Atlantic Canada's incredible shrinking population

Image via WikipediaThe Globe & Mail is running a series called "Canada: Our Time to Lead. Eight Discussions We Need to Have" saying "We hope, and intend, for this discussion to strike at the heart of how Canadians define ourselves, and our nation." The eight discussions that will help us define ourselves, according to the Globe, are: multiculturalism, women in power, failing boys, military, work-life, health care, Internet and food.
If we are looking to "strike at the heart of how we define the nation," I suggest we start a ninth discussion. It may not be top of mind in Toronto but I think it has much more potential to shape our collective concept of Canada - for better or worse - over the next few decades.
I am referring to the hollowing out of Atlantic Canada's population and its eventual impacts. We could also add Manitoba and even Quebec to the discussion because some of the challenges are the same but for simplicity I will stick to the Atlantic Canada problem.
There is an unprecedented demographic shift happening in the region. In the early 1970s, the population was growing at a fairly strong rate driven by natural population increases, net in-migration and at least a limited level of immigration.
Then something happened.
First, the limited immigration to Atlantic Canada mostly dried up (particularly as a share of national immigration). From 1990 to 2009, Canada welcomed more than four million new immigrants to the country - the largest swell of immigrant population in history. During that same period, New Brunswick, as an example, attracted an average of just more than 900 new immigrants per year.
Second, net in-migration into Atlantic Canada turned to net out-migration. From 1971 to 1976, the four Atlantic provinces combined had a positive migration from the rest of Canada of nearly 30,000 people. To be clear, that is 30,000 (net) people moving to Atlantic Canada from the rest of Canada. In the most current five year period (2005-2009), there was a net out-migration of 36,000 people from Atlantic Canada. That is a 66,000 swing comparing a five year period in the early 1970s to the late 2000s (or just about the population of the City of Moncton).
When you combine these trends with the declining birth rate you end up with regional population decline. Since 1990, Canada added more than six million people to its population while Atlantic Canada has shed 21,000.
There has been some limited positive activity on the immigration front in the past couple of years but the long term trend is unmistakable.
The regional demographic mix in Canada is diverging. The population of Atlantic Canada is comparatively old, white and declining. The population of the rest of Canada - particularly the large urban centres - is younger, multicultural and growing rapidly.
The implications of this demographic shift are starting to emerge with economic, community and fiscal consequences. We've seen what can happen to a city that suffers from chronic population loss but what about when it happens to an entire region such as Atlantic Canada? How do we continue to pay for public services? How do we support a positive economic development agenda?
People grumble about the balance of power now. At least most of the current political and bureaucratic decision makers in Ottawa have a limited affinity toward or knowledge of Atlantic Canada. By 2030 it is likely most MPs in Ottawa will have never even visited this region.
This issue may not reach the Globe & Mail's threshold for warranting a discussion, compared to the urgent topic of Torontonian work-life balance, but someone needs to start talking about it.
David Campbell is an economic development consultant based in Moncton. He writes a daily blog, It's the Economy Stupid, at www.davidwcampbell.com.

Source: nbbusinessjournal.com

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Canada reports slight increase in permanent residents from Latvia

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Latvians Online

October 27, 2010

The number of persons from Latvia earning permanent resident status in Canada increased in 2009, but remains significantly lower than the figure recorded a decade ago, according to government statistics.
A total of 86 persons from Latvia became permanent residents of Canada last year, up from 66 in 2008, according to data compiled by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and released in September.
Under Canadian law, permanent residents must live in the country for at least two years within a five-year period. Otherwise, they risk losing their status. While permanent residents share many of the same rights as Canadian citizens, they may not vote in elections.
Ten years ago, 230 persons from Latvia became permanent residents, increasing to 286 in 2001.
The number steadily declined through 2006, when just 73 new permanent residents were recorded. However, the number jumped to 113 in 2007.
In the past decade, a total of 1,491 persons from Latvia have become permanent residents of Canada, according to the data. That is more than from Lithuania, which contributed 1,355 new permanent residents during the same period, or Estonia, with contributed just 403.
Last year, more than 250,000 persons from around the world became new permanent residents of Canada. China, the Philippines and India are the top three source countries, according to the data.

