Canada in 2060
What will Canada look like in 2060?
Canada, eh? The beauty of the Great White North has withstood the test of time however, will it continue to shine during the many years to come? Using current trends, immigration statistics/facts and the First Nations situation we can evaluate what Canada's future might look like in the year 2060.
Demography
To begin, we are going to use current demography (study of human characteristics) to help model our future by looking at current trends. We can continue the indications of these tendencies to predict the population attributes of Canada in 2060.
From the population pyramid above, you can see the current data for Canada. There are many things from this alone, that can tell us what the future will look like for Canada. Firstly, you can see that the largest lines (most people in the Canadian population) are between the ages 45-59. This is the generation is the baby boomers. In 1945, when World War II ended, Canada's population had a dramatic increase in their birth rate. This is mainly because the young men that were gone for six years, came back home where they began their overdue families. By the year 2060, we can expect all (if not most) of the baby boomers to pass away, therefore leaving a large gap in the Canadian population. Of course, some may think that the new generations will make up for the loss of the people aged 45-59 right now, however this is not the case. Since the baby boomers, the birth rate has been declining and is now remaining stable at 1.8 - 2.0 million. We can expect this trend to continue until the year 2060.
But wait...
To know how the population will actually increase or decrease by the year 2060, we must find the natural increase rate. To do this we must evaluate the trends of the death rate and then subtract it from the birth rate. But what are the trends of the death rate showing? Well, recently the death rate of Canada has remained consistently low and we can expect it to be the same. So if the birth and death rate are low, that means Canada's natural increase will continue to increase slowly.
What about the baby boomers?
Since most of the baby boomers will pass away by the year 2060 and the natural increase will increase the population slowly, it will take Canada a long time to regain the loss of the baby boomers naturally. However, it is important for Canada to keep the population growing slowly as a large increase or decrease can create many problems (ex. lack of people to fill jobs). So when the baby boomers pass, we can expect a large drop in the population. So how can we maintain a stable growth?
Immigration
To help fill the gap left by the baby boomers, Canada can accept more economic immigrants to fill the extra jobs. They will help benefit our economy as well as help keep a stable population growth. How else can immigration change and help Canada in the next 45 years?
Over the years, Canada has seen immigrants come from a variety of countries. In the 1800s they came from Europe; mainly France and Britain. In the present day, as you can see from the graph, they mainly come from China, India and the Philippines. The ethnicity of the immigrants in 2060 may become completely different and they could immigrate from a whole other continent. As of right now, Canada has a positive NET Migration Rate, meaning more people enter Canada than emigrate. This has always been the case. Since Canada is a first world, developed country, it has great living conditions for those wishing to immigrate here and gives people a reason to stay. We can assume that Canada will continue to be an ideal country to live in and that our NET migration rate will remain positive. Other reasons people might want to immigrate to Canada are the health care, freedom of speech, no discrimination, right to vote etc. Many other countries might be experiencing lack of job opportunities or war/conflict in their native country and could be coming to Canada for these reasons.
First Nations
Throughout Canadian history, the First Nations have always ended up getting the short end of the stick. After making promises and helping the Europeans in conflict, they never got their promise in return. They have been purposely infected with diseases to kill them and have also been taken out of their homes to schools to strip them of their religion. So what will the future hold for the First Nations?
Well...
Currently, First Nations people are scattered all over Canada. They are being stereotyped and are seen publicly by the way their people looked in the past. By 2060, I believe that we should make it up to the First Nations not by money but by giving them what they asked for hundreds of years ago. I hope we also help them change their birth and death rates to match with ours, to ensure less deaths in our country. But overall, we should mend the broken relationship between the First Nations and the rest of Canada. However what we should and actually do are two different things.
Right now, the First Nations demography resembles one of a country in poverty, with a high birth rate and a low life expectancy (high death rate). However, it does not fully look like a country in poverty as the shape of it is not a perfect pyramid. It is consistent in the middle but begins to drop from age 50-59 as you can see from the population pyramid above. What we must work on in the future is help the First Nations people maintain a population pyramid that resembles the rest of Canada. It is not fair to them that they must deal with problems of poor countries because we didn't acknowledge them in recent years, and that should be one of the first things to improve in Canada.
A Statistics Canada Minute - Regional Demography
This Statistics Canada video discusses most of what has been mentioned in this Smore. It summarizes what Canada's population will look like in the future as well as explained the major role immigrant will make to help our population have a stable growth.
Overall...
Canada's future seems to be just as bright as it is now. Though our birth rate has dropped since World War II and our population does not seem to grow fast naturally, we must ensure that immigration will help to grow it by 1% every year. On top of that, we must make sure that the First Nations do not face anymore problems relating to poverty in the coming years by investing in more hospitals and better healthcare for them.