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What Inter-Provincial Migration Trends Can Tell Us About Good Governance

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It turns out we move a great deal less than our American neighbors

Government policies have consequences. Among them is the possibility that they might so annoy the locals that people actually get up and head for the exit. Given how parting can be such sweet sorrow (and how it’s a pain to lose out on all that revenue from provincial income, property, and sales tax), legislatures generally prefer to keep their citizens on this side of the door.

Nevertheless, migration happens. And when enough people do it at the same time, they sometimes leave economic and social clues behind waiting to be discovered. This graph represents net migrations since 1971 into and out of the four largest provinces:

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It may just be possible to make out some broad patterns here. Quebec has never had a net inbound migration year (although there’s been plenty of immigration to Quebec from outside of Canada). But nothing matches the mass exodus of anglophones due to concerns over language and separation in the 1970s.

Curiously it seems that Alberta and British Columbia received far more migrants than Ontario around that time – although the actual numbers tell us that they were more likely to have come from Saskatchewan and Ontario than Quebec. By contrast, most disillusioned Quebecers found their way to Ontario. Besides the 70s, Alberta also enjoyed inbound spikes in the mid-90s, mid-00s, and early 10s. And it looks like they’re in the middle of another boom cycle as we speak.

The real value of all this data however, is in using it to test causation hypotheses. In other words, can statistical analysis tell us what it was that caused the migrations? And are some or all of those causes the result of government policy choices? Here are some possibilities we’ll explore:

  • Household income trends
  • Government debt
  • Crime rates
  • Healthcare costs
  • Housing costs

Right off the top I’ll come clean with you: there’ll be no smoking gun here. I could find no single historical measure that came close to explaining migration patterns. However I was able to confidently discard some theories. That’s a win I guess. And other numbers did hint to intriguing possibilities.

Inter-provincial variations in household income, crime rates (specifically murder rates), healthcare costs (including prescriptions, eye care, and dental care), and even housing affordability had no measurable impact on migration. This was true for both correlation coefficients and lag analysis (where we looked at migration changes in the years following an economic event).

Rising unemployment had, at best, a minimal impact on outbound migration. And even then, it was only noticeable for Alberta and Prince Edward Island.

Of all the metrics I explored, the only one that might have had a serious influence in migration was provincial government budget deficits.

Folks from Alberta, New Brunswick, and Newfoundland all responded to growing government debt by clearing out. Now, I doubt this was their way to telling the government what they really thought about bad fiscal management. Rather, people probably decided to move to greener pastures in response to the ripple-effect consequences of deficits, like higher taxes, reduced social services, and deteriorating infrastructure.


I suspect that part of the reason I wasn’t able to find any strong connections between those metrics and migration patterns is because there really isn’t all that much migration going on in the first place.

Take Ontario’s record net population loss of 31,018 residents back in 2021. That may sound like a lot of people, but it’s actually just a hair over two-tenths of one percent of the total Ontario population. And even Quebec’s epic 1979 loss of 46,429 people was still nowhere near one percent. It was 0.7117456, to be precise. Those aren’t significant numbers.

When so few people choose to move, it’s probably because there’s nothing on the macro level going on that’s pushing them. Those who do go, probably do it primarily for personal reasons that just won’t show up in population-scale data.

There’s also the very real possibility that Canadians are smart enough to realize that things probably won’t be any better over there than they already are right here. Fewer than two-thirds of one percent of Ontarians left for other provinces in 2023, while only around one-third of a percent gave up on Quebec.

By contrast, annual state-to-state migration figures in the U.S. typically range between 1 percent to 5 percent of each state’s population. In 2022, that added up to 8.2 million people, according to the Census Bureau.

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EU Tightens Social Media Censorship Screw With Upcoming Mandatory “Disinformation” Rules

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From Reclaim The Net

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This refers not only to spreading “fact-checking” across the EU member-countries but also to making VLOPs finance these groups. This, is despite the fact many of the most prominent “fact-checkers” have been consistently accused of fostering censorship instead of checking content for accuracy in an unbiased manner.

What started out as the EU’s “voluntary code of practice” concerning “disinformation” – affecting tech/social media companies – is now set to turn into a mandatory code of conduct for the most influential and widely-used ones.

The news was revealed by the Irish media regulator, specifically an official of its digital services, Paul Gordon, who spoke to journalists in Brussels. The EU Commission has yet to confirm that January will be the date when the current code will be “formalized” in this way.

