Canada's surging cost of living fuels reverse immigration (www.reuters.com)

submitted 1 year ago by yogthos@lemmy.ml to c/canada@lemmy.ca

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[-] kakes@sh.itjust.works 25 points 1 year ago

(Reposting my comment here for posterity:)

First: The word is "emigration."

Second: The article itself points out why this article is bullshit:

To be sure, emigration as a percentage of Canada's overall population touched a high of 0.2% in the mid 1990s, and currently stands at about 0.09%, according to official government data.

The whole time I was reading the article, I'm thinking "Right... if you let in a record number of immigrants, then the number of emigrants is going to rise shortly thereafter. There's just more people. You need to look at percentages to draw any real conclusion."
Honestly wasn't expecting them to give the percentage like that, showing that this article is nothing but fearmongering.

[+] yogthos@lemmy.ml -6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The actual point the article makes is that people who immigrate to Canada are now leaving. What the article is saying is that Canada is becoming less attractive place to immigrate to, and increasing percentage of people who have immigrated to Canada are leaving. The fact that emigration from Canada hasn't hit the point it was at in the 90s isn't all that relevant here, it's the direction of travel that matters.

Furthermore, vast majority of emigration from Canada was to the US, and the fact that less people are moving to US is more of a factor of US becoming unlivable than people choosing to stay in Canada because conditions in Canada are improving. The benefit of moving to US and getting much higher pay than before simply doesn't exist today.

[-] kakes@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

You mean that tiny uptick in percentage, after an unprecedented drop surrounding a global pandemic? That ~0.02% change? The second-lowest rate of emigration since 1990? The rate, which has actually ticked slightly downward in the last year - going by the graph in the article?

The data in this article only looks bad from one very narrow and very specific angle. From every other perspective, it's a story of success for immigrants, showing that Canada is retaining newcomers at a rate that hasn't been seen in over 30 years.

[-] yogthos@lemmy.ml -4 points 1 year ago

There are two separate statistics here. One is the overall emigration rate from Canada and the second is emigration rate of immigrants. You're using overall emigration rate which is predominantly Canadians moving to the states.

[-] kakes@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 year ago

Actually, the article doesn't give any other more relevant statistics, besides an offhand mention of a report from the ICC. I'm just going from the data provided here.

This article is recklessly sloppy at best - deliberately misleading at worst.