Thank you for inviting me.
My name is Pierre Emmanuel Paradis. I'm with Analysis Group, which is a consulting firm with offices in Canada and the United States. I'm a co-author of the study that is before you on the economic impact of the immigrant investor program. I co-wrote the study with a professor from Queen's University in Kingston--his name is Roger Ware--and also with Pierre Fortin, who is an emeritus professor of economics at UQAM in Montreal.
Immigrant investors comprise more or less 3% of all immigrants who come into Canada each year. In the past 25 years or so, about 130,000 of them have arrived in Canada. They provide a substantial initial contribution and economic impact to the country. The study comprises four main parts. We described the inner workings of the program and the immigrant flows. We looked at the selection process and how funds of immigrant investors were used. For this part we essentially used data from CIC to present some basic statistics.
Second of all, we did something that had not been done before, which was to create a profile of the personal and economic activities of immigrant investors in Canada, which shows that essentially they establish their families here: they buy homes, and their children study here. A significant proportion get involved in their community.
The third part, which is the main part, assesses the economic impact of immigrant investor families who arrive in this country. Essentially, a typical immigrant investor family contributes to the Canadian economy in three ways. First of all, when they come into the country, the net impact of their initial contribution is valued at about $45,000. Provinces then use the funds that they receive from immigrant investors for various projects. The data on this is unclear, but we calculated that up to an additional $30,000 resulted from the use of these funds.
Third and more importantly, when immigrant investor families arrive in Canada, they buy homes, business assets, investments, and durable goods. In the survey we did of 107 families, the average assets that each family bought in this manner were valued at $721,000. If you calculate that we have 2,500 families coming into Canada every year and having this much economic impact, we're talking about an additional $1.9 billion to $2 billion every year for Canada.
Fourth, we looked at the prospective supply and demand of immigrant investors in the coming years in Canada. Essentially and in every way, economically and demographically, these families will provide a significant contribution to Canada. Regarding the international programs and policies, Mr. Major is going to talk more.
Our brief analysis concluded that Canada's program is fairly competitive. Its main competitive advantage is the initial contribution, which is lower than that of other countries. The main problem with it is the delays, which are the longest, by a significant amount, of all the programs we looked at.
Finally, in terms of the supply, there is a pool of wealthy families that would be interested in immigrating to Canada, which Canada taps into. It is really the tip of the iceberg. The pool of families is very large, and Canada could benefit significantly from having more of these investors.
I will give you the recommendations that we make in our analysis, which are on page 5 of the report in English. There are four of them:
First, the program should be not only maintained but expanded, considering all the economic benefits that I just presented.
Second, for the benefit of the general public, we believe the general public should know more about the impact of not only immigrant investors but all other categories of economic immigrants, so that the general public could appreciate the business activity, jobs created and investments performed by all these immigrants.
Third, I believe that Canadian authorities could build on our analysis to really optimize the program's criteria and conditions in view of what is offered internationally, and perhaps improve its weaker aspects, the greatest of which are the delays.
Fourth, I think that future research would be indicated if we looked at, for instance, the long-term impact of the second generation of immigrant investors.
I did my presentation in English, but I'm also willing to answer questions in French if any arise.
Thank you.