Quote:
Originally Posted by balletomane
A little inspired by some of the discussions in the "Canada: 1 Billion" thread, how do you envision Canada to be once it's 200th birthday rolls around, or how do you hope it to be?
(1) What will our economy be like? How important will oil be, or will water replace it is our greatest resource?
(2) What will our demographic makeup look like? Will we become a slow growth nation as the UN predicts or take in even more immigrants to sustain our economy?
(3) How big will our cities be? Will the current major cities continue to dominant nationally or will our medium-sized cities become more important?
(4) Will Canada become more important internationally, less important or remain in relatively the same position as it is now?
(5) What will the relationship between First Nations and non-First Nations look like?
(6) What will be our biggest challenge in the next five decades?
Sorry for all the "essay" questions, just brainstorming!
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The realistic take (or Debbie Downer take):
1. Fresh water, despite being essential to life, will not be out greatest resource. The problem is that the energy it requires to move any bulk amount of it to an area that would need it in quantity would dwarf simply desalinizing the 95% of the rest of the water on the planet, which is much more readily accessible. Even to move it within the continent would require a huge amount of energy on the order of thousands of megawatts to push it to where it would be needed - the US Southwest.
The future of oil is murky as we trend away from fossil fuels, but I still believe it will play a part in life.
Canada's economy will continue to drift away from value-added products, unfortunately. The 20th century idea that Canada can competitively produce high-value products will be but an aberration. Things like the Blackberry, Bombardier CSeries (now Airbus A220!) and CANDU nuclear power plants to name a few will simply be historical footnotes. Aside from the industries that are protected and the cockroach-like enduringness of icons like Tim Hortons to serve the domestic market, Canada will be but a small niche in the globalized world and a producer of raw materials, like a larger version of New Zealand.
2. The baby boom will be all but over. The drag of growth due to high death rates will mean our population will probably be around 50-60 million. Immigration will continue, but we'll get pickier with who we admit. There probably will be demographic bias towards those of Pakistani, Indian and Chinese heritage due to the sheer size of their countries, the presence of existing family and how they tend to be better aligned with what we need for immigration. Africa remains a wild card - can it become a place that takes part in the world economy or does strife leave it isolated?
3. Our largest cities will be larger, but the surrounding satellite cities will be the big growth stories. Small town Canada, despite being the last holdouts, will likely see an increase in diversity of residents, especially as second, third and fourth generation Canadians view themselves more as Canadian and are willing to explore the country.
4. Canada's relative importance will decline. We've been riding on our reputation since the mid-1970s with respect to international commitments (Afghanistan an exception). The Canada that fought WWII, Korea and did major peacekeeping operations will have faded. We've had some small victories (banning land mines, cluster munitions) but we're a non-player at the UN. The appetite for large scale military operations - even in peacekeeping form - is just not part of Canada's makeup.
Economically, we'll still be a first world country, but our total economic output will pale in comparison to countries who might be second-world, but have much larger populations. While part of the G8, places like the US, India and China will rule the roost economically. Africa, as mentioned above, will be a wildcard depending on how stable governments are.
5. The trauma of the residential schools will and the associated problems will remain. Destroying a culture will have generational casualties hundreds of years down the road. The damage can be mitigated if the governments of Canada make a concerted effort to bridge the gap, but the half-assed approach will yield us half-assed results. A serious commitment to breaking the cycle of poverty without being overbearing (a fine line, I know) along with improvements in the quality of life on remote reserves (clean drinking water!) would help.
6. The debt binge the world is going on as our population ages. A number of major jurisdictions in the world (Japan and the US, most notably) are running huge deficits and piling up debt when they should be saving towards a future of higher healthcare expenses and pension payouts. If a major shock comes to these economies, the loss of faith in the credit of them will be devastating. Either they'll have to default or markedly cut spending and raise taxes in such a manner that will likely not be acceptable to their populations. It will be ugly. Canada will be somewhat better prepared (maybe not some provinces), but that's cold comfort when you're tied closely to the much larger ship going down.
The overall take: barring an economic catastrophe (i.e. US debt default), Canada will remain one of the best places in the world to live. However, the erosion of our competitiveness will hurt life in the future. I'd call us 'fat and happy' today, while a large chunk of the world is hungry and willing to work hard. We may be in for a rude surprise should the demand for what makes life easy (i.e. our resources) takes a hit.