Good or bad?

Canada is a very large country, second only to Russia, but is sparsely populated. According to the latest census, the populations of the country stands at about 37 million.

Most of Canada’s vast territory is considered uninhabitable due to extreme weather conditions or remoteness.

Successive Canadian governments applied strong immigration policies to bring in hundreds of thousands of emigrants from various parts of the world every year to populate the vast country.

In the past, most of the newcomers were from Europe, first from Western European countries, then from the East, but lately the majority of new immigrants come from Asia, Latin America, Middle East and Africa.

These new groups of people, like those before them, bring with them their own identity, culture and ways of life, and tend to maintain them despite efforts to have them integrated.

This dependence on imported human capital came at a price, though.

Under the leadership of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the current government of Canada has accelerated the immigration process, thus taxing not only the resources of the country, but also its identity.

According to the latest census, emigrants to Canada constitute nearly 21 per cent of the total population that now stands at 37 million. 

The minister of immigration, Ahmed Hussein, has recently announced that Canada plans to receive 310,000 more emigrants.

These many people belonging to different cultures or religions, or of different political background, are by and large sticking to their original identities, and anti-immigration factions are suggesting that this huge influx of people may erode the mainstream culture of the country.

They can now make or unmake governments through the ballot box.

There is growing fear among some Canadians that the government, in its rush to populate the country will make it increasingly “tasteless, colourless and odourless”, meaning there will hardly be any discernible Canadian identity left in the country.

The problem lies in the failure of the integration or assimilation policies and the reluctance  of the new emigrants to shed their old identities.

Currently, 77 per cent of all Canadians belong to the European stock. Asians make up 14 per cent of the population. People that came from Arab countries constitute less one million of the total population.

Canada is facing a dilemma; on the one hand, it needs more people, but on the other, most of the newcomers are from the developing world.

Canada is opening its doors to immigration at a time other developed countries are closing them.

Only time would determine whether the Canadian immigration policy is viable. The country hopes that it is on the right track.