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In our most recent study we used basic statistics from the previous census and the National Household Survey to estimate that because of Canada’s progressive income tax system, recent immigrants paid much lower income taxes than non-immigrants. We added to this amount other taxes related to income and wealth, such as the GST and capital gains taxes, and concluded that in 2008-09, recent immigrants on average paid $13,100 in tax compared with $18,000 paid by other Canadians, yielding a shortfall of $4,900 per year.

The government publishes statistics on how much it spends to provide different types of benefits. In the absence of all the required information, we assumed that immigrants received the same benefits on average as did other Canadians. This assumption seems reasonable since nearly all spending was on universal health care, social insurance, education, security and conservation of the environment.

In response to criticism, we estimated that with their lower incomes immigrants benefit less from government spending on protection but, because they have more children on average, benefit more from spending on education. The net effect of these adjustments is that immigrants on average receive $414 more than non-immigrants in benefits.

Gatehouse noted that in our study we had not taken account of welfare and other social benefits received by immigrants, which some believe to be excessive and others believe to be less than what non-immigrants receive. We deliberately avoided this controversial issue and assumed simply that both groups received the same average amount of such benefits. The greatest differences between recent immigrants and others is on the tax, not the spending side of the government accounts.