Douglas Todd: Ottawa has lured a supercharged volume of immigrants and temporary residents to Metro Vancouver — 119,000 in one year alone — without providing the infrastructure to support them.
“I guess the federal government had this misguided idea that you could invite all these people to Canada and they wouldn’t have needs. They were never going to use the health-care system, they were never going to flush a toilet, they were never going to send their kids to school.”
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The absorptive capacity of Metro Vancouver has been stretched beyond its limits, said West.
The majority of the recent surge of international newcomers are guest workers and foreign students, who not only need housing but are eligible for universal health care and many other government services.
The country’s unrivalled growth has to date been “cheer-led” by almost all federal, provincial and municipal politicians, the housing industry, universities and colleges and the corporate world, West said.
“It’s only been in the last few months or so that these people are now acknowledging, ‘Oh s — t. Maybe there’s a downside to this.’
“It’s a pretty simple equation: You can’t have supercharged growth without investing in upgrades.”
Indeed, when provincial and territorial premiers of Canada gathered at last year’s meeting of the Council of the Federation, many expressed anxiety about higher housing prices, inflated rents, more people using food banks, newcomers sleeping in shelters, strained education systems and the difficulties people have finding family physicians.
The federal government is to blame for the immense pressure on public services, says Finlayson, now chief economist for the Independent Contractors and Builders Association after decades as policy head at the Business Council of B.C.
“The uncontrolled surge in temporary immigration represents a colossal public policy failure — as sheepishly acknowledged by Trudeau and his ministers when they abruptly announced they were reversing course on immigration targets last year,” said Finlayson.
Before that, “anyone who dared to raise doubts or questions was immediately dismissed as ‘anti-immigrant’ by the Trudeau thought police. So, we have ended up where we are, in a big mess largely fostered by ineffective policies, a lack of planning, and incompetent national leadership.”
The public is ahead of politicians and business leaders on pinpointing the problems of a surging population, said West, who supports “balanced and reasonable” migration levels that work within society’s “capacity to absorb.”
It used to be a person could get help at a Metro Vancouver emergency room within a few hours of arriving, said West. “Now you hear horror stories of people with serious issues who are waiting eight, 10 or 12 hours to be seen,” he said. “And that’s not to mention all the people without family doctors.”
Education is also under pressure, West said. “All you need to do is look at the number of portable classrooms that exist throughout the region to feel the brunt of (increased population) with respect to public education,” he said. “Portables are no longer the exception, they’re the rule.”
In swiftly growing cities such as Surrey, West said, some elementary and high-school students are even having to use portable lavatories, a reality confirmed by a Surrey school district official.
West, as a TransLink board member and chair of Metro Vancouver’s water committee, has directly noted Ottawa’s funding deficiencies when it comes to the impact of sudden population growth on such things as sewage treatment and drinking water.
“I defy you to find me a single dollar of money that went to a project because the federal government said, ‘Oh, we’re opening the country up to millions more people and, you know what, we better start investing more money in the services and infrastructure they will rely upon.’”
Despite recent promises by Trudeau to lower targets for permanent and temporary migrants, West doesn’t believe authentic drops will happen, in part because the status quo “suits some pretty powerful interests.”
“Now, half a decade after the damage has been done, they’re saying maybe we need to dial migration back a bit. But I expect they’re making a lot of noise, saying they’ll do this and do that, and it won’t happen.”