CIBC CEO says immigrants are the ‘lifeblood’ of Canada as overall mood on newcomers darkens

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The head of one of Canada’s largest banks says newcomers need support from all corners as “people are turning a little sour” on immigration.

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Victor Dodig, chief executive of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, said there’s a “lot of illegal migration” going around in the world, but the people who legally come to Canada as international students, temporary foreign workers or permanent residents “play by the rules” and it’s important to “treat them by the rules” going forward.

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“Immigrants are the lifeblood of our country,” the son of a refugee said at a Toronto event organized by the University of Waterloo. “Immigrants come here with hopes and dreams. Immigrants don’t want to come here to be demonized, and what we need to do is continue to work on supporting those immigrants so that they actually feel fully Canadian.”

Immigration has traditionally played a key role in Canada’s economy. But public support for newcomers has declined in recent years amidst record increases in the population, primarily due to a jump in the number of international students and temporary workers, who are referred to as temporary residents by the government.

A clear majority of Canadians feel that there’s too much immigration for the first time in 25 years, according to a national survey published in October by research group Environics Institute and Toronto Metropolitan University’s Diversity Institute.

Policy changes by the federal government made it easier to bring in temporary residents during the past two years in order to fill nearly one million job vacancies following the pandemic.

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But with the number of vacancies declining and the unemployment rate on the rise, Ottawa has taken steps in the past year to decrease the number of temporary residents entering the country. Overall, it aims to have a net reduction of a million temporary residents in the next two years.

The federal government is also reducing the number of new permanent residents, people who eventually become Canadian citizens, by about 21 per cent to 395,000 in 2025 and 380,000 in 2026, from about 500,000 currently.

Economists don’t expect these changes to completely resolve Canada’s housing crisis, but they could make home ownership more attainable as the government tries to get more housing built and interest rates decline. Economists also believe the decisions could boost productivity despite slowing the country’s near-term economic growth due to lower consumer spending.

Dodig said Canada’s struggling productivity levels could also be boosted by investing in technology and attracting foreign investors.

He said large corporate sectors such as telecom, banking and oil and gas are achieving productivity gains due to investment in technologies, and the government should follow suit.

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“Forty per cent of the economy in Canada is government,” Dodig said. “I think health care is probably leading, education is probably second and government is probably third in terms of using technology to advance the economic productivity of our country.”

The head of CIBC also said small and medium-sized companies tend to “sell out too soon because we don’t allow people to get scale, because the capital is not there or the resources aren’t there to continue to innovate.”

Dodig said Canada has no choice but to “move quickly” and get investors to put capital to work in the “private sector and get going.” He added that Canada needs to “work really hard” to create the conditions necessary to be considered a good place to invest, given that the United States is likely going to get even more attractive.

“We have no choice to wring our hands and think about what we should be doing,” he said. “You may actually have to throw a few things at it to make it work, because some of them will work and some of them won’t work, but sitting and thinking about it is the wrong answer.”

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