Alan Taylor: evaluation

Transcript context

…If we look at Canada today, we see, as you know, extremely high levels of immigration, people from all over the world. Do you in any way see this as rooted in Canada’s earlier history? Do you have a different perspective on that? For you, is it a continuity or reversal? Canada has long been a country that has wanted to have more immigrants. They have aggressively recruited immigrants ever since the later 19th century. One of the powerful considerations is, they look at the size of their country in terms of just geographic size, and it’s just a notch larger than the United States, but most of that country is arctic and subarctic. Even despite that fact, the population density in Canada within the temperate zone, which is approximately within 200 miles of the American border — that long stretch from the Pacific to Nova Scotia is still underpopulated relative to the United States. Now, part of that corridor is well populated; that’s particularly in Ontario and Quebec. But points west and points in the Maritimes, it seems to Canadians that if they want to develop their economic potential and retain some relatively modest equilibrium with the United States, that they need more people. They’ve been setting quotas in recent years that are up to 500,000 immigrants annually, which for a country of Canada’s size — of about 32 million — is a significant number. It adds up over time. Right now the proportion of people in Canada who are of foreign birth is rising. There’s also developing some pushback against that because it is contributing to inflation in the urban centers. You mean just housing prices and rents.…

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