In this November 2025 P2P Conference plenary presenters were asked to include a future-oriented focus in their presentations, considering how these dynamics may evolve over the next 10 to 15 years and what they could mean for migration to Canada. The goal is to be able to anticipate a number of plausible futures so that we can prepare for them in a more proactive way. Exploring possible futures requires careful attention to change drivers most likely to shape them. In this plenary, we will focus on three factors that are likely to impact the future of immigration to Canada: the demographics of Canada and global trends, labour market needs in our communities, and evolving attitudes toward immigrants and immigration.
Presenters:
AI-generated transcript:
good afternoon everybody if I could get your attention i hope you've enjoyed your lunch today i do enjoy it when there is pie for lunch and I think that's what you get when you come to Nova Scotia so I hope you enjoyed that um welcome welcome to Halifax and to today's session we will be together until around 2:30 and today's presentation will consist of three uh 15minute presentations by our speakers followed by a Q&A using Slido the same way that we did this morning so my name is Paula Knight and I am the CEO of Immigrant Services Association of Nova Scotia and as an immigrant who came Thank you uh as an immigrant who came to Halifax from Wales in the early 90s I was very much drawn to the reign of Halifax I think which was quite familiar um it is a privilege and a full circle moment for me to chair this important plenary session on shaping the future of immigration global trends labor market needs and public attitudes today we will highlight three fundamental drivers that are likely to shape Canada's future immigration landscape evolving demographic patterns in Canada and around the world pressing labor market demands in our communities and changing public attitudes toward newcomers that influence policies and society our distinguished speakers bring a future oriented perspective reflecting on how these forces might evolve over the next 10 to 15 years and what implications these changes could hold for migration to Canada together our goal is to anticipate a range of plausible futures enabling us to prepare proactively and ensure that policies and practices foster a welcoming prosperous and inclusive Canada for all it is my pleasure to briefly introduce our three expert speakers whose full bios are available on the conference platform first Keith Newman senior associate and co-founder of the Environ Environics Institute a respected notfor-profit research organization keith has dedicated his career to studying public opinion and social norms across diverse Canadian communities holding a PhD in social ecology he offers invaluable insights into Canadians attitudes toward immigration next Mikuel Bano assistant professor in demog in dem in in demography and population sciences at the University of Montreal macau's research focuses on population aging and linguistic diversity with a particular emphasis on using scenario planning to inform migration trends he will demonstrate how datadriven foresight can refine Canada's migration progress projections shamira Madami managing director for Canada and deputy executive director at World Education Services with over two decades of government experience and a strong commitment to inclusion Shamira has championed initiatives that break down barriers for internationally educated professionals and newcomers her leadership continues to advance a more equitable Canadian society as mentioned following the presentations we will open the floor for Q&A using Slido to share questions that matter to all of us with that let's begin and please join me in welcoming Keith Newman to the podium thank you Paula and thank you all for uh for being here today uh appreciate the opportunity to participate in this uh important conference immigration and newcomer settlement obviously is at a crossroads in this country and uh lot of big changes which we're all quite familiar with that really raises the stakes of what we're here to talk about um in the few minutes that I have I ho hope to offer some insight about public opinion and where it is and where it's going see if this works yes excuse me uh there are three things I'm going to cover very briefly uh Canadian public opinion today uh how this has changed what we can learn from public opinion surveys like this work and what we cannot and finally what we might expect in the near future so our institute has been tracking uh public opinion public opinion on immigration for quite a few years in fact we have data going back to the 1970s uh and we have more recently been doing an annual survey of Canadians 2,000 Canadians on immigration with some key indicators our most recent survey was in September we published in the media in October i'm curious if anybody has heard or seen of our research show of hands okay a few of you have okay um the research is public the report's on our website so uh I'm just going to give you some highlights uh but uh uh the details can be found elsewhere i'd also like to note that uh this is the fifth time I've actually been on this podium at this conference presenting our research going back to 2017 the story has been evolving since then uh and let me show you some results so you may already know from our research that the public opinion sentiment in this country has shifted towards immigration in the last couple of years and if you haven't seen our research you've probably come to the same conclusion from other sources so here is the tracking data we have going back to 1977 on a question one question agree disagree there's too much immigration to Canada so the green line is agree the red line is disagree you could see there have been some shifts over time but for much of much of the past 25 years people have tended to disagree and feel that this is not an issue but there has been a shift and let me just make this bigger so you can see it from 2017 the first year I was uh uh presenting at this conference most Canadians disagreed with that statement and that held steady for a number of years even through the pandemic and then starting after 2022 a dramatic change and now most Canadians agree and feel there is too much immigration a dramatic shift in two in two years um I think we've seen other indications of how this has gone um and uh but also if you pay attention between 2024 and 2025 that number has leveled off so that the sharp increase in concern agreement too much immigration that really changed much in the last 12 months so perhaps that's a positive sign what this really means and I won't spend much time on this today but is there's a dramatic shift uh first time ever perhaps where Canadians are paying attention to the numbers of immigrants not where they're coming from and it's really become an issue of capacity how many can the country handle both for the newcomers and for the people here um and we know a year ago that the federal government also understood where the public was and started changing the levels and reducing the numbers why are people concerned about too much immigration this slide may be too small for all of you to see um but we asked a follow-up question why is there too much immigration and it was an open-ended question which meant that we didn't give them easy answers people had to tell us and then we had some themes and I won't spend much time on