I’ve spent my entire life moving around the country. I grew up in a military family, and continued the habit of moving every few years into adulthood. At this point, I’ve lived or worked in eight of Canada’s 10 largest cities and every province west of the Maritimes. As a public policy generalist, I similarly move from one file to the next, whether that’s economic policy in the Prairies, housing policy in Canada’s big cities or industrial policy all over. No matter which area I’m working on, immigration is part of the conversation— and with good reason.

Canada is well on pace to hit 100 million Canadians by 2100; that’s a positive thing. Population growth allows for greater economies of scale to tap our natural resources. It attracts the best and the brightest from around the world to spur innovation and cultural diversity. And one increasingly relevant upside is that rapid growth affords smaller countries some much-needed geopolitical heft. At 41 million people, Canada is still a relatively modest country in a highly unstable world (for now, at least). And with America becoming a less reliable partner, we’ll have to stand on our own two feet. Having more people would give us a lot more clout in a world where it’s easy for the large to push around the small.

But problems arise when you take shortcuts, as Canada has, attempting quick population growth without the basic infrastructure required to support it. For example, we’re still building roughly the same amount of housing as we did in the 1970s. And while it makes sense that most immigrants tend to settle in larger, more diverse cities with more economic opportunities, these urban centres are already bearing the brunt of the national housing shortage, which then spills into other communities. It’s easy to see why many Canadians were frustrated by the post-COVID surge of new residents.

The solution? Making the sparser parts of the country more........

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