E150: David Campbell understands why our immigration policy isn't working for Atlantic Canada

In the 150th episode (whew), I am speaking with David Campbell, formerly Chief Economist with the New Brunswick Jobs Board Secretariat and President of Jupia Consultants Inc, an industry research and economic development consulting firm.

The big question for me as I was planning this episode was if population growth could be a bottleneck or an economic tool, and what that meant for Canada's productivity and Atlantic Canada.

The question I think we ended up answering was if one immigration policy can work for a country with wildly different demographic realities.

We also talk about a lot of other interesting things, such as:

• 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
• What a provincial approach to immigration targets would look like in practice
• How immigrants tend to be more entrepreneurial than average, and how that's helped the startup community in Atlantic Canada

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Dozie's Notes

A few things that struck me as I listened through this week's conversation:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Official Links

✅ Connect with David Campbell on LinkedIn

✅ Check out his Substack; It's the Economy, Stupid

✅ Read the March 2026 Public Policy Forum publication on solving Atlantic Canada's growing labour force challenge

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