Greater Toronto Area (GTA) in 2018 saw an active era of the immigrant influx of 106,000 permanent residents. The number was extremely high compared to Manitoba, Quebec, Saskatchewan together. Unfortunately, the number is expected not to decline as experienced early in the year 2019.
Letting in legal immigrants has been linked with diverse benefits not limited to cultural and economic diversity. Those are the benefits which GTA is expected to reap compared to its neighboring province with low immigrant influx. However, there is a need to encourage immigrants to settle in other provinces and explore life differently.
Surprisingly, GTA is encouraging close to 80% immigrant despite having about 45% of the total population. 80% immigrant attraction rate is huge, thus, other provinces are left to scramble with 20% immigrant proportion. That is critical since Canada aging population and low birth rates are distributed relatively equal across its provinces. This can be detrimental to development of other provinces socially, economically and financially.
It is important to understand that having immigrants in other parts of Ontario would bring forward benefits in terms of life affordability.
Those who are already living in GTA are expected to benefit from attracting new talents, thus, solving labor challenges, increased products and services consumption, and increased tax bracket. With the increasing number of immigrants, GTA will reap benefits of better infrastructure since it’s an integral part of population growth.
Both Ontario and the federal government have shown great support for equitable distribution of immigrants. These two governments are forging better relationships to encourage equal distribution. Such a move has seen the Ontario government create a new budget item, in order to, encourage development of better piloting programs. The pilot programs will encourage better immigrant distribution in other smaller communities. On the other hand, the federal government has demonstrated its efforts through the Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot program for equal benefit.
