People walk on Mont-Royal Street in Montreal on June 23, 2023.Andrej Ivanov/The Globe and Mail
The head of the Century Initiative, an influential non-profit think tank that wants to see Canada’s population grow to 100 million by 2100, is softening emphasis of its controversial headline goal, saying it is not a target it is aiming to reach and was created to be “provocative” and bold.
The 100 million population figure was meant to galvanize public debate about the best way to foster growth in Canada, chief executive Lisa Lalande said in an interview.
But she said the research group has been emphasizing it less in the past year – which has coincided with a sharp drop in public support for immigration – and it is now important “to focus less on the numbers” and “focus more on the path to growth.”
Her remarks, which follow the government’s decision to freeze its immigration targets and cap international student numbers, came as she published her think tank’s annual “score card,” looking at how Canada is doing in achieving growth and prosperity. It shows waning public support for immigration, a housing crisis, a productivity gap and a drop in the life expectancy of Canadians for the second year running.
The score card showed that across a number of indicators Canada is not doing well, including in household debt, youth well-being and low-wage work – although Canada’s 15-year-olds are outperforming many other countries’ in reading, science and math.
The drop in life expectancy in Canada is due in part, Ms. Lalande said, to deaths from use of opioid drugs. Meanwhile, Canada’s birth rate has slipped to record lows and is not high enough to replace the population. The fertility rate fell to a low of 1.33 children per woman in 2022 – the lowest rate in more than a century of data. Ms. Lalande said this is a problem because population growth should not be fuelled by immigration alone.
She said that, although a growing number of Canadians think there’s too much immigration, this is not tied to rising anti-immigrant sentiment “but more with practical concerns about issues like housing, infrastructure and health care capacity.”
Last fall, Immigration Minister Marc Miller froze the target for how many permanent residents the government aims to welcome to Canada for 2026, keeping the number static at 500,000 in the face of shrinking public support for immigration. Ottawa also stuck with its targets of 485,000 permanent residents for 2024, and 500,000 for 2025.
There are now almost 41.3 million people in the country, according to Statistics Canada. The Century Initiative is suggesting a target for population growth at between 1.25 per cent to 1.3 per cent of population per year over the next decade. Canada’s average annual population growth rate was 1.34 per cent over the past 10 years and 1.59 per cent over the past five years, the score card said.
“The current growth rate has surpassed the target we recommended. A significant portion of this is tied to the large increases in temporary migration,” she said.
The report said approvals for temporary foreign workers increased 68 per cent between 2021 and 2022, and that “temporary immigration has become a key driver of population growth.”
Temporary foreign workers made up 4 per cent of Canada’s employed work force in 2022, representing a 78-per-cent increase compared with five years earlier. Mr. Miller has announced plans to reduce the number of temporary foreign residents and to set targets for them in addition to the targets for permanent residents.
Ms. Lalande said it is important that Canada decrease its reliance on temporary foreign workers. But more should be done to make use of immigrants’ expertise to fill labour gaps, she said, by allowing people with credentials – such as medical qualifications – to work in their chosen fields.
Asked about a plan being considered by the federal cabinet to grant permanent residence to immigrants who do not have valid papers and may be facing deportation, Ms. Lalande said “undocumented workers should not be a key driver of growth.”
But she said so little is known about them – including their numbers which academics say could be between 20,000 and 500,000 – it is difficult to plan for their impact on housing and other needs.
“Any steps taken to create a pathway towards regularization, citizenship or in some cases deportation, should be evidence-based, maintaining strong security requirements, while also recognizing that as long as these individuals are working in Canada, there’s a huge benefit to integrating them into the taxpaying economy,” she said.
Ms. Lalande said the 100 million population goal for 2100 “was meant to be provocative and bold” and to “spark an economic recharge.” The ultimate objective isn’t to see a specific population number by 2100, she said, but for Canada to be strategic and thoughtful in planning for growth.
“We don’t believe that growth should happen at all costs,” she said, saying the 100 million figure “was meant to galvanize the conversation and to spark debate and discussion of what the country could be and how we need to get there.”
But she warned against curtailing immigration, saying “that approach would result in an aging, less-skilled work force, less foreign investment, less diversity and less influence” globally.
The think tank proposes a target for permanent resident admissions at 1.15 per cent to 1.25 per cent of the population annually over the next decade. There were 468,817 permanent residents admitted to Canada in 2022-23, which represented 1.2 per cent of the population, according to the score card.