this except to say that what's increasingly becoming the focus of people who have concerns is the government management of the system or lack of management that's the number one driver of people feeling that maybe the there too many people as opposed to threat to culture as opposed to housing as opposed to security threats or public health and that sort of thing so there's been some changes when we look at results of a question like this across the country we do not see a lot of differences by region by age by education even by generation in Canada you don't really see big differences in opinions what we do see is a growing political divide at least at the federal level you can see that if you start back in 2001 there was very little difference across supporters of the main parties on issues of immigration today there is a huge divide with those who support the federal conservative party much more likely twice as likely that people who support the Liberals or NDP to say there's too much immigration and you can see how that gap is widening over time we did also ask questions about the why who sorry the who who's coming do people have concerns about the type of newcomers and immigrants we're welcoming here's another one of our tracking questions agree disagree too many immigrants do not adopt Canadian values so we can see that generations ago most Canadians agreed with the statement and then it kind of narrowed and it was divided now over the past couple of years we're starting to see that green line creep up and a larger number of Canadians are saying yes to or agreeing with this question and I might add it's primarily people who would support federal conservatives and election who are driving that change what about the economic benefits of immigration most Canadians have and continue to agree that immigration is good for the national economy it has gone down a little bit uh but it's still a clear majority and there are other sides to this to this issue all of those questions I've showed you have talked about opinions about the national level the national economy what's happening in Canada but what's happening in your own local community when we ask that kind of question the picture changes somewhat what's the net effect of immigration in your own local community and what we could see even in 2025 Canadians are twice as likely to say it's a net positive than a net negative again that's a change from before not quite as positive but the bottom line is that most Canadians say immigrants in my community it's either a plus or it's really makes no big difference it's not a negative and unlike some what some commentators are starting to talk about Canadians are not turning their back on multiculturalism or diversity here's a question that we asked this year what makes Canada a unique country open-ended so people had to give us what was in their heads and the number one theme continues to be multiculturalism diversity tolerance we accept refugees we accept people who come here not the only response but it's the top response more than the land resources health care uh hockey and so forth i've got some thank you yes and just uh a bit more data this is from another study on race relations from last year uh when we ask Canadians how well people from different races get along in this country generally good or generally bad most Canadians say generally good and that is held for the past number of years most Canadians feel that we generally get along from different places and what's really important is when you look at those results by people's own racial or ethnic background it's the same picture it is not simply the white majority who are saying this but people who are black or Chinese or indigenous everyone generally agrees that this is the case or a majority of them do and it suggests that we do not have a big collective divide in this country by race ethnicity or even uh uh generation so okay I'm going to have to go fast uh not a bad picture from a public opinion point of view and so we may say that you know there's some hope here um but the question then I have to ask and and you may want to ask is does this accurately capture what's happening in our communities today how well does this reflect what's happening in in particular communities in the context of hate incidents and protests and other signs of disrespect and racism and prejudice um perhaps our research is not covering the whole picture and in fact it's not and so what I'd like to just sort of uh carry on with and I guess go through quickly is a couple qualifiers to the research I just presented and one is that these national surveys are very good at capturing opinions at the 30,000 foot level at the national or regional level but every community as we all know has its own distinctive characteristics and circumstances and we need to also understand the opinions and perceptions of people living in specific communities as well which may or may not reflect what's happening at the regional or national level and I think uh Vicky Essence and her colleagues deserve a shout out here for the local surveys that they did a few years ago where they actually took this on and found out what was happening in something like 20 communities across the country the other caveat is that public opinion really measures opinions and attitudes and so forth but not behavior um and behavior is actually pretty important when we're talking about how newcomers are treated and and and how they fare when they come to this country because how people behave is driven much more by our social connections and the group influences and what are known as social norms the norms that either constrain or enable people to act out what their beliefs may be or the beliefs of groups they're part of and so I think it's very important for people researchers like me and others those of you in the room you know looking at this to pay more attention to the norms that are taking place in our communities because they're actually a going to make a big difference and b norms are something that can change and in some cases are easier to change than attitudes so what is to come last two slides do I have time okay um it's pretty cliche to say these days that the world is changing rapidly we don't need the strategic foresight I think to to tell us that um but the picture is really changing and our story about immigration has changed and it's not going to go back to what it was five or six years ago a new chapter is really being written when I was putting this presentation together I was envisioning the very kind of rapids that Greg Landry showed in his slides and I you know I almost put the same slide up um and so you know it's we're we're uncharted territory and even though the those sorts of projections are going to be very challenging to do we have to I guess come to terms with the fact that we're in a whole new political public social environment um and the balance there's going to need to be a difficult balance uh uh in in terms of immigration flow and the capacity i mean this is obvious but we need that to maintain the public and political support for the kind of system we have and not to end up like some other countries like the UK and and Denmark and so forth where they are be they are starting to engage in something called negative nation branding which is a new term that I just learned and and you may be hearing about soon so my last slide um perhaps it was uh unrealistic for us to sustain our sort of