Peter Menzies: Immigration Must Be Meticulously Planned

Commentary

There’s been a lot of talk lately about immigration as people and provincial governments feel the impacts of Justin Trudeau’s decade as prime minister.

Between 2016, his first full year in charge, and 2024, his final full year at the nation’s helm, annual average immigration hit 1.4 million, considerably more than double the 617,800 averaged between 2000 and 2015. Prime Minister Mark Carney has begun to dial that back but nevertheless there is talk of more, with the Indian High Commissioner suggesting Canada needs another 15 million newcomers. Little wonder immigration was among the questions in Alberta’s recent referendum.

There’s little doubt that Canada will need more people. The host population, after all, has chosen to demographically extinguish itself. The current birth rate is at the extreme end of low, having hit 1.25 per woman recently, while the basic rate required to simply replace, let alone grow, the current population is 2.1. Without immigrants, in other words, Canada can’t survive if it insists upon not reproducing. The choices may be individual, but the consequences are collective. Long gone are the days when staunchly Roman Catholic francophone Quebecers and others were fuelling a national baby boom. For instance, the year I was born—1955—the birth rate was 3.82 children per woman.

Today, were it not for the contribution of foreign-born mothers, births would have not kept up with deaths for the better part of this century, and were it not for indigenous mothers, the birth rate for native-born Canadians would be of even greater concern. More recently, that, too, has been falling from previously robust levels.

The reasons for this remarkable downward shift in reproductive enthusiasm are multifold. Assuming people have maintained an interest in intimacy, the baby bust is considered to be due to effective contraception, female education levels, and easy termination of unwanted pregnancies. Other significant economic factors are involved, in particular the affordability of housing.

There’s a whole other conversation to be had there, but suffice to say that if Canada wants to continue to be populated, immigration has never been more necessary.

When the West was opening up at the turn of the 20th century and the government was having difficulty convincing enough Ontarians and Quebecers to move, the cry went out for more immigrants, most of whom came not only from traditional sources such as the United Kingdom but also from Ukraine, Russia, and other European destinations where people could be found who had the skills and ambition Canada needed to fill the Prairies with productive new citizens capable of relatively swift adaptation.

But these days we can forget about Europe as a source of abundant immigration. Birth rates within the European Union are tracking at about 1.34 per woman, while 1.4 is the number in the UK. So, guess what? Canada’s going to have to find its newcomers from non-traditional sources, Africa (birthrate 4.0) and the Middle East (2.98) being leading options.

I’ve experienced this personally. My doctor’s heritage is Libyan, my masseuse comes from Kenya, and my physiotherapist hails from Nigeria. My church is blessedly filled with Nigerian and other west African Christians.

I have long been a fan of the attitude expressed by Prime Minister Sir Wilfred Laurier when he spoke of immigration upon the establishment of Saskatchewan and Alberta as provinces in 1905.

“We do not want nor wish that any individual should forget the land of his origin,” he said. “Let them look to the past, but let them still more look to the future. Let them look to the land of their ancestors, but let them look also to the land of their children. Let them become Canadians … and give their heart, their soul, their energy and all their power to Canada.”

Those were good words then and they are good words now. But as we look to the land of our children and grandchildren, it would be wise to be, as our forefathers were, intentional about it. If one were to extrapolate current trends, for instance, and look 50 years into our future, the nation won’t just look different, which is irrelevant, it will have a very different set of core beliefs than those that dominated Laurier’s 20th century.

Christianity already no longer dominates the spiritual/intellectual landscape, for instance. It is declining so swiftly that, unless there is a revival, it could be in the niche category by late in this century. Islam, on the other hand, is growing and is on pace to be the nation’s dominant faith two generations down the road. Extrapolation is never a certainty, of course. Core demographic assumptions don’t always stand up—behaviours change—but as things stand, calls to prayer will have replaced church bells 50 years on and the Judeo-Christian intellectual foundations upon which Western civilization was founded will be rapidly receding in the rear-view mirror. The majority of Canadians will have no faith affiliation whatsoever.

You may think this is a good thing or you may think it’s not. But it’s definitely a thing. And, given that the average Canadian probably has no idea what’s possible, it’s time we talked sensibly about the tomorrow Canada is building with its policies and practices of today and build a consensus around what we want to become.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.