39 There seems to be a general consensus that population decline in Canada would be detrimental to the economy and welfare of Canadian residents. According to a recent report from Employment and Immigration Canada (1987b:27), "Canadian politicians, business leaders, economists and academics are convinced that Canada must experience further population growth if it is to sustain its economic and social infrastructure... The standard of living of Canadians generally would drop substantially if the population went into decline." These types of considerations have led to serious discussions of substantially increasing immigration to Canada. In fact, the government is now discussing an annual intake of one percent of the total population each year, which would amount to 260,000 immigrants per year at the current population size. This should certainly be considered an upper limit on possible immigration, but some experts feel that such a level of immigration could actually be achieved within five years.

Official Projections. The international migration assumptions in the official government population projections have changed substantially in the last three years, largely in response to the recent upsurge in legal immigration. As recently as 1985, the low variant projection assumed that net international migration would be constant at an annual level of 50,000 for every year from 1985-86 to 2005-06 (Statistics Canada, 1985:30). The high variant projection allowed net immigration to increase by 5,000 per year from a level of 50,000 in 1984-85 to 100,000 in 1994-95. Thereafter, net immigration would be constant at a level of 100,000 per year. The authors point out that the high migration assumption was meant to "represent a scenario of a possible improvement in the economic situation -- thereby increasing the demand for selected workers and a higher intake of workers. The possibility of an increase in immigration to partly compensate for the prevailing low fertility level is also considered" (Statistics Canada, 1985:31). It appears that both of these considerations were taken into account more centrally in the new projections.

The new set of projections has increased the net immigration assumption in both the low and high variant projections by about 20,000-30,000 per year. The migration assumptions for 1987-200W. are shown in Table 17. For the low variant projection, net immigration is assumed to be 86,000 for 1987-1988. It then drops to 75,000 in 1988-1989 and slowly declines to 70,000 by the end of the century entirely in response to a slow increase in emigration. Immigration is assumed to be constant at an annual level of 140,000 for 1988-1989 to 2000-2001. The high migration variant assumes that net immigration will rise steadily from a level of 86,000 in 1987-1988 to a peak of 131,000 in 1994-1995 and then will slowly decline to 127,000 by the end of the century. In that projection, immigration is assumed to rise from 150,000 to 200,000 per year within the first eight years of the projection period and then to remain constant through the year 2000-2001. Both variants of thr projections assume that the sex ratio of net immigrants will be only about 80 throughout the projection period.

Canada Recommendations. For 1980-1985, I would strongly favor the net emigration figures available from Statistics Canada. These are based on excellent information about the actual extent of immigration to Canada. Although the emigration estimates are considerably less certain, even if