Frank McKenna Says N.B. Needs Immigrants: ‘We Either Grow or Perish’
FREDERICTON – Frank McKenna admits he couldn’t convince New Brunswickers when he was premier that the province’s slow-growing population threatened the economy and social services. Now that the numbers show the province’s population may be entering a period of decline, he says it’s a problem we need to urgently address.
“We are at an absolutely critical stage,” said McKenna in a recent interview with Huddle. “We either grow or perish.”
McKenna, now Deputy Chair of the TD Bank Group, will deliver this message to delegates at the Atlantic Summit on immigration and revitalization Wednesday in Fredericton.
The day-long event organized by the Public Policy Forum will feature research findings, success stories from small and large communities and employers, and discussion and debates about policies to attract and retain immigrants that will help the region grow and thrive.
“Demography truly is destiny,” said McKenna. “The trend has been going the wrong way for some period of time. New Brunswick was the only province in Canada in the [2016] census that actually showed a reduction in its population. Saint John was the only city that showed a smaller population than in the last census. Throughout the region we’ve been bleeding jobs, bleeding people and aging.
“When you put all of those [factors] together it creates a very critical situation where governments have fewer able-bodied people to work, fewer taxpayers to pay for an aging population that requires more and more services. Less equalization, less sales tax revenue, less revenue across all of the categories and more requirements to service the population. It’s not a sustainable situation.”
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The solution, says McKenna, is increased levels of immigration. In 1995, he created a committee of the legislature to look at our demographic challenges and propose solutions. But he says most politicians and ordinary New Brunswickers saw no urgent need to increase immigration because unemployment levels were so high at the time.
“I’ve been disappointed since we raised the alarm bell in 1995 with [the lack of] progress and there are a number of reasons for that,” said McKenna.
“Firstly you need a burning platform in order to get anything significant done in government. That’s just a fact and this wasn’t a burning platform. And one of the reasons was that we had a very very high rate of unemployment. It was about 15 per cent. I think it even got up to 17 per cent – a very high rate of unemployment. So it’s hard to convince people that we’ve got a workforce challenge when we’ve got a big percentage of our population that can’t get jobs.”
At 8.2 per cent in February, the province’s unemployment rate is still higher than the national average (5.8 per cent), but it’s much lower than the levels McKenna faced as premier in the 1980s and 90s. And there’s more of a consensus that immigration is now part of the solution to resolve worker shortages that occur even in urban areas like Moncton that are making immigration an economic development priority.
“It’d be hard to find an industry in New Brunswick that’s not short of workers and that’s ominous because we will not be an attractive place to invest or bring business in if we can’t find workers,” said McKenna.
He says politicians in Fredericton and Ottawa have to make this a priority if the province is to make substantial gains.
Manitoba is often cited as an example of how a smaller province can make substantial and rapid progress on the immigration file.
McKenna says Lloyd Axworthy, a Manitoba MP and immigration minister when the Provincial Nominee Program was introduced nationwide in the 1980s, was able to use his influence to help make those gains possible.
[Manitoba was] able to draw down on that enormous advantage and get access to the Provincial Nominee Program and did quite well with it,” he said. “But they also had a textile sector that needed workers so they had a unique combination of circumstances. To the best of my knowledge, Atlantic Canada has never had an immigration minister or a voice or face in Ottawa.”
McKenna says the province is starting to receive much-needed attention from the federal government.
“Alarm bells should be going off everywhere because we have a staggering demographic challenge,” he said. “The good news is we are getting attention from Ottawa which started with John McCallum when he was the Immigration Minister and now with Ahmed Hussen, the [current] Immigration Minister
“We’re getting really good support in Ottawa and the federal ministers are making us a priority and the Atlantic Immigration Pilot is a good example of success on that front.”
McKenna says the general population is also starting to embrace immigrants, and the pervasive fear that newcomers take jobs from people who already live here is dissipating – in urban and rural New Brunswick. This is making immigrants feel more welcome and increases their chances of staying here.
“We’re starting to see some successes,” said McKenna. “More people are coming in. There’s a burgeoning Filipino community in Richibucto. In my little village, Cap Pele, we have a lot of Jamaicans. We have Filipinos. We have Mexicans who come to work.
“And as you go around the province you’ll see different communities that will have increasing demands. In St. Stephen, Ganong is bringing people in. The fish plants are all bringing people in. And of course, the large numbers of Syrians [in many communities]. So we’re starting to see some critical mass develop.”
McKenna also says we need to appreciate the entrepreneurial skills of immigrants, and he cites as an example the transformational effect of the expatriate community that helped grow tech businesses in Silicon Valley.
“You can imagine the transformation that would take place in Atlantic Canada if we had access to that kind of energy and enthusiasm and even desperation from people from all over the planet,” he said.
“That’s what our population needs to understand because they often get mad at me for saying we need immigrants. They say, ‘but we’ve got people who don’t have jobs.’ We need immigrants to come here to create jobs which will put our people to work because in many cases they possess entrepreneurial skills and technical skills that we simply don’t possess.”