A handful of Cuban athletes defecting to Canada during the Pan Am Games has Fidel Castro hopping mad. Meanwhile, 2,475 Canadians moving to the United States in 1996 draws yawns from the Prime Minister.

To deflect attention from the quality of life in the worker's paradise, Castro went on a verbal rampage of the Pan Am Games and blamed Canada and the media for encouraging the defections. Any serious debate as to why Cuban athletes are defecting would likely weaken Castro's grip on power. Jean Chretien has as much to lose by conceding high taxes and lower disposable incomes are driving Canadians to the U.S.

Despite the communist mumbo jumbo, at least Castro acknowledges the defections actually occurred. Prime Minister Jean Chretien, on the other hand, is in complete denial. He says Canada's brain drain is a myth, orchestrated by "business people who want tax cuts."

The Prime Minister chose to ignore the World Competitiveness report that ranked us 36th out of 47 countries in our ability to retain well-educated people. And he somehow missed the Standard & Poors DRI report that warned rising incomes in the U.S. could precipitate an exodus of Canadians stateside.

Mr. Chretien is emboldened by a study from the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) that states "the alleged brain drain is unjustifiably being used to promote a tax cut agenda." Instead of disproving a 1998 C.D. Howe Institute study that is considered the benchmark in this debate, CAUT actually reinforced the C.D. Howe's findings.

In a paper entitled Canadian Human Capital Transfers: The United States and Beyond, the Institute showed that between 1980 and 1996 Canada lost six managers and professionals to the United States for every one that immigrated to Canada from the U.S. The CAUT paper shows similar data for 1996 and finds that emigration to the U.S. in selected occupation categories (engineers, computer scientists, natural scientists, nurses and physicians) totaled 2,475 individuals while immigration to Canada from the U.S. across the same occupations totaled 302.

Hence the ratio of U.S. emigrants to U.S. immigrants is now 8.2 to 1, not 6 to 1 as the C.D. Howe study reported. The brain drain is getting worse.

To be fair, CAUT and other "brain drain is a myth" proponents point to Statistics Canada numbers that indicate net inflows of immigrants versus net outflows are negligible, hence they say there is no brain drain.

But these numbers don't capture a variety of qualitative concerns. Workers leaving Canada for the U.S. are leaving for solid employment offers. The same can not be said for those entering Canada from abroad. Professional and academic credentials from abroad are not necessarily applicable to Canadian employment opportunities.

The real kicker in the CAUT study is their conclusion that "the bulk of evidence suggests people emigrate primarily in search of work, not lower taxes." Yes people do leave for greener pastures in search of work opportunities. What CAUT conveniently fails to mention is that job opportunities, whether they are in the U.S. or Canada, are most abundant in low tax jurisdictions.

The numbers of Cuban defectors or Canadian expatriates tell only part of the story. For every one that gets away, hundreds more wish they could do the same. The free exchange of labour across borders in the Americas could become one of the greatest social levelers. Somehow, I doubt high taxes and communism will come out on top.