Canada's Population Growth All Immigration by 2030?
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will likely become the only source of gains by 2030, according to a
national census snapshot released recently.
If Stats-Can's projections prove accurate, having a higher proportion
of immigrants would spark increasing urbanization, especially in
Greater Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver.
Statistics Canada also found the country's population increase was the
highest of the G8 industrialized nations between 2001 and 2006. At
31.6 million, the number of Canadians grew by 1.6 million, or 5.4 per
cent.
The expansion, however, is largely concentrated in a handful of urban
areas that attract most of the country's newcomers.
"Immigration is the real driver for the population growth in Canada,"
said Rosemary Bender, Statscan's director-general responsible for
census content. "This is an increasing trend."
Stats-Can predicts that net international migration will be the
country's only source of population growth by 2030 because deaths will
likely outnumber births in the next two decades or so. Indeed,
Canada's fertility rate now hovers around 1.5 children per woman, less
than the replacement rate of 2.1 children. And the baby boomers, who
are now between the ages of 40 and 60 and form the largest segment of
the population, are entering the back end of their lifespans.
Canada, which accepts an average of 240,000 immigrants a year, has the
highest per-capita immigration rate among industrialized countries.
Newcomers drove 66 per cent of the country's population growth in the
most recent census period, significantly higher than between 1996 and
2001, when they resulted in 58 per cent of the increase.
"It's not that immigration is just happening; we really need it if
we're going to grow," said Ryan Berlin, a demographer at Urban
Futures, a Vancouver-based research institute.
Canada will need to better integrate immigrants, many of whom have
trouble finding jobs suitable to their skills, have lower incomes than
native-born Canadians and are more alienated, experts said.
"That problem is going to become more pressing, in a way, as the
immigrant population becomes a larger and larger proportion of our
work force," said Jeffrey Reitz, a University of Toronto sociology
professor who specializes in immigration issues.
However, having more immigrants should result in better political
representation, especially in big cities -- although Prof. Reitz said
"it will be a slow process."
But some observers also warned that if immigrants cannot find jobs
suited to their educations and skills, social tensions may increase.
"If that comes to be seen as a negative, that immigration is not
contributing to a kind of overall positive to the country, then I'm
afraid that we could have some backlashes as they're having
elsewhere," said Rod Beaujot, a sociology professor and demographer at
the University of Western Ontario. "Immigration works for Canada . . .
but we have to be careful that it continues to be a positive."
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