DRAIN ON CANADA

Dominion, Volume 18, Issue 152, 24 March 1925, Page 7

DRAIN ON CANADA

THE DRIFT TO THE STATES SERIOUS IMPERIAL PROBLEM “BOOTLEGGING OF ALIENS” The most disturbing phenomenon to-day in the national life of Canada is the southward exodus of her citizens to the United States, writes a Canadian correspondent to ths London “Times.” A reference to this Imperial problem appeared) in the cablegrams some days ago.

Ever since Canada came under the British flag there has been a certain crossflow of population over the international frontier; people from Vermont and New Hampshire helped to settle the eastern townships of Quebec, and Canadians from Ontario formed a large element in the stream of colonisation which spread over lowa and Nebraska in the middle of last century. From Confederation down to 1960 every year there moved southward a contingent of ambitious Canadians, impelled by the same motives as bring an annual flock of Scotsmen to the richer pastures of England. The exodus was abnormally serious in the years 1893 to 1896, and furnished the tiberal Party, then in opposition, with valuable ammunition, but •when the Laurier Government started the real development of the Canadian West with a rigorous immigration policy the opportunities there created attracted the adventurous youth of Canada, and the stream of southward migration was reduced to a trickle. On the other hand there began a northward movement of American fanners who saw an opportunity of bettering their fortunes on the cheap fertile lands of the prairie provinces, and for the two decades before the end of the war the balance of migration was heavily on the side of Canada. But since the war the situation has altered once more, and during the last five years Canada has been a neavy loser by the interchange, of population. The' stream of American immigrants has shrunk to very modest dimensions, and the outflow of Canadian emigrants has shown an alarming increase.

The Figures. Exact figures of the emigration are difficult to obtain because the Canadian Government will pubash no statistics and the American data are admittedly inaccurate owing to the fact that thousands of Conadian settlers, in order to evade the headtax of 8 dollars and escape various formalities of examination which might end in rejection, simply slip through some of the innumerable crevices in the international boundary. Mr. Husband, Commissioner-General of Immigration for the United States, in his latest survey covering the fiscal year ended June 30, 1924, reports that 200,690 immigrants from British North America, including a small contingent from Newfoundland, actually paid the headtax for entry during that period. And recently the United States Commissioner of Immigration at Montreal inserted publicly that a record kept at his office for five months of 1924 showed 57,367 Canadians from the Montreal area entering the United States under the status of “temporary visitors" who escape the headtax and 40,197 of these failing to return. Furthermore, Mr. J. J. Lavis, Secretary of Labour at Washington, has be%n descanting in recent speeches upon the huge traffic in “bootlegging of aliens" which goes on and declared that in the last fiscal year no fewer than 850,000 aliens made surreptitious entry into the United States. His figures, which were given to buttress a recommendation for the application of the quota system to Canada and Mexico, are certainly exaggerated, but notoriously a very extensive and profitable trade is conducted along the frontiers of the United States by enterprising individuals who have acquired in connectioii with alcohol experience in the illicit evasion of frontier barriers. Canada must on the lowest estimate be to-day losing population to her neighbour at the rate of 300,000 per i- nuiun. and the total loss since the war will not fall far short of a million peonle, which is a grievous drain upon a population of less than nine millions. The proofs of this exodus are abundant in the United States. The Canadian', clubs which flourish in many American cities have all gained greatly in membership, and societies like the Sons of England and the Scottish Clan organisation, which aspire to maintain sentimental ties with the Mother Country, have all secured an unwonted number of recruits, Veterans of the Canadian Army, unable to find immediate employment at home, migrated all too freely to the ?nited States, and of the 50,000 pensions now being paid by the Canadian Government no fewer than 5350 are sent to American addresses.

