There may be valid concerns about increased immigration, but they’re often tainted—spoiled even—by the bigots.

To me “Illegal immigration” is a dog whistle for immigration.

If Canada had a “whites-only” immigration policy, I doubt half of those complaining about foreigners working at Tim Hortons would continue to do so.

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Housing shortages, IMO, are relatively easily dealt with in the 2nd largest country on the planet.

e.g. FWIW, wp:Manitouwadge doesn’t seem to have a housing problem. e.g. https://www.royallepage.ca/en/on/manitouwadge/properties/

The weather currently looks colder https://weather.gc.ca/en/location/index.html?coords=49.141%2C-85.844 but probably not much worse than what Toronto had last February.

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Presumably under true competition among employers at least, lower wages lead to lower costs. People pay less for service, but if they want workers to get more money, then maybe increase the minimum wage to Ca$20 (≈US$14)/hr.

Would the average person who complains about immigration be willing to pay, say, an extra 25¢ for a coffee or donut, if it meant the lowest paid worker there got ≥Ca$20 (≈US$14)/hr?

Being low skilled matters because they aren’t doctors or nurses, and tend to be fast food workers or uber drivers. Whether they were doctors in their own country is irrelevant, as this is a problem with the mass immigration policy regardless.

The problem is also outdated and insular accreditation that reduces the skilled to unskilled roles.

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They also tend to require more government support than the taxes they contribute since Canada has a highly progressive tax policy.

Sales and fuel taxes aren’t progressive, and as many are young and childless, they probably require less health care and child services.

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In April 2022, the federal government announced changes to the TFWP that would ease hiring caps for low-wage workers, remove hiring restrictions based on regional unemployment and extend work permits (Employment and Social Development Canada, 2022). Additional measures were announced later in in 2022, including a possible 18-month extension for post-graduate workers whose permit did or would expire between September 2021 and December 2022 (Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, 2022).

and your point is …, ?

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https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/sdp2025-8.pdf

Please cite relevant points from this 42-page document.

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Calling anyone who disagrees with answering the Tim Horton’s lobbyists calls for cheap labor a racist is how we got here,

Not all of them are racists, but I suspect most are.

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the neo-liberals have been weaponizing language. So sure the housing shortage is caused by regressive and sprawled zoning laws, high developer taxes, greenbelt, etc, but in the end immigration should be tied to housing completions, and you’re a fool who hates poor Canadians if you disagree.

Canada is about 9.6 million sq km in size. I think reforming regressive and sprawled zoning laws, high developer taxes, and NIMBY laws would pretty much solve the problem.

“truckers” convoy.

or, IIRC, as one (NDP-voting) trucker I know put it, “the owner-operators”.

I didn’t comment on your original 10% efficient “land availability” because some empty space should exist.

I thought I referred to 0.1%, but yes, let’s leave some empty space (i.e. maybe ≥ 99.9%).

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Again my concerns were/are efficiency and toxicity.

Glass tubes, painted black (or using a relatively non-toxic paint to decrease the albedo to, say, < 0.1), filled with water might have a high efficiency; are easily made (possibly 19th century technology); and with a relatively low impact on the environment.

PVCs other than silicon-based seem to require rare earths and other substances that are either toxic and/or are worse for the environment in mining and refining. Again, this is not to say to not use any, but not to when cheaper and/or environmentally better (or less bad) alternatives exist for particular uses.

Oh, okay.

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Some more reading for me to do, I suppose.

wp:Hydrogen economy, wp:Green hydrogen, wp:Solar cell, and wp:Crystalline silicon (which apparantly has a 13.1% efficiency), and wp:Solar-cell efficiency.

I’m not sure if most of the electricity generated needs to be converted into hydrogen.

Indeed, I’m not sure if some of the solar power even needs to be converted into electricity: how many millions, or at least 100 000s, of homes could make use of wp:solar water heating. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think they covert a greater percentage of solar power/surface area than PVCs and might be less harmful to the environment. Their use would be limited given our climate, but not so much as to make it an impractical supplement.

Most of the electricity generated could be used as is, or stored in batteries or with pump storage hydroelectricity.

Presumably electric vehicles could (continue to) use batteries and railways be electrified.

Hydrogen, or something else fluidic that could be produced by electricity, might power aircraft.

Electricity could be exported to the US, as well as products that require a lot of electricity for manufacture, such as aluminum, cement, refined metals, maybe even compressed and/or liquefied gases such as helium;

and yes, I suppose hydrogen could also be exported.

Presumably this can be easily done in Canada as the technology is over 100 years old: in this, we’d be making nickel-iron batteries, not smart phones.

Nickel and iron aren’t rare earths.

Right now, as we post, the Sun is radiating on Canada:

((at least 100 watts/sq meter x 1 million sq m/sq km x at least 4 million sq km) ÷ 1 billion watts/gigawatt =)

at least 400 000 gigawatts of solar power.

If we harvested 0.1% of it, that’d be about 400 gigawatts of solar power, or about 10 kilowatts per Canadian.

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Maybe we could line highways such as the 401, and the Canada-US border, with big beautiful windmills.

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As electrical storage would not have to be mobile, the batteries need not be lithium or even lead acid, but wp:nickel–iron batteries, or maybe use wp:Pumped-storage hydroelectricity.

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I think we could take 400 000 immigrants a year—probably less than 1% of our current population—particularly Americans, and maybe some Mexicans.

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We could end subsidies for the rich, and change our so-called “intellectual property” laws to say ending it after 28 years.

Also we could purchase far less overpriced crap from the US military-industrial complex. It might be time to leave NATO and NORAD as Trump’s America is perhaps a greater threat to Canada than the PRC, Iran, and Russia combined.

Like Jack Layton, he’s a white heterosexual Anglo male with a good pedigree; and like Layton, I think he will win the NDP lots of seats.

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We aren’t all that different from the Yanks.

(Here’s to you, wp:Jagmeet Singh: at least the Liberals remain a minority.)

Maybe the indigenous should determine our immigration policies, or at least have a say in them;

otherwise, I’m pretty much open borders.