Some notes on new immigration trends in Canada

In the right-leaning Canadian daily newspaper the National Post, policy analyst and writer Steve Lafleur recently had an article titled "Only more immigrants can save Canada’s economy" published. How many more immigrants, and why so many more?

In his immigration policy remarks on July 19, Minister Jason Kenney acknowledged that Canada would need roughly one million immigrants per year in order to maintain the ratio of working age citizens to retirees. Citing a lack of resources for integrating new Canadians, and a concern that accelerating immigration levels too rapidly could lead to a nativist backlash, he said that it won’t happen.

While the Minister’s expressed concerns are valid, they pale in comparison to the demographic reality. The proportion of Canadians aged 60 and over is projected to increase from roughly one-fifth to nearly one-third by 2020. Our national debt stands at over $582-billion, and is increasing at a rate of more than $1,400 per second. This burden doesn’t include provincial government debts, or unfunded pension liabilities such as the $748-billion shortfall for the CPP. For those Canadians hoping to start collecting CPP in the next decade, the question shouldn’t be if we can integrate one-million immigrants per year, but how.

While taking in four times more immigrants than we do now would present some logistical challenges, they are not insurmountable. One criticism against more immigrants is that more immigrants will put greater stress on the housing market. This assumes that the housing stock is fixed, and that all immigrants will go to the hottest real estate markets. Canada’s three biggest cities have admittedly been hostile to new development, which is pricing many out of the market. A healthier attitude toward development will be crucial if those cities are to remain affordable.

However, the immigration question presents a great opportunity not just for smaller metropolitan areas, but for rural areas as well. Rural areas in Canada are often resource rich, but population poor. It is most evident in Saskatchewan, where there are typically 10,000 vacancies in any skilled trade in the province. There are plenty of resources, but not many people. Saskatchewan is twice the size of Germany, with 1/80th the population. There is no shortage of room or resources.

Smaller centres also offer the advantage of lower cost housing, and would require less expensive infrastructure upgrades. Manitoba is leading the country in terms of targeted immigration to smaller centres. Rural Manitoba received nearly 3,200 immigrants in 2008 alone, and the province is clamouring for more. For too long, our immigration policy has been fixated on Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. High levels of rural immigration can revitalize communities, and Manitoba has shown the way.

I see any number of problems with this. Leaving aside the question of whether such vastly increased immigration would be acceptable to the Canadian electorate, I wonder if Canada should enact this policy given the continuing lags in income and employment relative to the Canadian average experienced not only by first-generation immigeants but apparently many of their Canadian-born children. Is it ethical for a country to sharply increase levels of immigration if it can't guarantee the integration of these immigrants and their children into the community on equal terms with native-born? Canadians have a myth of their country as a country open to all. The ongoing growth of class and income disparities in the city of Toronto right now defined substantially by ethnicity and immigration status could disprove this thesis quite badly.

Lafleur does bring up the interesting success of the province of Manitoba. Manitoba Labour and Immigration's 2009 report does suggest that the province, twice as many immigrants as the neighbouring province of Saskatchewan that also has a population of roughly one million (13 520 in Manitoba in 2009 versus 6 890 in Saskatchewan). This may have something to do with the distribution of the Manitoban population. Winnipeg is the province's capital and largest city, and with its hinterland, accounts for seven-tenths of the province's population. Opportunities offered by economies of scale may exist in Manitoba thanks to Winnipeg that don't exist in Saskatchewan, where less than a quarter live in the largest city of Saskatoon and a fifth in the provincial capital of Regina a substantial distance away. The previous mentioned report does suggest that a percentage of immigrants roughly proportional to Winnipeg's share of Manitoba's population does settle in Winnipeg, however, suggesting that the rest of province is also attractive. Rates of unemployment in Manitoba are consistently 2% or more below the Canadian average, with Saskatchewan in a similar position. Presumably Manitoba is doing something right insofar as attracting immigration goes. Is it doing right by its immigrants? Research is called for.

For that matter, my native Prince Edward Island is also apparently doing something right. Taking in absolutely as many immigrants (some two thousand per year) as the much larger adjacent provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, the province is really surprising me.

When a Chinese immigrant visits Brown’s Volkswagen in Charlottetown, general manager Skip Rudderham is prepared: He has interpreters on speed-dial and bilingual business cards. Prince Edward Island, with its reputation of homogeneity and conservatism, may not seem the likeliest province to require such measures, but require them it does: Chinese immigration is transforming the island both culturally and economically.

“We would quite literally hire every qualified [Chinese] person we could get our hands on,” said Mr. Rudderham. “Our Chinese clientele is large enough that we could keep this person busy basically dealing with that clientele alone.”

