If Canada aims to sustain or grow its population, it is time for governments to develop an evidence-based population strategy, write Rachel Margolis and Howard Ramos.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Rachel Margolis and Howard Ramos are professors at Western University.
Immigration is not the solution to the demographic tsunami Canada will face because of ultra-low fertility rates and the aging population. At best, immigrants fill the country’s labour market needs, but they will not solve the long-term demographic shortfall. This is because immigrants, just like other Canadians, are not having very many kids.
Those are the findings of our research with fellow academics Yue Teng and Yoko Yoshida, just published in Population Research and Policy Review.
If Canada aims to sustain or grow its population, it is time for governments to develop an evidence-based population strategy.
Business groups have long touted immigration as a solution to Canada’s economic problems. The country’s human capital-based immigration system selects highly talented and educated economic immigrants who fill labour market shortfalls. Immigrants also drive economic growth and spark innovation.
The Century Initiative advocates for increasing immigration to grow Canada’s population to a hundred million by the year 2100. Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government responded to such calls and greatly increased the number of immigrants welcomed to the country.
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Although the hope was to stabilize and grow the country’s population, as well as stem the country’s rapid aging, our research shows this is not the case, and not even close. Our paper, which uses census data and demographic techniques, has busted several myths about immigrant fertility.
First, the paper found that the top 10 countries immigrants arrive from are now facing low fertility rates.
Second, it found that people who leave those countries have even fewer children than those who stay behind.
Third, immigrants from economic categories, the largest immigration policy stream, have the lowest fertility rate among immigrants (1.32 births per woman once in Canada) and it is pretty similar to that of native-born Canadians (1.31 births per woman).
Fourth, the paper finds that those who immigrate as children have even lower fertility rates than people born in Canada. This all means that immigration on its own will not stabilize or add to Canada’s population in the long run.
Immigrants are feeling the same pressures as everyone else in Canada. Their fertility choices are often delayed because of a need to get high levels of education to meet the criteria set out by the country’s immigration pathways. Once they land, they may pursue more schooling or reskilling, delaying childbearing further. Then there are housing and affordability challenges. Added to this, many immigrants are separated from their extended families, making child-care and support more difficult.
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It is not that immigrants and other Canadians don’t want more children. Demographic research shows that many people end up having fewer kids than they want. They also have fewer kids than they think would be ideal.
This is an important societal problem that we should address by thinking about how to support families and the demographic priorities that meet the long-term goals of the country. But Canada doesn’t have an explicit population policy, nor is it investing in the infrastructure that would be needed to achieve its demographic goals.
For example, the federal government increasingly says it wants to defend, build and transform the North. However, it assumes the population in the region will be stable or grow. Our research published last year shows that Indigenous fertility has been converging to national trends since 2001, and although Inuit people are still having slightly more children than would be required to maintain their population levels, it is not clear that will be the case in the long run. It is also unclear whether immigrants will want to settle in the North.
Building a population strategy requires clear demographic goals and co-ordinated data that governments across jurisdictions, businesses and researchers can easily access. The information needed to tackle population problems is currently scattered across jurisdictions and difficult to access for most researchers.
A population strategy also needs to be sure that assumptions are based in evidence. The findings of our research highlight that immigrants have very low and declining fertility rates, and the assumptions governments use to sustain and grow the population through immigration are wrong. The current economic-focused immigration policy is a short-term fix at best.
To ensure that immigration is more than a stopgap measure, Canada needs to recognize it has acute demographic challenges and not just economic challenges. To this end, Canada needs a population strategy that focuses on not only immigrants but the broader population structure, and that addresses our births, deaths and migration along with the affordability and infrastructure bottlenecks that keep families from flourishing.