Canada can reach
100M without touching the boreal forest and most certainly will. Turning the boreal forest into an effective
agricultural breadbasket as we have extensively discussed and shown here in
this blog can provide a lifeway for a billion population. That is Canada’s real material
potential. The USA can achieve similar
numbers as well as the productivity of the land will turn out to be similar at
least.
The place to
seriously start today is the Great Lakes watershed which if properly stimulated
with my farm densification model and ample credit and careful regulation on
both sides of the border would set in motion a building boom and economic
expansion quite able to drive both economies.
That just happens to be the low hanging fruit. That watershed alone could likely house 100M
to 300M population.
Canada has had
the luxury of picking its wars and conflicts and its own future. That shall surely continue by simple
geographical determination. In quite the
same way the USA remains well defended by that same power that also includes a
blue water fleet that ensures conflict starts on the other side of the world. The strategic advantage is massively
expensive to overcome and is easily countered with allies anyway.
On top of all
that, warfare is in serious decline and I see this continuing. It is no longer fought over control of
resources at all as the settlements of
WW11 demonstrated pretty clearly but now to remove heinous leadership
politically isolated. This is effective
and valuable so long as one leaves quickly enough to avoid blame for the next
crop of fools. You cannot change an
aberrant society quickly but you can kick it down the road to self-realization
and resolution.
As well most
present internal problems could be settled sooner by judicious partitioning and
transportation as Stalin conducted at the end of WW11 and Britain in
India. It is not pretty, but it
generally makes insurgent warfare itself a future impossibility however Pakistan
postures.
Canada –
Population 100 Million
IRVIN STUDIN June 14, 2010
At 100 million people, three times its current
population, Canada is among the most consequential countries on Earth
Canada should be a country of 100 million people. It
has been said before. Apocryphally, by Winston Churchill himself; more
recently, by the countless immigrants, newcomers and visitors to the country
who are able, it must be observed, to see in Canada what incumbent Canadians
oftentimes do not: that Canada could be a proper world power –
a country of global consequence – if only…
Canada’s first francophone prime minister, Sir
Wilfrid Laurier, was likely tapping into this hypothetical when, in the early
20th century, he declared that the century would be Canada’s. That never
happened, for reasons we are about to cite, but that optimistic impression of
the Great White North has endured in certain quarters: at the end of the Cold
War, for instance, certain Chinese measures of ‘comprehensive national power’
rated Canada as among the seven most powerful countries in the world. And in a
2007 speech in Calgary, Tony Blair easily declared that “Canada will become one
of the most powerful nations in the world.” The several other similar such
insights into Canada’s potential power are almost universally of foreign
provenance.
To be sure, what is at issue here is ‘strategic
power’ – the capacity of a country to shape international outcomes and to move
other parties (state, non-state) to do something that they would otherwise not
have done. Just as importantly, this strategic power (‘hard’ and ‘soft’ alike)
is typically deployed with intent; that is, it requires deliberate moves –
deployment of assets and capabilities – on the part of government and society
to make things happen. In the absence of such intent and deployment, a country
either does not exert strategic power (or has power exerted on it by other
parties) or, at best, aims or hopes, passively, to serve as an ‘example’ or
‘model’ to foreign parties through the proper and competent administration of
its domestic affairs.
At 34 million people, Canada today finds itself
living the latter two realities. Canadians largely fancy themselves citizens
either of a ‘small’ or, at most, a ‘middle’ or ‘principled’ power. There is
little state or collective ambition to use strategic levers to be a player of
any consequence in international affairs, and even less national cognizance
that, with the requisite political acumen and chutzpah, the levers of strategic
power available to Canada to be a driving force in the grand anarchy of
international affairs are very considerable. A justified national
self-confidence does reign, however, in the capacity of Canada to lead the
world – or to be among the world’s leaders – in largely internal matters of
federalism, human rights and the integration of the outsider – immigrants, of
which Canada, on a per-capita basis, takes in the most in the world – into the
national fold. And while Canada may on occasion serve to other countries as a
gold standard of strong domestic governance, its patent weakness lies in its
incapacity, and general national disinclination, to actually export (with
intent, or purpose) this model or any associated Canadian instruments of
influence.
