Canada’s population surpassed 40 million last year, recording its highest growth rate since 1957. The vast majority of this growth — 97.6% — was from international migration, both permanent (almost 500,000 people) and temporary (just more than 800,000). As a cosmopolitan and classical liberal, I applaud this kind of openness. Yet it also worries me.

It’s not just Canada — Ireland, New Zealand and the UK are seeing historically high levels of immigration as well. How long will citizens of these countries continue to accept this trend? Who exactly benefits, and how? Why hasn’t the backlash been stronger?

After all, immigrants do not bring an immediate economic boom. When New Zealand closed its borders during COVID, for example, output did not fall, and the post-pandemic resumption of immigration did not cause a noticeable boost. In the UK, meanwhile, economic stagnation has accompanied a wave of immigration. Whatever the benefits of the migrant arrivals may be, they lie in the more distant future, which does not help its political popularity now.

And yet, for all the cultural and economic adjustments immigration may require, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that, for many countries, high rates of immigration are simply flat-out necessary.

In Canada, for instance, the current fertility rate is about 1.33 children per woman, the lowest on record, and it probably would have been lower yet without recent immigrant arrivals. Canada’s geography also argues for more immigration. It is likely to have much more usable territory, due to global warming, so a much larger population is feasible. If Canada wants to maintain a reasonable balance of power with the U.S., and have the resources to develop and protect its Arctic and Arctic-adjacent areas, it needs a commensurately large population and economy.

Toronto has become one of the most interesting cities in North America, and immigrants deserve much of the credit for that, as well as for the growth of Vancouver. Canada is now also a premier spot for international dining. My point is not to make travel recommendations (though the restaurants in the town of Scarborough remain a particular favorite), but to show how Canada is connected to many global trends that will help keep it vital.

In general, Canada — like Ireland, where the fertility rate is about 1.77, higher than in Canada but still below replacement — faces a choice: Either take in migrants or depopulate. Perhaps one reason voters are tolerating such high migration rates is an intuitive fear of living in an empty, stagnant country. Voters tend to want their country to be able to project influence and defend its interests.

Economic debates about immigration typically focus on the wage effects on domestic workers, and there the impact of immigration is often neutral or marginal. But the more important effects of immigration may be more impressionistic: how it affects people’s views of their own country and what it’s like to live there, as well as its global reputation.

In this sense, Canada is ahead of much of the rest of the world in seeing the importance of these factors and turning it into actionable policy. It is willing to give up some of its present cultural identity to achieve a brighter cultural and political future.

This trade-off is much better than it looks at first. For one thing, birth rates for native-born citizens may fall further than they have already. If a country wants to preserve its national culture, it may be better off allowing more migration now, when there is still a critical mass of native-born citizens to ease assimilation.

To put the point more generally: Whatever costs there might be to immigration, successful nations will have to deal with them sooner or later. And the sooner they do, the better off they will be. The choice is not so much between more immigration and less immigration, but rather a lot of immigration now or a lot later. This choice will become all the more pressing as the need to fund national retirement programs requires more tax-paying citizens.

One of the most common criticisms of immigrants is that they push up real estate prices. Yet there is a home-grown explanation: Stringent regulations on building make it difficult for the supply of housing to respond when demand increases.

In fact, there is a way immigration can help address this problem. First, immigrants may themselves induce their adopted country to free up its real estate markets. So immigration might increase real estate costs in the short run, but help reduce them in the longer run. Second, immigrants can help lower-tier cities move to the fore. The suburbs of Toronto, for example, have seen much of their growth driven by Asian in-migration, and longer term that will give Canadians more residential (and commercial) options.

These points aside, note that higher real estate prices, to the extent they result from immigrant demands, largely translate into capital gains for homeowners — most of whom are native-born. To be sure, the higher home prices may be bad for many younger Canadians, who may be locked out of housing markets, but eventually many of them will inherit high-valued homes from their parents.

My argument is not that there aren’t short-run transition costs to high levels of immigration — especially in housing, where Canada is seeing some now. In the long term, however, more immigration is better for a country than less. To me, the question is not so much why Canada and similar countries are allowing so much immigration. It is how long voters in these countries will allow this experiment to continue.

Tyler Cowen is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist, a professor of economics at George Mason University and host of the Marginal Revolution blog.

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The Timberwolves may have a matchup problem.

It was easy to dismiss a mid-November drubbing in Phoenix as the result of circumstance. That tip time was 23 hours after Minnesota downed Golden State in a game better known for the fight that took place two minutes into the contest.

Phoenix looked ready for the game, and Minnesota did not. Schedule loss is the term so flippantly thrown around the Association.

Surely, in other scenarios, Minnesota would have no problem dispatching a Phoenix team that simply hasn’t clicked all season.

Or maybe not.

