🧵Disappointing interview on CBC Ottawa this morning. Host was determined to push me into a corner to say that responsibility for unsustainable growth in foreign students lays with provinces, not Feds. Interview ended abruptly when I refused. 1/9

Listen: cbc.ca/listen/live-ra… What's most disappointing is that the producer and I agreed in a lengthy pre-interview yesterday (Sunday) that the "blame game" is unhelpful; what's needed now are solutions. Instead CBC host pushed me to contradict my own Parliamentary testimony.

👉 2/9

It's time that someone ask @R_Boissonnault about these data.

Here's the % of Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) applications for temporary foreign workers that have been approved under the Liberals' watch.

1/4 Here is the total number of LMIA positions that have been approved under the Liberals' watch.

More than a six-fold increase since 2014.

2/4

“It’s a market for PR status. There’s a fixed number of slots, and people are doing what they can to get those.” 1/4
theglobeandmail.com/canada/article… In many markets, fairness concerns keep us from relying on explicit prices to determine allocation (healthcare, education, votes). But somehow prices always find their way in. The market for PR status is no different. 2/4

🧵*THREAD* The blaming of education consultants by senators is misplaced. False that "only highest ranked get PR status" in current system. Big time false. Push to expand PR pathways in recent years has created a non-standard selection system... 1/8
theglobeandmail.com/politics/artic… which lures migrants with (*justified*) hope of getting lucky. Makes candidates willing to pay exorbitant tuition fees and accept substandard wage and working conditions to get on uncertain PR pathway. Equivalent to paying more for a lottery ticket with better odds. 2/8

The average wage of Canada's low-skill workers, after adjusting for inflation, was *lower* in June 2023 than it was in June 2019.

Good if you employ low-skill workers. Not so good if you are one. 1/4 And if you think declining wages of Canada's low-skill workers in recent months reflects decreasing demand, think again.

Low-skill employment is increasing.

The only way for real wages to fall while employment is increasing is for supply to increase faster than demand. 2/4

*A PERSONAL ACCOUNT* 🧵 For two summers in 90s, I worked for ABC Group in Brampton and Rexdale. Plastic parts supplier to automotive industry. Nonunion. Lean and mean. Line workers all recent immigrants from South Asia and Caribbean. Privately owned by Mike Schmidt and family.1/5 When plastic part leaves injection mold it goes in a trimmer. Excess “flash” then put in big grinder with 3-ft rotating blades. When blades get dull, plastic melts to blades and machine stops. My job? Use hammer and sharpened flathead screwdriver to break plastic off blade.😬 2/5

Can we please stop with this nonsense interpretation of these data? @TheEconomist says "Canada admits more (temporary residents) than the permanent sort." Wrong. These are not mutually exclusive groups. ~1/3 of temps become permanent and that share is growing over time. 1/6 🧵 Growth in temporary numbers largely reflects foreign students and IMPs w/ no desire to stay in 🇨🇦. That's a deliberate policy that works. Interpreting expansion here as reflecting growth in migrant workers with no PR pathway is *highly* misleading. 2/6 www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-626-…

*NEW* Among 6,292 jobless workers who lost job after mid-February, I find that women, especially women with young kids, and older workers, are significantly less likely to be searching for a new job. But weak evidence that workers benefiting most from CERB are searching less. These estimates, from a linear probability model, suggest to me that in mid-May caregiving constraints and virus fears were more important labour supply obstacles than CERB-induced work disincentives. #cdnecon #cdnpoli