exceptional story and success about immigration uh that the rest of the world has seen us as and probably continues to but we are still exceptional in certain ways in terms of our geography our history our culture our institutions we are not like most of the other countries that we usually compare us with in terms of immigration we have avoided the some of the worst developments to date um we're not divided by race and religion we're not seeing mass protests in some of those other countries and I think when we look outward and see every all those things happening in other countries I think it's a good reminder to to tell ourselves what we still have here and what we can work with and how we can approach the future so thank you thank you so much for that reminder Keith i think it really puts so much in perspective around our conversations that we're having over the next few days now it's my pleasure to invite Mikuel Buisano to the stage thank you all right so um yeah thank you for uh having me here it's my first time uh and I'm really impressed with the the size of the conference and um yeah uh I also wanted to say that I enjoyed uh the talk by uh Greg Landry uh this morning i think it sets up the table very nicely for uh what we are talking about and especially for what I will be talking about in this presentation so um as um PA said um I'm a demographer so I'm really interested in the uh quantitative uh aspect uh relating to migration and so what uh Greg was talking about this morning foresight is really much about uh stories uh but what I was interesting uh in uh a few years back was to look at how those stories can be can be used to derive numbers about uh migration trends in the future i need to push here ah wasn't pushing hard enough so um as a background for uh my presentation of course is the really important increase in population size that uh happened in Canada in between 2022 and 2024 um that was mostly unpredicted and uh of course uh most of that growth was uh attributable to uh migration um I will be talking about that in a second but so if we look at population projections that were uh made uh prior to the to the strong increase uh we can look at the projection by statistics uh Canada and I I don't want to criticize uh statistics Canada but um I think we we saw the the the projection by Scotia Bank this morning it could have been the United Nations also u make projections regularly and it's it's all the same uh the even the the highest um scenario that Statistics Canada uh projected so that that's the the higher bound was at least 1 million people uh below the what what actually happened so that's a projection that was made in 2015 uh Statistics Canada used to make projections every 5 years now they're making uh more often they they update their projections because things are changing so fast but if we look at what was projected uh in 2015 based on the 2012 numbers uh that was um uh obviously um uh completely um uh under uh estimated and one of the one of the main reasons was was that immigration so the immigration component of the projection was underestimated and what they what demographers usually do when they um make population projections is that they look at the past trends so it's really about uh forecasting using past trends looking at what was the highest level that we observed let's say uh over the last 15 years what was the lowest level and we take that as boundaries and we project that into the future and we we see what happens we we see what we get um obviously um past trends are a very bad predictor of future ones in terms of migration especially uh when you look at migration um and the increase between 2022 and 2024 was uh not uh was much uh underestimated so obviously there was a specific context for uh for the increase uh a lot of things happening at the same time so there was a uh governments were searching for growth after the pandemic they they wanted a bit of stimulus uh the number of birds was historically low also especially in terms of birth rate um there was the unstable political climate uh abroad in Afghanistan and uh Ukraine um all the the story also around Rox uh where a lot of um refugees uh came and and altogether I mean the general uh context also of the government favoring higher uh uh immigration levels so very specific context but could it have been predicted um and I will argue that uh if we use the the right tools we maybe it was not predictable but at least we could have been better prepared and that's really much was uh what um Greg was saying this morning um so we can turn to scenario planning uh and uh I won't repeat what Greg said this morning but uh so it's been that's an approach that's been around for for a long time especially in in business and in science it's been appearing a little bit later maybe since the turn of the century uh there has been more publication and it's um it was a bit more niche maybe in the beginning but uh gradually it became more um popular among uh different circles including in uh among um some demographers more recently um so starting around 2010 uh or larger organizations like the OECD started using scenario planning to uh think about the future of migration to um to OECD countries uh the European Union used scenario planning a lot uh during the last 10 12 years to think about the the future of migration to um to to Europe um so this is one example of uh what uh scenario planning might how it can be used in the uh in the context of migration and uh we see usually we see this example uh over and over again across different publications so uh I published um literature review of those uh scenarios and that's what I wanted to uh say in the beginning of presentation actually so this is work that that uh I will be talking about now uh that I did in Europe so I did not do this for um the specific case of Canada but I think we can learn a few things uh from what I did in Europe because I I was there and there was a strong demand for that kind of um um well for uh better forecasting migration demographically and uh so I was working in a in a project part of the that was funded by Horizon uh 2020 so but before I I I talk specifically about the project we worked on so this is what we had uh as a model uh when we started our our work um scenarios like uh those by the OECD the the European Union they usually use two uh axes they looked at how things could change so two drivers of change and uh they predict two directions of change according to those two drivers this is a um somewhat of a special uh case with three drivers actually but the idea is the same um so you have those two drivers you combine them and you have usually four scenarios and then the scenarios will be uh narratives there will be stories about how migration might look like in 10 to 15 years in a specific place what uh the problem as a demographer with this is that we the stories aren't enough so we want to put numbers on those stories we want to know how many people will migrate so there was a first attempt that I'm aware of that was published in 2020 and what these authors did is that they gathered a bunch of experts they had discussions about how the the future of migration might look like to Europe it was in the case of Europe in this case they came up with four scenarios once again the scenarios depended mostly on economic whether countries would uh diverge or converge economically speaking and uh whether there would be more or less international cooperation between