As Lorne Gunter says, “OMG! Say it isn’t so!”

A new study shows that immigrants are more than four times more likely to be unable to swim than people born in Canada. As a result, they are at a greater risk for drowning, according to the Ipsos Reid Public Affairs study commissioned by the Lifesaving Society.The findings released on Thursday confirm what drowning-prevention experts have suspected for nearly a decade, Lifesaving Society public education director Barbara Byers said.

“For the first time, we have scientific, evidence-based data to support what our hypothesis was: that new Canadians have a higher drowning rate,” she said.

This goes right into the “issues I don’t care about” stack, in case anyone was wondering.

Speaking of drowning foreigners…