Canada should build its population to a size – at least 100 million – that will allow it to determine its own future, maintain its standard of living against the coming challenges and have a large enough body of talent and revenue to solve its largest problems. All it takes is a sustained and determined increase in immigration, to at least 400,000 permanent immigrants per year.
This will not be free: Immigration requires support and assistance. But it will become much more expensive in the future, when shrinking world populations make immigrants scarce, and Canada’s crisis of underpopulation becomes expensive.
Statistics Canada has built in an increasing level of immigration into many population forecast scenarios.
Canada’s 2013 population census came in at its high estimate and Canada’s population is now over 35.1 million. Alberta had the most growth and has over 4 million people. Alberta could pass British Columbia by 2026.
Canada’s population increased by 404,000, or 1.2 per cent, over the previous year.
Canada is growing faster than California.
Current baseline trends forecast
Canada has 35.15 million people in mid-2013
35.4 million by the end of 2013
40 million in 2023
50 million in 2042
60 million in 2060
70 million in 2075
Increasing immigration to 1% of population 350,000 instead of 250,000 or to a minimum of 400,000 per year until it shifted to 1% of population would increase population to about
42 million in 2023
55 million in 2043
70 million in 2060
90 million in 2080
The increased immigration option would put Canada ahead of the population in UK, Germany, France and Japan in 2080.
Even by 2060 if Canada had strong per capita income from a very strong energy sector (oil and natural gas) and agriculture and technology, Canada could be ahead of UK, Germany and France in GDP. Canada could be ahead of Japan by 2060 if Japan’s per capita income.
Future Climate Change helping Canada
90% of Canada’s population is within 100 miles of border with the USA.
Warming climate could make more of Canada’s climate more appealing.
Canada Energy Superpower Scenario
Canada could use molten salt nuclear reactors to unlock three times as much oil from the Canadian oilsands. This would create a few hundred molten salt reactors which would then become their own proven product. Perfected molten salt reactors would burn up nearly all of the uranium (unlike about 5% in current reactors) and could bring costs down less than 1 cent per KWh. This would be four times cheaper than coal or natural gas power.
Background of projections for other Countries
Eurostat recently published projections out to 2060 as well.
If India, Indonesia and Brazil do not achieve strong per capita GDP over the next several decades then Canada could become the number three economy in world after China and the USA.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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