countries and then uh they had these four scenarios and once they had those scenarios they asked um the experts to put numbers on them so here you can see that uh in the case of uh scenario 4 with multi-ateralism and uh economic divergence between sending and receiving countries that uh immigration would increase by 44% uh in 2030 compared to the 2008 2017 average so this is just asked I think it was maybe 20 experts to put a number and this is the average that you see here to put a number on each scenario um so we thought that's that's promising but we were missing a few things so international cooperation and economic conversion the two drivers that they used are um probably very important but they aren't the only ones that we need to think about when we think about the future of migration so what about for example uh demographic change uh I talked about a few of those uh a few minutes ago so political stability public attitudes public policies and also what about how those uh drivers play out differently in receiving and uh sending countries so we wanted to come up with uh a way to quantify migration scenarios but also their components so we can have more complex uh scenarios take into account more uh uh a wider array of futures so what we did to take that into account is that we had the idea of using vignettes so um actually if I can come back I will first show you this this is what I mean by a vignette so we presented we did the same as the previous authors uh did so we uh prepared an online survey for uh to to to be filled by uh migration experts in different parts of the world and we presented them with vignettes just short story lines that uh describe how migration how actually um different drivers of migration might change in the future each driver could uh either go one way or the other so they could change into uh two directions and there was seven uh of those drivers three of them in the receiving countries three of them in the um sending countries and one that combined kind of combined uh the the the two um sets of countries and uh I will come back and so that that was about migration from the mana countries so um Middle East and North Africa to the European Union and by combining by having all those combinations of uh factors of drivers and those directions their uh different directions of change uh we actually had 128 unique scenarios that uh had to be quantified by the by the experts and uh we reached a total of 138 experts and we asked them questions about four types of migration flows that you see here and I I will just present um results for one of the migration flows migration types so the this economic migration and this is this was for the period so we asked them to quantify what they saw on the vignettes in in the year 2030 compared to the year 2019 so before the pandemic and this is uh one example of what we obtained so this is the average uh across all um experts and we see that uh what they thought was the most and that that was a bit unconscious so they would read um the vignette of course and there was seven different uh drivers um that they would uh be presented with at the same time but um because we arranged them in a very systematic way and varied them in a very systematic way uh we were able to tell exactly uh how much of a difference in uh the experts assessment was attributable to each of them and so the largest difference was attributable to divergent uh employment uh levels between sending and receiving countries and then you have uh uh the restrictiveness of policies that played a large role in also the attitudes towards migration so and uh of course we have different levels for each of the drivers that we uh that we used but we can still combine them to have really fullyfledged scenarios and in the case do I still have one minute yes I will take one minute um so we can still combine them to to have full scenarios and so just to to show you a little bit how much variation we obtain um this scenario that would uh induce the most the largest migration flows and we see that there is more than a doubling of the of the levels uh in 10 years and then you have the less um uh the one that's associated with the lowest flows so that's a bit more variation than uh what um uh typical predictions will have usually when they are based on past trends i think it's promising uh we would have hoped that I would have imagined that the variation would have been even even greater but people are quite conservative I think when they assess that kind of scenarios um but I so for Canada I believe that uh if demographers want to continue making uh migration projections or just population projections they need to uh consider a wider array of possibilities for the future and it starts maybe with using uh scenarios or scenario planning thank you M that actually fits in really well with what we saw this morning as well so an emerging theme here so I'd now like to actually invite uh Shim Madani to the stage good afternoon everyone um so I'm not a demographer i'm not an economist i'm just me in terms of the presentation I'm going to be making this afternoon um I'll just start by by saying that I've been working in this sector for over three decades um I know many of you in the room who have been around with me and I've been in government and outside of government um and yes I would like to say that I started when I was four but um it's been a long time and today I'm going to be a little controversial for for some of you for years I've sat in rooms like this where we talk about our programs our funding needs and the complexity of the people we serve and one theme rises to the top every time we always talk about requiring more funding and as I prepared uh these remarks through the lens of investing in Canada's shared future I realized something and I've been thinking about this for a little while but I realized something starting with funding and especially having been in government inside government is the wrong conversation if we want to have meaningful engagement with government so the context has has shifted fundamentally and you know it's not temporary and it's not political it's structural and government priorities are moving because of that so you heard uh you know the the speakers this morning speak to it you've heard my colleagues speak to it so inflation pressures labor market disruption due to trade tensions uh public opinion volatility and shrinking internal tolerance for what's happening so the settlement sector is staring at all of you 20 to 40% funding cuts ircc is reducing its own workforce by 3,300 positions justified by the assumption that fewer newcomers mean fewer services required by newcomers meanwhile the federal government is investing over $280 billion in capital projects including 110 billion in productivity and competitiveness there is money in the system just not for everything and the competition for dollars that remain has never been fiercer across the country organizations are cutting staff closing programs and turning away newcomers who are desperate to survive and your concerns for your programs your teams your ability to serve people these are real and legitimate fears the sector does need funding that's not what I'm disputing but now we face two choices we could continue to lead with funding requests and risk becoming increasingly ignored or we always show up and align with conversations that the government is having about how the future of immigration is going to work