Geography It's not my Fault

Canada is, by any measure, an immigrant country. Yet it recent years two trends have combined to cause stress on the fabric of Canadian society. A fault line has opened up between new Canadians who have recently arrived and those who have longer roots in the country. This fault causes social frictions, as the mores and ethics of Canadian society are influenced by the newcomers, and by the many newcomers who have difficulty adjusting to certain aspects of Canadian society. This paper will take a closer look at some of these issues, in particular with reference to the provinces and cities most shaped by immigration -- Vancouver (BC) and Toronto (Ontario).

Demographic Challenges

In surveys of the cities with the strongest immigrant influence, Vancouver and Toronto routinely make the list, joining the likes of Dubai, Miami and Hong Kong. Even major world cities like London and New York -- with their massive immigrant communities, have fewer foreign born people as a percentage of population than do Vancouver and Toronto. While other urban areas in Canada have immigrant communities, these communities in Vancouver and Toronto are so large that they have even spread to the suburbs, as any visitor to Markham or Richmond will attest. In general, Canada has the highest percentage of foreign-born residents in the G8, representing 20.6% of the population or 6.8 million people. Of these, 1.2 million arrived between 2006-2011. A total of 59.6% of these arrivals came from Asia, and most settled in either Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal (Xinhua, 2013).

Cardozo and Pendakur (2008) note that the proportion of immigrants in Canada has not been so high since the 1920s, when waves of Europeans arrived after World War One. This shift has dramatically transformed the country's demographic landscape. In 1965, only 2% of Canada's population was considered to be a visible minority. However, that decade saw a shift in Canada's immigration policy away from family reunification to one based on skills and schooling (Ibid). This allowed for immigration to shift away from Europe and towards other parts of the world. It is now estimated that visible minorities make up 19.1% of the country's population (Xinhua, 2013). This shift has been even more dramatic in Ontario and British Columbia, whose large English-speaking cities have attracted the bulk of new immigrants to the country.

Economic Development

Jane Jacobs argued that economic diversity and large populations, when combined with competition, foster stronger development of urbanized economies (Carlino, 2001). This trend can be seen most in Toronto, but to a lesser extent in Vancouver as well. Where there is high diversity, there is knowledge spillover, and this foster more rapid innovation. For major cities, this becomes a positive feedback loop, where innovative people are motivated to relocate to those centers to gain the benefits of innovation, building the innovative base more. Both of these cities have developed their industrial and social diversity through economic development programs and through their ability to attract immigrants from all over the world.

Where large immigrant communities develop, they also have the ability to create strong business links with their home countries. Links between Vancouver and many Asian countries are very strong, fostered in part by transportation links, cultural ties and trade ties. Hong Kong and Vancouver are almost mirror images of each other across the Pacific with their towers, mountains, harbours and demographics. Toronto has similarly strong ties with its immigrant communities and their homelands. These are more diffuse than those of Vancouver, as Toronto attracts from both Europe and Asia, as well as the Caribbean. Such ties encourage greater economic development, foster ideas, and provide greater access to markets than might otherwise exist. As an example of how such ties facilitate business -- it is much easier to do business in China if you can choose between half a dozen Mandarin-speaking MBAs who know the country's business culture than it is if you are choosing from candidates who would have to learn everything from scratch. So these new immigrant communities are, rather than a fault line, a boon to the economies of these cities. The complaints you here in other countries about...

It is just that the faults can generally be felt more in the social sphere. While think tanks and governments trumpet Canada's successes -- such as a report placing Canada near the top at integrating immigrants (Friesen, 2013) -- there are also problems that occur when cultures clash. The high number of new immigrants allows many groups to build their own communities. This makes integration more challenging in some ways, because there is less communication between social groups and this can result in less tolerance.
One example is a heated debate about ethics, for example about shark fin soup (Lau, 2012), which typifies strong culture differences about the value of the environment. Conversely, some cultures carry with them more conservative values, and this leads to social problems as well when adapting to Canada's liberal social policies. Punjabi men in particular commit acts of violence against homosexuals, an act borne out of inability to comprehend or adjust to Western values. These types of clashes may seem relatively minor, but they can lead to bigger problems. Social order is a strong Canadian value, and when new immigrants are seen as not understanding the social order, conflict is natural. Where new immigrants have a large enough community that they feel they can impose their culture on their neighbours, this also creates a situation where conflict can emerge.

As Mann (2013) notes, racial divides in Canada are generally being reduced, but they are not gone yet, and new developments can challenge all Canadians with respect to their levels of tolerance. Social harmony is challenged as well when the established populace suffers economically from immigration. The issue is not necessarily one of jobs, but in some cases of affordability. Young (2013) notes that property values have been escalating rapidly in British Columbia, beginning in the mid-90s with an influx of Hong Kongers seeking a refuge from the oncoming threat of Communism. Today, the complaint is that working class individuals cannot afford to buy homes in the neighbourhoods in which they grew up. Further complaints arise about "monster houses," absentee landlords, and wealthy children parachuted into the country to run wild with no supervision. Such complaints have legitimacy, but they also target immigrant groups specifically and there can be no clear way to distinguish the problem immigrants from others. Indeed, it can be difficult in many cases to distinguish the troublemakers from fifth-generation Canadians. But the perceived problems with immigrants make headlines, and drive forms of racism and social discord to the fore. This is the fault line that is emerging.

Rural-Urban Split

One of the other dynamics that comes into play with this particular fault is the rural-urban split. With most visible minorities settling in a handful of major cities, the remainder of the country remains full of old-timers. Some feel that they have been pushed out, but for others it is simply a matter of not understanding the new demographic dynamic. Most of British Columbia is white, and most of Ontario is as well. Even major cities like Hamilton and Ottawa are relatively bereft of immigrants compared with Toronto. As a consequence of this concentration of minorities in urban centres, Canada is now faced with a significant split socially and politically between these centres and areas with less demographic diversity.

For example, consider how Stephen Harper got elected. Harper was not elected by the diverse urban cores but by the white suburbs. This is a powerful manifestation of how newcomers are transforming Canadian society. There is a voting split that delineates people who live in diverse environments and those who do not. What happens here is that people of all races who live in the major cities will generally get along and create a vibrant, dynamic urban culture. This culture is increasingly at odds with the monoethnic suburban cultures. In suburbs with high immigrant populations, the culture is more like that of urban Canada, but suburbs with low diversity are going to have a vastly different culture than those with high diversity. The split between suburban, rural and urban voter preferences in large part reflects racial diversity. The last federal election showed the split more clearly than before. The question is what will happen when the diverse urban culture, fueled by dynamic economies, newcomers from all over the world and those who embrace diversity take government. When that happens, the backlash from the non-diverse areas will be immense, because the values of that culture will have drifted so far away from the values of the urban cores. Politically, this is a fault line where pressure is rapidly building, and when it fractures the political situation in Canada could deteriorate. One look south of the border tells us what we need to…