Immigration policy as population policy

In their impressive review, Bourne and Rose (this issue) have ranged widely in covering the components of population and social change in Canada. We turn in this brief response to an issue that has considerable intellectual and policy significance: the extent to which, by default, Canadian immigration policy has become the nation’s population policy, and how this state of affairs is creating a distinctive social and population geography. The demographic trends in Canada are clear. Fertility levels are below the replacement rate, with no grounds for expecting a turnaround.’ Mortality rates are also in decline but changes into the future are anticipated to be modest, and of course have little direct effect on the size of the working age population. Immigration, as a consequence, becomes the central component of population growth or decline. This trend is in stark contrast to Canada’s past; throughout Canada’s history as a nation state, even during the two peak periods of immigrant landings (just after the turn of the previous century and following World War 111, natural increase has been the driving force in population growth (Table 1; also see George et al. 1997). In the early 1990% however, net migration accounted for just over half of the growth of the national population and this ratio is sure to rise in the new century. Immigration has a particularly large impact on the size of the active labour force, a key concern as demographers and economic forecasters wonder who will pay for the social programs of the future. Population policy, population projections, and changes in the population geography of Canada, therefore, are now in the first instance an outcome of immigration. At one level, this would seem to enhance the state’s planning capacity, because the management of immigration the setting of annual targets and immigrant composition by entry class is more centralized and subject to the steering capacity of the state than the birth rate or the death rate. But, ironically, immigration is a more unstable component of population change than birth or death rates, which typically exhibit only marginal adjustments from year to year. In contrast, immigration is a notoriously unstable parameter in the short and long term in any planning or projection exercise. For example, when George et a/. (1997) prepared their national population projections, the annual immigration parameter was set at 250,000, the mean of the three most recent years; however, the mean of the preceding five years had been considerably lower, at 150,000.2 The result was that after fifty years, estimates of Canada’s total population based upon the two estimates varied by nine million or over 20 percent, a range that makes them of little use (also see Ryder 1997). The official policy of the Liberal Party, which the current minister endorses (e.g. Caplan 20001, suggests an annual target of 300,000 (1% of the population), a number that has yet to be reached in the post-war era. Emigration rates are equally capricious. There is reason to believe that more Canadians are moving to the United States since the implementation of NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) provisions facilitating cross-border mobility for professionals and entrepreneurs. In the absence of reliable data on departures, however,