This article by Jill Mahoney on Canada’s diaspora caught my eye last week and given my turtle pace it took me until now to sort out what it might mean. The piece turns on a report issued by the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada indicating that a lot Canadians leave the country and don’t come back.
“More Canadians than ever before have moved out of the country, according to a new report that says 2.8 million live permanently overseas.
The trend is being fuelled by naturalized Canadians who are three times more likely to leave the country than people born here. Over a 30-year period, the study estimates that at least 27 per cent of these immigrants who obtain Canadian citizenship would move away.
‘You have to really ask yourself, are we sort of a revolving door here?’ said Don DeVoretz, a senior fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada who wrote the study.
‘We bring people in, we have one of the most aggressive immigration recruitments in the world. ... We've always lost a substantial number, but now we're losing more. And so I think that's something to be concerned about.’
The report, which is to be released today, raises policy implications ranging from voting and citizenship to taxes and the work force. Canadian citizens have the right to return at any time, a reality Prof. DeVoretz said could increase pressures on the country's health-care, pension and welfare systems.
The 2.8 million estimate represents about 8 per cent of the total Canadian population. The Asia Pacific Foundation likens the Canadian diaspora to a ‘missing province.’"
Why is this a problem? For the most part Canadians, naturalized or not, live strung out along the border with what is, at least until lately, the most powerful engine of commercial and military prowess on Earth. That ambitious Canadians move to make a go of it by heading to the States (more than a third of our “diapora”) puts us in league with just about every country on earth.
And here’s the thing: we speak the same language and even when we “leave” Canadians cross and recross the border in order to, among other things, carry on the largest bilateral trading relationship on Earth. It seems to me that if fewer Canadians were leaving to establish promote and propogate that relationship this would be a genuine cause for concern.
Last weekend I was in New York for the marathon. Whereas the representatives of other countries made kind of a big deal about their presence (flags on their shirts cheering sections along the course) the 1,324 Canadian finishers went about their business without quite so much fuss. I’d like to think that this reflects the quiet cosmopolitanism that’s always marked Canada’s contribution to the world.
