Skuterud, who has been a vocal critic of the federal government's immigration policy, says the benefits of high immigration have been exaggerated by the Liberals.
He said that starting around 2015, when the Liberal government was first elected, a narrative developed in Canada that "immigration was kind of a solution to Canada's economic growth problems."
While the professor says that narrative is one that people like to believe, he notes higher immigration does little when it comes to increasing living standards, as measured by real GDP per capita.
However, attention is now shifting from these targets to the steep rise in non-permanent residents. Between July and October, about three-quarters of Canada's population growth came from temporary residents, including international students and temporary foreign workers.
That trend is raising alarms about the increase in businesses' reliance on low-wage migrant workers and the luring of international student by shady post-secondary institutions.
Mikal Skuterud, an economics professor at the University of Waterloo who specializes in immigration policy, says the federal government appears to have "lost control" of temporary migration flows.
Immigration is not causing that demographic to grow that fast. The issue is we're not dying fast either, which holds onto housing AND stresses support systems* at the same time. We have to die more. Obviously.