Kevin Yin is a contributing columnist for The Globe and Mail and a doctoral student in economics at UC Berkeley.

Support for immigration in Canada has declined. Ottawa began polling Canadians in 1996 about their views on immigration. According to Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, last year was the first time a majority of Canadians believed there were too many immigrants. A recent Nanus poll found that 71 percent now prefer to reduce their numbers. If the government cannot restore support for one of Canada’s key policies, our long-term economic growth and geopolitical influence are at risk.

Let me start by acknowledging that record post-pandemic immigration levels have exacerbated an already serious housing crisis, and that Canadians are justifiably concerned about taking care of those already here when poverty rates and the number of homeless people are rising. Immigration policy has been poorly managed post-pandemic, and Canadians are right to be concerned.

However, in the long term, our ability to grow our economy, provide social services, and raise our influence on the global stage requires more migration, not less. The Nanos survey was conducted in September, and the number of new immigrants has declined significantly this year. Average quarterly population growth is now the lowest it has ever been (for the years for which we have data), including pandemic years. All this is worth remembering as public opinion soars.

How Canada got immigration so right for so long — and then got it so wrong

Economic growth, meaning rising standards of living per person, depends on immigration. For example, Japan’s lost decades are entirely due to the fact that the proportion of non-working retirees has risen rapidly and that the country refuses to compensate for this with new immigrants. Europe now faces a similar challenge. As Canadians know, immigrants start more businesses, are more innovative, and get better educations than their Canadian-born counterparts. Addressing Canada’s poor productivity, low rates of innovation, and brain drain to the United States therefore depends on our ability to attract foreign talent.

Our ability to care for low-income seniors also depends on bringing in people from outside. Old Age Security is funded by general tax revenues, meaning today’s young people pay the wages of today’s seniors. To maintain funding, we need the number of people paying into the system to be equal to the number of people taking from it. However, with a fertility rate of only 1.26 births per woman (well below the G7 average and not much higher than Japan’s rate of demographic decline), the pool of young workers who fund the system will shrink dramatically year after year without new immigrants.

In a world where Canada can no longer depend on others for its security, population size is also key to geopolitical power. Trade agreements are negotiated to access large markets – which is partly why China and India have so much influence, and why countries have been so quick to accommodate Donald Trump’s tariffs, a country almost ten times larger than us. Military strength also depends on demographic depth: active forces can only constitute a small percentage of the population, and Canada’s military currently faces a deficit of about 14,000 personnel. If we want Canada to have more weight in the world, Canada must be bigger.

Where does Canada’s immigration system go from here?

Moreover, not all of the problems we are concerned about are as immigration-related as they seem at first glance.

For example, youth unemployment is the reason why Canada does not want to immigrate anymore. This problem is primarily due to a weak economy (i.e. tariffs), not immigration, as Professor Fabian Lange of McGill University recently pointed out. The timing does not fit well with the labor supply explanation – youth unemployment recovered quickly after the easing of Covid-19 restrictions, even as immigration rates skyrocketed, and is faltering again this year, as population growth declines. Moreover, the popular wisdom that only highly educated immigrants contribute positively and that “the country doesn’t need more Uber drivers” makes no sense. From a growth and cost of living standpoint, cheap labor from abroad makes our goods more affordable and actually fills much-needed gaps in the labor market.

One has to admit that immigration has clearly not helped solve the housing shortage. But the question we should ask is why our housing markets respond so stringently. There are a few other markets that do so poorly.

Developers want to build more. Why can’t they? The housing shortage is not just a result of the time it takes to build homes. Zoning restrictions, developers’ liquidity challenges and rising construction costs have all kept them from doing so.

The purpose here is not to create fear, or to ignore the real concerns surrounding migration. But it is important to keep our eyes on the long-term goals and put the current discussion in a proper context. We must prioritize addressing housing now, but large-scale immigration will always be essential to growing Canada’s potential.