Causes of Emigration. The causes of this deplorable emigration are worthy of examination. It has probably been most serious in ths western provinces where agricultural depression, caused by the economic debacle of Europe, temporarily obliterated the economic gains which had been a magnet for population. The climate of the prairie provinces does not breed disease and does not lack. defenders, but it has many mute inglorious Ovids, who count it worthy of the 'bitter gibes levelled at Tomi. For people who have been born in it and have known no other it has many attractions and they aro apt to find southern climes heavy and debilitating. But men and especially women who were nurtured in more temperate regions will always be critical of its admitted rigours, and will only tolerate them as long as there are available financial returns which seem to compensate for their laboure and their annual endurance of a six months' winter. If these returns cease to materialise, they will migrate to other lands where, even if wages and profits may be smaller, there will be greater climatic amenities. "Once an emigrant, always an emigrant” is a dictum of Sir Andrew Macphail and undoubtedly there is in the blood of the people of Nort.i America a widespread nomadic instinct which is not visible in the ordinary European community. Few residents of the prairie provinces have any sentimental associations which will hold them in a particular spot and the adventure of emigration has a (certain charm; there are scores of farmers who have homesteaded first iu Manitoba and moved on later, to Saskatchewan, and afterwards to Alberta. Hence the spirit ot migration is always in the air, and the economic motive which would damp it, is temporarily absent. And lying within easy access of the restless is the richest country in the world, where wages are, on the averago, higher than in Canada, taxes much lower, and the costs of living cheaper. It is true that the average farmer of the American West has been undergoing as bitter an experience as his Canadian brother, but when the latter leaves his farm and crosses the boundary he usually seeks urban employment, and among American employers there is a special partiality for Canadians on account of their high reputation for competence and trustworthiness. Nor should it be forgotten that the new immigration policy of the United States which has dammed back the stream of European immigration has made available greater chances of employment for Canadians. Indeed, the southward movement among members of the building trades has been almost as serious as among farmers. Possible Remedies. How can this exodus be checked and the United States prevented from absorbing each year so. many of the flower of Canada’s population? Th# first step

should be an equalisation of taxation rates in the two countries, and this can onlv be achieved, by rigid Canada and a diminution of her heavy burden of overhead charges. If. Canada could only double her population her railway problem and her overhead charges would soon become manageable and reduction of taxes would bo possible. Immigration would therefore seem to be the most urgent need of tire hour, but unless more intelligent ™®thods than those now pursued are adopted the results will nrobably fail to justify the expenditure 'involved. Group migration was a common feature of the , e ‘V l F P> tish settlement of Canada; whole High land clans, like the Macdonalds of Glenaladale, emigrated in a body, and par tiss of English farm labourers from the same locality formed ments in Western Ontario. The Hebrid ean colonies, planted in Alberta, in 19-3 and 19'24 by the single-minded energy of Father Andrew Macdonnell, M.C., should lie capable of indefinite multiplication, and it would also be judicious to divert immigrants who hail from south of the Trent to. the milder climates of British Columbia and Alberta. But the surmise is permissible that drastic economies in administration and a flood of immigration might not suffice to effect a complete cure of Canadas troubles. The cold truth is that the Dominion has now reached a condition where she badlv needs a tonic, of sotw sort There ’has always existed an e ement in Canada who contended that absorption in the United- Stales, offered He onlv path to real prosperity, and its numbers, while still very. far from . a majority have probably increased in recent years. But. to such a develop-m.-nt an unsurmountable obstacle now exists in the shape of a large agrarian interest in the United States which would bitterly resist it for the r ain reason that the deletion of the in’ernational boundary could not tail to cause a serious decline of farm values in the Middle Western States; the fierce protectionism of the same interest lias also banished a reciprocity treaty to distant Kalends. Belief must be sought elsewhere, and it might come most ea«i!v through a far-reaching economic consolidation of the British Commonwealth. Unfortunately, the parties ot the Left in Canada who have been combating economic nationalism. have, hitherto been bemused with the ideal ot political nationalism, failing with singular denseness to realise that the two principles are natural concomitants, and on’.v a few of their leaders have perceived that their economic ends might be most ouicklv achieved by a simultaneous championship nf the wider political and economic unit. It mav. well, however. Ire made cl°ar at no distant date that Canada cannot regain the prosperity which will enable her to retain her population and develop a rich and varied culture until she decides tn abandon her -conomic nationalism and pool her fortunes in. the larger economic unit embodied in the British Commonwealth.