Canadian Confidence
Ottawa has set a new target of half a million migrants per year by 2025. It's a sign of Canada's confidence, but also of a glaring structural problem it needs to solve
When I explain that one of my primary areas of interest is Canada most people find this to be odd. The standard view of Canada is that it is a boring and insignificant country not worthy of serious attention. Canadians themselves like to play on this perspective, promoting themselves as a polite and mundane people. However, this is merely a form of self-deprecation, as well as an outgrowth of a national inclination to hide its light under a bushel.
Amongst other alluring traits, the country has extraordinary regional diversity, and not only due to its large French-speaking minority. The two poles of its Pacific and Atlantic coasts – Vancouver and St John’s – may share a common language, but are highly divergent in culture and demeanour. St John’s being deeply wedded to its population’s roots in Ireland and South West England, with a strong Catholicism that guides its everyday life. Whereas Vancouver is the most Asian city outside of Asia, where 1 in every 5 people are of Chinese heritage. Vancouver could also be considered the “wellness” capital of the world - a new religion emerging to be potentially as influential as the old ones.
Canada is a “post-national” state, a country where regional identities – and other group identities – often take precedence over any sense of national identity. It currently has two provinces in Quebec and Alberta who want very little to do with the country at all (except federal dollars in Quebec’s case), and are actively seeing how far they can push the Canadian constitution. Other regions may have similar designs, but simply lack the power to be as bullish as these two. This is all fascinating stuff.
But my standard line to those who think it is odd that I am enthusiastic about the country is that Canada is a G7 country – it sits at the table with the big players in a way that Australia does not. And its weight within the G7 is growing. It has just overtaken Italy to become the 8th largest economy in the world and on current trajectory will should also overtake France to become the 7th. Canada is not an insignificant country. Therefore someone in Australia should be paying attention to it.
This significance is expanding by the day. Canada has a highly enthusiastic immigration programme that is rapidly increasing its size. It added 4 million people to its population over the past decade, and has begun to accelerate this pace. The country accepted 405,000 migrants last year and is on track to achieve its target of 431,000 this year. Its target for next year is 465,000 people, increasing to 485,000 for 2024, and then half a million for 2025. Canada is not a country looking to shrink from the world. It has a bold and clear ambition to enhance its capabilities and global influence.
To understand the reasons for this ambition we need to think about what the world looks like to Canada at the moment. And by “the world”, what I really mean is its southern neighbour.
As I wrote in for the Lowy Interpreter a couple of years ago:
More than three-quarters of Canada’s exports go to the US, and its total trade is over eleven times that with China. In normal – that is, non-pandemic – times, US$2 billion in goods and services crosses the border each day, as do 400,000 people. Ninety percent of Canada’s population lives within 160 kilometres of the US border, making it the country’s principle orienting feature. The two countries have integrated administrative zones and highly coordinated defence and law enforcement systems, as well as shared airspace, maritime spheres and ecosystems. Canada exists in a permanent state of cooperation with the US. There are very few Canadian policies that do not, at the very least, take the US into consideration.
To have such a symbiotic relationship with a country that is going through a profound existential crisis must be disturbing. Nothing is more confronting to Ottawa than the current political instability in the United States, and the prospect of power being in the hands of a radical, revisionist, and emotionally chaotic party like the Republican Party. Canadians like to make fun of the US, and project an air of superiority towards Americans due to having universal healthcare, much lower crime, and a more equitable distribution of wealth. But they are also well aware that what happens in the US will always have a grave effect on themselves, and what is occurring in the US at the moment isn’t at all funny.
Rather than gloating about America’s current problems, Canada has made the rational calculation that it now needs to dramatically increase its own capabilities - across all sectors of both the state and civil society. Being reliant on a US that doesn’t share its values is an uncomfortable option. Of course, Canada will always be bound to the US due to the realities of geography, and because of the power discrepancy Ottawa will be required to orientate itself to US policy. However, the more weight and capabilities Canada develops the more influence it will have in Washington and greater ability to shape its own destiny.
At present Canada vastly underspends on defence because it knows that the US would consider an attack on Canada to be a security threat to itself.1 This perspective in Washington is likely to endure no matter how radical the Republican Party becomes. However, as the Republicans may not continue to believe in America’s role as the guarantor of the liberal international order it will mean that middle powers like Canada will need to do a lot more of the heavy lifting (in greater coordination with countries like Australia). Alongside this, as the Arctic becomes a more contested space Canada will be required to invest more resources in its north. At present, Canada still doesn’t meet the 2 percent of GDP target expected of NATO members, but it is increasing its spending.
Of course, in order to be able to increase defence spending the country requires consistent economic growth, and this is the primary way that the Canadian government is framing its immigration targets – highlighting that the country faces significant labour shortages that are inhibiting the country’s potential. What it interesting is that the Canadian public are – unlike many of its peers – very aware that migration is a creative force that enhances opportunity for all. The economic fallacy that migrants are “stealing jobs” has very little traction in the country.
