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Originally Posted by Drybrain
It's pretty obvious that some people are going to figure out ways to stick around. But the idea that a major proportion of temporary residents will illegally remain in the country on expired visas seems implausible at best. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people.
Honestly, we're already seeing the decline in a few places. The new CMA estimates show that Halifax's population growth really tumbled last year, down to 2.4 per cent (though that would still be a pretty good clip for any CMA, pre-pandemic). This is almost entirely due to the fact that non-permanent residents declined by 60 per cent from the previous year. That's probably due to the cap on international students who comprised a large part of the city's temporary residents, and also because the city had a low unemployment rate, making it harder for employers to bring in TFWs under the new federal rules.
Most CMAs haven't yet seen that kind of drop in temporary residents (many saw increased numbers) but that will change through 2025, and growth rates will fall correspondingly. I think we do have to be watchful for bunk asylum claims and the like, but I don't think hundreds of thousands of people are going to be hunkering down undocumented nationwide.
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Yes this all seems like solid analysis. The idea of actual population decline is such a paradigm shift that there is a lot of disbelief. Every real estate investor I know thinks it's impossible. It would be a huge change in many industries with a lot of shocks. There will be a lot of winners too of course. If you are a less educated person from Northern Ontario, Rural Maritimes etc you will be able to get much better wages with much lower rent by moving to a city than has been the case for many years. But we will see construction grind to a halt and labour shortages across many industries. If we are run by big business as many assume they will back down from this path.
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