The economic scene ... needed: more immigrants?(A Light-Hearted Look back at 50 Years of Management)(Cover Story)

"People make the difference." So runs the slogan of one of Canada's larger chartered banks. No doubt the bank is using the term narrowly to define its attitude towards customers. But it is a well known fact that population growth in any country leads to a rising demand for consumer goods. It also leads businessmen to increase their expenditures on plants and equipment, both of which provide employment and income in the economy.

The dozen or so years since the end of World War II have constituted a period of tremendous growth in Canada and our high intake of immigrants to swell the labor force and also to consume goods and services has been a big factor in this expansion. Population increase, whether by natural growth of the native population or immigration, is closely related to the continuing health and growth of the Canadian economy. Since the war some 1,800,000 immigrants have come to our shores. During the same time our total population rose by about 5,350,000. In other words, one out of every three added to the Canadian population came from some other country.

THE FIGURES

The relevant statistics are shown in the following table covering to date the decade of the '50s.

[TABULAR DATA OMITTED]

POPULATION RISES AS EMIGRATION DECLINES

Contrary to widely held opinion, in the years in which population has taken a big jump, say by over 400,000, the increase has been due less to a marked rise in new arrivals than to a sharp fall in the number of Canadians leaving the country to live elsewhere. The sole exception is 1957 when both intake and outgo were unusually high with immigration so heavy as to cause a very large rise in population. Emigration tends to be high in boom times and low in recessions, presumably because these fluctuations in the business cycle occur in other countries at pretty well the same time as in Canada. The annual loss is no small item - for every three to four immigrants, one resident leaves the country.