Five months later, the result was the same. The Suns jumped all over Minnesota early and often Friday in Phoenix, handing the Wolves a 97-87 defeat.

The loss pushed Minnesota back into a tie with Denver in the race for the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference. And while Minnesota still owns the tiebreaker, the lack of breathing room in the standings looms large with the Wolves and Nuggets set to square off Wednesday in Denver.

This game — and all the ones down the stretch — matter. The same is true for Phoenix, who’s scratching and clawing to secure a to-six seed and, thus, avoid the dreaded play-in tournament. So the stakes were high Friday. Neither team played the night prior.

The playing field was relatively level. Minnesota has won nine of its past 11 games and had seemingly found a nice groove, even sans the injured Karl-Anthony Towns.

But Phoenix scored the first 15 points Friday, and never really looked back. The Wolves never even pulled within single digits after that.

The Wolves turned the ball over a bevy of times, which led to a number of Suns’ buckets. Minnesota didn’t play poor defensively, but was seemingly flummoxed on the offensive end all night. Anthony Edwards again struggled from the field and, this time, there was no one else stepping up to pick up the slack.

The entire starting lineup had issues knocking down shots. Conversely, every Phoenix starter scored in double figures. Even on a night where Devin Booker struggled from the field, he had a double-double, serving as an offensive maestro with double-digit assists.

Phoenix center Jusuf Nurkic notched a double-double early in the fourth frame and was a disruptor on defense.

Again, Minnesota had no answer for the Suns. The two teams will meet again in the regular season finale. There’s no telling if either team will have something at stake at that point. At this point, the Wolves should hope not, as they’re also probably hoping to not square off with Phoenix in Round 1 of the playoffs.

RHINELANDER, Wis. — A cascading series of environmental factors pushed by climate change are causing a decline in northern Wisconsin’s loon population and may be limiting loon numbers in Minnesota as well.

Loon researcher Walter Piper holds an adult loon that’s part of a long-term study of what’s causing a decline in loons in northern Wisconsin, especially loon chicks. New data shows the problem appears spurred by reduced water clarity from increasingly frequent heavy rains. (Courtesy of Allison Piper)

That’s the finding of research published in the recent edition of the journal Ecology and conducted on lakes in northeastern Wisconsin. Researchers already knew there has been a 22% decline in loon numbers over the past 27 years in the study area, and now they say the problem is driven by declining water clarity.

That declining water clarity is caused by more runoff and erosion on land, a rush of dissolved organic matter into the lakes, caused by much heavier summer rain events fueled by climate change, said Walter Piper, lead researcher on the long-term project and a professor of biology at Chapman University in California.

Adult loons are finding it harder to find fish to feed their chicks, the study concludes, and the population of young non-breeding loons, which scientists call “floaters,” is down 46% since the study began. Meanwhile, chick weight has declined by 11%, a sign they aren’t getting enough to eat.

“Loss of mass by chicks — which shows up as emaciated chicks that often fail to fledge — appears to be a major driver of the well-documented decline in survival rates of young loons in Wisconsin recently and overall population decline in the region,” researchers concluded. While other studies have shown that loons prefer clear water, this is believed to be the first study to directly link declining water quality and declining loons.

July water clarity decreased by nearly 0.6 meters in the lakes studied from 1995 to 2021. July is the critical month for newly hatched loon chicks to survive toward adulthood, Piper said.

Piper has been studying loons in the project area, around Rhinelander, for 31 years and previously documented declining loon numbers there, especially fewer chicks surviving to make the flight south their first fall. Those findings were published in a 2020 edition of the Condor, the journal of the American Ornithological Society.

But it’s only been in recent years that Piper confirmed the disturbing trend of reduced water quality in July. Loons, which depend on their sight to find and catch fish for food, often pick the clearest lakes to nest on because they can see their prey underwater. Other researchers in the project from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York used decades of satellite imagery to help track water clarity in the loon lakes studied.

“The hidden nature of the Wisconsin decline points out that floater populations can mask major drops in breeding populations and throws into question population trends in other loon populations, whose floater populations are largely unknown,” researchers wrote.

Piper began expanding his study to include north-central Minnesota lakes in 2021. There are now about 250 Minnesota loons banded and part of the study along with 400 in Wisconsin.

A Common Loon chick hitches a ride on its mother’s back while her mate looks for food on Maranacook Lake, in Winthrop, Maine, Tuesday, July 20, 2021.A cascading series of environmental factors pushed by climate change are causing a decline in northern Wisconsin’s loon population and may be limiting loon numbers in Minnesota as well. That’s the finding of research published in the recent edition of the journal Ecology and conducted on lakes in northeastern Wisconsin.. (AP Photo/Chris O’Meara, File)

“I have been color-marking and studying the behavior and ecology of common loons in northern Wisconsin since 1993. Four years ago, I sensed a decline was afoot in my Wisconsin study population, and this fear was confirmed when I looked at my data,” Piper noted. ”This decline was part of what inspired me to establish a second marked study population of loons in Crow Wing County, Minnesota. We now have about two-thirds of the adult breeders banded in the new Minnesota study area, which includes part of Cass County as well.”

