Professor Studins plan to increase the population of Canada threefold to a hundred

million would elevate Canada into one the worlds top economic and political powers.
Attempting to increase the population by more than sixty million is not simple task and not all
regions would benefit equally from implementing this plan.
Canadas natural rate of population increase is too low to increase the population to a
hundred million and experts in demography agree that Canadas population would start to
decline within a few decades (Bone 2014). To quickly increase the population of Canada, the
most practical choice would be through immigration. Depending on immigration to increase the
population is not an easy task because a third of people immigrate to Canada leave after twenty
years most after only a few years (Reitz 2007). The current population of Canada is thirty-five
million; this means that to compensate for the people leaving, much more than sixty-five million
immigrants have to be attracted.
The provinces that would benefit the most from the implementation of this proposal
would be Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec because currently most immigrants settle here,
and by attracting sixty-five immigrants one can deduce that they would not settle differently.
Furthermore Alberta would also see an increase in population not only because of new landed
immigrants but also because of internal migration. This is already being seen with workers being
flown in from Newfoundland to work in the oilsands. Though measuring internal migration can
be difficult, certain trends for internal migration are seen: it is lowered by the presence of family
nearby and increasing age. Internal migration is reduced because of language barriers,
educational levels, gender, and settlement assistance. For example refugees (they mostly lack
familial ties) are the most mobile. Other examples are of English speaking immigrants being
more mobile than French speakers and high educated males are much more like to migrate
internally than females (Nogle 1994).
93.5 percent of new immigrants currently settle in CMAs, while 77 percent settle in either
Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver (40 percent of immigrants settle in Toronto alone)(Hiebert
2000). More specifically the cities of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal would see their
population increase the most. Immigrants who arrive in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver settle
either the urban core or the periphery; nowadays most immigrants choose to settle a suburban
setting. The inner city attracts immigrants of all economic levels while the suburbs attract mostly
middle class families. For example in the GTA, lower income immigrants are concentrated in the
City of Toronto as well as Hamilton, while concentrations of high income immigrants are found
in Mississauga, Markham, Vaughn, Richmond Hill, Oakville, King, Burlington and Brampton
(Siemiatycki 1999). Vancouver attracts the largest amount of wealthy investors, while Toronto
attracts the largest number of refugees as well as the largest number of economic class
immigrants. On the either hand because of language barriers, Montreal attracts the largest
number of French speaking immigrants from countries such as West Asia, Asia and Latin
America (Bauder 2002). Roughly Vancouver attracts the largest number of Chinese and Korean
immigrants, while Toronto attracts significant numbers of refugees and economic class
immigrants (Hiebert 2000). Most immigrants of South Asian origin tend to settle in Toronto.
Moreover, immigrants now account 49.4 and 44.9 percent of residents of Toronto and Vancouver
respectively (Good 2005).
The most important reasons that certain areas (especially cities) attract immigrants are the
presence of family and friends, economic opportunity and climate. The three largest Canadian
cities: Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver have favorable climate, a sound economic base and
because of history has been the tradition choice of earlier immigrants hence further attracting
newer immigrants (Hyndman 2005). Reasons new immigrants are now choosing to live in the
suburbs is because of gentrification of the some formerly low-income neighborhoods such as
Cabbage Town in Toronto (Ley 2000). Suburban settlements are now playing a greater role in
the process of settlement and cultural interaction than ever before (Hiebert 1999). From this
trend, one can easily deduce that most new immigrants to Canada in settle similarly
With large scale immigration, the cultural profile of the major Canadian cities will
change especially Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. Trends show that people of certain ethnic
groups cluster together to create ethnoburbs. It is especially true for older Canadian cities such
as Montreal where there is a higher level of segregation than younger cities like Vancouver. This
can be explained because visible minorities in Montreal suffer from greater economic
disadvantages than either Toronto or Vancouver. This can be quantitatively measured using the
segregation index (Ray 1999).
Though tensions between new immigrants and old-timers are rare, sometimes tensions do
arise. This was seen with the building of ethnic malls in Vancouver geared towards the local
Chinese population caused some outrage from locals who protested that all Chinese signage
alienated them. Furthermore, the renovation of ranch style home into monster homes in
Vancouver and Surrey also caused some backlash (Hiebert 2000).
Among new immigrants, an area of concern is their devaluation of their skills and
education levels once they are in Canada. Canadian companies prefer to hire employees who
have Canadian experience. Professional organizations and the state actively exclude immigrant
labor from the most highly desired occupations in order to reserve them for Canadian born and
Canadian educated workers (Bauder 2003).
Unlike the United States where the government has a more laissez faire attitude towards
immigration, the Canadian government on the other hand gives much more public assistance.
Therefore immigrants to Canada are more successful than their American counterparts (Reitz
2008). The social assistance programs to serve the huge numbers of new immigrants to Canada
would create many jobs for old-timers.
The large number of people would boost the local economy. Most Canadian work in the tertiary
sector such as retail and a larger population would stimulate demand for many goods and thus
increase sales for the retail sector. In order to accommodate the large number of new immigrants,
many new houses have to be build, thus the construction industry will have a boom. Studies have
shown that immigrants put the ownership of houses as a priority as seen with Southern
Europeans immigrants having the highest rate of home ownership (Ray 1991). With an increase
in population, manufacturing would get a boost with a larger labor force driving down wages
because immigrants typically earn wages that are twenty percent lower than the average;
currently Canadians manufacturing mostly based in Ontario and Quebec are being driven out of
business by inexpensive imports from abroad (Reitz 2007). The current immigrant policy is
bringing in people who have high educational education. If the amount of people with high
percentages of higher education increases, then Canadians who cannot match these standards
might find work harder to find.
Because most immigrants tend to settle in the outer suburbs the chances of traffic
congestions and painful gridlock on roads are not a possibility. In Vancouver, with increased
immigration, the social divide still stands. In Vancouver, the ethnocultural concentration has
increased over time. Some of the most prominent increase in segregation indices between 1986
and 1996 were registered by European origin groups. People of European origins are consciously
avoiding areas that are densely settled by new immigrants. The general trend was one of
relatively high levels of segregation among visible minorities.
This policy would have huge repercussions within the economy and society because of its
drastic nature. As a soft country, this radical proposal has a very low change of being
implemented in Canada. Most Canadians support current levels of immigration, but the majority
oppose increasing the rate. If there was a referendum, many Canadians would not support
Studins proposal for environmental reasons. A larger population of Canada will be
overwhelmingly urban, but unfortunately the expansion of cities and towns in Southern Ontario
has spread into farmlands. Farmland will be part of the urban landscape. Currently urban Ontario
is growing and requires more land for housing, roads, and retail outlets. On the other hand, high-
quality agricultural land is scarce commodity but its market value is low compared to the same
amount of land used or urban spaces. Ontarios government has recognized this dilemma but
state intervention in real estate market has been ineffective (Bone 2014). The same problem is
faced in British Columbia where urban development is spreading onto agricultural land. British
Columbia has lost some of its most productive farmland. From the end of World War II to the
1970s nearly 6,000 hectares of prime agricultural land were lost each year to urban and other
uses. With only five percent of BCs land mass classified as cropland, the provincial responded
to the serious erosion of its agricultural land base by introducing BCs Land Commission Act in
1973. With continuing pressure from urban land developers, this legislation remains under fire
from market economy-oriented groups such as the Vancouver based Fraser Institute, the central
argument being that more value can be derived from non-agricultural use of the land (Bone
2014). Since the paramount reason for the governments immigration policy is economic (Green
1999), with a larger population the biggest losses will be borne by the environment.
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