Would slashing migration tank the economy or reset Australia’s living standards? Canada may offer clues

Canada has not targeted a specific net overseas migration level. Instead, it has adopted policies to reduce the number of temporary migrants as a share of population.

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• Patrick Commins is Guardian Australia’s economics editor.

Fotografia: Canadian Press/Rex/Shutterstock Ver imagem em tela cheia O Canadá não definiu um nível específico de migração líquida para o exterior. Em vez disso, adotou políticas para reduzir o número de migrantes temporários como parte da população.

Photograph: Canadian Press/Rex/ShutterstockAustralian immigration and asylumAnalysisWould slashing migration tank the economy or reset Australia’s living standards.

O Canadá pode oferecer pistas Patrick Commins O crescimento populacional anual da nação norte‑americana desacelerou para apenas 0,5% – e a economia está ‘ajustando’.

Would slashing net overseas migration “trash the economy” or deliver the necessary population “reset” to restore Australia’s stagnant living standards.

Labor and an ascendant One Nation have presented starkly different visions of what a migration program in the national interest looks like.

Pauline Hanson, the populist party’s leader, last month announced a plan to cut the number of temporary migrants in Australia by more than 750,000 over three years by targeting international students and family members of skilled migrants.

That compares with Labor’s longer-term Nom target of 225,000, and to the last official estimate of 292,000 in the year to March.

Tony Burke, the home affairs minister, said One Nation’s plan, if enacted, would “trash Australian services and trash the Australian economy”.

Hanson discordou e rapidamente culpou o alto crescimento populacional da Austrália nos últimos anos pelos problemas da economia.

In a social media post, she said “vested interest [sic] are warning Australia could face a technical recession if migration is cut”.

For those looking for international comparisons, Canada has long been a type of sister country to Australia – similar size, similar culture, similar economy.

E a nação norte-americana está no meio de um dramático ajuste migratório que tem nivelado o crescimento populacional.

O Canadá está a cerca de metade desse objetivo. O governo tem feito isso reduzindo chegadas temporárias, especialmente estudantes internacionais, dificultando a extensão de estadias e concedendo permanência a alguns migrantes temporários.

Annual population growth has slowed from 3. 1% in early 2024 to just 0. 5% now.

So how well has Canada’s economy coped? And what does their experience tell us about how Australia should respond to growing calls for a more hardline approach to migration.

?Canada’s economy is not broken. It is adjusting’.

Em maio, o CD Howe Institute, um think tank canadense de destaque, divulgou um relatório sobre a economia do país na “era de menor imigração”.

The title was “resetting expectations”.

Modelling by the report’s authors, Don Drummond and Parisa Mahboubi, estimated that employment in Canada could fall this year and the next.

Real GDP growth in 2026 may be no more than 0. 5%, they forecast, and “little more” than 1% on average in the long term.

Falling employment would normally be cause for alarm, but Drummond and Mahboubi say this is actually “what a normally operating labour market delivers, given the demographic shifts underway”.

Ver imagem em tela cheia A economia canadense tem sido “relativamente resiliente”, dizem especialistas. Imagem: Vancouver Fotografia: Charles Mistral/Alamy. Nathan Janzen, economista assistente chefe do Royal Bank of Canada, concorda com essa avaliação.

The university sector has been hit particularly hard by the tighter migration rules. The government also provided exceptions to migrants working in areas of particular labour shortages, such as agriculture and the care economy.

Mas, no geral, Janzen diz, “a economia canadense tem sido relativamente resiliente”.

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Canada’s recession and ‘cyclical factors’ at play.

But economists warn against assuming Canada’s experience would be replicated here.

Jonathan Kearns, economista‑chefe da Challenger, diz que o primeiro ponto a fazer é que a alta pós‑pandemia do Canadá foi muito maior do que a da Austrália.

Even now, Canada’s population still sits 5% above where it would have been expected to be based on pre-Covid trends.

Em comparação, a população da Austrália está acompanhando apenas 0,2% acima de sua linha de tendência pré-pandêmica.

Canada also began its migration crackdown at a time of high unemployment in the wake of an aggressive series of interest rate hikes by the Bank of Canada.

In contrast, were Australia to crack down hard on migrants, it would do so with a tight labour market where unemployment sits at 4. 6% and at a time of widespread labour shortages.

Luci Ellis, Westpac’s chief economist, says: “I don’t think you can just point to Canada and say, ‘Look, they did OK.’”.

Ellis diz que há fatores cíclicos em jogo que ajudam a explicar a aparente resiliência econômica do Canadá diante de sua repressão migratória.

The challenge of ageing populations.

While Canada’s economy has, so far, coped with the country’s stricter migration policies, there is little appetite for them to be a permanent feature in a nation that remains open to immigration.

O Canadá, assim como a Austrália, está envelhecendo. Isso significa uma participação cada vez menor de trabalhadores que pagam impostos para financiar o custo de fornecer pensões, cuidados de idosos e serviços de saúde aos canadenses mais velhos.

Read moreThe CD Howe Institute analysis shows that if the current era of low population growth became a permanent one, then Canada’s economy would be about 11. 5% smaller by 2060, compared with official government projections.

Janzen says that, without immigration, “labour shortages are going to be a structural feature of the economy”.

E, embora a Austrália possa não querer replicar exatamente a dramática redefinição migratória de nosso colega norte-americano, ainda permanecem questões legítimas sobre como podemos gerenciar melhor um programa de migração temporária que tem se expandido nos últimos anos.

Ellis believes Australian employers have become too reliant on overseas labour, from chefs to workers in rural areas, and that this has come at the expense of training and hiring locals, even if it means paying higher wages.