Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to speak today to this motion that has been brought forward by my friend and colleague from Fundy Royal. This has such an enormous impact on my riding of Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, as well as neighbouring ridings in Atlantic Canada.
I want to commend the member for introducing Motion No. 39 to the House as it specifically addresses the crucial question of immigration and, more importantly, the retention of newcomers. This is something I personally feel deserves much more attention, thought, and careful study, especially if we want to better understand why newcomers choose to leave our beautiful region.
Canada is first and foremost a land of immigrants. We all, at some point in time, came from somewhere else, and we all brought with us our own cultural and linguistic baggage. As members of the many different groups and nations in our country, we then worked together to forge connections and share our knowledge and experience in the service of creating a new, vibrant, and typically Canadian identity.
Nowadays, we recognize that our Canadian identity is shaped by that diversity of peoples, cultures, and languages. We take genuine pride in affirming the Canadian mosaic. That is why I feel we have to keep moving in that direction, maintain our traditions, and work even harder to attract more immigrants.
This is why I fully support this motion. I sincerely hope that we seek to provide the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration the clear mandate to take a closer look at our immigration situation in order to help our region, and indeed Atlantic Canada as a whole, as we face some serious demographic challenges with which we are currently at risk.
I firmly believe that the information that we are able to gather through such studies and analyses of data would also serve to further the interests of many other regions throughout Canada that are currently facing very similar demographic challenges.
As we all know, Canada is facing one of the worst demographic crises of all time. Everywhere we go, we hear the same thing: Canada's population is aging at an alarming rate, to the point where we are no longer able to support our labour market needs.
Indeed, between 1956 and 2006, the median age of the Canadian population rose from 27.2 to 38.8 years, an increase of more than 10 years over a span of just 50 years. Also, by 2056, the median age is expected to reach 46.9 years, or 20 years more than it was in 1956. That is worrisome.
Obviously, the impact of this problem is easily seen in the labour shortages that we are experiencing in many sectors of the economy, but it is worth noting that this population decline is also creating serious problems from a tax perspective. Not only does our aging population mean an increase in transfer payments to the provinces for health and education, but this population decline also reduces our tax base, since fewer people are contributing and paying income and consumption taxes.
This means that we will have fewer resources that we can then invest in social programs and infrastructure. Canadians will be the ones who suffer as a result.
It goes without saying that back home, in Atlantic Canada, the situation is even more serious. For example, in my province, New Brunswick, the fertility rate is less than 2%. The exodus of our people keeps growing before our eyes. Thousands of New Brunswickers leave our province every year.
According to Michael Haan, Canada Research Chair in Population and Social Policy at the University of New Brunswick, in recent years Atlantic Canada has gone through one of the most significant demographic shifts of any region in Canada. Again, the facts are alarming.
That is why we must absolutely look to immigration to offset this low growth. In fact, for the past few years, migratory increase in Atlantic Canada has been the main source of demographic growth in our region, largely surpassing natural increase.
This is partly because, with the exception of a few urban areas, we live in a part of the country that is predominantly rural, so the impact of our aging population on our way of life is even greater.
In fact, in 2014, for the first time in the recorded history of our province, the number of deaths outnumbered the number of births in our province. We now have the second-lowest fertility rate in Canada, a fertility rate that will only continue to drop because of our aging population.
This is simply unacceptable, because we all know that an aging, shrinking population could be absolutely devastating to an economy. The math is simple. Fewer people working means less income tax, which results in a reduction of resources available to fund key essential public service programs and infrastructure, the development of which is also an important tool in building our economy.
Of course, it is also important to mention that back home, immigration must definitely take into account the language component, because our community has a very large francophone population. Obviously, maintaining our demographic weight in our province is important to us as francophones, otherwise the risk of our language being assimilated and of our culture and institutions being lost becomes too great.
Further analysis of the situation by the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration would allow us to identify the key factors that explain why francophone newcomers have a hard time settling in our region. This is essential information if we want to understand the situation and then develop tangible solutions for improving it.
In my opinion, it is essential that we focus our efforts on attracting francophone immigrants to our region. We must also do what it takes to help them flourish and succeed in our communities. Their contribution is very important for our region from an economic standpoint, but also from a cultural standpoint, because these people greatly enrich our heritage and push us to broaden our horizons.
The government of Canada recognizes that francophone immigration to Canada is vitally important, especially in regions where French is already the minority language.
Consequently, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada has set a goal, namely to have francophones represent 4% of the total number of economic immigrants who settle outside Quebec by 2018. This was the impetus for the department to establish, for example, the mobilité francophone component of the international mobility program, whereby skilled francophone workers are exempted from a labour market impact assessment in order to facilitate their entry into Canada and their transition in our communities.
It will now be easier for skilled francophone workers to come to Canada, initially on a temporary basis, but with the possibility of working and remaining in Canada under the express entry system.
While we often hear certain misconceptions about immigration in Atlantic Canada regarding newcomers to our region, it is important to remember that immigrants are not here to take our jobs. In fact, they give much more than they take. They give by sharing their unique experiences with all of us, by filling identified skills gaps in our region, by investing their capital, and by contributing to enhancing our Canadian identity.
I strongly believe that, and on this the data are crystal clear, Atlantic Canada absolutely needs growth. The motion is an important and a necessary first step to improving and understanding the needs of immigration growth and retention in our area. By allowing the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration to study the immigration landscape in Atlantic Canada in greater depth, all ridings in our region will be in a much better position to map out our economic future by developing a progressive immigration strategy that will help address our lack of growth.
I believe that members will agree that we will succeed together, and that by working collaboratively we will build a future for our beautiful region and overcome the many challenges we have.