[. . .]

Since the province started recruiting skilled and affluent immigrants through its Provincial Nominee Program in 2001, upward of 10,000 newcomers have called P.E.I. home. But while the province of just 143,200 is undergoing a metamorphosis at the behest of immigration generally, it is immigration from a land of nearly 1,337,000,000 in particular that is driving the novel shift.

China has been the chief source of immigration to P.E.I. for the past five years, with nearly 2,400 newcomers arriving between 2006 and 2009 alone, according to the province’s Population Secretariat. Most of those newcomers at least initially settled in Charlottetown, where the population was just 32,000 at the time of the census in 2006.

[. . .]

That fact has not been lost on the government, which is looking to counter a natural-population-growth rate that has shrunk to almost zero. Provincial spending on resettlement programs doubled to more than $4.2-million between 2008 and 2009, and it has paid off: P.E.I’s population rose by nearly 400 in the first quarter of this year, making it the only Atlantic Canada province to see an increase.

[. . .]

Hamish Redpath, a realtor who recently launched a monthly bilingual publication called Ni Hao PEI (Mandarin for “Hello P.E.I.”), said he regularly shows homes to Chinese newcomers at prices ranging between $400,000 to $1.5-million. He said the Chinese community is peppered throughout Charlottetown and across the bridges in communities such as Stratford and Cornwall.

“They’re interested in beautiful homes, with water views or right on the waterfront,” Mr. Redpath said, adding that he serves Chinese families looking for more modest abodes, too. “I have also shown Chinese families some rural homesteads outside of Charlottetown. They have lived in Beijing all their lives and they talked to me about the pollution and the crazy traffic, so to come here and have five acres and a little farmhouse for a couple hundred thousand bucks is a dream come true.”

A fourfold increase in immigration is probably impossible. If Manitoba and Prince Edward Island, two provinces not known as receivers of immigrants, are encountering success, then there may well be a diffusion of immigrants beyond the country's traditional gateway cities--Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver--that could bode well for immigrant integration into the country's labour markets and national life as a whole.

Rust belt migration in the USA

I recently came across a site titled Burgh Diaspora authored by Jim Russell, a geographer who focuses on human capital issues particularly related to the city of Pittsburgh, but covers the wider area commonly referred to as the "Midwest" and "the Rust Belt"(referring to abandoned factories).

Russell's point of view is unconventional and he challenges the conventional wisdom regarding the relative prospects of metro areas throughout the US. The site asks the question:

Since education makes a person more likely to leave your region, how do you justify your investment in human capital?

This seems based on the idea that graduates of local universities leave due to the industry centers of modern America being located anywhere but Russell's home region. Russell challenges the idea that a "brain drain" from the heartland is actually taking place.

One factor affecting migration to this region that seems to appear in Russell's accounts is a certain amount of xenophobia in this region; he documents instances where the residents of some areas are hostile to "outsiders" potentially migrating in. This would be a major obstacle if attracting workers from other parts of the US is a goal for governments in this region.

Demography's misuse, or, going from Eurabia to mass murder

Demography matters so much that one man, Norwegian Anders Behring Breivik, decided to become a mass murderer on account of what demography supposedly told him.

As has been noted worldwide, the tendentious concept of "Eurabia"--a Europe doomed, via Muslim fecundity and the fecklessness or outright self-hatred of its governing elites, to become Muslim--is the single idea most responsible for Breivik's decision to kill as many future potential multiculturalist traitors to Norway and Europe as possible. Journalist Doug Saunders elaborates on this in a video post from Oslo for the Globe and Mail.



Saunders has posted at his website a collection of Breivik's comments posted at the Norwegian blog dokument.no revealing the man to be preoccupied with pop demography of the least analytical sort. (No, Lebanon is not a relevant model for any plausible European future, not least because of the substantial territorial changes coupled with unprecedented history of sustained mass emigration and the numerous bloody, bloody wars.) Going into more detail, blogger P.Z. Myers noted that in his screed, Breivik was concerned with the ridiculously precise micromanagement of fertility along the misogynistic lines described by Margaret Atwood in her 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale.

1. Limit the distribution of birth-control pills (contraceptive pills): Discourage the use of and prevent liberal distribution of contraceptive pills or equivalent prevention methods. The goal should be to make it considerably more difficult to obtain. This alone should increase the fertility rate by 0,1 points but would degrade women's rights.

2. Reform sex education: Reform the current sex education in our school institutions. This may involve limiting it or at least delaying sex education to a later age and discourage casual sex. Sex should only be encouraged within the boundaries of marriage. This alone should increase the fertility rate by 0,1 points.

