Immigration.ca - Canada Immigration News - September 2007
A new report from Statistics Canada has found that birth rates in Canada were up in 2005, particularly in Quebec and Alberta where the birth rates were up 3.3 and 3.1 per cent, respectively. The territories of Yukon and Nunavut had the largest declines in birth rates at 12.3 and 6.4 per cent, respectively. Nation-wide, birth rates are up 1.5 per cent over the previous year.
However, these numbers fall below the rate needed to maintain the population. This means that without immigration, Canada is headed toward a population decline. Experts warn of an over-burdened health care system and labour shortages as just some of the serious challenges facing the aging population in the near future. Not all analysts, however, share that sense of doom. McGill sociology professor Amelie Quesnel-Vallee iterated uncertainty in an interview with The Gazette. "We've never faced a situation in the past like we're facing now with this population aging," she said, "so we don't know for sure what the impact is going to be."
The data released by Statistics Canada also showed that Quebec and Alberta, with the nation's highest increase in birth rates, accounted for nearly three-quarters of all births in Canada for 2005. Nation-wide, rates of still-births were up slightly and teenage fertility rates were down. The 25-year trend toward increasing average age of child-bearing women continued to land at 29.2.
Source: The Gazette
http://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/story.html?id=60a07206-45ac-4b59-b47f-415bbe372b61&k=19971