and the future of our country so speaking where I sit as the managing director of World Education Services we sit at a unique intersection of education workforce development policy advocacy and research and we work with all different sectors all different levels of government and where we see where the system works and where it breaks often often badly and as a social enterprise we can approach government with a neutral evidence focused lens and ask the hard questions that others can't and here's what we're seeing when funding is the conversation starter government stops listening and when we lead with solutions especially on workforce and talent doors open this time the situation is really different when people say this is temporary things will change with the next minister with the next government but I believe that this is actually a different you've heard my colleagues since this morning speak about that because this is not politics it's about reshaping Canada's future this isn't about a pendulum swing this is a system level inflection point so this is where we can't really talk about forecasting we can only talk about predictions Immigration is the key to keeping our aging society economically vibrant you've already heard Keith and and Muel talk about that the labor market picture is changing pretty significantly unemployment for Canadians is 7% for recent immigrants nearly double for immigrant refugee and youth 23% one in three immigrants are not in jobs using their skills you have civil engineers working as crossing guards doctors driving Ubers skilled trades people delivering packages meanwhile AI shape reshaping the labor market faster than our systems can adapt our GDP is declining global competition for talent is intensifying and our ability to compete is weakening you just heard about the report where people are leaving the narrative has shaft shifted shifted to for 20 years immigrants were celebrated as nation builders but in the last two years that optimism has faded ke he just talked about how 56% of Canadians now believe there's too much immigration and not because im immigrants are problem they aren't but because many Canadians today feel economically vulnerable and a false narrative has taken place that immigrants are takers what's missing is a foundational truth newcomers are essential to e Canada's economic future not optional not supplemental but essential and government isn't saying that immigration the immigration system is failing but there's a clear recognition that approaches must change to rep to respond to a challenging environment an environment that we know government itself helped create so the real question today is will the settlement sector help lead the renewal or simply absorb the consequences of change and there are stories of real people last week in my Uber I met a a Muhammad a chemical engineer from Iran he designed rural water systems brilliant experience committed to public service ina he cleans offices by day and drives Uber at night and not because he's not qualified and not because his skills are not needed but because our systems create barriers instead of removing them and when I asked how he felt he said "I'm grateful to be here but I did not come to Canada to disappear." And you heard Tamara talk about that this morning there are tens of thousands of Muhammads and our economy needs every one of them to work in the profession again to contribute to the country to thrive and not survive so now we talk about strategic foresight let me pre basically paint two very different uh futures but plausible picture one 20 years from now Canada is no longer a top destination long-term care facilities can staff shifts Canadians must work into their 80s because there is no talent pipeline GDP keeps on declining and the settlement sector and afterthought not because of lack of passion but because it it wasn't part of designing the solutions solution two 20 years from now the future where we are leaders Canada becomes the global destination of choice because we solved economic integration a nurse from the Philippines gets licensed in 6 months not in 6 years a civil engineer helps build the infrastructure we desperately need for the big projects a doctor practices medicine our communities instead of driving Uber and credentials follow people across provinces employers governments licensing bodies all work together co-design systems with immigrant voices at the center taxes are sustainable healthcare works communities survive and the settlement sector a full policy and program partner not a downstream implementer essential because you made yourselves essential and so what does the settlement sector have that government needs the work you do is economic infrastructure I'll just repeat again the work that you do is economic infrastructure not social programming not fixing people Your superpower is lived experience government consults through two-page surveys designed by people who don't work with immigr immigrants and rarely include immigrants themselves but you know what happens on the ground and you know what's real and you know what's political theater and you know how to collaborate in the ways government simply cannot government wants cross department solutions right now at the recent ministerial roundt every sector whether it was tech construction aerospace AI AI asked for one thing better coordination across departments because immigration touches labor labor touches health health touches education education touches economic growth the settlement sector can be the voice insisting on that coordination by showing how settlement work links directly to productivity competitiveness and national prosperity from my perspective there are three ways to engage government differently first connect local work to national policy you already convene with local IRCC regional offices employers licensing bodies municipalities etc now document those community insights systematically and then feed them up to provincial and uh federal policy tables this is how local intelligence becomes national strategy two coordinate our narrative right now misinformation is shaping public opinion not evidence imagine if local stories local data and local solutions were shared through one coordinated narrative immigrants are essential contributors and you can show proof and you can bring employers and others because the issue of immigration and settlement isn't just about immigrants for immigrants it's for Canadians everybody benefits if immigrants can contribute narrative shifts happen when multiple voices speak in unison and consistently and third become solution partners from day one say to government we need to be in the room at the beginning not after decisions are made and when you basically meet with government make sure that you have immigrants accompanying you not survey summaries but people who have been impacted top-down policy must meet bottom up lived experience or it will fail do you recall last year at this session IRCC promised a roundt with lived experience two years ago to this very audience do you remember that promise when you position yourself as system architects not just service providers the funding conversation changes because your value becomes undeniable so the bottom line immigrants and refugees are not the cause of Canada's economic challenges they're the key to overcoming them but that requires systems designed for economic integration and that requires leadership voice and