Ontario's inevitable takeover of Canada
NEIL REYNOLDS
OTTAWA -- It has been said that Ontario has a third of Canada's population and a half of everything else. And this is about all that's ever been said. The country's most populous province isn't quotable. It generates no jokes. No witticisms.
It wasn't hard, a few years ago, to make Colombo's New Canadian Quotations. Quebec got 50 references. Ontario got four, none of them memorable. It was harder to make the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Yet here Ontario here did even worse. Quebec got one reference. (Vive le Quebec libre!) Ontario got none. But then that's Ontario, isn't it? Always behaved. Always responsible. Always proper. Always unremarkable. Always paying.
But what happens when Ontario gets half of Canada's population? What happens when Ontario gets half of the seats in the House of Commons? What happens when Ontario gains the capacity to elect a national government all by itself? What happens, for that matter, when the Golden Horseshoe, as a supermetropolis, gains the capacity to elect a national government all by itself? Will Ontario then remain so unnoticeable? So forgettable? So pliant? The timing of Ontario's takeover of the country is uncertain. The event itself, though, is essentially inevitable. Within this century, with Canada's population in gradual decline, Ontario will become the home province of more than 50 per cent of all Canadians.
People elaborately ponder these days the consequences of Quebec's decline as a dominant political and economic force in the country. The transformation, of course, is under way. In the beginning, Quebec comprised 35 per cent of Canada's population. (The 1871 census put Quebec's population at 1.2 million in a confederation of 3.5 million.) By 2000, Quebec's population had fallen to 24 per cent. Using a moderate-growth scenario, Statistics Canada projects that Quebec's share of the population will fall to 21 per cent by 2026
Thus Quebec's demographic alarm. Can the French language survive in a province that must rely on immigrants to avert a calamitous downsizing? Can French survive in Montreal, the metropolitan enclave that must accommodate hundreds of thousands of newcomers with tenuous allegiance to the language? Can Quebec itself survive, in any authentic way, its own internal demographic self-destruction? (In 1959, Quebec women had the highest fertility rate in the country; in 1971, the lowest.)
Yet Ontario's transformation, equally as rich in consequences, attracts little attention. Yes, the consequences are still a few years off. But the history of the future is as fascinating as the history of the past -- and some of it is apparent, in broad outline, before it happens.
Although demographic variables can be manipulated to produce an infinite number of results, two of the most important are known: fertility rates and life expectancy. The third most important factor is immigration -- along with migration within the country.
Here, Ontario gains disproportionately on all other parts of the country. With 38.5 per cent of the population now, Ontario has been chosen as the final destination by 54.8 per cent of immigrants. This attribute is a multiplier factor: As immigration increases, the percentage of immigrants selecting Ontario will increase further. Toronto already has three times the immigrants (as a percentage of population) as Montreal.
Canada, with 32.5 million people now, will grow in the next 25 years -- perhaps to 36 million or 38 million -- but at a slower pace. It will peak by 2046. In its "moderate growth" scenario, Statscan plots a population in subsequent decline at a rate of 0.01 per cent a year. (In its "low-growth" scenario, the rate of decline is 0.04 -- four times faster.) Take all these factors forward, wave a wand, and Ontario gains an absolute majority of the country's population in 2080 (give or take a few years). It'll be a big event.
Mark it in your day book.
In the present 308-seat Commons, the distribution of seats still perpetuates the same Ontario-Quebec alliance that has governed Canada from the start. With 181 seats in the country's first Parliament, neither Ontario (82 seats) nor Quebec (65 seats) could govern alone -- but both could govern together. As they have done. This is the axis of power referenced in the memorable Alberta bumper sticker of the 1980s: Let the Eastern bastards freeze in the dark. Nothing much has changed -- though you can glimpse the future in Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty's tough Ontario-first talk on equalization payments.
But we won't have to wait for 2080 for radical change. We're getting closer.
With 38 per cent of the population, Ontario now has 106 seats -- 34 per cent of them. With 24 per cent of the population, Quebec has 75 seats -- 24 per cent.
Assume that the absolute number of seats isn't increased in the years ahead but merely redistributed. In only 20 years, Ontario (with 41 per cent of the population) gets 126 seats -- more than enough, under the right circumstances, to form a national government, albeit a minority. Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper did it earlier this year, after all, with 124.
They'll be noting and quoting Ontario soon enough.