There are good reasons for the domestic
gravity that so predominates in Canada. The country, constituted in its
modern form in 1867, was created as a ‘strategic annex’ of the British Empire.
Strategy, in other words – including management of the then-important American
expansionist threat – was to be the province of Whitehall, while matters
‘domestic’ and otherwise ‘astrategic’ were properly Canada’s to manage. This
basic inward-looking Canadian ‘culture’ arguably endured unvitiated until at
least WW2, when Canada’ declaration of war on Germany was differentiable (by a
day, it must be said) from that of the UK. After that war, this essential
gravity was reversed only sporadically by the force of world events foisted on
Canada – the Korean war (still not over, evidently), the Suez Crisis and the
general framework of the Cold War – only to be decisively reasserted time and
again by internal social-democratic debates about the size of the national
welfare state, Quebec’s distinctive place in the federation, distribution of
national wealth among the country’s variegated regions, the creation of a
constitutionalized Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the transition from a
binational political polity to a de facto multiethnic one still
struggling to coherently explain and accommodate its Aboriginal footprint
(indeed, hundreds of such footprints).
The essential domestic gravity of Canada was, for
the entire last century, buttressed by a basic truth: Canada was among the
luckiest countries in the world. Canadians knew private tragedy, but, with some
notable exceptions, Canada as a political whole knew precious few public
tragedies. For all intents and purposes, with the possible exemption of
Australia (given the Japanese aerial bombings of Darwin and northern
Queensland, and coastal submarine attacks during WW2), continental North
America was the lone continent to have not known any major warfare – or, more
precisely, any major land warfare; land warfare being the most devastating
and destabilizing of all – in all of the last century. This is an exceptional
strategic fact – one that is unlikely to be repeated in this new century.
Since the 1871 Treaty of Washington, when Canada and
the US settled their intermittent armed border skirmishes (themselves antedated
by several bloody wars), Canada has effectively been a massive peninsular
state, surrounded by three separate oceans, and protected (symbolically and by
formal alliance) at its southern flank by a friendly neighbour that happened to
be the country that, to Laurier’s chagrin, was to veritably own the 20th
century. Stable borders (how many countries had stable borders in the 20th
century?) and the absence of war on the home front together made for a happy,
peaceable constitutional kingdom; one that, not having been created in the
first place to worry about world affairs, did not – privileging instead the
creation of a prosperous, sophisticated welfare state (pound-for-pound,
perhaps, the most intricate federation in the world). And the administration of
this state would fall to generations of senior mandarins and politicians who
would become extremely skilled and elegant in erecting, levering, preserving
and justifying an ever complex governmental machinery that juggled the heavy (domestic)
centrifugal forces operating on the federal centre. However, with few
exceptions, this governing class did not instinctually think about
world affairs or, more importantly, about world affairs as an arena in which
Canada would perform (or had to perform, or could legitimately perform) with
effect. There having been no external existential threat to the national
project, world affairs, apart from the perfunctory and the sui
generis (WW1, WW2, Korea), were mostly discretionary.
Discretion meant that concrete ‘investments’ in the
key assets of strategic influence were, as a general rule, not made in Canada.
We refer here not just to military, diplomatic and intelligence assets (Canada,
tellingly, has no human foreign intelligence service), but also, perhaps more
fundamentally, to the building blocks of ‘strategic culture’: languages (Canada
is, for entirely domestic reasons, stuck in English-French bilingual mode;
rising powers are mastering three or four or more tongues); literature;
education; think tanks; indeed, all of the ‘cultural’ assets required to
properly support the state if it ever wishes to, or must, act purposefully in
international affairs. And we refer also to one of the most fundamental
elements of strategic power – population.