vision so I offer this question will we shape the future or watch the government build it without us the expertise the relationships the immigrant voices the community trust the courage this is not a moment for caution this is a moment for boldness let's believe the Canada we believe in an inclusive competitive thriving nation where everybody has the opportunity to comp to contribute this is the Canada worth fighting for that's the reason why my parents came to Canada let's build the future together thank you wow well thank you so much that was a beautiful way to kind of end those presentations i invite you all to begin asking your questions on Slido if you can and we are going to show a brief video while you get your thoughts together put those questions in then we'll move to the Q&A there's so much potential and so much skill and knowledge that immigrants bring over and really what keeps us from tapping into that potential is not making that transition efficiently and I think that's where is really important i was here with a bachelor's degree but I was kind of like jobbing around for 3 or 4 years not really apply applying any of that skill so I think it's really important that that potential that comes with immigration that we really make use of that and yeah apply it immediately and yeah ping trades program is such a program I think that is doing that kind of work thank you so we're going to start with the questions okay so Keith we're going to start with the first one for you keith did you expect the federal government would respond to your poll by cutting immigration levels especially certain categories do you feel bothered your secret research is quoted every time to justify level cuts and consequently funding for services it's a tough question at the very beginning no thank is that working you can hear me yes well uh just a couple of points uh first um you may not be surprised to know that the government is doing their own ongoing research on this uh they're not relying on our research they in fact are very very interested in our research and uh they don't release theirs by the way that's for internal purposes but every time we do a survey they want to know what we find and to find out if our research is similar to theirs and it typically is so our research isn't actually pushing the government i think it's simply quantifying and and putting into perspective I think what the government is also picking up through other sources not just research but politics and and media and so forth so we're not our our impact is not really that dramatic in that sense i think the difference is what we're doing is we're doing our research and we're making it public so the story is out there and it's not something that's only in the hands of of uh people in back rooms and and you know minister's offices and so forth um I think the challenge for us is to tell the story in a way that's balanced and nuanced and doesn't lead quickly to negative narratives that say Canadians don't want immigrants or we think they're all bad or something because our research really doesn't paint quite a negative picture i think the only point I want to add to this is that why Canadians say there's too much immigration it's not simply because they feel immigrants newcomers are takers or raising housing prices but it's one of those flash points that remind Canadians that perhaps our infrastructure and our health care systems and so forth are not up to standard and it perhaps isn't make sense for immigrants or or people living here to continue to bring large numbers in so uh we're a small piece of this and we're simply trying to tell that story in a public way thank you so much does anybody want to build on that m do you have any thoughts around flexibility and building systems or Okay all right uh so the next one uh so is for Shamira and given the changing context and increasing competition for funds what are the implications of what collaboration in the sector looks like and how can we foster collaboration in this context and what is lost if we don't sure that that's a heavy question so I'm actually going to just start with um the question at a very macro level um at West we released a document which is called the future of immigration and the reality is that what we need is collaboration both at the federal level and at the local level at the federal level we need a pancanadian approach ircc working with ESDC working with health working with global affairs and it should be a panCanadian approach where rather than each ministry working together potentially the prime minister's office coordinates that and at the local level the conversation needs to happen again in collaboration so you here is a system right now you have the council of federation which is the premier chaired by the prime minister then you have an immigration table and a labor market table and a health table and it goes on and on what happens in terms of collaboration what needs to happen is that those tables need to jointly work on the issue of talent and immigration and the way it could happen at the local level is that rather than just the settlement um organizations working with other settlement organizations or workforce you could basically develop hubs in your regions and bring employers and different groups together because they need talent and you know where talent is coming from so you could basically create hubs in the different communities and then bring it together and make sure that these various tables at the province and the national levels know what's happening we're looking at some ideas but that's basically the the design that that we are thinking about thank you Keith you and I had a brief conversation about this next question this morning and that is around negative nation branding and its impact it was the first time I'd heard that term until when we chatted so I'd love to hear more about that yes uh negative nation branding i think I came across that term in the last two days uh in the Guardian uh that was in the context of a story about the new UK policies on refugees which some of you may know they are starting to make some serious restrictions uh on uh on refugees this is the Labor government trying to keep themselves afloat politically um and uh basically they're sending out a strong message saying that uh for potential refugees maybe this isn't the right place to come i don't know who coined the term perhaps it was the journalist uh but the term was in quotes uh and we may start hearing it and basically it refers to a country which tries to present itself globally as not the right place to come to if you're thinking of trying to come here and uh the UK is talking about well we got this from the Nordic countries so you know it's their idea so I think it's it's a a place where countries could end up Uh I think clearly Canada is not there but I think it's a flag it's a warning sign that uh depending on what we the country does intentionally otherwise we get the reputation that we're not a good place for refugees to come we may really lose out in the way that Shamira was talking about in terms of of which scenario or picture we end up with thank you and I'm actually going to move to a question that's a little bit further down for um Mikuel's maybe if you could have an opportunity to respond to this so how could global trends such as climate migration or shifting geopolitical priorities reshape Canada's immigration policies in the long term um you want me