Immigration and Canadian Politics

first objective of society is its own survival; and if it is possible, a society will seek to grow, in order better to assure its survival. A nation seeks security through the maintenance of military power, material wealth, and the defence of certain spiritual or cultural principles which distinguish it from other nations. But more fundamental for its survival than these defences is the growth, or even the mere maintenance of its numbers. If a state were totally cut off from outside sources of population, and totally dependent on the balance of births over deaths, it could do a certain amount by law and public policy to maintain or increase its population. It could improve health standards in order to reduce mortality. It could prevent the wastage of life in many ways. But on the side of the birth rate, the efficiency of state action seems doubtful. Pro-natalist policies ranging from simple tax exemptions to subsidized housing, family allowances, and medals for parents, are of very uncertain value in promoting parenthood, however strong may be their justification on other grounds. But a state, or group of states, which is in the fortunate position of being able to draw immigrants from abroad, and which can feed and assimilate these additions to its numbers, has an opportunity not only to guarantee its survival, but to expand, through judicious application of policy. For Canada the problem of survival as a separate political entity, and beyond that, the prospect of growth to a stature commensurate with the physical endowment of the country, have always implied an active concern with immigration and immigration policy. However, the economic problems involved have never been so simple, nor the will to expand so strong and unanimous, as to allow a direct resort to unlimited mass immigration, over long enough periods of time to settle the question of numbers out of hand. In the early period, for example, concern to protect the fur trade implied restriction of settlement. In more recent times, shortages of capital, lack of markets for Canadian products, or of transportation facilities, or the late development of the requisite techniques for harnessing latent resources, have in turn played their part in preventing, or retarding for a time, increases in population through immigration. From time to time each of these factors, or several of them in combination, reappear to limit the frontiers of settlement temporarily, and to restrict the numbers of settlement within the frontier. In addition to these economic limitations there have been certain political forces within the Canadian community working, on the one hand to

Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Endowment · Immigration · Immigration policy · Market economy · Order (exchange · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Population growth · Power (physics · Sociology · State (computer science · Subsidy · Canadian Identity and History · Canadian Policy and Governance · Finance · Law

• International Migration

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