This recognition is extended – and thankfully driven by – the three main pan-Canadian federal political parties – as well as most of its provincial parties2 – who wholeheartedly support Canada’s immigration ambition. The only exception to this are the Quebec nationalist parties - the provincial government of the Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) and the federal Bloc Québécois. The CAQ is currently insistent that Quebec will only accept 50,000 people each year, despite its own significant labour shortages, and as the second largest province having the capacity to take far more.
Premier François Legault’s specious reasoning is that migration is a threat to the French language. Yet because French is the public language in Quebec, those migrating to the province will be well aware that they will need to live and work in the language. Furthermore, children of migrants are compelled to be educated in French, with only those whose parents were educated in English in Quebec (that is, the historical Anglophone minority) afforded education in English in the province.
To most people these are conditions that would be seen to enhance the French language in Canada by immigrants adding to French’s numerical weight. But Quebec nationalism has a peculiar form of insecurity that feels threatened by what language people speak in their homes, regardless of whether they speak fluent French outside the home. It’s a masochistic form of nationalism that is actively creating the very thing that it fears.
Even though the number of French speakers in Canada has continued to rise, due to Quebec’s suspicion of immigration, over the past few decades those who use French as their primary official language as a percentage of the overall Canadian population has dropped from around 28 percent to 21 percent. This continued decline of French’s power within the Canadian federation has serious consequences for one of Canada’s key assets; its diplomatic duality – Ottawa’s ability to be a major influence in both the Anglophone and Francophone worlds.
Due to Quebec’s lack of ambition for itself, the federal government has designated a target of around 20,000 French speakers to settle outside of Quebec each year. This is something that Ontario has embraced with its own Express Entry French-Speaking Skilled Worker stream, which combines with the new Rural and Northern Immigration Pilot to attract French-speakers to French-speaking towns in Northern Ontario. This is a region that is older than the rest of the province – with its Francophone population older still – and the hope is that these programmes will start to shift its median age down.
While the vibrancy and health of regions such as Northern Ontario and north and eastern New Brunswick are vital to preserve French as a pan-Canadian language, they unfortunately cannot do the heavy lifting that big cities like Montreal or Quebec City can. So unless the CAQ – who now dominate the province’s politics3 – can overcome its ethnic nationalism, Canada will see the continued diminishment of one of its great assets.
However, one of the potentially positive outcomes of Quebec’s insularity is that it shifts Canada’s centre of gravity towards its Pacific coast. As I wrote in a different piece for the Lowy Interpreter in 2019:
Ontario still accepts the largest portion of immigrants, but its percentage of the intake is shrinking, while the percentages of Alberta and British Columbia are rising. The country’s internal migration is also favouring these two provinces as it follows their Pacific-facing economic opportunity. Alberta’s economy is now only slightly smaller than Quebec’s, but with 4 million fewer people. Vancouver has become Canada’s largest port…
And as Canada’s immigration intake is dominated by people from India, with China and the Philippines being the second and third largest sources, it is culturally reorientating the country towards the Indo-Pacific. As Canada’s population increases it is becoming far more integrated with the world’s own emerging centre of gravity. It is a great positive for Australia to have a country of significant capabilities who shares its interests becoming more engaged in our own region.
In 2017 while in Ottawa I purchased a book at Canada’s major book chain, Chapters.4 Accompanying the purchase was a bookmark that stated The World Needs More Canada (in both English and French). It’s a phrase that has stuck with me not only because Canada is now embodying this sentiment with its ambitious immigration policy – a declaration that Canada is a positive influence in the world and so there needs to be much more Canada – but because it is unlikely that such a clear and confident phrase would be promoted within Australia. Unfortunately, in Australia there is timidity and fretfulness that prevents us from pursuing our own interests with conviction.
Quebec aside, Canada is striding boldly into the future. This is not because it is blasé about the world’s current problems – and the major problems of its southern neighbour – but because it sees that Canada can – and should – be part of the solution to these problems. The country just needs to capabilities to do so. Now year each it will have half a million new enhancements to achieve this objective.
For context, Australia spends more on defence than Canada despite having 13 million less people and an economy that is US $500 billion smaller.
The decentralised nature of the federation, and strong regional identities, means that there are often different political parties at provincial level to federal level. The federal Conservative Party of Canada has no affiliation with any provincial party, for example.
Although this is due to the deficiencies of the first-past-the-post voting system. Ridiculously, the CAQ holds 72% of the seats in the National Assembly with just 41% of the vote.
The Morning After by Chantal Hébert and Jean Lapierre is an extraordinary series of interviews with the major players in the 1995 Quebec Referendum on separation from Canada. Discovering details like the premier of Saskatchewan creating a contingency plan that included Saskatchewan also leaving the federation should the Quebec referendum pass highlighted just how fragile that Canadian federation actually is. For those not convinced that Canada – and Canadian politics – is absolutely fascinating this book would be a great place to start.