to answer yeah seems to be one there i I I can see the the question came up i couldn't process it fast enough let me read it again to you hold on a second or just ask it ask it again maybe i'm going to ask it again oh and it's disappeared on my screen oh how could global trends such as climate migration or shifting geopolitical priorities reshape Canada's immigration policies in the long term yeah um I I don't know if I can talk about Canada's uh immigration policy but uh there is a lot of very uncertain uh things that can happen and and climate change is uh is a very important one and uh I think yeah it's it cannot be excluded from when you think about the the future of migration uh especially in quantitative terms um so that's one of the drivers that has been uh absent from most uh um scenario exercises and um there there isn't because it's really tricky to take into account and um more work is needed and that that's something that uh agencies like Statistics Canada could could potentially uh do more research about great thank you all right um moving back to the top of the list um is there a way to unite all provinces with the same qualification requirements to allow doctors teachers nurses to continue doing the same work as at home so maybe Shamir I could direct this to you yeah um what I'm going to do is is respond to both the questions is there a way to unite all the provinces and nation building projects because I I believe that both those questions are are linked um so first in terms of demographic uh profile and and Keith's talking about this is that currently basically we have each family having about 1.2 two children that's very few and you also have high retirement rates i talked about that talent shortage is critical right now and talent will need to come from both those who are already trained in Canada who will be educated in Canada and from immigration and so from my perspective the question around nation building projects how can the settlement sector reframe its role it's about talent if this country is going to remain economically sustainable it's about talent and talent is coming to our country talent is coming to our organizations so that's the reframe in terms of how to unite all the provinces with the same qualifications i guess they're trying remember the labor mobility uh commitment that the prime minister made by July um the huge commitment complexity however I feel like as the the best way again to do that is look at where the critical shortages so as an example health shortages nurses is there a way that all the regulatory bodies across the provinces could work on the issue of nurses so that there's a national framework for assessing the qualifications of nurses you know if you're working in as a nurse in Alberta or Ontario it doesn't make any difference doesn't make any difference because your qualifications are the same so that's what we should be achieving toward is at least try a pilot project with nurses very similar to the red seal program that they have in the trade sector thank you so much for that um just to move along here um so I'm going to move to the bottom because this that one of the questions isn't showing fully but can we hear reflection on how to best leverage existing infrastructure like lips to enable the horizontal and lateral policy and programming engagement being suggested suggested models already exist in some communities so who might like to answer that one the local integration partnerships shamir any thoughts from you sorry it's the can we hear reflection on how to best leverage existing infrastructure like lips to enable the horizontal and lateral policy and programming engagement being suggested models already exist in some communities so it's similar in terms of the recommendation that I'm making if you already have the existing infrastructure like lips right now the focus is very much on settlement right that's all we discuss we talk about settlement and again my recommendation is we stop talking about settlement we talk about economic inclusion and economic integration using talent and leveraging talent it's the terminology that changes I mean the work is the same we are doing economic inclusion economic development work but when you call it settlement then what ends up happening is that the the mind shift is these are people who aren't very educated or they need to be fixed and so therefore we'll spend more time settling them rather than economic integration so I believe that we already have the hubs the work is there already we have the expertise it's building on that expertise and literally it's the shift in the terminology that we use there's a question that kind of just builds I think on what you were just saying and the question around do you believe that social enterprise and pay for service is something that we should be considering as a settlement agency as a settlement sector i think that conversation needs to take place if you have 20 to 40% uh funding cutbacks because of what's happening in the country then it's a conversation that needs to happen and the reason why I say that is if you look at the uh immigrants who have been coming to our country in the last two to four years highly skilled mostly globally trained and they are paying thousands of dollars to agents and others to be able to come to Canada so it's a conversation that needs to happen it's a policy discourse around you know would individuals be willing to pay to provide to get good quality services so it becomes a conversation with government putting in funding the individual pays a fee for the value that's being provided and and fundraising efforts i think we do need to talk about it great so I'm going to thank you for that we're going to direct this one to Keith um so how can the settlement uh sector attempt to influence public opinion in favor of immigrants and particularly refugees i.e where can where do we have strategic leverage or how can we have influence well I want my mic on can you hear me testing yeah okay i'm glad some whoever asked that question thank you because that's sort of the question I've been thinking about uh I'm not part of the settlement sector i'm kind of on the outside looking in um but I think picking up on on Shamira's talk I think there is an opportunity here for the settlement sector writ large collectively the extent to which resources can be combined and focused for the settlement sector to to be a catalyst or initiator to build the kind of narrative that Shamir is talking about because who else is going to do that that has an interest in that that might not be sidelined by another political agenda uh or some other kind of uh framework which isn't really supporting what I think is important i think that that as a sector collectively you're positioned to take that on because you understand the lived experience you're local uh but you're large enough in scope across the country that there may be some uh uh collective uh resource to make that possible and I think the other part of this is that I think the public will uh uh for the most part in Canadians is there that the the foundation is there that this would resonate if Canadians better understood the economic integration model that Jamir is talking about as opposed to the settlement wall or whatever most Canadians aren't paying attention they don't understand it they do know what's happening in their communities but they're not quite sure what's happening nationally so I think there's the