No, Mass Immigration Is Not Igniting A “Renaissance” In Atlantic Canada

On July 18th, the National Post published an uncritical review of a book titled Toward Prosperity: The Transformation of Atlantic Canada’s Economy in which former pollster Don Mills and economist David Campbell “detail the dramatic improvements newcomers are bringing to the East Coast” and claim that Atlantic Canada is “in the early stage of an economic renaissance” fuelled by immigration.

This piece is instructive insofar as it reveals the shaky assumptions, unfounded premises, and poor logic of those who argue in favour of the merits of high immigration levels.

I will begin by quoting the first lines of the NP article:

“Canada is struggling with the effects of an unprecedented immigration boom: Housing shortages, youth unemployment, overtaxed social programs and more.

But in Atlantic Canada, those irritants are largely overshadowed by a much different story: the transformation of moribund and stagnant economies that made the region Canada’s poor cousin.”

There are two extraordinary aspects of these lines. Firstly, describing the consequences of simultaneously flooding Canada’s housing market, job market, and social safety net with unprecedented immigration as mere “irritants”. Secondly, the argument that these “irritants” are not a significant issue in Atlantic Canada.

The sheer human suffering caused by Canada’s policy of mass immigration is so vast as to be essentially unmeasurable, but most Canadians can immediately call to mind some of the most devastating effects – seniors losing their homes amid rising rent, millions of young people unable to form households as they find themselves priced out of the market, two in five Canadians left without a family doctor.

These consequences are being felt severely in Atlantic Canada, which has experienced rapid immigration-driven population growth over the last few years. Soaring housing costs have 41% of Nova Scotians feeling “very concerned” about their ability to afford a place to live. As of this past spring, 10% of Nova Scotia’s population was on a waitlist for a family doctor. In PEI, record immigration levels touched off a stratospheric 70% rise in home prices from 2019 to 2025. In New Brunswick, home prices have soared by 89% since the pandemic, and monthly rent for a two-bedroom unit rose from $800 in 2019 to $1,250 in 2024.

But perhaps the obvious downsides of taking a wrecking ball to Canada’s last bastion of housing affordability is outweighed by some other benefit? Let’s keep reading the NP article to see what the authors of Toward Prosperity argue:

“In Toward Prosperity, The Transformation of Atlantic Canada’s Economy, former pollster Don Mills and economist David Campbell highlight how increasing immigration in the past five years has boosted the economy of a stagnant region with the oldest population in the country.

‘Provincial governments across Atlantic Canada have finally understood the implications for an aging population and the need for population growth: all four provinces in the region now have population growth strategies, with immigration as a core focus of those strategies,’ they write.

Nova Scotia seeks to double its population to two million by 2060, and New Brunswick, where the population was pegged at 854,355 last year, is aiming for one million people within the decade, according to their 2025 book published by Halifax-based Nimbus.”

Here, we find two classic pro-immigration arguments: 1) immigration is needed to address Canada’s ageing population, and 2) immigration is needed for population growth. Canadians have heard these two arguments repeated over and over again like a mantra by academics, business lobbyists, and politicians of all stripes. Both arguments rest on such perilously shaky foundations that they collapse upon the slightest pushback.

It is important to question whether every trend we are told is a “crisis” fulfills the requirements to meet that extreme description. We are told that Canada’s ageing society is a crisis, but this contention has never been sufficiently proven.

In an excellent article titled The Lie That Won’t Die: Immigration Is The Solution For Canada’s Aging Population, population expert Madeline Weld explains that the ageing that has taken place in the Western world for some time, but accentuated after the Baby Boom, is a transitory demographic phenomenon. If left alone without government intervention in the form of immigration, this ageing trend will self-correct over time as the population stabilizes.

Interestingly, there are also a slew of undiscussed benefits of ageing societies. These are outlined in detail in a report by Population Matters titled Silver Linings Not Silver Burdens. The most overlooked contributions of seniors include things like family childcare and volunteering, services provided for free that have immense economic and social benefits.