“I’m worried we’re going to see the same problem in Minnesota, but we don’t have enough data yet,” he added, noting state researchers already have seen some decline in loon chicks in Minnesota.

While Piper said other issues are problems for loons — eagles, nest predators like raccoons and lead poisoning — but none have the widespread impact of water clarity declines. He said controlling shoreline runoff along lakes might help curb the issue, as could reducing fertilizers that may be spurring algal blooms and adding to the water clarity problem.

“This is all grim news, I know. But I think we need to get the word out about it,’’ Piper said. “If we narrow down the cause of the loon decline even more, we might take steps to fix the problem. Although, admittedly, we will not fix climate change overnight.”

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Ruby Hunt. (Courtesy of Jane Hunt)

The afternoon tea on Saturday at the Episcopal Homes common room on University Avenue will feature a special guest. Ruby Hunt, who served on the St. Paul City Council for a decade before a dozen years as a Ramsey County Commissioner in the 1980s and ’90s, is celebrating her 100th birthday.

Hunt, a former president of the League of Women Voters and the St. Paul Charter Commission during a transformative time for St. Paul politics, will be surrounded by her three daughters, a grandson and granddaughter, and her 12-year-old great-grandchild Oliver, as well as other fans she’s acquired over the past century.

When Hunt joined the St. Paul City Council in 1972, she was the third woman to join that body since the city’s incorporation in 1854. Elizabeth DeCourcy was elected to the council in 1956, and Rosalie Butler in 1970. Hunt served as a council member through 1982, including two years as council president, before being elected to serve the county board from 1983 to 1995.

In 2014, Hamline University created the Ruby Hunt Endowed Scholarship for Public Administration. U.S. Rep. Betty McCollum entered her achievements into the official Congressional Record on Nov. 12 of that year. Her political interests and activities have never stopped. She assists fellow residents at the Episcopal Homes apartments casting absentee ballots in every election, and joins fellow protesters outside her building, walker in hand, for street demonstrations against gun violence, among other causes.

Beginnings

Her beginnings were humble. Hunt, the only child of a seamstress and railroad blacksmith, grew up at 883 Tuscarora Ave. W. off West Seventh Street, and attended Monroe High School, where she was valedictorian. Her late husband, Richard Hunt, founded Hunt Electric while Hunt was a stay-at-home mom, occupying her free time with service to the League of Women Voters, the Girl Scouts and other organizations.

Prior to the early 1970s, city council members ran city departments themselves, so each elected official also doubled as an administrator, hiring and firing city employees while doling out services. The system leant itself to some self-serving chicanery, propping up “the classic neighborhood bigwig,” said her daughter Jane Hunt. “You had your personal favorites in your neighborhood, your family.”

Organizations such as the League of Women Voters and the city’s Charter Commission swooped in as reformers. At separate times, Hunt ran both.

Political work

Of all her political activities, Hunt is perhaps most associated with overseeing the process that created St. Paul’s home rule charter, which was approved by voters in 1970 and took effect in 1972. The city charter defines the powers and responsibilities of the mayor and city council, laying out the foundation for the “strong mayor” system in which the administration hires department leaders and the council approves the city budget.

“She ran for office as soon as it was adopted,” Jane Hunt said.

“It was a huge deal,” said former City Council President Kathy Lantry. “She’s very ‘here’s the role of the council, here’s the role of the mayor, and if everyone stuck to their lane, everything would run smoothly. She was very process oriented. That’s why she did so well with the charter. She was, ‘What should the process look like?’”

Lantry, who was first elected to the council in 1998, never overlapped with Hunt at City Hall, but her parents did.

“I remember her from my childhood,” said Lantry, whose mother was a city council legislative aide before becoming state senator, and whose father was a legislative aide before becoming a labor leader. “Everyone knew who Ruby was.”

Zeal and dedication

Hunt’s attention to process and detail sometimes clashed with the changing times. In 2004, when bronze statues of “Peanuts” characters Peppermint Patty and Marcie landed in Rice Park, Hunt joined a group of opponents who called on the city council to relocate them, arguing they clashed with the statue of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Her campaign gained national attention, unsuccessful as it was.

Though she can laugh about it now, Jane Hunt recalled the “Peanuts” flap as mortifying at the time for family members, who saw her made momentarily famous by a comedy show. “She was interviewed by ‘The Daily Show’ … but they treated her well,” she said.

Her political zeal and dedication to St. Paul has served Hunt well at Episcopal Homes, said her daughter. “She’s still in independent living,” Jane Hunt said. “We’ve been talking to the Ramsey County Historical Society about keeping some of her documents.”

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