As mentioned, Canadians have historically conceived,
and to this day often continue to conceive, of their country as ‘small.’ The
said domestic gravity drives this self-appraisal, but it is also doubtless
supplemented by Canadians’ historical (psychic, self-conscious)
self-juxtaposition first with the British colonial master, and later with the
much closer US. In short, according to the dominant Canadian narrative, at 309
million people, the US is today big, meaning that, at 34 million, Canada is
small, tout court. (Never mind, for the moment, that a different kind of
juxtaposition – say, with European powers like France or today’s UK, each only
roughly twice as populous as Canada – yields a far less self-abnegating
assessment; to the proverbial outsider, at least.)
To this notion of ‘smallness,’ the outsider, as we
noted at the outset, retorts: “What smallness? Canada could be a country of 100
million. Its territory is huge – second only to that of the Russians; it has
hyper-abundant natural resources; it is rich in indigenous fresh water and food
sources; it has (natural) borders to protect it (and, since 1871, no ‘natural’
enemies); it has stable governance; and, to be sure, it is exceedingly
underpopulated; that is, strategically speaking, it is well below carrying
capacity.”
It stands to reason that Canadians and the Canadian
state have seldom seen population or demographics in strategic terms; that is,
they are wholly insensitive to the idea of growing the national population in
order to directly increase Canadian impact in international affairs. Many have
forgotten that much of the original populating motive of the federal government
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had a clear sovereignty motive (yes,
a strategic motive) vis-à-vis potential American encroachment into Canadian
territory (particularly in the West). That strategic logic was almost
inexorably, and with great rapidity, subordinated to a modern economic
rationality – ever dominant today – that holds that Canadian population growth
should be a function principally – if not exclusively – of the national need
for new labour; specifically, in this early 21st century, new labour to
replenish an ageing work force. Domestic considerations, and only domestic
considerations, win the day.
That a far larger national population could give
Canada greater weight in international affairs is – to the bemusement of many
cold-blooded external analysts of the country – nary a line of reasoning that
enters the national imagination. Regarded as radically absurd on the economic
logic (for where are the jobs?), it may be regarded as wholly irresponsible and
reckless on the social logic (for how is a country to absorb or integrate
immigration waves that, over time, outstrip even the total current incumbent
population)?
A national population of 100 million – three times
the current Canadian population – is a symbolic quantum. It could very well be
85 million or 130 million and yield the same desired effects. And these effects
would be pincer-like: first, a far larger demographic base to build strong
national institutions and structures (east-west-north-south) across the vast
territory of Canada – institutions that, while today often absent or weak,
would eventually serve as a bulwark for international strategic influence; and
second, a far larger talent pool to populate the strategic arms of the Canadian
state – the military, diplomatic, general civil service and political branches
of government – as well as connected sectors and organizations (business,
cultural, educational, scientific) in Canadian society at large. In the
process, the Canada of 100 million, through the force of new domestic
structures, coupled with growing international impact (and prestige), undergoes
an evolution of the national geist – one arguably appropriate for
this new, more complicated, more international century. In short, Canada
becomes a serious force to be reckoned with.
Let us stress that the Canada of 100 million goes a
long way toward addressing one of the capital challenges of Canadian
governance: the difficulty, dating from the days of the Fathers of
Confederation in 1867, of building east to west, or west to east (and north, of
course), across the country’s vast geography. (At 34 million, Canada is easily
in the lowest decile among all countries for population density.) The Canada of
100 million has a far larger national market and the attendant economies of
scale and scope – for ideas, for debate, for books, for newspapers, for
magazines (print and online), for all species of goods and services. It poses a
far more impressive cultural counterweight to the US – now only three or four
times larger, instead of ten or eleven times. It has many large, dynamic,
global cities – more than just Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, or perhaps even
Calgary – that, superior division of labour oblige, serve as incubators and
competitive arenas for innovation, productivity and creative ambition – all
derivatives, as it were, of humans rubbing up against humans. Provided that
there is proactive distribution of this increased population (the province
principally of the federal government, and an area in which it is currently
underperforming) – meaning more people and larger cities everywhere, but
particularly in the Maritimes (the East), the Prairies (the Midwest) and,
indeed, the Canadian North, all grossly underpopulated regions – the Canada of
100 million also has increased, highly productive inter-civic rivalry between
these complex metropolises, and more social and economic experimentation and
invention at the local level (sub-state units as laboratories, as it were) to
drive overall national performance. There are sufficient numbers across the
country to populate large applied research institutions (partisan and
non-partisan) to aid the generation of policy ideas; to create bona
fide national institutions of higher culture in the musical, visual and
theatrical arts; to justify national sports leagues where today, in Canada,
there is, to many outside observers’ surprise, perhaps one at most. At 100 million,
Canada has cutting-edge, world-beating companies that are far larger and more
numerous across the sectors; and, to be sure, it has far more aggregate wealth
– profit-seeking and philanthropic alike – to regularly provide the said
institutions and structures with liquidity; this, manifestly, on top of the
public liquidity that over time comes with a far more substantial tax base. In
short, at 100 million, the internal energy of Canadian society is
transformed.