Another more obvious benefit of population ageing and stability is cheaper housing. In an article titled The Sheer Idiocy Of Fighting Ageing With Mass Immigration, environmental expert John Meyer points out that, while “Japan’s declining population growth is a disaster for developers”, it is delivering “benefits to Japanese individuals and society in general”. Meyer explains that, despite the pervasive media narrative that Japan’s ageing society is an unmitigated disaster, they have a house price to income ratio that is significantly lower than Canada’s.

But even if ageing was the five-alarm-fire that it is portrayed as by proponents of high immigration levels, there is an uncomfortable fact that is never acknowledged: for the last 20 years, studies have consistently shown that immigration cannot hold back ageing.

A 2006 study by the C.D. Howe Institute found that “no conceivable amount of immigration with an age profile such as Canada currently experiences can significantly affect the coming shift in the ratio of older to working-age Canadians.” A study published by the Migration Policy Institute in February of this year explained that the only way to mitigate the fact that immigrants “age and eventually retire along with their native-born peers” would be “continuously increasing the scale of immigration on an indefinite basis.” For a more thorough analysis of this type of study, check out my recent article in the Epoch Times titled Why Immigration Will Never Be a Fix for Canada’s Aging Population.

The second classic pro-immigration argument is “the need for population growth”, a claim that is asserted without evidence and thus can be dismissed without evidence. Why does Atlantic Canada, or any region of the country for that matter, need population growth? What is so wrong with Nova Scotia as it is now that it needs another million people by 2060? Why is New Brunswick “aiming for one million people within the decade”? What was so wrong with Canada’s population of 35.7 million in 2015 that we needed to grow it to today’s 41.6 million through immigration?

The NP article goes on to quote Don Mills, one of the two authors of Toward Prosperity. Mills assures Canadians that he is arguing for a controlled and reasonable immigration rate:

“We argue in the book for growth under control — somewhere between one and 1.5 per cent is something that we can manage…”

Keep in mind that the Century Initiative – the lobby that wants to raise Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100 – advocates for a growth rate of 1.15% to 1.25%. The upper end of the growth rate put forth by the authors of Toward Prosperity is actually higher than the growth rate advocated for by the Century Initiative.

The NP article then outlines another pro-immigration argument put forth by Don Mills, namely the idea that Canadian employers should be able to use immigration as an auxiliary source of labour:

“Mills uses his own business as an example: When he sold his polling firm, now known as Narrative Research, in late 2018, Mills, along with his son and brother, acquired Cabco, an infrastructure cabling business. Since the purchase in the spring of 2019, the company has grown from 40 to 100 employees.

‘We’re continuously recruiting for people,’ he said. ‘It’s hard to find skilled people.’

The company turned to immigrants to help fill the gap. ‘They’re great workers,’ Mills said. ‘They have a certain ambition that sometimes seems lacking in native-born Canadians.’ “

An alternative interpretation of the labour issues allegedly faced by some businesses in Atlantic Canada is that they are not offering sufficient pay, benefits, or opportunity for advancement. If nobody is answering your job ads, your first instinct as an employer should be to think about whether your job opportunity meets the needs of the current Canadian job market. Why, for instance, does there seem to be an expectation in this quote from Mills that employers should be able to “find skilled people” at the drop of a hat? If your company requires a specific skillset, why not offer training and apprenticeship opportunities so that Canadians can obtain that skillset?

Finally, the claim that immigrants “have a certain ambition that sometimes seems lacking in native-born Canadians” is dubious, and frankly disrespectful. The peoples of Newfoundland, PEI, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have a long history of taking on hard work to provide for their families and build their communities. By the sweat of their brow, these provinces built up industries in forestry, fisheries, shipbuilding, mining, and agriculture. Commercial fisheries in particular have long been recognized as “one of the most hazardous occupations in terms of mortality related to work”.

While mass immigration into Atlantic Canada might be good for business interests, it is not igniting a “renaissance” for our countrymen living on the East Coast who are suffering the effects of immigration swamping the housing market, healthcare system, and job market. In the future, National Post should avoid publishing articles which allow advocates of high immigration to promote unfounded pro-immigration arguments without serious questioning or challenge.