This article is taken from the special issue of Le Figaro “D’Est en Ouest – Vivre au Canada”, available on the Figaro Store.
Its exact area is 8,965,588.85 km2 and its density 3.9 inhabitants per km2 (in comparison, that of France is 105.9). French and English are the two official languages of the country. Its space is divided into ten provinces, three territories and six time zones (there is a six-hour difference between Paris and Montreal and nine hours with Vancouver). Quebec is the largest of the Canadian provinces and its area is equivalent to almost three times the Hexagon. It is the only one with French as the only official language (New Brunswick is the only officially bilingual province in the country).
Canada is also one of the most resource-rich nations in the world. It is the 4th oil producing country, the 2nd producer of softwood lumber and the 1st producer of potash. About 80,000 species (mammals, birds, fish, plants, amphibians, reptiles and insects) are listed there. The most emblematic – the caribou, the polar bear, the beaver and the loon – appear on the coins. The country with the maple leaf has about 24% of the boreal forests and 25% of the temperate forests of the world. There are 2 million lakes and the third largest area of glaciers in the world.
First established in the 16th century by the kings of France, monarchical institutions were maintained when the Confederation was created in 1867.
Today, the King of Canada and head of the Canadian state is King Charles III. He is the embodiment of the Crown in Canada. In the system of government, the Crown holds the power to govern, but vests it in the government (and its leader, the Prime Minister) who assumes it in the name and for the good of the people.
The king is also represented, on the territory, by the “general governor”. This position has been held since July 2021 by Mary Simon: this well-known defender of Inuit rights and culture has thus become the first Indigenous person to assume this position. The country has three levels of government: the federal, which manages issues of national and international interest such as public security, the army, currency or criminal law; the provincial (responsible in particular for education, health and social programs) and the municipal (the latter is responsible for local issues such as waste collection or public transport).
This is the highest proportion among the G7 countries. If, historically, the majority of immigrants came from Europe, Asia has become, in recent years, the main region of birth for newcomers (for example, nearly one in five recent immigrants was born in India). In the context of an aging population (baby boomers represented 24.9% of Canadians in 2021), the country with the maple leaf is openly counting on this external demographic contribution to “mitigate the repercussions of labor shortages across a number of sectors and regions (as of Q3 2022, there were nearly one million jobs to be filled across the country in areas as diverse as health, education, hotels and restaurants or even construction).
Canada has thus planned to welcome 465,000 new permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024 and 500,000 in 2025. By 2036, immigrants will represent up to 30% of the Canadian population (in 2011, the ratio was 20.7%). In Quebec (the Belle Province is responsible for the selection of its immigrants and the federal government for their admission), between 32,000 and 33,900 people should be received, in 2023, under economic immigration. *Data from the 2021 census.
The country with the maple leaf has a longstanding commitment to gender equality, a principle based on the Canadian Human Rights Act (adopted in 1977) and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms ( entered into force in 1982). Over the years, several texts have addressed this issue, including the Employment Equity Act (1995) and the Pay Equity Act (2018). In March 2019, to “encourage a more equitable distribution of childcare responsibilities in households”, Canada also created a “parental sharing benefit”. The principle ? Offer enhanced parental leave (up to 40 weeks) if shared between the two members of the couple. The country is also one of the most advanced in the world in terms of the rights of LGBT people. As early as 2005, Canada recognized same-sex marriage and medically assisted procreation has been open to everyone since 2004.
Since 2019, people “who do not consider themselves exclusively as a woman or a man” can have an “X” printed on their identity documents (passport, citizenship certificate or permanent resident card). On the end-of-life side, the Parliament of Canada passed a federal law in 2016 that makes it possible to request “medical assistance in dying” (MAID). Very supervised, the process is reserved for adults with “a serious and irremediable health problem”. According to the latest available data, 31,664 people have benefited from MA since it came into force.
In Canada, there are three categories of Indigenous peoples – First Nations, Métis and Inuit – whose population is growing steadily (9.4% between 2016 and 2021). More than 70 distinct indigenous languages are spoken in the country, divided into a dozen language families (the largest and most widespread being Algonquian). If, for the first settlers, the Aboriginal peoples initially constituted major military and economic allies, the balance of power changed in the 19th century. With the decline of the fur trade and after the last colonial war in America, the First Peoples became useless in the eyes of Europeans. In a context of rapid colonization where land is coveted, they are even considered an obstacle to development. They will then gradually lose their territorial rights and be confined to more restricted spaces, the reserves. In 1876, the federal Parliament passed the Indian Act, which gave the government broad powers of control over the reserves and the daily lives of its inhabitants.
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This guardianship policy reached its apogee with the boarding school system: in order to “civilize” indigenous children, the State and several churches set up a network of schools where young people, torn from their families, had to give up their language. and their traditional way of life. Between 1880 and 1996, more than 150,000 children attended these boarding schools. An estimated 6,000 died there from disease, abuse and malnutrition. This state scandal was recognized in 2015 as a “cultural genocide”. In January 2023, the government announced an agreement with 325 indigenous communities to compensate them up to 2.8 billion Canadian dollars (1.9 billion euros) for the damage suffered. *Data from the 2021 census.