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Improved innovation in Canada linked to immigration

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German Chancellor Angela Merkel's recent comments about the failure of multiculturalism, while controversial, were nothing new for Europeans. Former British prime minister Tony Blair seems to have started the ball rolling in 2006, when he told immigrants to "conform ... or don't come here," and since then, many European leaders have echoed such sentiments.
Given the problems Europe has experienced -- the London bombings of 2005, civil unrest in Paris, and the failure to integrate Muslim Turks in Germany -- the comments aren't terribly surprising. But one must be careful not to assume that these events are simply the fault of an ill-defined policy like multiculturalism -- or worse, the fault of freeloading immigrants.
Germany's problems with Muslim Turks, for example, has little to do with multiculturalism. The Turks were originally considered guest workers, and as Merkel herself admitted, everyone expected them to return home at some point. This is not multiculturalism, and is no way to ensure a lasting contribution from foreign-born workers.
Merkel did, however, advocate for the integration of immigrants, and asked how that's best accomplished. One answer is to look to Canada, which, of course, has a long-standing and sometimes controversial policy of official multiculturalism, and which has also benefited enormously from the contribution of immigrants.
This is the conclusion of a new report, Immigrants as Investors: Boosting Canada's Global Competitiveness, from the Conference Board of Canada. The report set out to test the presumption that immigrants are likely to be highly innovative, and, according to Diana MacKay, director of education and health for the board, "At every level we examined -- individual, organization, national and global -- immigrants were associated with increased innovation in Canada."
Among the specifics, the report found that 35 per cent of Canada Research Chairs are foreign-born, even though immigrants make up just one-fifth of the Canadian population. Further, immigrants win proportionally more prestigious literary and performing arts prizes, such as the Giller Prize and the Governor-General's Performing Arts Awards.
Perhaps not so surprisingly, immigration also affects trade levels between Canada and immigrants' countries of origin. According to the report, a one-percentage-point increase in immigrants can increase the value of imports by 0.21 per cent and raise the value of exports by 0.11 per cent. Also not surprisingly, foreign direct investment into Canada is greater from countries that are well represented in Canada through immigration.
Hence, whatever the supposed drawbacks of multiculturalism, Canada's immigrants have made important contributions to Canadian society. But things are not perfect, as the report notes that immigrants face many obstacles, including inadequate recognition of their international experience and qualifications, failure of employers to utilize immigrants' foreign language skills and lack of opportunities for newcomers to use their skills.
That returns us to Merkel's question about how best to achieve integration. And on that point, the report advises that employers hire immigrants at every level of their organizations, including leadership roles, match the diversity of their staff to their markets, and encourage immigrants to share their views.
This last recommendation is particularly important, as there's no better way to improve integration than to ask immigrants what they need to function effectively in Canadian society. And that doesn't in any way conflict with multiculturalism. Rather, it serves to respect the values of immigrants while, as the Conference Board report makes clear, also helping to improve conditions for all Canadians.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

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Immigrants Made Canada

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By J.L. Granatstein

October 25, 2010
Source: my towncrier.ca

Let me begin with one simple fact: Toronto’s public schools declare themselves the most multicultural in the world. One school, Thorncliffe Park Public School in Toronto’s east end, has 1,913 students speaking 54 languages. What that means is obvious —  Canada today is a nation of immigrants.

But what we forget too easily is that Canada always was a country of immigrants. Everyone who ever lived here came from someplace else, including the First Nations whose ancestors crossed into North America over a land bridge from Siberia. Everyone. The original European immigrants of Canada were the French followed by the Loyalists, the losers in the American Revolution, who settled in the late 1780s in what is now Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Ontario, and Quebec. Most were of British origin, devoted to King George III and Great Britain, but there were also others of German, Dutch and other origins, as well as blacks, most but not all slaves. Those “originals” largely shaped Canada’s population mix for almost two hundred years.
    
Let me demonstrate. The Canada into which I was born in 1939 had a population of some 11.5 million, according to the 1941 Census figures, which was made up of those of British and French origin (50 percent and 30 percent respectively) and the others (20 percent). The others were of German, Ukrainian, Scandinavian, and Dutch origin in the main, with a scattering of other ethnicities. There were few blacks, Chinese, Japanese, or South Asians, the Canadian population almost wholly white.
    
Overwhelmingly the population was Christian with a few hundred thousand Jews and a handful of other denominations. The corporate, cultural, and political leaders in Canada were overwhelmingly drawn from among those of British origin, and French-speaking Quebeckers did not have anything like their fair share of economic or political power.
 
