Decline in immigration: a “devastating” impact to be expected for businesses

Anger is growing following Ottawa’s decision to halve the number of immigration places allocated to the Atlantic provinces. For many businesses and organizations, these workers are the key to their survival.

In October, Federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller, had declared that he wanted to considerably lower permanent immigration targets to reduce pressure on housing, infrastructure and social services.

Earlier this week, - learned that these places will be reduced by half in the Atlantic provinces in 2025.

Economy needs immigrants, experts say

For the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), this is a decrease considerable which will have a major impact on several businesses that survive thanks to workers from immigrant backgrounds.

Qualified labor is still the number one or number two constraint to the growth of our businessessupports Frédéric Gionet, Atlantic director for FCEI.

Same story with Restaurants Canada, which talks about an impact devastating for the industry.

The number of employees available on the labor market is not what we need, so we need to recruit abroadsays Janick Cormier, vice-president for Atlantic Canada.

Growth and supply will decline

Janick Cormier expects that these new government policies will force restaurants to review the way they do things, due to a lack of employees. Consumers will quickly see the effects.

If we don’t have enough cooks, we’ll have to reduce hours, maybe cut days. If we do that, the economic impact will still be quite large for an industry worth $6 billion in Atlantic Canada.

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Janick Cormier adds that 53% of businesses represented by Restaurants Canada are already operating at a loss or barely breaking even.

Frédéric Gionet emphasizes that the demographic growth of recent years was beneficial for the economy of Atlantic Canada. The reduction in the number of workers from immigrant backgrounds will reverse the situation.

Without that, we will return to a portrait that was before, we are talking about population aging, we are talking about a decline or a freeze in growth.he said.

He adds that business owners could experience an overload of work and a loss of business opportunities due to a lack of staff.

A change of direction from Ottawa

The economist Richard Saillant emphasizes that this is a extraordinary change of direction on the part of Ottawa which will reduce dramatically immigration. He said that last year, the country welcomed more than 1.2 million new arrivals.

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Essentially what we are going to see is unprecedented. There will be more people leaving the country than arriving in the country.

He adds that we should expect labor shortages for a few years. The provinces will therefore have to target their recruitment strategy more, by inviting workers who can work in sectors such as health and construction, explains the economist.

The impact in French-speaking communities

The president of the Société nationale de l’Acadie, Martin Théberge, is concerned that this reduction in immigration targets will have a very harmful impact on French-speaking communities.

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We know that the number of Francophones is decreasing proportionately because the number of Anglophones is increasing more quickly. With cuts like that, it could have an impact on the growth of French-speaking communities, on the growth of Acadia.

A call to review the targets

Restaurants Canada urges the government to reverse course.

We ask them first and foremost to reverse this decisionsays Janick Cormier.

For his part, the minister responsible for New Brunswick Immigration, Jean-Claude D’Amours, affirms in a statement that Ottawa puts and endangers hiring in key sectors such as health, education and construction.

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The federal government’s unique measure simply sets aside our province’s unique status as the only officially bilingual province. The demographic reality of New Brunswick must be recognized by the federal government and I invite it to do its homeworkwrites the minister.

On X, the Premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, Andrew Fureysaid Friday afternoon that the province has reversed its population decline thanks to immigration and that 90% of newly arrived nurses work in rural areas or fill hard-to-fill positions.

He assures that he will put pressure on the federal government. The federal government’s reduction in the number of newcomers is not working and we will push Ottawa to find solutions.

With information from Katherina Boucher and Patrick Butler