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The new report from Century Initiative, an organization co-founded by Barton, reiterates the grand claims that a larger population is the key to a prosperous economic future. “We believe that putting Canada on track for a population of 100 million Canadians in 2100 should be central to Canada’s bold response to this century’s challenges,” the report says.

Along with Barton — former global head of McKinsey & Company and now Canada’s ambassador to China — the Century Initiative’s backers include Goldy Hyder, CEO of the Business Council of Canada, and Mark Wiseman, former head of the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. Whether their new report, titled For a Bigger, Bolder Canada, can trigger a national crusade for a new immigration boom is debatable.

Canada needs immigrants. Along with the United States — where former President John F. Kennedy’s last book was titled A Nation of Immigrants— Canada was built by newcomers, most of them refugees of one sort or another, who brought their talents, ambitions and cultures to a country that still today remains a vast under-populated wilderness.

In the current economic and political environment, smothered as it is in angst about climate change and warnings of global over-population and man-made environmental crises, amid clashing cultural and religious nationalisms and border-fencing plans, calls for opening Canada to more immigrants seems somewhat out of touch. To describe Canada today as a vast under-populated wilderness is itself politically incorrect. Such wilderness should be protected, not exploited by grubby humans looking for growth.