Transcript for:
Overview of Canada's Geography and Demographics

So this is part two of the lectures in week one, just the lecture that follows the syllabus lecture. So this course is about Canada, and its main purpose is to introduce you to some of our country's most basic and enduring features, which I hope will... help you better understand, but also navigate and live, study work in the context of Canada's political, economic, social, and cultural systems. I think Canada is actually one of the most interesting countries to study for a variety of reasons. and we're going to go through that in this course.

But one of the interesting things about Canada is that geographically, in terms of land mass, it is the second largest country in the world. It has almost 10 million square kilometers of land, which basically makes it the second largest country in the world, just behind Russia, Russia being the largest country in the world. So you have, you know, that's kind of interesting, first of all.

What's also interesting is that despite its mass, it has a pretty small population relative to Canada. to other countries that are much smaller geographically. So as of 2023, the Canadian population is 40 million people. And rather than being spread out across the country, most Canadians are concentrated in urban centers near the border with the United States. So we have this giant landmass, small population, but rather than being spread out across Canada, we tend to be concentrated.

Most Canadians tend to be concentrated. to be concentrated in urban areas, major cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, for instance, and they tend to be close to the border in the southern part of the country. In terms of demographics, if we look at the 2020 census data, you'll see the average age of Canadian, the average age in Canada is about 42 years old. So a relatively older population.

population. It's a highly educated population. So 88% of adults have completed high school, 34.6% have completed college, and about almost 33% has a bachelor's degree, a university degree. So pretty, you know, highly educated society.

Most Canadians or a majority of Canadians own a house, some sort of home, 66.5% of Canadians, and about a little less than... than 30% of Canadians spend 30% or more of their income on housing. In terms of immigration, Canada is historically known as a land of immigration, a land that was built on and which welcomes with open arms immigrants. And so you have about 23% of the population is made up of immigrants.

But of course, most Canadians who are born here in Canada were the children of immigrants who moved here in previous generations. Canada. Canada is a fairly wealthy society.

If you look at the medium after tax income by household, that's about $73,000. And the medium income of people who are 15 or older is about $37,200. Technically, we are a bilingual nation. And so, at least at the federal level, you are allowed to or you can expect to be able to interact with the Canadian federal government in either.

French or English and both languages are taught in school. So we're supposed to be a bilingual nation and we'll talk about why that is the case. But in practice, only 18% of Canadians are bilingual, at least in 2020. And most are actually English speakers. So 75% of Canadians are English speakers or use English as their first language versus about 21, you know, 21.4% in terms of French being used as the first language.

And then if you look even at work, at 83.5% of Canadians use English at work on a regular basis. That's compared to about only 25% use French as their language of choice at work. So moving beyond the sort of individual level of demographics, in terms of our government, which we'll spend some time on in a couple of weeks, we we are a federal system of government. So a unitary system means there's one constitutional level of government.

So if you think about England, for instance, Great Britain, it's technically a unitary level of government. There's only one constitutional level of government and that's the national government. But I mean, there are other levels of government. that exist at the regional or the municipal level, but they're not constitutionally protected.

They exist at the whim of the federal or the national government. In Canada, we use a federal system. So we have two constitutions.

constitutional orders of government or two constitutional levels of government. There's a federal government, which is the national government, and then there are provincial or territorial governments, and there's 10 provincial provinces. and 10 provincial governments, which you can see on the screen, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, etc.

And there's three territorial governments, the Yukon Territory, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. And they're sort of like provinces, but they're not constitutionally guaranteed. They have all the powers, basically, of a province, but they don't have the constitutional, they don't exist as a constitutional unit.

And that's an important distinction because, you know, A federal and a provincial government being constitutional orders of government, they have their own, they exist without having to worry about, you know, being changed unilaterally by a different order of government. So the national government, the federal government tends to have, was in 1867 when Canada was founded, the federal government was given control over jurisdictions, areas of jurisdiction that, you know, would affect the entire country. country like currency banking national defense and the provincial and territorial governments were given control over things that were more were seen to be at least in 1867 issues that were more of a local nature so health care and education at the time were seen as being local issues you know they were charged of municipal governments for instance and we'll talk more about this in future future lectures the original Inhabitants of Canada, you know, as I talked about, Canada was a country of immigration.

We were built through immigration. But there were original inhabitants of Canada. They were here first. They owned the land first.

They occupied the land first. They existed here before immigrants from Europe came to Canada. These are indigenous peoples. They've been here since time immemorial. So, you know, the argument is here that they were always here.

There's some scholarship that argues that they may have migrated here. across the Bering Strait from Asia. There was a period of time when there was a landmass that connected Asia to Alaska, and they came through Yukon Territory. But that was many generations ago.