At the same time, as mentioned, at 100 million,
Canadian society is far more able to support and populate the various factors
of power and exportable strategic instruments that are at the ‘coal
face’ of international influence. Whereas the Canadian Forces of today number
just under 60,000 men and women, the equivalent, very modest proportion of
population in uniform on an aggregate population of 100 million would mean some
200,000 Canadian Forces – to wit, total armed forces that are larger than those
of today’s UK, and almost as large as those of today’s France. (To be fair,
total effectives of around 300,000 would not be much of a stretch either, if
Canada, say, used as a guide Australia’s current proportion of population in
uniform.) The country’s diplomatic force, drawing on a far broader and more
dynamic national talent pool (quite plainly, there are many more Lester
Pearsons – Nobel Peace Prize winners and international virtuosos – in a pool of
100 million than in one of 34 million), would be more significant and
formidable as well, with sufficient numbers to justify deep and sustained
division of labour and coverage of key countries. And, perhaps most signally,
the increased national wealth (and tax base) would allow Canada to mobilize
very significant quanta of money in order to properly lead in
international interventions – non-military and military alike; through carrot
and stick, in development, intelligence, reconstruction, war and peacemaking –
wherever and whenever, of course, there was a national political will to do so.
Just as 100 million provides a more serious national
bulwark on which to build national assets of influence abroad, so too does the
very advent of such influence redound to the transformation of the national
culture. Greater demographic energy (underpinned by robust national
institutions) feeds international performance; and success internationally, in
turn, slowly transforms the national psyche. The ‘iron cage’ of the colonial
past dissipates…
Even without an aggressive national push to populate
the land, UN population projections point to a Canada of some 44 to 50 million
people by the year 2050, respectively on the medium and high variants of
demographic growth. (This gets us half of the way to the symbolic 100 million
of Churchill’s strategic imagination.) At historic rates of population doubling
in Canada – Canada’s population has roughly doubled every 40 or so years since
1867 – the country could arguably make a concerted policy push to top the 60
million population mark by the year 2050. Baby bonuses aside, this would
presumably mean increasing its annual intake of immigrants (currently around
260,000 per annum) by some 20 to 30 percent. At historic rates of population
tripling in Canada – Canada’s population has roughly tripled every 65 or so
years – the country could arguably make a policy push to reach the 100 million
mark within a few generations; again, largely through the lever of increased –
although not radically increased – immigration.
