Citizenship and Immigration committee  Public policy is another option. It all depends on your objective, whether it is economic growth or improving dependency ratios. We did not study both of those scenarios. I can, however, tell you that day cares and early childhood education have managed to increase the birth rate

Citizenship and Immigration committee  The Conference Board and other private organizations have looked at that. Some of the research done by the Conference Board—and I don't mean to boast—has tried to bring some perspective to the debate. We have to react to the impact of immigration and other policies on people's li

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That is a good question, and that is one of the aspects we looked at. You mustn't forget that most immigrants are not that young. They arrive in Canada when they are already 30 or 35. If Canada decided to increase its immigration targets substantially, this would not necessarily

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In fact, we do have very good data on that. Our data indicate that an immigrant with refugee status will during the first year earn about 20% of the average Canadian salary, and that it will take him a long time, almost 20 years, to earn 50% to 60% of the average Canadian salary.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Fair enough. I'm not sure I can claim to be an expert on public opinion. I think there are pollsters out there that probably know more.

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We do track what's being said. I do think it's an important issue. I think we have to educate first. I think we have to be flexible if things are changing. We have seen the outcomes of things turning for the worse in other areas: very protectionist agendas, for example, and rig

Citizenship and Immigration committee  That's a difficult question to answer. All I can say is that we have taken a very careful look at the economic contribution of each of the classes. We've kept them in line with recent history and with the targets we have currently. I talked a bit about those, but essentially it's

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Again, this is a bit outside of what we're specifically researching. I think there are folks in that area who would probably be able to give us better suggestions. What we are seeing is that the labour market outcomes really aren't as solid as they could be. I talked about a num

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, absolutely. I think it's just that when we get to the data at that level, the micro kind of data, it's harder to find and harder to compile all of that information and give you a number, top line. I would say that there is clear evidence, absolutely. There's anecdotal eviden

Citizenship and Immigration committee  We did build a no-immigration scenario. Again, it's counterfactual, but essentially we see GDP or income growth slow to about 1%. I think there are significant costs that we need to be aware of beyond just growth for the sake of growth. I talked about some of them. These kinds of

Citizenship and Immigration committee  In terms of those settlement services, language training and credential recognition are really important to labour market outcomes. The last point I want to make is about perceptions. We have to be careful about perceptions. We've seen protectionist rhetoric drive up an agenda i

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Yes, I think all of these things play out. I once had a colleague who's also an economist tell me that economists are like artists—they try to paint reality with the fewest brush strokes possible. I have to confess that we haven't dug into monetizing or making assumptions that w

Citizenship and Immigration committee  Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for having me here. I'm Pedro Antunes, deputy chief economist at the Conference Board. I guess what we can bring today is perhaps a perspective that is a little different from some of the other testimony today and that you might have heard pr

Citizenship and Immigration committee  I've been at the Conference Board, I have to confess, for a very long time. I'm in the forecasting business, if you like. It's a tough business, and people often criticize how we can get the next few quarters or the next year right, or how we can guess what the next economic scut