OPINION: Newcomers working to alleviate Canada’s top issues

Newcomers are working to address Canada’s top two issues: healthcare and housing affordability.

In a research study conducted by CIC News, Canadians ranked healthcare and housing affordability as among the top concerns facing Canada today.

Both newcomers and native-born Canadians responded similarly to the survey. Here’s how newcomers are working to address Canada’s top issues.

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Survey Results

Members of the Angus Reid Forum were asked to provide their opinion on the top two most important issues in Canada at the present time.

Of those surveyed, 50% of respondents ranked healthcare as one of the top two priorities, and 45% of respondents ranked housing affordability as one of the top two priorities.

Although the top concerns were shared among native-born Canadians and newcomers, newcomers were slightly more concerned with housing affordability, while native-born Canadians were slightly more concerned with healthcare.

The following table breaks down the percentage of each demographic who ranked either healthcare or housing affordability as one of the top two issues:

Issue	Native-born Canadians	Newcomers
Healthcare	50%	46%
Housing affordability	44%	51%

Canada’s housing affordability

Canada has become notorious for its housing affordability woes.

Real home prices in Canada have soared above those south of the border. While housing prices in the US fell significantly with the bursting of the housing bubble prompting the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, Canada’s continued to march upward, with a few temporary dips doing little to soften the parabolic trend.

In recent times, newcomers have been scapegoated for population growth leading to a lack of affordability.

But a closer analysis will reveal that Canada’s housing affordability woes stem from deeper systemic issues that have been going on for decades, including:

Overly restrictive zoning across many municipalities, on account of local councillors kowtowing to their NIMBY constituents;
A building process riddled with bureaucratic red tape, such that it can quite easily and typically take 15 years from a developer purchasing land with the intention to build housing, to that housing having been completed;
Inappropriately high construction costs, due to artificially constrained supply of the workers needed to construct housing, due to trade unions limiting licensing intake, resulting in many skilled and competent tradespeople being unable to be licensed; and
The federal government having abolished its program for funding public housing in the 1990s.

These systemic issues are all on the supply side of things—for decades, there simply have not been enough homes being built in Canada.

It’s easy to blame newcomers for an increase in population leading to increased demand. But if we take a closer look, we’ll find that newcomers are actually doing a lot to help make housing more affordable in Canada.

Newcomers helping with housing affordability

As a group, newcomers tend both to make more efficient use of existing housing stock, and to contribute more labour to the production of new housing stock.

Newcomers make more efficient use of units than native-born Canadians.

If we consider how efficiently newcomers use housing compared to the rest of the population, we can observe that newcomers have a higher occupancy per unit than the rest of the Canadian population.

Newcomers are much more likely to live with roommates than other residents of Canada.

According to the 2021 census, 32.9% of temporary residents “lived in housing that did not have enough bedrooms for the size and composition of the household, according to the National Occupancy Standards.” This is more than 200% higher than for the remainder of the Canadian population, in which only 9.1% live in such arrangements.

Newcomers supply skilled workers for construction to help boost supply.

By providing skilled workers to build homes, immigrants to Canada are helping to increase the supply of housing.

As a group, immigrants make up

23% of general contractors and builders;
41% of architects;
40% of civil engineers;
24% of construction managers; and
23% of urban planners.

On the skilled trades side, immigrants make up

20% of roofers;
16% of electricians;
15% of carpenters;
14% of plumbers; and
12% of steamfitters, pipe fitters, and sprinkler system installers.

Many builders and contractors rely on temporary foreign workers and immigrants to fill gaps in their labour force so they can build necessary housing stock.

These figures are quite impressive, because newcomers face significant barriers to becoming licensed in regulated occupations, which include many skilled trades. It can easily take many years for a plumber or electrician with experience overseas to become licensed to practice their profession in a Canadian jurisdiction.

Newcomers have played, and will continue to play, a pivotal role in the planning and construction of new housing stock in Canada.

Canada’s healthcare issues

Canada has been lauded for its publicly-funded healthcare system, in which citizens and permanent residents obtain health insurance from their province of residence.

In many jurisdictions, foreign nationals on work permits can also receive provincial or territorial health insurance coverage.

But many residents of Canada suffer from long wait times and a lack of access to primary care.

Emergency room wait times

For many Canadians, a visit to the emergency room can easily be an all-day or all-night affair.

In September 2024 in Ontario, for example, the latest average length of stay for a high-urgency patient not admitted to hospital was 4.7 hours, with 12% of patients having visits longer than 8 hours.

Long wait times can discourage patients from seeking care. And while the public health coverage is the same for everyone, lower-income Canadians can struggle more to make arrangements for employment and child care to allow for doctor’s visits.

Specialist referral and surgery wait times

Ontarians can also struggle with wait times to see specialists and to undergo surgery. From July to Sept 2024 for residents of downtown Toronto, for example, the Ontario government reported the following wait times for patients with benign brain tumours:

Patient priority	Time from referral to first clinician appointment	Time from decision to surgery	Total wait time from first referral to surgery
Priority 2	30 days	13 days	43 days
Priority 3	90 days	42 days	132 days
Priority 4	182 days	74 days	256 days

In the real world, the time from which a patient presents with symptoms to surgery can be even longer, on account of long wait times (often 9-12 months) for imaging such as MRI machines.

Lack of access to family doctors

Ontarians also struggle with a lack of access to primary care family physicians. According to data from Sept 2023, 2.5 million Ontarians did not have a family doctor—out of an estimated population 15.6 million.

Without access to primary care, Ontarians can struggle to obtain day-to-day care, specialist referrals for more complex issues, and even renewals of existing prescriptions.

Newcomers providing front-line healthcare

One of the issues with healthcare in Canada is a shortage of trained and licensed professionals to delivery primary care.

Newcomers are helping to address this issue. Immigrants make up a large proportion of healthcare workers, including

25% of registered nurses;
42% of nurse aids;
43% of pharmacists;
37% of physicians;
45% of dentists; and
61% of dental technologists.

Canada’s economic immigration system favors highly skilled workers—which includes many healthcare professionals. Workers with more education and work experience score more points in federal and provincial programs, making it more likely for them to get invitations to apply for permanent residence.

Starting in 2023, Canada’s immigration department took this a step further, by establishing Express Entry category-based draws to invite workers with select occupations, including a healthcare category.

As is the case for skilled trades, these figures are especially impressive on account of the barriers that newcomers face in becoming licensed as healthcare professionals to legally practice their occupation in Canadian jurisdictions.

Newcomers will continue to play a critical role in providing front-line care for residents of Canada.

Moving forward together

Canada certainly isn’t perfect.

But there are good reasons that it remains a top destination for immigration—a high standard of living, excellent infrastructure and social services, low rate of violent crime, and diverse multicultural society.

The majority of newcomers and native-born Canadians surveyed were confident about Canada’s future, with 55% of respondents agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement “Canada will be a great place for me and my family to live over the next fifty years.”

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About this survey

These are the findings of a survey conducted by CIC News from November 1, 2024 to November 4, 2024 among a representative sample of 1503 online Canadians who are members of the Angus Reid Forum. The survey was conducted in English and French. For comparison purposes only, a probability sample of this size would carry a margin of error of +/- 2.53 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.