BCBusiness

LEFT AND OPPOSITE PAGE: ISTOCK 16 BCBUSINESS FEBRUARY 2017 pattern is emerging," write the authors of a 2016 Harvard Busi- ness School paper: "High-skilled migrants are departing from a broader range of countries and heading to a narrower range of countries—in particular the United States, the United King- dom, Canada, and Australia." In B.C., meanwhile, there's also evidence of demand. The province took in 35,730 foreign nationals as new permanent residents in 2015, the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism and Skills Training reports. Sixty-three per cent were economic class, a category of immigrant selected for their skills and ability to con- tribute to Canada's economy. Of 934,000 total job openings the ministry is projecting from 2015 through 2025, 35 per cent will be "lled via net in-migration, which includes immigration and interprovincial migration. Summarizing the provincial government's immigration policy goals, the ministry states: "The right number of people with the right skills… to meet BC's labour market needs and economic growth potential." An important component of these policies is the Provincial Nominee Program ( PNP), which describes itself as ošering an "economic immigration pathway for in demand foreign workers and experienced entre- preneurs who can contribute economically to the province." The idea is that ranking would- be immigrants by skills and other attributes can identify the people most suited to contribute economically. The data supports the conten- tion that PNP entrants do better than average immigrants, at least in the short term. A 2013 Univer- sity of Winnipeg study shows that PNP immigrants start working at higher wages than their non-PNP peers, but the dišerence evens out after seven years. There's anecdotal evidence that B.C.'s economy would sušer without these labour inœows. Sandra Reder, founder of Verti- cal Bridge Corporate Consulting Inc., a Vancouver-based human resources consultancy, gets regu- lar requests from companies that can't "nd workers. Welders. Legal secretaries. "Skilled labour is really a problem," Reder says. "The schools can't produce them fast enough, and the sector is aging out." But does immigration contribute to real growth? Here the numbers are less clear, says David Green, a professor at UBC's Vancouver School of Economics. Adding more bodies to the econ- omy will expand it on aggregate, what economists refer to as extensive growth. But immigra- tion may not do much per capita, the yardstick for evaluating individual well-being. "If you talk to any economist who stud- ies the impact of immigration on a local economy," Green says, "the consensus would be that immigration inœow has a very small impact on average wages and on employment rates." The most famous case study of this phenomenon took place following the Mariel boatlift of 1980, when an inœux of Cuban refugees expanded the labour supply in Miami by a colossal seven per cent in "ve months. Three years later, after an initial depression of average wages and the employment rate, Miami had returned to the same numbers as before. "You can hit economies with these kinds of shocks, and they tend to repli- cate themselves," Green says. North Americans may choose sides, with one group claiming that immigrants are a stimulus for growth and innova- tion while the other argues that they steal jobs and depress wages. "What I'm telling you is that "ve years out, you can't see either of these ešects," Green explains. "It's not a big positive or a big negative." That shouldn't be read as a resistance to immigration. "We want a diverse society," Green says. "We want to help refu- gees." Maybe the total Canada accepts should reach that 450,000 "gure. But whatever the number, new arrivals might thrive more if we spared them the weight of our expectations or, worse, our pessimism. MOVING TARGET That's the average amount withdrawn by British Columbians who have taken money out of their RRSPs before retirement, according to a 2016 BMO study—51 per cent more than the national average. As Canadians scramble this month to make tax-year deposits before the RRSP cutoff, people here will be contributing less, borrowing more and paying back withdrawn funds at a rate 15 per cent below the rest of the country. In real-estate-rocked B.C., the number-one reason for this is no surprise: the funds pay for homes. "It's concerning," says Roxanne Hoffman, BMO's regional VP of financial planning for B.C. and Yukon. Although the use of RRSPs for down payments can be tax-smart, she says, those who don't bal- ance that with retirement savings can find themselves choosing between home and income later on. "Houses may not always go up," Hoffman warns. "If you are rely- ing on real estate to fund your retirement, you are making a lot of assumptions." by Melissa Edwards $24,100 Nest or Nest Egg? NUMEROLOGY SOURCES: ADVISORY COUNCIL ON ECONOMIC GROWTH, STATISTICS CANADA For most of the past decade, the number of landed immigrants enter- ing Canada each year has hovered around the 250,000 mark. But the federal Advisory Council on Economic Growth suggests gradually increasing the annual total to 450,000 by 2021. The only year we saw anything close to that level of immigration was more than a century ago. 1913 409,100 1942 7,600 2015 271,000 2021 450,000 F (all-time high) F (all-time low) F (proposed number)

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