opportunity to play a catalyst role in building that narrative and finding some way to take the initiative finding partners wherever appropriate and doing it in a way that you're not encumbered the way that governments might be or others could who else is going to take that that project on so that would be my encouragement building on Shamira your good words thank you so much so I know that um credential recognition is top of mind for all of us um in the sector and there's been some changes that we've seen you across the country so how can we work on credential recognition as a sector and as individual organizations so I'm not sure who would like to take that Shamir is that one for you at World Education Services so in terms of credential evaluation credential recognition two different issues so as far as I am concerned and we have four other credential evaluators in the country we have solved the problem of credential evaluation for academic purposes the issue is credential recognition regarding skills or competencies and so what you'll have employers and licensing bodies will use Canadian experience as a proxy for I don't recognize your skills and how your skills will basically be situated in my workplace or in this country so I think that the conversation that needs to take place is are we able to build basically a skills framework where you have standardized ways to assess somebody's skills that are harmonized across the country so that no matter where an individual goes basically from one province to the other the skills recognition framework exists it's like the academic evaluation framework right now if you get an evaluation report from World Education Services or one of the services from BC Alberta you recognize it and you basically move forward we need a skills recognition framework that's national in nature that has the the tools that employers and others will recognize and I hope that we can build some from projects in that way thank you so much that's wonderful response um so let's shift a little bit um you know housing is top of mind for everybody across every part of the country and housing affordability so housing is um essential for immigrant success and are there any public discussions about housing as part of the conversations on talent is there work happening in this area maybe I'll point that to you to Shamira as well because I think you know it's obviously a lot coming to you i apologize we're gonna I've actually found one for Michael that I'm going to read back up in a moment so sure you know housing basically is a conversation that's happening for for and by all Canadians housing affordability etc from a talent perspective when government makes such significant commitments and they have to to build affordable housing or even just housing they need talent and talent comes from immigrants and trades people and so that conversation is happening in pockets in different places whether it's with labor unions whether it's basically with municipalities etc but it's happening in pockets i do not see a coordinated approach in terms of talking about housing and immigration and talents and what this could also mean is that the large number of immigrants who have been here for many years those who are coming in who may not be able to reenter the profession for whatever the rationale is and is there a way for government to really think in an innovative fashion and that $110 million billion dollars that I talked about productivity and competitiveness could they think about upskilling or re reskilling young people here and immigrants who would want to go into the trade sector etc so the conversations are happening but they're happening in pockets and we need to bring it together thank you so much totally agree so Michael I'm going to pull one up to the top for you because I think it's important it's not there but it really asks about what learnings from the OECD scenario planning in immigration do you think that we can apply to Canada through one of your examples that you gave um what are the fact drivers that we should be considering here in Canada well what I would learn from um scenarios like the one from the OECD but other scenarios is that we need to think about more drivers than uh has been done so far um the OECD other organizations were really putting a lot of focus on um the level of economic integration among countries and uh how much governments work together but there are so many other things and it's it's hard you can add a lot of dimensions and it becomes increasingly complex for people to uh come up with uh good scenarios uh so we we need to think about ways to to to incre to include more uh I think that's what I would say so the scenario planning uh by OECD is too narrow in other organizations like that yeah thank you all right so we're going to close I think with this last question i'm going to direct it to Keith if that's um okay with you and that is um a forecast still indicating that by 20 2030 uh Canada's birth and death rates will be equal leading to little or no population growth how can we encourage discussions to counter negative perceptions of immigration vital for growth um my mic on yes uh just to build on a point that I made um in my presentation i think right now the broadest the biggest public concern with immigration is about capacity that is how many newcomers can the country absorb in the short or medium term nationally and in particular communities um given all kinds of other infrastructure and program deficits and everything else which are unrelated to immigration per se um and I think the key to to building rebuilding maintaining support for immigration is in a sense to come to terms with some of those other challenges which aren't really about immigration and they're not necessarily about nation building but I think most communities certainly in cities the ones I know there's a real challenge with uh uh transportation with health care with education and so forth and I mean those are all big challenges but those figure in u because the extent to which people it's not just about housing and affordability i think it's the sense that the communities can absorb more people coming in and there may be some recognition that yes it's good for the economy and their jobs to be filled but if people feel that there's not enough support now for the community in all of these other areas they're going to be much less receptive and supportive to continue the continued immigration we need and so that's a big challenge but that really in a way I think immigration is revealing some much bigger issues in our society than just immigration to newcomers but that is really kind of bringing it to the surface and forcing us to realize that thank you so much well I hope you enjoyed as I have this uh really informative discussion with great data and great insights you know I remember coming uh to Canada full of optimism and hope of building a beautiful life and future here a future full of possibilities and a future where I could contribute in a meaningful way and I feel that I have i know each of us here believes in the vision and promise of this being possible for all immigrants and refugees reason I think we've he as you've he shaping the future of immigration and settlement is really important so thank you so much to all of our panelists for really really driving that discuss today very much appreciated thank you great thank you so much
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