3. Making abortion illegal: A re-introduction of the ban on abortion should result in an increased fertility rate of approximately 0,1-0,2 points but would strip women of basic rights.

4. Women and education: Discourage women in general to strive for full time careers. This will involve certain sexist and discriminating policies but should increase the fertility rate by up to 0,1-0,2 points.

Women should not be encouraged by society/media to take anything above a bachelor's degree but should not be prevented from taking a master or PhD. Males on the other hand should obviously continue to be encouraged to take higher education - bachelor, master and PhD.

Adds Myers, "It's all about fertility, ladies, and if only we keep you ignorant and trapped in the home, you'll start pooping out babies for us. Isn't that sweet?"

Demography's a concern of this blog, obviously, as are future population changes. The signal difference is that we at Demography Matters are concerned with fact-based linkages, writing, and research, taking a look at what actually goes on insofar as populations evolve because demography matters enough to be taken seriously. We engage with myths like Eurabia not least since these kinds of catastrophic theories do very little to create informed discussion on the subject. People are not going to talk or act in rational manners about immigration or population aging or anything of the kind of they think that the future of their country is doomed. This may especially be so if they think that their country's doom is indeed that is an intended consequence of their evil political elite.

As a co-blogger of mine over at History and Futility, Jussi Jalonen, wrote earlier today, the whole knot of anger and misunderstandings and conspiratorial mindsets surrounding Eurabia that motivated Breivik exist at the center of an increasingly influential political network.

Following the modus operandi of all publicity-seeking mass murderers, Breivik wrote a manifesto where he openly stated his motives and clarified his political opinions in detail. Published in the internet, the “European Declaration of Independence” – which can be downloaded from here – is essentially a grotesque compendium of blog posts and columns, tied together with Breivik’s own narrative. The quoted writings all have in common an openly islamophobic, anti-immigration theme. According to Breivik’s twisted, but coherent logic, the “multiculturalist Marxist establishment” is attempting to convert the European Union into a “Marxist superstate, the EUSSR”; these “cultural Marxists” are also responsible for the “mass Muslim immigration” and “islamization” of Europe. Breivik is, in other words, a true believer in the so-called “Eurabia”-predictions previously discussed also on this blog, and he also believes that an open discussion of these threats was impossible due to the pervasive European “political correctness”. In his own words, Breivik was using the mass murder as means to “send a message” to the “Marxist, multiculturalist elites”. His chosen method was to wipe out the next generation of the left-wing politicians whom he saw as the culprits of the immigration policy and the destruction of his cherished European civilization.

What’s important to remember is that Breivik’s ideology was not original, and his sick ideas were not of his own making. In essence, he was a product of the internet age, a dedicated consumer of the radical anti-Muslim political propaganda which has circulated around the websites and weblogs ever since the 9/11 attacks and the controversial Muhammad cartoon episode. Breivik maintained a lively interest in the most notable anti-Islam bloggers, such as “Fjordman”, with whom he occasionally seems to have corresponded, advertising his book project; one example of their dialogue can be found here, in the comment section. The title of Breivik’s book, “Declaration of European Independence”, is actually borrowed from a column which “Fjordman” wrote for the cultural-conservative “Brussels Journal”-blog. Breivik describes his ideology by the name “Vienna School of Thought”, which is a reference to another well-known paranoid anti-Islam blog, “Gates of Vienna”.

This internet sub-culture where Breivik spent his pastime has not been without political significance. The very same post-modern, radical, fanatic cultural-fundamentalist atmosphere which produced Breivik has made serious inroads to the mainstream politics in the Western World, basing its success on populism and fear. The writers who inspired Breivik included known Muslim-baiting hate-mongers such as Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and Daniel Pipes, and he was fascinated by the Tea Party movement. Geert Wilders, the head of the Dutch PVV and the producer of Fitna, was among Breivik’s heroes, and his book even mentions – in one of the quoted posts from “Fjordman” – Jussi Halla-aho, a Finnish anti-Islam blogger who was elected as an MP of the populist “True Finns” party in the last elections and became the chairman of the parliamentary committee in charge of police, border guard and the immigration affairs. Breivik’s book endorses several “anti-immigration, cultural conservative organizations”, ranging from the Sweden-Democrats to the Polish PiS, all of which he saw as the possible salvation of the Continent from the supposed evils of multiculturalism and immigration. The only thing which made Breivik special was his conviction that this parliamentary political activity needed to be supplemented with direct action, and he saw himself as the man who could provide it.

Demography matters too much to be left unchallenged to the sorts of people who would use the study of population--or more precisely, what these people think counts as the study of population--to justify all manner of horrors. Beware.