But generally speaking, the accepted argument, the accepted knowledge that most Canadians work with is that Indigenous peoples have basically been here, you know, since time immemorial. They've been here forever. And they were here many generations before you. Europeans started to come here looking for passage to Asia and then looking for new places to explore, settle, and the like.

Now indigenous peoples, as we'll talk again in more detail, these were, they were here for a long time. They developed highly advanced societies. So these, you know, sometimes the images of indigenous communities are that these were not advanced societies, but they were. They were highly advanced societies. They had sophisticated systems of government.

So this idea of federalism dividing power between two levels of government actually came from the Haudenosaunee, which was a group of indigenous communities in sort of Ontario area and Quebec. And so the Haudenosaunee had developed this idea of federalism dividing power between different governments and the Canadian federal system and the American federal system. Some scholarship suggests that that. Canada and the United States basically built federalism out of the ideas of the Haudenosaunee. But beyond that, indigenous societies, many indigenous societies were matrilineal, which meant that women were the power, were the people who had authority in these societies.

They had sophisticated clan systems for delegating tasks and authority within these systems. So there's lots of, these were very, you know, very sophisticated political systems. that had their own constitutions determining who had power over what. Also, Indigenous peoples are very diverse. So for a long time in popular culture, Indigenous communities were seen as this homogenous group.

They were all the same. They wore the same kinds of clothing. They had the same kinds of practices.

But that's not true, actually, as you'll see, that Indigenous communities in Canada were and are very diverse in terms of the kinds of language they use, the kinds of culture. and cultural practices, the kind of economies that they use, the kinds of political systems, and the kinds of social structures. And some of this is mentioned in some of the readings that you had to read this week and in future readings. In Canada, politically, under the Constitution, even though there's a lot of diversity among Indigenous groups, our Constitution, our political system, recognizes basically three types or three categories.

of indigenous groups. These are First Nations, or the term actually in the Constitution of 1867 is Indians, but today we tend to use the term First Nations, the Métis, and Inuit. And so there's these three legal categories for understanding indigenous groups in Canada, but even within these three groups there's amazing diversity among First Nations, among Métis groups, and among Inuit communities. And we'll talk more about this.

But what's important about it is that there are these groups, they predated Canada, and as a result, they have a special place in our political system and in our culture, in a very complicated place, as we'll talk about. Now, later on, Canada was settled by mainly English and French settlers, mainly, in the case of English settlers, Protestant settlers from England, and in the case of French settlers, French Catholic settlers from France. and they came here for a variety of reasons to the new world a lot of it was exploration at first trying to find a passage to asia but later on you know a lot of them also eventually came to canada to to basically seek their fortune once once the north america was you know discovered by europe they came to seek their fortune to try and make money uh by you know by through fishing through fisher fisheries trying to establish fisheries or fur trying to create the fur trade or other natural resources to bring back to Europe.

Also, settlers left the New World because they were trying to flee religious persecution and overcrowding in Europe. So at various stages that, you know, different religious groups felt persecuted and so they left to come to the to North America in hopes of being able to start a new society, a new life, free from persecution and overcrowding. So as the textbook talks about Canada eventually eventually is founded in 1867 after you know there's a lot of a lot of discussion in there about what happens but you have basically english and french coming to canada uh they they work with indigenous communities we'll talk about this history in future in future lectures they but over time english and french wars in europe are imported to canada the english defeat the french and eventually for a variety of reasons uh the colonies the french and english colonies decide to to create a new kingdom that would govern itself, but still under the authority of the British crown.

And that's Confederation in 1867. And although this was a secular kingdom per se, it had very strong religious roots because of the nature of the colonists that came here. And so you have a very much a Judeo-Christian country built here. And notice here when I mentioned Judeo-Christian, that indigenous peoples.

and their cultures and religious traditions were completely excluded in 1867, despite them being here for a long period of time. So as a result of this Judeo-Christian nature, as a result of England winning the conflict with France in the New World, you have a political system, a political economic union that is very much British. So we have a Westminster parliamentary system based on the British. model with an executive, a first minister or a prime minister and their cabinet.

That's the executive, the political executive that decides what laws should be introduced and what line and the laws that are, and they're in charge of implementing those laws. And the executive actually sits in the legislature or parliament as members of the lower house or the house of commons. And they sit in there, they introduce laws directly into that.

house of commons they do they participate in debates and vote on those laws and the legislature or parliament has two houses there's a lower house the house of commons which is supposed to represent the people uh it's supposed to be you know representation by by population and then you have a senate an upper house much like in england that's appointed uh by the governor general who's the queen's representative on the advice of the prime minister and the senate reviews legislation given it to by the House of Commons. There's supposed to be a place of sober second thought where they review what the masses in Parliament were debating about. They review it, they make modifications to it, and then they pass it. similar to what exists in Britain, except in Britain they have the House of Lords, and here it's the Canadian Senate.

