Canada

H

Environmental Concerns

Although Canada is the world’s second largest country, 90 per cent of its population is concentrated along the border with the United States and in a few major southern cities. Canada relies heavily on its fisheries, forests, and water resources, and it is here that its most pressing environmental challenges lie. Canada has recently been involved in disputes over ocean fishing rights with Spain and the United States. Many forests have been heavily logged, particularly in the mountains of British Columbia. The land suffers from the effects of clear-cutting, giving way to landslides and locally severe soil erosion, which damages salmon habitat.

Air pollution from vehicles is considerable in cities, but Canada’s greatest environmental threat comes from acid rain, over half of which originates in the United States as a by-product of ore refining and coal-fired power generation. Forty-three per cent of Canada’s land area is highly sensitive to acid rain contamination, and such destruction has been a serious problem since the mid-1970s, especially in the eastern provinces. In 1985 Canada signed the Helsinki Protocol, which obliged it to reduce air-polluting emissions 30 per cent below 1980 levels. By 1993 such pollutants had been reduced by 56 per cent in provinces participating in the Acid Rain Control Programme. In 1991 the United States and Canada signed an air-quality agreement, and in 1995 Canada began to formulate its air-quality objectives beyond the year 2000. During 1981 to 1994, a survey of 202 lakes in the Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic regions indicated that the level of acidification in most lakes was either improving or stable, although some lakes continued to become more acidic.

Habitat loss throughout Canada has been great, especially in recent decades. It is estimated that 80 per cent of the country’s original wetlands have been lost in some areas, with an overall 23 per cent loss between 1980 and 1990. Also at risk of total loss are the native tallgrass prairie, the Carolinian forests of southern Ontario, the Acadian forests of the Maritime Provinces, and the western coastal rainforests. Overall, Canada has only about 10 per cent of its original forests.

Canada’s federal government actively supports alternative transport, recycling, habitat restoration, and wildlife protection at the community level through grants to local governments. Endangered species are offered protection by the Canadian Endangered Species Protection Act and similar legislation enacted by the individual provinces. Nevertheless, biodiversity remains seriously at risk. It is estimated that in Alberta, only 10 per cent of wild species are not threatened.

Canada generates a large proportion of its energy from hydroelectric sources, and the construction of new dams has become an important environmental issue in recent years. Nuclear power accounts for about 16 per cent of the country’s energy needs, with 22 nuclear power reactors in the country, all but 2 in Ontario. A central nuclear waste disposal site is planned and would be constructed deep beneath the Canadian Shield. Plans to expand nuclear generating capacity have been slowed by environmental concerns since the late 1980s.

Canada was the first industrialized country to ratify the 1992 United Nations (UN) Convention on Biological Diversity and proceeded to rapidly formulate its own national biodiversity strategy, emphasizing sustainable resource use and incentives and legislation to promote biodiversity. Canada has an international environmental agreement with Chile that obliges both countries to inform each other of environmental developments and new legislation, and provides a framework for mutual enforcement of environmental laws.

III

Population

The racial and ethnic make-up of the Canadian people is diverse. About 34 per cent of the population is composed of people of British or part-British origin. People of French or part-French origin total about 27 per cent of the population. The vast majority of French-speaking Canadians reside in Quebec, where they make up about 78 per cent of the population; large numbers also live in Ontario and New Brunswick, and smaller groups inhabit the remaining provinces. French-speaking Canadians maintain their language, culture, and traditions, and the federal government follows the policy of a bilingual and bicultural nation. During the 1970s and 1980s the proportion of Asians among the Canadian population increased from 5 per cent to more than 16 per cent; more than two thirds of the Asian immigrants live in Ontario or British Columbia. The remainder of the population is composed of people of various ethnic origins, such as German, Italian, Ukrainian, Dutch, Scandinavian, Polish, Hungarian, Greek, and the native peoples, who are officially designated the First Nations. The First Nations make up nearly 2 per cent of Canada’s population, and belong predominantly to the Algonquian linguistic group; other representative linguistic stocks are the Iroquoian, Salishan, Athabascan, and Inuit (Eskimoan). Altogether, the indigenous people of Canada are divided into nearly 600 groups, or bands.

Blacks have never constituted a major segment of the Canadian population, but their history has been an interesting one. Although Louis XIV of France in 1689 authorized the importation of slaves from the Caribbean, black immigration into Canada has been almost entirely from the United States. Some Loyalists brought slaves north with them during and after the American War of Independence (1775-1783). The British troops that burnt Washington in the War of 1812 brought many slaves back with them to Halifax, Nova Scotia. However, Nova Scotia abolished slavery in 1787 and their action was followed six years later by Upper Canada, thus setting precedents for the whole British Empire, in which slavery was finally abolished in 1833. The presence of free soil in Canada was a major influence in the operation of the Underground Railroad, which, during the abolition campaign in the United States, transported many slaves into Canada, particularly to Chatham and Sarnia in Ontario. Blacks make up less than 2 per cent of the Canadian population today.

A

Population Characteristics

The population of Canada is 33,390,141 (2007), compared with 27,296,859 in the 1991 census. The overall population density is about 4 people per sq km (9.6 people per sq mi).

Approximately three quarters of the people of Canada inhabit a relatively narrow belt of land along the US border, with about 62 per cent concentrated in Quebec and Ontario. Nearly 17 per cent of the population lives in the Prairie provinces of Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan; about 8 per cent in the Atlantic provinces, which include Newfoundland and Labrador and the Maritime provinces of Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick; and about 13 per cent in British Columbia. Yukon Territory, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut are sparsely inhabited, having only about 0.3 per cent of the total population. About 81 per cent of the population is urban.

B

Political Divisions

The country is divided into ten provinces (Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Prince Edward Island, Quebec, Saskatchewan) and three territories (Northwest Territories, Yukon Territory, and Nunavut, which was created from a division of the Northwest Territories, and came into existence in 1999).

C

Principal Cities

Among the leading cities of Canada are: Toronto, Ontario, a port and manufacturing city (population, 2005 estimate, 5,304,100); Montreal, Quebec, a port and major commercial centre (2005 estimate, 3,635,700); (Vancouver, British Columbia, a railway, shipping, and forest-products manufacturing centre (2005 estimate, 2,208,300); Ottawa, Ontario, the capital of Canada and a commercial and industrial city (2005 estimate, 1,148,800); Winnipeg, Manitoba, a major wheat market and railway junction (2005 estimate, 706,900); Edmonton, Alberta, a farming and petroleum centre (2005 estimate, 1,016,000); Quebec City, Quebec, a shipping, manufacturing, and tourist centre (2005 estimate, 717,600); Hamilton, Ontario, a shipping and manufacturing centre (2005 estimate, 714,900); Calgary, Alberta, a transport, mining, and farm-trade centre (2005 estimate, 1,060,300); St Catharines, Ontario, an industrial and commercial city (2005 estimate, 396,900); Kitchener, Ontario, a city of manufacturing industries (2005 estimate, 458,600); London, Ontario, a railway and industrial centre (2005 estimate, 464,300); and Halifax, Nova Scotia, a seaport and manufacturing city (2005 estimate, 380,800). The capital of the territory of Nunavut is Iqaluit (2001, 5,236).