Post-1800, what is the highest modern population Canada could plausibly have?

Prior to about 1870, people mainly moved to North America with the anticipation of their own bit of land to farm. You are thus restricted by viable land availability to increase immigration much above that point. You can increase fertility by a bit, and then have more immigration due to the US closing it off, but the results of the 1920s suggest there wouldn't be much of an impact there anyway. I would guess 70-90 million is the absolute limit.
 
Those are... optimistic migration numbers.
Not really. Canada offers five or more times the per capita income of most of the world during that time period with an extra twenty years of life expectancy and can also provide safety to refugees and just about anyone who believes they are being persecuted.
 
Not really. Canada offers five or more times the per capita income of most of the world during that time period with an extra twenty years of life expectancy and can also provide safety to refugees and just about anyone who believes they are being persecuted.

So how many people actually apply to immigrate to Canada annually?
 
So how many people actually apply to immigrate to Canada annually?

Apparently 45 million people worldwide would move to Canada if they could:

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In terms or actual applications it's much lower as they know it's not as easy as just wanting to move there to be admitted but a restricted and long shot process.
 
So how many people actually apply to immigrate to Canada annually?
Not particularly useful to look at. Most people have no capability of moving with current laws, have never considered it, or have alternate preferred destinations. A scenario where thousands of people from India or Africa can take a boat ride to Canada paid for by some company that hired them or simply take a flight to Canada and decide to stay on a whim is very different.
 
Food for thought, there were plans in the 1960's to start a scheme of infrastructure development, settlement and resource extraction in the 'Mid-Canada Corridor', the northern half of the region below the tree line that was and is mostly uninhabited.

I'll admit it, I love it for how shamelessly hopeful it is, though the habitability of the region would improve over the decades as climate change does its work, so an incremental process moving slowly northwards would hedge bets. The hope for population was that the combination of relaxed immigration laws and the creation of jobs would kick up the rate of immigration, so that Canada by 2000 would have a population of around 70 million. That may be in the region of another couple hundred thousand immigrants each year, so starting with a PoD around 1965, I'd say 70 million would be the absolute maximum limit.
 
Food for thought, there were plans in the 1960's to start a scheme of infrastructure development, settlement and resource extraction in the 'Mid-Canada Corridor', the northern half of the region below the tree line that was and is mostly uninhabited.

I'll admit it, I love it for how shamelessly hopeful it is, though the habitability of the region would improve over the decades as climate change does its work, so an incremental process moving slowly northwards would hedge bets. The hope for population was that the combination of relaxed immigration laws and the creation of jobs would kick up the rate of immigration, so that Canada by 2000 would have a population of around 70 million. That may be in the region of another couple hundred thousand immigrants each year, so starting with a PoD around 1965, I'd say 70 million would be the absolute maximum limit.

This is a uniquely terrible idea. What are all these people going to do in these areas? If you offer enough government subsidies people can live anywhere, but it would be hugely expensive and pretty pointless without some economic backbone that provides impetus for them existing in the first place.
 
This is a uniquely terrible idea. What are all these people going to do in these areas? If you offer enough government subsidies people can live anywhere, but it would be hugely expensive and pretty pointless without some economic backbone that provides impetus for them existing in the first place.

Mining, oil drilling and refining, hydro-power sites, that sort of stuff. It was often pointed out at the time that the long-term success of the whole scheme would depend on the new communities being able to diversify before the raison d'être was depleted.
 
Mining, oil drilling and refining, hydro-power sites, that sort of stuff. It was often pointed out at the time that the long-term success of the whole scheme would depend on the new communities being able to diversify before the raison d'être was depleted.

I could see a half dozen serious communities developed, but any more than that probably just sees them fail and result in ghost town boondoggles. This was around the time companies were beginning to experiment with fly in/out instead of mining towns too, if there was a serious effort to settlement in the late 19th or early 20th century maybe, but by the 60s it's probably too late.
 
my guess is by say 2100 Canada could have up to 100million if climate change is not a major issue. If it does in the end the entire population of the Americas?
 
Most likely is a more decisive War of 1812 in favour of the British, with Britain (Canada) taking some northern US territory "back". Perhaps parts of Maine, NH, Vermont, NY and Michigan, or perhaps even a drive down towards the Ohio valley. This would drastically change the way the US, and therefore Britain/Canada expanded west, with the likely agreed border somewhere further south than OTL. In this scenario it's feasible that Canada gets northern US states like Wisconsin, Iowa etc as well as more of the Oregan territory. That alone would probably double the population or more.
 
Most likely is a more decisive War of 1812 in favour of the British, with Britain (Canada) taking some northern US territory "back". Perhaps parts of Maine, NH, Vermont, NY and Michigan, or perhaps even a drive down towards the Ohio valley. This would drastically change the way the US, and therefore Britain/Canada expanded west, with the likely agreed border somewhere further south than OTL. In this scenario it's feasible that Canada gets northern US states like Wisconsin, Iowa etc as well as more of the Oregan territory. That alone would probably double the population or more.

Thinking of the butterflies of this. With much of the northern 13 Colonies returned to the British fold, either as an annexation into BNA or as an early dominion-type holding, then the influence of the slave states in the rump United States will be even greater. They would likely direct US expansion southwards where plantation farming is best suited, leaving the north for the British. Slavery sticking around for longer would also mean a longer Underground Railroad, another vector for Canadian population growth.
 
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