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.

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.

  • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
    51·
    7 months ago

    Who knows how many people were waiting for the virus to be over and this is the backlog.

    Why anyone would leave Canada is not something I get. Every time I visit I am basically of the opinion that this is about as close as utopia that anyone with this cold of a climate is going to get.

    • overcast5348@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      Lack of healthcare availablity, lack of good transit connectivity outside of like 3 cities, insane housing cost, low wages - especially compared to the US… The list is long.

      I love it here, but it’s not even close to utopia depending on your circumstances. I personally know 2 recent immigrant families (I’m an immigrant too, so I run into a lot of them in community events etc) who went back to their home countries within 2 years of immigration because they were diagnosed with medical conditions that needed attention which the healthcare system here could not give.

      • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        7 months ago

        Yeah but you don’t got bankrupt over a medical problem. Also the same only have a few cities with good mass transit, high housing, wages are only high if you are in a wall street scumbag or the ever diminishing super skilled workers. My 15 years in engineering and degree makes me me much closer to the salary of a Walmart associate than it does to the C suite of Goldman Sachs.

        • overcast5348@lemmy.worldEnglish
          11·
          7 months ago

          but you don’t got bankrupt over a medical problem

          That seems to be a US centric comment. People who came to Canada from other countries are fine even after moving back due to health reasons. And, even otherwise, I’m sure that I’d be happy to be alive and broke than dead and not-broke.

          only have a few cities with good mass transit, high housing, wages are only high if you are in a wall street scumbag

          Again, a US centric comment. People can move to Germany/UK/France etc. A lot of “third world countries” have decent enough infrastructure too. So people may choose to just move back to where they originally came from rather than be stuck here - which is the point of the article we’re commenting on.