So beyond sort of this very short political history, Canada is also not only geographically... large, as we talked about, but is also geographically diverse. So if you go, that's what's kind of interesting about Canada, is that you have all these different climates and geographic characteristics, which also influences the kind of sort of social relations and cultural norms that emerge out of these various regions of Canada.

So in the West Coast in British Columbia, it has, you know, coastal mountain ranges, massive... evergreen forests and of course it's a coastal province so it has access to the pacific ocean and all of the kinds of things that come from that fishery and fisheries and trade with asia later on and that that sort of develops a unique sort of political culture in british columbia next to british columbia are alberta saskatchewan and manitoba these three provinces and they're also known as sort of the canadian prairies and they're mainly these places are mainly flatland that are lots of farmland, some desert-like areas that have significant oil and gas reserves. And there's some enormous lakes and swamps in Manitoba. But the big thing for here is they have a lot of rich natural resources coming from its farmlands, wheat, and other kinds of farming crops, especially in Saskatchewan, Manitoba.

And in Alberta and in Saskatchewan, you have... vast oil and gas natural gas deposits that later become important for the industrialization of Canada and which certainly to some disputes as we'll talk about between the West and the center of Canada in the center of Canada or otherwise known as central Canada are Ontario and Quebec and if you think about some of the geography there you have lots of hills and fields and forests and lakes you have natural resources in these places too in terms of mines minerals you have major hydroelectric projects in Quebec but also very temperate climates in the southern parts near the United States right a really warm summers in and the most Canadians live in Ontario and Quebec and Ontario Quebec were sort of the original colonies of Canada that's where upper and lower Canada were the French selling in Quebec the English settling mainly in Ontario and that's what they built built sort of that's why we have a political system that can't Canadian political system that revolves around these places. The rest of the provinces in eastern Canada are also known as Atlantic Canada. It's an Appalachian region.

It borders the Atlantic Ocean. It's got some rugged mountains as well and hills. But these provinces include Newfoundland and Labrador, which actually didn't join Confederation in 1867. They waited until much later in 1949. But you have some other provinces like New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. which are on the still part of the mainland you have Prince Edward Island which is this little island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and these are provinces that are blessed with with access again to the Atlantic Ocean and the ocean resources that come of that and then the rest of Canada is sort of the north the three northern territories which I again meant which I mentioned are very similar to provinces they have many of the same powers and jurisdictions but They're not provinces.

They don't have constitutional status. And so they're not as powerful as the provinces. So we have three territories, Yukon Territory, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. Nunavut being the newest territory, just created in 1999. And Nunavut is interesting because it was created out of what's called a Comprehensive Land Claims Agreement, or a modern treaty.

This was an agreement signed by Canada, the Northwest Territories, and the Inuit who lived in this region of Nunavut, who dominate, in fact, this area. In fact, 85% of the population in Nunavut are Inuit, are a member of an indigenous community, the Inuit. And so they signed an agreement with the federal government and the government of the Northwest Territories to create a new territory in which the Inuit would have more control over their own.

own lives. As I mentioned earlier, most Canadians live in Ontario and Quebec, and interestingly, most Canadians live in urban centres. That was not always the case.

It was much more spread out. But over time, like many countries, due to industrialisation, modernisation, you have the turn towards urban centres. People move, migrated, urbanization, people move to the urban centers to improve their standards of living. Now, although Ontario and Quebec have multiple major cities, most provinces basically only have one or two major cities. two large cities.

So if you think about Manitoba, its only big city is Winnipeg. If you think about Alberta, it has two main cities, Calgary and Edmonton. If you think about British Columbia, it has Vancouver and Victoria. But most Canadian provinces basically have only one or two big cities. The real exception is mainly Ontario, where you have a number of larger cities here.

And then just overall, there's quite a bit of climate diversity across Canada. If you compare the British Columbia to the Prairie provinces, they're very different. And Ontario and Quebec sort of have very different climate and geography. geographical characteristics relative to them. And Atlantic Canada, too, is quite different.

And then, of course, then you compare all of these provinces to the north, and it's quite, you know, the north is very cold and has different kinds of resources. And a result of this geographic diversity, you get some very different characteristics, cultures, and social norms, and even political movements that arise. And so we'll discuss some of this, some of the diversity that stems out of this geography. in future lectures. So this ends part two of our week one lecture.