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“The question is: Why do we need immigration? Well, five million Canadians are set to retire by 2035. And we have fewer people working to support seniors and retirees,” Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen said recently, echoing the watchwords of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

The Liberals repeatedly maintain higher immigration will, as Hussen says, “help us to ease the great challenges of the coming years, such as the slowing labour force growth and labour shortages linked to Canada’s aging population.”

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But do the minister’s claims check out?

The short answer is: Not really. Leading Canadian economists say the Liberals’ claim that higher immigration levels will offset the aging of Canada’s workforce is, at the least, extremely exaggerated.

As one economist half-joked, the only way immigration alone could actually make up for the country’s aging workforce would be if Canada exclusively brought in only 15-year-old orphans.