Statistics Canada is an agency tasked with providing data about the country’s economy, population, resources, and culture as well. It recently revealed that the primary reason why Canada’s population is set to increase within the next five decades or so is immigration. This is unlike in many developed countries across the globe whose population is expected to decrease over the same duration.
According to Statistics Canada, under a medium-growth scenario, the country will have as many as 55 million people by 2068. As of 2018, there were 37.1 million people in Canada. If the report by the Canadian agency is anything to go by with, there will be 17.9 Million more people competing for the available jobs as well as resources in the country. That shows the predicament that immigration might cause in the next few years.
So what are some of the possible scenarios?
Statistics Canada came up with nine practical long-term situations that were aimed at planning how the Canadian population could look like in the coming decades. It brought up five medium-growth scenarios (with different interprovincial expectations of migration.) They included a low-growth, a high-growth, as well as fast and slow aging scenarios.
In each of the scenarios, immigration was notably the main expected population driver in many years to come. However, it was not unexpected. According to the government agency, ever since the 1990s, immigration has accounted for the majority of the population increase in Canada. It is not something that’s just started. Immigrants have been flowing into Canada for quite some time.