If the impulse for deliberate and significant
population increase in Canada does not issue from one of a national sense of
strategic opportunity or even obligation (born of good fortune) to ‘do things
in the world,’ then it could well come from the following basic proposition:
The world of the 21st century will, in all probability, not be as kind, in
strategic terms, to Canada as it was in the last century. Where there was
negligible warfare in North America in the 20th century (as compared with the
far bloodier 19th,18th and 17th centuries on the continent), the tremendous pace
of new-century technological innovation in matters military suggests that both
the US and Canada, if ensnared in a war with a serious country (developed or
underdeveloped alike), will be hard-pressed to escape some description of
attack (by air, sea and even land; through cyber-warfare, terrorism or
intercontinental missiles) on the home front. The prospect of such renewed
warfare at some point in this ‘post-American’ century on territory that has not
seen it for some time, and for populations that are therefore reasonably
virginal in this regard, focusses the mind. To be sure, the seasonal melting of
Arctic ice on Canada’s northern borders – to take just one possible new-century
strategic theatre – will for the first time in the country’s modern history make
it vulnerable to encroachments, assaults and indeed competitive claims on what
it has historically considered – in psychic terms, at least – an impregnable
realm, both on land and sea. And given the resource and general economic stakes
at play, some species of interstate warfare on Canada’s Arctic frontier is far
from inconceivable. Unstable borders have a habit of moulding strategic
cultures.
The reversal of the erstwhile immunization of Canada
from many of the world’s geopolitical ills will give way to more sustained
historical dynamics that will organically cause, and indeed require, the
country to properly revisit its weak strategic culture; and, just as
importantly, to calibrate its strategic assets for meaningful assertion of its
national interests. In the context of the Arctic, for instance, defence of
territorial sovereignty, economic opportunity and environmental or ecological
heritage (the latter, say, against environmental disasters, à
la British Petroleum in the Gulf of Mexico, brought about by foreign
players) are clearly some of those key national interests. Of course, national
interests (and national projects internationally) are context-specific, whereas
we are here first and foremost concerned with the means (themselves
less context-specific) that should help Canada pursue its ends (interest,
projects) in various international contexts, from outright war to
peace-brokering, to disaster or humanitarian relief, to the total
transformation of less advantaged foreign societies. In this sense, population
(population size) is perhaps the most potent of the means – the factors of
strategic power, as it were – that can alter a country’s overall impact in
international affairs. This is because population size in many cases drives or
informs the other major (‘objective’) means or factors of strategic power – in
particular, the size of a country’s economy and of its military and diplomatic
forces. And given that Canada is peculiarly strong in the factors of power that
are independent of population size – to wit, geography (territorial size,
borders), natural resources and even quality of government (itself, granted,
somewhat related to population size) – we might argue that population is the
key factor of power in which Canada is weakest or most susceptible to
strategic improvement. In other words, grow the population variable
significantly, and watch the overall strategic power of the country multiply.
Other things being equal, of course… There is little
doubt that population increases of the size suggested would create certain
non-negligible integration and cohesion challenges for Canadian society – both
nationally and regionally, and particularly in regions with less history of
immigrant intake. There would naturally be a burden on the public purse,
federally and provincially – in the early days, before the newcomers ‘hit their
stride,’ as it were – to promote this integration, in its various forms; and
then to help drive the creation of the national institutions that may convert
this new demographic energy into national vitality and international influence.
There is also little doubt that such population increases would cause some
political angst in Quebec to the extent that the changed demographic mass
undercuts, or is perceived to be undercutting, the effective weight of the
French fact in Canada. These and the other major domestic hurdles to reaching a
Canadian population of 100 million will tax the national creativity. But then
again, Canada has, over the course of its history, been among the most
constitutionally innovative polities on Earth. Without being naive about the
scale of the task, we might easily recognize that the precedential roots to
success are to be found in the very Canadian ‘culture’ that is, in the process
of achieving this success, being transformed and modernized. At 100 million,
this is, as we have said, among the most powerful and important countries in
the world. And the world will take good note.
2 comments:
What sane Canadian would want any such thing? Canada: **DON'T** repeat the United States' mistakes!!!!!
""Canada: **DON'T** repeat the United States' mistakes!!!!!""
Exactly!! We don't need more megalomaniacs killing people at will around the world. The sooner the "big" powers collapse and countries learn to keep their noses in their own business, the better.
Fools like the essay's author only reinforce the meme that 'might is right' and any big country should be out there terrorising smaller ones for looting.
Sorry Arclein, no offense, I know you're a Canack, but we need to work towards individual freedom, not State power.
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