UWRA 2026 Spring Luncheon
Join fellow retirees at the annual Spring Luncheon featuring guest speaker Mikal Skuterud.
Schlegel Village at University Gates,
Ruby Room – 10th floor
250 Laurelwood Drive,
Waterloo, ON. N2J 0E2
FREE parking.
Doors open at 11:30am; lunch is served at noon; the presentation during dessert.
Price: $15/person
Please Register on the following form! Don't wait too long, this event fills up quickly!
Please note that the capacity of the venue is limited to 50 attendees.
Mikal Skuterud
Biography
Mikal Skuterud is a Full Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Waterloo, Director of the Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), and Fellow-in-Residence and Roger Phillips Scholar of Social Policy at the C.D. Howe Institute. He received his Master’s degree in Economics from the University of British Columbia and his Ph.D. in Economics from McMaster University. His research interests include: the labour market integration of immigrants, labour market policies that influence hours of work, and the economics of trade unions. His work has appeared in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Labor Economics, and the Canadian Journal of Economics, and has received national media coverage in the New York Times and the Globe and Mail.
What's the Objective of Economic Immigration?
What is the objective of Canada's economic immigration system? Is it to increase national population growth, populate regions that are seeing declining populations, alleviate our aging population, meet current labour market needs, or boost national economic growth. These objectives are poorly aligned, which means the government must commit. It is, after all, better to do one thing well than everything badly. In this lecture, Professor Skuterud will argue that the objective of Canada's economic immigration system should be to boost growth in real GDP per capita. He will then describe the optimal policy design to achieve this objective and describe how current policy undermines this objective. While the ideas underlying the talk will be grounded in core economic theory, the lecture will be accessible to a broad audience, including individuals with no formal training in economics.