More than 90% of the Canadian population lives within 150 miles of our border with the United States.
Imagine if the situation was reversed, with almost the entire population of the United States living within 150 miles of the same border. Viewed from that perspective, it becomes a ridiculous prospect, with 10 percent of the American population scattered thinly through the vast area south of that limit, punctuated only by the isolated state capital of Los Angeles and its token population of only 7,700 people.*
And yet, that's the reality of Canadian geography - and society, that we have millions of square kilometers of wilderness. To be fair, northern Canada is a punishing environment during the winter months, and it would require a massive investment to create the missing infrastructure that the continental US takes for granted: power grids, roads, dams, airports and so on.
However, we live in a changing world. Unchecked climate change may lead to parts of the world, such as the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, being uninhabitable by 2050, and much of South Asia, Eastern China, and Brazil by 2070. As such, northern Canada's frigid environment and relative emptiness could well become a silver lining in a world of rising temperatures**.
With that as a starting point, what would the map of a future Canada be, 100 years from now?
Tuktoyaktuk becomes the gateway to the North for cargo shipments from China and Russia, as the challenges of the Northwest Passage vanish with a diminished Arctic icepack - a timely alternative to the gently steaming waters of the abandoned Panama Canal, slowly being filled by the blowing sands of the scorched, lifeless Central American Desert.
The Mackenzie River replaces the St. Lawrence River as the trade conduit to central Canada. Great Bear Lake and Great Slave Lake become the new Great Lakes, and home to the waterfront cities of New Phoenix, New Houston and New Miami, as we open our doors to a wave of American climate refugees - along with Nuevo Monterrey, Bago Manila, and Nouvelle Dakar. The good news is that we have a lot of room for these heat-seared immigrants, along with a long-standing tradition of a tolerant cultural mosaic.***
And we need all those people, as the Canadian North turns into the world's biggest boom town, a bonanza of construction, development and expansion. This will be a challenge for the federal government: strict controls will be necessary to avoid having uncontrolled exploitation destroy the already heat-damaged ecology of the muskeg and the taiga, at a time when much of the world would be in the middle of an environmental disaster.
The Canadian government will also be faced with another challenge: indigenous land rights. It would be far too easy to sweep the existing indigenous population of the northern territories aside under the guise of necessity in the face of climate change. Hopefully there would be a strengthened commitment to the current policy of indigenous reconciliation, making Canada a stronger country at a time when unity and cooperation would be of the utmost importance.
- Sid
*The approximate population of Iqaluit, capital of the territory of Nunavut.
** Ignoring for a moment the disastrous and unfortunate consequences for the Northern Canadian ecosystem itself.
*** Does everyone still learn about the Canadian Cultural Mosaic versus the American Melting Pot in high school?
