Rory Leishman’s December Interim column is about immigration not being a panacea for Canada’s falling fertility rates. First, as the C.D. Howe Institute has noted — in two studies, “Faster, Younger, Richer? The Fond Hope and Sobering Reality of Immigration’s Impact on Canada’s Demographic,” (2009) and “No Elixir of Youth: Immigration Cannot Keep Canada Young” (2006) — it only slightly slows the aging of society. But mass immigration also presents other challenges:
Meanwhile, working Canadians will also have to bear most of the huge annual costs of integrating new immigrants to Canada – a challenge that is especially difficult in the case of the tens of thousands of Muslims who emigrate to Canada every year. In a recent report, Projections of the Diversity of the Canadian Population, Statistics Canada projects that by 2031, Canada will have anywhere from 2.5 to 3.3 million Muslims, up from 884,000 in 2006. Within Toronto alone, the projected Muslim population ranges from 1.1 to 1.5 million in 2031, up from 393,000 in 2006.
Of course, the majority of Canadian Muslims are peaceful. It is the not insignificant minority of violent jihadists who are the prime cause for concern. In 2007, the Environics Research Group found that 10 per cent of a representative national sample of Canadian Muslims admitted to believing that a cell of Islamist terrorists in Toronto had been at least somewhat justified in planning to set off three huge bombs that would have resulted in the worst, mass slaughter of civilians in Canadian history.
Can Canada’s immigration officials be counted upon to screen out the Islamist radicals who apply to immigrate to Canada?
You can read the entire column here.