It is certainly fair to say that nation-building, such as it was, aimed to establish a British type of society in Canada. Culturally, this was reflected in Canada’s political, economic and social institutions. In law, all Canadians were defined as British subjects until the passage of the Canadian Citizenship Act in 1947, and a variety of cultural symbols ranging from the monarchy to the flag and to the names of army regiments showed the British underpinnings of English-speaking Canada. By and large, the government either ignored racial and ethnic differences or worked to turn all into British Canadians in attitude if not in ethnic origin.      
    
Obviously, Canada is very different today. In the 2006 Census, the most recent, the “other” category, now with some 200 ethnicities, has reached 50 percent of the 31 million population. For example, there were reported to be 1.35 million Chinese, 962,000 East Indians, and 436,000 Filipinos, and one in six Canadian residents was a visible minority. Christians still predominate (some 70 percent), but as recently as 1951, 96 percent of the population was Christian. Today, there are far more Roman Catholics than Protestants (40 percent of the Canadian population is Catholic, only 30 percent Protestant), and Muslims are approaching one million, far more than those of Jewish belief. Those with no religion number one in six of the population.
   
In Greater Toronto, the nation’s largest city, very close to half of the 5.1 million population were immigrants, an increase of 27 percent in five years, and more than four in 10, or 43 percent of the population, were visible minorities, primarily Chinese, South Asian or black. India and China now provide most of the immigrants to Canada and Toronto, and in an ordinary year at least 250,000 immigrants come to the country, more than four in 10 of them heading to Toronto. At the time I was born and for my first 15 years, by contrast, the British Isles were the main source of immigrants to Canada.
   
So Canada has changed, and certainly much for the better. There are Members of Parliament in turbans, the Chief of Defence Staff is of Ukrainian ethnicity and the previous Governor-General Michaelle Jean is a Haitian woman immigrant who succeeded a Chinese female immigrant, Adrienne Clarkson. Jews hold three of the nine seats on the Supreme Court; a Jamaican-Chinese-Canadian multimillionaire made a huge donation to add a giant extension to the Royal Ontario Museum and a group of Italian-Canadian millionaires matched that with equally grand gifts to the redeveloped Art Gallery of Ontario; the public service is almost as mixed as the nation; and Toronto’s public schools, for example, declare themselves the most multicultural in the world. It may even be true. Mixed-race marriages are increasingly common in the larger cities, and adoptions abroad, especially in China and Africa, have created multiracial families all across the country.
   
There can be no doubt that this is a great success story. Immigration changed the old Canada, and immigration is continuing to do so. What the Canada of 2150 will look like, no one can say — except that it will not look at all like the Canada I grew up in.

Historian J.L. Granatstein is editor of The Canadian Experience. He writes on Canadian political and military and on foreign and defence policy.
 

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Immigration consultants reflect on their work to help immigrants live their dreams during Citizenship Week

Toronto, ON – Canada’s Citizenship Week is a time for all Canadians to consider the shared benefits and responsibilities we enjoy as citizens, and immigration consultants are especially aware of just how lucky we all are.
As part of Citizenship Week, the Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants (CSIC) is releasing What is a CCIC?, a video that details what Certified Canadian Immigration Consultants are and how they feel about helping immigrants live their dreams of becoming Canadian.
“Canada is a nation built on immigration and immigration continues to play a pivotal role in Canada’s future,” said CSIC Chair Nigel Thomson. “We are fortunate that many immigrants enrich our cultural fabric by choosing to make Canada their home.”
Members of CSIC, known as Certified Canadian Immigration Consultants, members of a provincial or territorial bar and Quebec notaries are the only paid representatives who are legally entitled to appear before the Canadian government on behalf of an immigration applicant.
“Immigration is a crucial step on the long journey to citizenship,” said Thomson. “Our members are proud to be a part of that journey by helping prospective Canadians navigate the often stressful and uncertain immigration process.”

The Canadian Society of Immigration Consultants is the professional regulatory body for Certified Canadian Immigration Consultants. Established in 2004 it currently has over 1,800 members. CSIC’s mandate is to protect consumers of immigration consulting services. Consequently, it is responsible for ensuring the education, competency testing and the discipline of its members. CSIC also requires its members to carry errors and omissions insurance and to contribute to a compensation fund. The best way to find a CCIC is via CSIC’s toll free referral line, 1-877-311-7926 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              1-877-311-7926      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

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