In June 16, a few minutes before 3:00 p.m., Canada’s demographic clock showed a round count: the country passed the milestone of 40 million inhabitants that day. This tool, set up by the federal organization Statistics Canada, allowing real-time monitoring of daily variations in the population, did not specify whether the “forty millionth” Canadian was an infant born in a maternity ward in the country or an immigrant coming just landed on Canadian soil. But, statistically, the latter option is the most likely.
Because, if Canada is experiencing the highest population growth of the G7 countries (2.7% last year), it owes it less to its low birth rate than to the strength of its immigration: in 2022, 1.1 million additional inhabitants, 96% were immigrants, permanent residents and temporary workers. This is the biggest demographic jump the country has experienced since 1957, at the height of the post-war baby boom; it is also a record year for the number of foreigners welcomed.
Justin Trudeau’s government does not intend to stop there; he presented an immigration plan last year that plans to attract half a million new immigrants per year until 2025. This economic immigration carefully chosen, thanks to a very strict system of permit points evaluating the level of education, the professional experience of the candidates for the installation and their aptitude to hold a job in a sector “ in tension”, is above all intended to alleviate the shortage of labor from which the country suffers. At this rate, Canada could reach 50 million inhabitants by 2043. The Minister of Immigration, Sean Fraser, had to defend himself from wanting to follow a powerful lobby close to liberal circles in Ottawa, the Initiative of the Century , which sets to “100 million Canadians in 2100”the objective to be achieved to ensure the economic growth of the country.
From coast to coast, major Canadian cities are made up of these diasporas from around the world. The 2021 census counted more than 450 ethnic and cultural origins and more than one hundred religions practiced; Toronto, the provincial capital of Ontario, boasts of being the most cosmopolitan metropolis in the world, with more than half of its inhabitants born abroad.
Is it because the history of Canada has been intertwined since its origins with that of immigration, these successive waves of Europeans who have come since the 16e century to colonize this immense territory, even if it means dispossessing the original indigenous peoples, that Canadians, all “children of immigrants”, remain attached to the value of hospitality? Is it out of economic necessity?
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