Immigration and Canada: Some Charts

 I have a piece today in the Globe and Mail outlining the advantages of immigration to Canada but also explaining that it has to be done right.  That is, that we have to keep an eye on productivity and per capita GDP and there needs to be increased investment including infrastructure investment to accommodate the larger population.  In retrospect, one of the things that might have been useful to accompany the piece would have been several charts illustrating some of the statistics quoted.  Using data from Statistics Canada and Historical Statistics of Canada, I have plotted two figures.

Figure 1 plots annual immigration to Canada all the way from 1852 until 2023 (a forecast) and it is indeed a very striking picture showing immigration for 2023 reaching nearly 600,000.  This of course is only immigration and does not include people on temporary work permits, people on student visas, etc...That type of data really cannot be extended back to the 19th century and so this chart tries to make an "apples to apples" comparison.  Nevertheless, there are a lot of people coming into Canada in absolute numbers and indeed the totals are the highest ever and yes it is straining our current infrastructure and capacity to accommodate.  

 

 

However, in relative terms, the current population boom is actually modest if one takes current immigration as a percentage of current population totals and compares it to the past.  It is a legitimate comparison and not some type of statistical "trick." Whereas in 1912 we had approximately 8 million people and were letting in 400,000 immigrants a year, today we are a nation of 40 million people letting in over 500,000 immigrants annually (though one can add to that with temportary residents and visa holders).  Figure 2 presents annual immigration to Canada as a percentage share of annual population and it shows that relatively speaking, the current immigration boom is more modest compared to that of the early twentieth century. 

 

 

 At its peak, the annual immigration flows into Canada topped five percent of the population while today they are at about 1.5 percent and perhaps over  two percent if you want to start including everybody who has been allowed to enter Canada.  Could we do a better job of accommodating the current immigrant influx? Yes, indeed. Is infrastructure being strained? Yes, indeed.  All of that still does not eliminate the fact that in the past, we let in relatively more people given the population and seemed better able to accommodate them.  Not only did we have a larger annual immigrant to population share than the present circa 1912 as mentioned in the Globe piece, but we also did in the early1880s, the late 1920s, and the late 1950s.  A key question still remains as to why we cannot do better in accommodating and managing the current inflow?

 

 

Covid-19 In Canada: Regional Impact

By now, we are quite used to seeing the daily numbers by province splashed across computer and television screens as the number of Covid-19 cases grows.  As of 6pm on March 22nd, there were a total of 1430 confirmed cases in Canada.  If we plot those ranked by province as in Figure 1 below, we see that the total number of cases is largest in Ontario at 425, followed by British Columbia at 424. However, what is interesting is that this does not convey the full impact of severity across provinces because this is not adjusted for population.  Ontario, for example has approximately two and a half times the population of British Columbia which means on a per capita basis, British Columbia has more cases.



Figure 2 provides these same numbers in terms of cases per 100,000 population.  It becomes quite apparent when the provinces are ranked in terms of cases per 100,00 population, that western Canada - particularly British Columbia and Alberta are the hardest hit in terms of cases at 8.3 and 5.9 cases per 100,000 of population.  They are then followed by Ontario and Nova Scotia at 2.9 cases per 100,000 each.  Saskatchewan clocks in next at 2.8, Quebec at 2.6, the Northwest Territories at 2.2, PEI at 1.9 and New Brunswick at 1.2.  The remaining provinces and territories currently have less than 1 per 100,000 of population.



That is all for now.

Toursim and Travel in Ontario: A Target for Northern Ontario Tourism

My last post was on border crossings into northwestern Ontario at Pigeon River and Rainy River.  This type of data has always interested me because my academic career began approximately when the Canadian cross-border shopping frenzy of the late 1980s and early 1990s took place. In 1980, Canadians made 22.1 million same day auto trips to the United States and this rose to 25.2 million in 1985 and hit 53.2 million in 1990.  As the graph below shows, the peak was in 1991 at close to 59 million trips before a decline set in and today the numbers are not even half that peak at 21.5 million for 2017. These trips by Canadians to the United States were a tourism flow into the US and a function of exchange rates, income, and relative prices of goods.  

What is also interesting when examining travel flows is province level numbers for the number of tourism visits, their origin, as well as the spending amounts.  The figure below plots total visits to Ontario from1998 to 2015 based on data from Ontario’s Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Sport which in turn is based on Statistics Canada travel survey data.  Total tourism visits in Ontario in 1998 were 129,646,000 and in 2015 they were 141,902,000.  The average annual growth rate of total trips was 0.6 percent - which does not seem that high. The average annual growth rate of trips in Ontario originating from Ontario was 1.7 percent, compared to 1.1 percent from the rest of Canada, 1.6 percent for overseas trips and -5.3 percent for the United States.  Ontario has been its own best growing tourism market accounting for 71 percent of visits in 1998 and 85 percent in 2015. The biggest decline has been in American visitors which over the period fell from 23 percent to 8 percent.

When total spending by these visitors is examined in the chart below, it suggests that spending has grown faster than the number of visitors particularly for overseas visitors to Ontario.  Indeed, spending by Ontarians visiting within Ontario grew at an annual average of 3.7 percent, that by other Canadians 3.7 percent, Americans -1.2 percent and overseas visitors by 6.9 percent.  Indeed, overseas visitors have definitely been punching above their weight when it comes to their spending on tourism visits to Ontario indicating that this is definitely an area where Ontario might wish to direct its marketing activities.  Spending by overseas visitors to Ontario surpassed that of Americans in 2013 and in 2015 was 50 percent higher. 

 

How important is this tourism visitor spending to Ontario’s economy-approximately 2 percent of Ontario’s GDP – but is has not changed much over the period 1998 to 2015.  It has not been growing as a share of GDP given that during this period there has been a decline in American spending that has counteracted the rise in spending by overseas and Canadian travelers.  

When it comes to marketing tourism in northern Ontario, the above data suggests two main targets for our energy: the rest of Ontario and the overseas market.  For the time being, the American market appears to have sunk into decline.