The legislation that would enable the “transition” is the controversial Digital Services Act (DSA), which critics often refer to as the “EU online censorship law,” the enforcement of which started in February of this year.

The “voluntary” code is at this time signed by 44 tech companies, and should it become mandatory in January 2025, it will apply to those the EU defines as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) (with at least 45 million monthly active users in the 27-nation bloc).

Currently, the number of such platforms is said to be 25.

In its present form, the DSA’s provisions obligate online platforms to carry out “disinformation”-related risk assessments and reveal what measures they are taking to mitigate any risks revealed by these assessments.

But when the code switches from “voluntary” to mandatory, these obligations will also include other requirements: demonetizing the dissemination of “disinformation”; platforms, civil society groups, and fact-checkers “effectively cooperating” during elections, once again to address “disinformation” – and, “empowering” fact-checkers.

This refers not only to spreading “fact-checking” across the EU member-countries but also to making VLOPs finance these groups. This, is despite the fact many of the most prominent “fact-checkers” have been consistently accused of fostering censorship instead of checking content for accuracy in an unbiased manner.

The code was first introduced (in its “voluntary” form) in 2022, with Google, Meta, and TikTok among the prominent signatories – while these rules originate from a “strengthened” EU Code of Practice on Disinformation based on the Commission’s Guidance issued in May 2021.

“It is for the signatories to decide which commitments they sign up to and it is their responsibility to ensure the effectiveness of their commitments’ implementation,” the EU said at the time – that would have been the “voluntary” element, while the Commission said the time it had not “endorsed” the code.

It appears the EC is now about to “endorse” the code, and then some – there are active preparations to make it mandatory.

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Alberta

Lesson for Ottawa—don’t bite the hand that feeds you

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From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill

The Alberta government has launched a campaign to inform Canadians about the negative impacts of the federal government’s cap on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the oil and gas sector, which exempts the other three-quarters of the economy that emit including transportation, buildings and heavy industry.

According to Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, the cap will “kill jobs” and lead to “economic and societal decline” for all Canadians—and she’s right. Any policy that damages Alberta’s economy comes with consequences for all of Canada.

Of course, this isn’t the first Trudeau policy to damage the sector. The list includes Bill C-69 (which imposes complex, uncertain and onerous review requirements on major energy projects), Bill C-48, (which bans large oil tankers off British Columbia’s northern coast and limits access to Asian markets), “clean fuel standard” regulations, numerous “net-zero” targets, and so on.

Again, while these policies disproportionately impact Albertans, they have consequences for all Canadians from coast to coast because of Alberta’s role in the federation. In our current system, Ottawa collects various taxes from Canadians across the country and then redistributes the money for programs including equalization and employment insurance.

For perspective, from 2007 to 2022 (the latest period of available data), Albertans contributed $244.6 billion more in taxes and other payments to the federal government than they received in federal spending—more than five times as much as British Columbians or Ontarians. The remaining seven provinces received more federal spending than they contributed to federal revenues. In other words, Albertans are by far the largest net contributor to Ottawa’s coffers.

Albertans’ large net contribution reflects the province’s comparatively young population (fewer retirees), higher rates of employment, higher average incomes and relatively strong economy.

Alberta’s relative economic strength isn’t new. From 1981 to 2022, the province had the highest annual average economic growth rate in Canada. In 2022, Alberta accounted for 17.9 per cent of Canada’s total economic growth despite being home to just 11.6 per cent of the country’s population. That same year, Alberta contributed nearly one in every five private-sector jobs created in Canada. In fact, Alberta was one of only two provinces (alongside Nova Scotia) where private-sector employment growth (including self-employment) exceeded government-sector employment growth over the last five years (2019 to 2023).

Alberta’s prosperity, which helps finance other provinces, may help explain why 56,245 more Canadian residents moved to Alberta than left it in 2022—a much higher net inflow than in any other province. For decades, Alberta has provided economic opportunities for Canadians from other provinces willing to relocate.

Albertans continue to contribute more to the federation than Canadians in other provinces due to Alberta’s relatively strong and prosperous economy. And Canadians benefit from the economic opportunities Alberta provides. With this in mind, the Trudeau government should stop imposing economically damaging policies on the province—as it costs not just Albertans but all Canadians.

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