Canada 2060
What will Canada look like in 2060?
Introduction
Immigration, Demography and The First Nation community in Canada, what is it? These three factors are very important when it comes to Canada's past, present and most importantly Canada's future. When we look at these factors, it all connects to the population and economy of Canada. In 2014, Canada's population was calculated to 35.54 million, compared to the rest of the world our population is not that big but geographically we have the second largest country in the world. How will this population and how will Canada look like in 2060? Using our knowledge about our immigration right now and in the past, Canadian demography and The First Nation community we can predict how Canada will look like in 2060.
Current Immigration
Immigration plays a big role in Canada's population because immigrants make up at least 20 percent of our population. Canada is known to be a very multicultural country and that is because of the large variety of immigrants that come to Canada. Every year there are about 250 000 immigrants that come to Canada. These immigrants go through a long and different process to be able to get into Canada and they can be classified as one of these four categories; Family class immigrants, Economical immigrants, refugees and other immigrants.
- Family class immigrants (25.6% - 66,659)
- Economical immigrants (63.4% - 165,088)
- Refugees (8.9% - 23,286)
- Other immigrants (2.1% - 5,367)
Now we know what kinds of immigrants come to Canada and we also know that most immigrants are economical immigrants. Almost half of Canada's immigrants move to Ontario, this is because of the big cities and the job opportunities Ontario has. After Ontario most immigrants go to Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia. Next you might be wondering where do all these immigrants come from? Well, in Canada immigrants come from all over the world but the majority of the immigrants come from Asia. Philippians, India, and China are the most popular countries when it comes to where immigrants come from. You may be able to notice this when you are walking around outside in the streets of Mississauga. The graph shown below tells us where immigrants come from and how many of them come from that certain country.
Canada has a high immigration rate because we are a well developed country and most of our immigrants come from developing countries like India and China. They immigrate to Canada because Canada has more jobs too offer and more income. Since the push factors of the countries like India and China are that they are developing countries, this will change in the future when these countries are developed. People in the future wont have reasons to emigrate from these countries like they do now. This will cause our immigration rate to drop because other countries wont have push or pull factors that will make them want to emigrate from their origin countries to Canada. In the future, we need to look for higher achievements in technology and we need better income so there can be pull factors for people from other countries. If there are no pull factors for Canada, our net migration will drop in the future which is not beneficial for us because our natural increase rate will drop so to keep our population increasing we need a high net migration rate. In the future it is also important for Canada to have high immigration rate so our economy can improve and so citizens don't have to suffer from high taxes. In the future taxes will get higher because of our baby boom population that is about to retire.
Demography
Demographics are a very important and useful way to look at population of a country, and they are very useful when it comes to predicting a countries future, without them we would not be able to see patterns in population and predict the future population, birth rate, and death rate of a country. By using statistics and looking at past events, demographers are able to predict what will happen to a country and how it will change in the future. Shown below are some statistics that help us predict birth rate, death rate and natural increase rate in 2060.
The Canadian statistics for 2014 are shown above and since our population is only growing slightly, not much has changed and the statistics are accurate. The age structure is interesting because it is divided equally in all age groups except 25-54. Why is this? That age group includes the baby boomers who were born from 1946-1965 following World War 2. Baby boomers consist of most of our population and since the baby boomers are ageing, they are going to need more support from the government because of health care benefits they receive. The money the government uses is taken from the taxes we pay so as the baby boomers age, our economy will suffer. The population pyramid down below shows us the populations of baby boomers and also life expectancy.
Life expectancy is about 80 years. Looking at the population pyramid we can observe that it will take about 30 years for the population to even out because that is when most of the baby boomers die. So as mentioned above, our economy will suffer because of the ageing of baby boomers. For 30 years how are we going to deal with a suffering economy.? The only way to get through this will be if there is an increase in population through immigration. But since other countries are developing and our population is not increasing by a lot we have to pay more taxes so there is no pull factors for other people to immigrate to Canada. Also Canada is getting expensive, for example prices for houses are going up dramatically, Now we can just pray that immigration will help us our through the 30 years while the baby boomers age.
The graph above shows that in the future, the population will drop. This is because of the death of baby boomers. The oldest baby boomers are 70, so in 10 years the death rate will start to increase because life expectancy is 80. Since Canada is a developed country, birth rates are going to stay stable or may even slightly decrease. This is because women have jobs that are as important as mes jobs so they will not have enough time to raise big families and some women may not have any children at all. Since birth rate will be low and the death rate will be high, this will cause natural increase rates to go to zero or even into negative numbers, which means in the future there could be no growth in the population at all and we will depend highly on migratory increase for our population to increase. This video will help explain in more details on the changing demographics in the future.
Canada's Changing Demographics
First Nations, Metis, and Inuit
The aboriginals were the first people in Canada and they owned all the land in Canada because they were they only one here until the Europeans came and took over. The Europeans made Canada look like how it is today. The aboriginals are first nations that are divided into four groups. Non-status Indians are people who identify themselves as Indians but are not entitled to registration on the Indian Register Pursuant to the Indian Act. Status Indians are Indians by blood. They live on reserves and practice their culture within themselves. The Metis are people of mixed European and Indigenous ancestry, and they have their culture different from the first nations. The last group of aboriginals are the Inuit. They are bands who live in the territories and Northern Quebec and Labrador.
4% of Canadas population which is 1.4 million people are the ones who have identified themselves as aboriginals. 50% of the aboriginal peoples are Status Indians, 30% are Metis, 15% are Non-status Indians and 4% are Inuit. In the graph below it shows how the aboriginal people are distributed over Canada.
Right now the first nations population is not that big but further into the future it will increase. This is because first nations have big families because they still follow some of their old traditions and also so they can have more help in their communities. Because they have big families, their population will increase while the population of the rest of Canada does not. What does this mean? The growth of aboriginal peoples population will lead to conflict with non-aboriginals even though there is a Indian Act. Also if there is more aboriginal people, there will be more space required for them which will lead into even more conflict. There is one way to solve this, which is to remove the Indian Act and create a new set of rules which can benefit both aboriginals and non-aboriginals.
Geography Project by Abdurqadeer
Conclusion
To conclude, immigration, demography and first nations all have big affects on Canada's future. In 2060, we will need many more immigrants as our population will stop growing because of the death of baby boomers which will be in 30 years. Demographically, since death rate will be high and birth rate will be low, we will have no natural increase or maybe even decrease and that is when we will depend heavily on immigrants to come to Canada so the population can continue to grow. Also the first nations population will increase by a lot and they will want more land so they can continue to pass on their beliefs to the next generations. In all, all these three factors play a role in how Canada will look like in 2060?
Bibliography
https://www.google.ca/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&met_y=sp_pop_totl&idim=country:CAN:GBR&hl=en&dl=en
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/statistics/facts2014/index.asp
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/demo34a-eng.htm
https://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1370438978311/1370439050610
http://www.indexmundi.com/canada/demographics_profile.html
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/91-215-x/2015000/part-partie1-eng.htm
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2014001-eng.htm
https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2011/as-sa/98-311-x/98-311-x2011003_2-eng.cfm