The dream of making it big in Canada is turning into a battle for survival for many immigrants due to the high cost of living and rental shortages, as rising emigration numbers hints to newcomers being forced to turn their back on a country that they chose to make their adopted home.

Trudeau has made immigration his main weapon to blunt Canada’s big challenge of an aging and slowing population, and it has also helped fuel economic growth. That drove Canada’s population up at its fastest clip in more than six decades this year, Statistics Canada said.

But now a reversal of that trend is gradually taking hold. In the first six months of 2023 some 42,000 individuals departed Canada, adding to 93,818 people who left in 2022 and 85,927 exits in 2021, official data show.

The rate of immigrants leaving Canada hit a two-decade high in 2019, according to a recent report from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), an immigration advocacy group. While the numbers went down during pandemic lockdowns, Statistics Canada data shows it is once again rising.

While that is a fraction of the 263,000 who came to the country over the same period, a steady rise in emigration is making some observers wary.

  • girlfreddy@lemmy.worldOP
    232·
    9 months ago

    On average in Canada about 60% of household income would be needed to cover home ownership costs, a figure that rises to about 98% for Vancouver and 80% for Toronto, RBC said in a September report.

    Trudeau’s utter failure to take housing costs into account is telling. He seems to have become blind to the needs of the people.

    He may well lose the next election because of it … and Canada will end up with a right-wing mess in Pierre Poilievre. :/

    • ryan213@lemmy.worldEnglish
      9·
      9 months ago

      Yeah, we’re f’d even more when PP/Milhouse takes over. Maybe we’ll elect non-Conservative parties at the provincial level when that happens and start the cycle the other way.

      People are forgetting Conservative premiers aren’t helping anyone but their private donors.