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David is currently President of Jupia Consultants Inc, an industry research and economic development consulting firm. He was formerly Chief Economist with the New Brunswick Jobs Board Secretariat. In that role, he was tasked with helping to develop economic policy and economic development strategy for the Government of New Brunswick. He has more than 25 years’ experience in economic development-related roles working with industry, not-for-profit organizations and governments across Canada.
In this episode, David and I chat about the following and more:
How international students contribute $12,000 to $15,000 in indirect taxes per year
Why firms facing labour shortages in Atlantic Canada moved to Brampton instead of investing in automation
Why immigration targets should be set based on provincial and local need, not applied nationally
How immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial than average, and how that's helped the startup community in Atlantic Canada
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Chapters
0:00 People don't seem to understand the realities on the ground
0:45 Intro
1:30 On temporary vs permanent residents
3:38 Two counties, two different realities
8:09 The student-to-PR math
13:11 Why kids can't get summer jobs
19:05 The number one reason immigrants stay or leave a community
28:21 Atlantic Canada can't keep a third of its own kids
34:35 How public opinion on immigration flipped in two years
45:09 Small communities had higher immigration rates than Toronto
48:40 Has immigration papered over structural weaknesses?
54:52 What Canadians need to understand about newcomers
1:08:24 When immigration gets politicized
1:09:33 Outro
Some takeaways:
The gap between what different regions need is enormous, and our immigration policy seems to treat them as the same. In Peel County, Ontario, there are 169 births for every 100 deaths. In Queens County, New Brunswick, there are 41. The recently released Public Policy Forum publication authored by David adds another dimension to the conversation, which is: by 2035, 175 communities across Atlantic Canada will have at least a third of their population over 65, up from 12 in 2011. A national immigration policy that applies the same cuts everywhere ignores the fact that some of these communities are literally running out of people while others are congested.
When you bring in 1.5 million students but only have space to grant permanent residency to a fraction of them, you've built a system that manufactures disappointment. The people caught in that gap made life decisions based on what they were told. Now many of them, including people David says are in career jobs, are being sent home because their work permits aren't being renewed.
The yearning for a 1950s world, as David puts it, is a yearning for something that never existed. Even in New Brunswick's history, Catholics and Protestants fought like cats and dogs. There was never a time when everyone shared the same background and culture. David says Canada works because you don't have to agree with your neighbor's religion or views, you just have to tolerate that they can hold different ones. When people push for restricting immigration to return to some imagined cultural homogeneity, they're chasing a past that was always fictional. And they're willing to sacrifice the economic and demographic future of their communities to get there.
Links:
Where to find David:
Check out his Substack; It's the Economy, Stupid
Read his March 2026 Public Policy Forum publication on solving Atlantic Canada's growing labour force challenge
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