The reasons why people are leaving Canada in droves
- Enticed by the country’s global image, many immigrants - including some Hongkongers - are finding realities on the ground very different
“The coming period of recession will … accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations,” said the heavily redacted report, which was obtained by a law professor through a freedom of information filing. However bad it is now, it warns Canada’s situation is likely to deteriorate in the next five years.
“Law enforcement should expect continuing social and political polarisation fuelled by misinformation campaigns and an increasing mistrust for all democratic institutions,” it added.
Time to leave? More people are indeed leaving. In the first six months of last year, 42,000 people left Canada. For the full year of 2022 and 2021, the respective numbers were 93,818 and 85,927. Canada has an annual immigrant acceptance of roughly half a million, but not all of them show up. So in recent years, for almost every five people coming in, one leaves.
Canada has long prided itself on its welcoming immigration policy. For such a huge country with a small population, it has been making a virtue out of necessity. But its once-famed social safety net and reputation for easy comfortable living are fraying.
Like other immigrants, many from Hong Kong have been enticed by that global Canadian image to emigrate. They are finding realities on the ground are very different.
Canada ranked 15th out of 170 countries in the 2024 social progress index provided by the Washington-based Social Progress Imperative, 6th in the 2021 index and 10th in 2022.
Canada’s four biggest cities are all an epicentre of something bad. In Toronto, it’s the housing crisis. In Montreal, it’s the collapse of healthcare. In Vancouver, it’s the fentanyl-driven drug crisis. In Calgary, it’s food security for the poor. The Calgary Food Bank served more than 33,000 people in December, a jump of 40 per cent from the year before. One reason may be that the commodity-driven economy of the province of Alberta is subject to the global boom-and-bust cycles in mining and minerals.
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Meanwhile, according to Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, rent affordability to those earning a minimum wage is statistically zero in Toronto, Vancouver and Ottawa.
The country admitted 1.2 million international students last year, up from slightly more than 301,000 a decade ago. Paying up to five times more than a Canadian student, they represent big business, not least for sustaining public education institutions facing federal funding cuts. About half of the new foreign students’ first stop is in Toronto, thus making housing supply even tighter.
Every night in Toronto, close to 10,000 homeless seek emergency shelters, excluding those who live rough on the streets.
But the most common and perhaps biggest issue for all Canadians is public healthcare. According to the OECD’s ranking of the doctor-to-population ratio by countries, Canada is placed 26th – right behind Britain and just ahead of the United States – out of 31 high-income economies.
As for Vancouver, the long-time favourite of Hongkongers, it has become the ground zero of the opioid crisis. Decriminalising small possession and consumption of dangerous drugs has led to addicts and homeless fanning off into previously untouched neighbourhoods, sometimes causing racial conflicts.
In another recent viral clip, a woman shouts “go back to Hong Kong” to a group of ethnic Chinese protesting a drug use centre in their neighbourhood. Some of them may be doing exactly that.
