Assignment (United States, Canada, Central America, Islands)

Canada’s Indigenous People | The Estimated Population | Population Characteristics |

Canada

Canada is the second largest country in the world but has about the same population as the state of California, which is about 4 percent of Canada’s size. This is because the north of Canada, with its harsh Arctic and sub-Arctic climates, is sparsely inhabited. Most Canadians live in the southern part of the country. More than three-quarters of them live in metropolitan areas, the largest of which are Toronto, Ontario; Montréal, Québec; Vancouver, British Columbia; Ottawa, Ontario; Hull, Québec; and Edmonton, Alberta.

French and English are the official languages, and at one time most Canadians were of French or English descent. However, diversity increased with a wave of immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that brought in people from many other European nations. This trend continues into the 21st century: Canada is one of the few countries in the world that still has significant immigration programs. Since the 1970s most immigrants have come from Asia, increasing still further the diversity of the population. See Canada: People.

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Canada’s prosperity and diversity have encouraged a variety of artistic pursuits. Most major cities have symphony orchestras, opera companies, classical and modern dance groups, and live theater. Canadian popular musicians have built highly successful careers both in Canada and in the world at large. Canadian writers have also gained worldwide recognition, as have painters, sculptors, filmmakers, and architects. To nurture Canadian arts, the government has imposed quotas on foreign content in Canadian media.

Canada has impressive reserves of timber, minerals, and fresh water, and many of its industries are based on these resources. Many of its rivers have been harnessed for hydroelectric power, and it is self-sufficient in fossil fuel. Industrialization began in the 19th century and a significant manufacturing sector emerged, especially after World War II (1939-1945). Canada’s resource and manufacturing industries export about one-third of their output. While Canada’s prosperity is built on the resource and manufacturing industries, most Canadians work in service occupations, including transportation, trade, finance, personal services, and government. See Canada: Economy.

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Canada is a parliamentary democracy and a constitutional monarchy. The federal, provincial, and territorial legislatures are all directly elected by citizens. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom is recognized as the queen of Canada. She is the official head of state. The queen is represented in Canada by the governor-general and ten lieutenant governors. Canada's constitution guarantees equality under the law to all of its citizens. Powers of the federal and provincial governments are spelled out separately under the constitution, but over the past 50 years they have increasingly cooperated in programs that provide a wide range of social services to the public. See Canada: Government.

Canada’s Indigenous People

Canada's Indigenous People (original inhabitants) are often called First Nations or Indians (see Native Americans of North America). The name Canada comes from a word meaning “village” or “community” in one of the indigenous Iroquoian languages. Indigenous peoples had developed complex societies and intricate political relations before the first Europeans, the Vikings, arrived in the 11th century. The Vikings soon left, but more Europeans came in the 16th century and were made welcome because they brought manufactured goods and traded them for furs and other native products. However, the Europeans settled down and gradually displaced the indigenous peoples over the next 250 years. This process of dispossession has left a legacy of legal and moral issues that Canadians are grappling with today. See Canada: History.

European settlers came in a series of waves. First were the French, followed by the English, and these two groups are considered the founding nations. France lost its part of the territory to Britain in a war in 1760, but most of the French-speaking colonists remained (see French and Indian War). Their effort to preserve their language and culture has been a continuing theme of Canadian history and has led to a movement to become independent of the rest of Canada.

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Modern Canada was formed in an event that Canadians call Confederation, in 1867, when three colonies of Britain merged to create a partially independent state of four provinces. Since then, six more provinces and three territories have been added. Canada achieved full independence in 1931 but continues to belong to the Commonwealth of Nations, a voluntary association of countries with ties to the United Kingdom.

Canada is a country of difficult terrain; much of its area is underwater, rocky, marshy, mountainous, or otherwise uninhabitable. Settlement has therefore been concentrated in the areas that are more level and have the better soils. The northern climate, with its long winters, has encouraged the population to settle in the south, where agricultural and living conditions are most favorable. The vast majority of Canadians live within 320 km (200 mi) of the American border.

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Canada occupies nearly all of North America north of latitude 49° north and east of longitude 141° west. It has an area of 9,984,670 sq km (3,855,103 sq mi), of which 7.6 percent or 755,180 sq km (291,577 sq mi) is covered by fresh water such as rivers and lakes, including part of the Great Lakes. It is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean; on the northeast by Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, which separate it from Greenland; on the east by the Atlantic Ocean; on the south by the United States; and on the west by the Pacific Ocean and Alaska. Cape Columbia, a promontory of Ellesmere Island, is the country’s northernmost point; the southernmost point, 4,600 km (2,900 mi) away, is Middle Island in Lake Erie. The easternmost and westernmost limits, which are separated by 5,500 km (3,400 mi), are respectively Cape Spear, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the greater part of the border with Alaska. Long distances and a challenging physical environment make transportation and communication across the country very difficult. This reality has made it a challenge for Canadians to maintain a sense of nationhood.

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The Estimated Population

of Canada in 2006 was 33,098,932. At the time of the last census in 2001, the official population was 30,007,094, compared to about 28.8 million in 1996. The population growth rate from 1994 to 2003 was 1 percent per year; this was the eighth highest rate among the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a list that makes up the most developed industrial countries of the world. Two-thirds of this growth was due to immigration. Canada’s liberal immigration program accepts newcomers from nearly every other country in the world.

Most Canadians live in cities, and most of the cities are close to the country’s southern border. The largest urban centers are in Québec and Ontario provinces, or central Canada, where almost two-thirds of the people live. Most of the population is ethnically British or French, although other European countries are well represented, and indigenous peoples are the majority in the north. French and English are the official languages, although the people who speak English as their mother tongue outnumber those whose mother tongue is French by about 2.5 to 1. Roman Catholics, who include most French-speaking people, are the most numerous religious group, followed by the United Church of Canada and the Anglican Church. Immigrants are a growing minority, particularly those from Asia, and have been changing the face of Canada’s largest urban areas. See also Ethnic Groups in Canada.

Canadians have a high literacy rate and a number of top universities. The standard of living is one of the world’s highest, although one in seven households lives in poverty. Violent crime is low compared to other North American societies but has been rising.

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Population Characteristics

Canada is a nation of people who came from somewhere else. All but the indigenous people arrived there within the past 400 years, most within the past few generations. For that reason most Canadians still feel some attachment to their old homelands. The majority of the population is of European descent, but the proportion of Asians is increasing. Nearly 60 percent of all immigrants in the decade from 1991 to 2001 came from Asia, and Chinese is the fastest-growing mother tongue in Canada. As ethnic groups intermarry, however, ethnic identities are becoming more blurred; more than one-third of Canadians report multiple ethnic origins. Indigenous peoples make up about 3 percent and blacks about 2 percent of the population.

Immigration is important to maintaining Canada’s population. The current childbearing generation has smaller families than earlier generations: The fertility rate (average number of children born per woman) is 1.6. At the same time, older people are living longer, so that the average age of the population is higher. In 2006 Canada’s rate of natural increase was 0.30 percent, resulting from a birth rate of 10.8 per 1,000 persons and a death rate of 7.8 per 1,000. There is a downward trend in the birth index—in 1981 it was 15.3—and the likely end result will be zero growth or population loss. For this reason the Canadian government decided in the 1980s to compensate for the low birth rate by allowing more immigration.

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