wild goose chase
Active Member
Regarding the world's brightest workers, many still choose the US, as it has bigger and more influential and established industries, whether it be business or things like entertainment, fashion, IT etc. But I think in the years to come, Canada will be no slouch as we have proportionally a high percentage of new immigrants relative to our population relative to the US and would likely continue to do so, so perhaps we can produce more homegrown industries as our population not only rises but gets more cosmopolitan (perhaps this will also boost our image internationally).
I do wonder about whether or not the trend towards urbanization will be different in the two countries. Both countries seem to have their millennial generation more likely to move to cities after a long trend of suburbanization, but Canada has some advantages, or at the very least head start, with lack of inner city decline in this regard. Perhaps it remains to be seen if the trajectories between the two countries' cities converge or not. The thing with cities though is that growth probably is concentrated in a few big ones for Canada (and spread out more in the US) and it remains to be seen if there will be spillover to growth to places that haven't seen as much of it in the near future (eg. small towns, regions like the Maritimes etc.)
In terms of multiculturalism, one thing that could be different for us is the sheer percentage of immigrants is larger for us and perhaps would continue to be. The US is also going to have a lot of immigration too but I think that the cultural changes with diversity have been greater for us because we got diverse more quickly within a short amount of time (eg. we were far less diverse than the US in, say the 1960s, but caught up rapidly). The US might continue to have most of its minorities' cultures represented by those with long-standing roots (eg. African American, and some Latino communities), while our minorities' cultures may be newer and perhaps make for some interesting possibilities in developing homegrown multiculturalism (eg. most of our African, Asian and Latin America communities) that may grow to eventually be distinctively Canadian the way African American, Italian American, Chicano culture etc. has done stateside.
One thing that I wonder about is if the fact that more of our citizens have had immigration histories within living memory (not just many being first- or second-generation Canadians but also have friends/co-workers/spouses who will be familiar with them and their cultures), while the US (even if it receives in absolute amount much larger immigrant waves, still has most people farther removed from the experiences of a recent immigrant, and additionally has often in public image conflated new immigrants in general with illegal immigrants) even might make us a bit more open-minded about newcomers, as we see with the Syrian refugees. It should be much harder for a Trump-like figure or someone trying xenophobic campaigns to win elections and influence politics in Canada because immigrants will perhaps punish them at the polls, while to our neighbour down south, you can still win with a voter base that is not just so-called "old stock" but less urban etc. because of the electoral college and other factors that disfavor cities with diversity having as much say.
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