Richard Saillant: N.B. won’t escape immigration U-turn

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New Brunswick’s population is booming. In total, the province has added 61,000 residents between 2021 and 2023, more than over the previous 30 years combined.

Behind this unprecedented growth are two related phenomena: massive inflows of newcomers to the country and a housing affordability crisis that some consider the worst in the country’s history.

During the last decade, the annual net number of newcomers to Canada averaged 300,000. From 2021 to 2023, it was three times as many.

The main driver of this development is a dramatic spike in the number of non-permanent residents, a group dominated by students and temporary workers. Over the past decade, their ranks grew by about 70,000 annually. Last year, they expanded by more than 800,000.

Two weeks ago, the federal government made a game-changing announcement on this file. Currently, non-permanent residents account for about 6.5 per cent of the Canadian population. Over the next three years, Ottawa intends to reduce this share to five per cent.

According to my estimates, to achieve this target, the number of non-permanent residents will have to turn negative, declining by approximately 180,000 annually.

This means Ottawa is putting an end to Canada’s migration-fueled population boom. From 1.2 million in 2023, net inflows of newcomers should drop to around 300,000.

New Brunswick will certainly not be spared from Ottawa’s U-turn. Under this new regime, the province cannot count on welcoming much more than a net total of 8,000 newcomers annually from 2025 to 2028, a figure that includes “housing refugees” from southern Ontario. This is three times fewer than in 2023.

The consequences will be monumental.

The economy, along with the government’s revenues, will reel from the vanishing of the province’s demographic sugar high. Labour will become even more scarce, affecting all employers, from fast-food restaurants and fish plants to hospitals.

Ultimately, it is only on the housing front that things could improve – or at least stop getting dizzyingly worse. New Brunswick was simply not equipped to accommodate its recent population boom. It should, however, find itself in a much better position to cope with the growth expected from 2025 onwards.

That is not to say things will be easy for renters and buyers. Housing demand has vastly outstripped supply for several years, producing unprecedented backlogs. Homeseekers will thus continue to face challenges in finding a roof at a price they can afford. They will, however, be much better off than would have been the case otherwise.

No one should find this surprising. The housing crisis is, after all, the very reason behind Ottawa’s U-turn on migration.