well, if 55% of the immigrants are economic migrants - meaning that 45% are refugees - and ~ half of them are dependents or spouses then it would actually follow that 45 + 55/2 = 72.5% are dependents or spouses.

one would expect that a dependent is either a child, a retired person or somebody that is otherwise unable to work, as that is what it would mean to be a dependent. and, while we consider it normal for spouses to work in canada, that is definitely not the assumption that a large percentage of immigrants are bringing in with them, and this is well understood by immigration authorities.

the article didn't present any data, and i can't be bothered to look for it. but, if we nonetheless allow for some level of two-income families in the immigrant population, what does that reduce the number to? 65%? 60%? does that change the point?

i'm not going to address the question of whether "immigrants" make more or less money than native-born canadians, as that is a policy question. that is, that is determined by the people crafting the policy, rather than something to be measured in the wild. we don't just randomly let people in, we have a very detailed screening process designed to create a certain outcome. direct empirical measurements of this question would have the effect of determining if the policy is working or not, granted, but it's not something we're trying to figure out from first principles by measuring a natural phenomenon in the environment. and, given that canada's immigration system does in fact prioritize people with higher levels of education, you would expect that recent "immigrants", as a broad category, would have higher levels of income, on average, once they've established themselves - because that's how we designed the system. if that was not the case, we'd have a serious policy failure on our hands. and, trump loves that, by the way, it's what he's trying to emulate. on the other hand, you would also expect that certain classes of unskilled labourers would have much lower incomes, as they were brought here for that reason. a serious and worthwhile discussion of the topic would need to be very specific about these kinds of things, and not just talk about "immigrants" as a monolith, but neither maxim bernier nor jonathan gatehouse want to have a serious or worthwhile discussion about the topic, they just want to sling nonsense back and forth at each other. the tldr is that there is no class analysis here, and that's what is really necessary to get to the point of the matter.

i just want to address another point, though:

Last winter, Statistics Canada published a detailed report on labour trends among immigrants that found immigrants were responsible for two-thirds of all national employment gains in 2016-17.

the labour market is going to consist, broadly, of three types of people: young people, immigrants and people that have been fired or laid off. when you have high immigration levels, they're going to become the dominant force in the labour market. so, to point out that they're responsible for most of the gains is a tautological truth - it's a consequence of the high immigration rate.

verdict: gatehouse's article is badly written and highly misleading.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/bernier-immigrants-fact-check-1.5225422