# Why do Canada and Australia have so few people? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 25, 2016, 4:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071 "2016-02-25T04:34:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Drunky\_Smurf](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drunky_smurf/32/449_2.png) [@Drunky\_Smurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Drunky_Smurf)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/41 "2016-02-25T18:11:51Z")
For Australia it’s because of the dingos. The dingos keep eating the babies. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/42 "2016-02-25T18:14:06Z")
> [@ftg](#): > > This makes a huge difference in settlement. Most of Australia has “old soil” with a lot of the nutrients weathered out. The US has very large areas of fairly new soil that is reasonably to very fertile. Combine that with many of these areas being near rivers that can be dammed to provide water and you have a huge amount of farmland available. Thats another thing I don’t understand. The US has so much fertile soil (as I understand it) because of the effects of glaciation and volcanic activity. But Australia is as far south as the Ice Age-glaciated bits of the US are north, and has plenty of volcanic activity of its own. So why is its soil so crappy? ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/43 "2016-02-25T18:14:38Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Canada strongly encouraged immigration from Europe once the CPR was built. Settlement on the Prairies exploded from 1890 to 1914. It gets back to my earlier comment, and **Malthus** ’s similar comment: the route for expansion to western Canada was through the Shield, north of the Great Lakes. To do that, you needed a railway. You can’t have a pattern of generational leap-frogging settlements. > > Immigration to the west was a key part of Macdonald’s National Policy: high tariffs to foster Canadian industry; a transcontinental railway to hold the new country together; and loads of settlement out west to firmly keep it in Canadian control and out of the hands of the grasping Yankees. 😉 Although to nitpick a bit, the US pattern of expansion into the far west definitely _wasn’t_ gradual leapfrog expansion. Settlement into the US expanded gradually until it hit the Mississippi River, but after that it jumped all the way to the west coast, skipping the more arid Plains and Rocky Mountain States. That was eventually facilitated by railroads, but there were 20 years of major wagon-drawn transcontinental settlement. I’d argue the main reason why that didn’t happen in Canada is that you guys kinda got the short end of the stick in the 1840’s oregon border dispute and ended up with your utterly useless west coast (see earlier post.) The US west coast got settled very quickly because it’s good land; the Plains and Rocky Mountain states only got settled when all the good west coast land was taken, which happened around the turn of the 20th century, on a similar timeline to when the equivalent Canadian regions were settled. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/44 "2016-02-25T18:45:49Z")
> [@Barbarian](#): > > Canada has winter. > There are vast portions of the United States where people do not understand that going outside without the right clothing can leave you dead. > > To go through a year in Canada you need to devote a lot more resources to basic necessities such as not freezing to death. > > You also need to realize that as a northern country, a big chunk of that land you see on a map stays cold even in summer, and the ground is permanently locked in ice (permafrost). > > The tradeoff is that Canada has water. Lots and lots of fresh water. I remember watching the firt Superman move - here’s Chris Reeves as Clark Kent, having lost his super powers, walking down the Alaska highway in a windbreaker and no hat, in a snowstorm. I lived in northern Canada that year. Several people in a nearby town went joyriding in a jeep and had a flat tire. One walked 10 miles at -35C wearing running shoes and a thin jacket thanks to dead still air. He was not coherent when they found him still walking, he lost a few toes. The other froze to death trying to climb a small hill at the edge of town, the others froze to death on site despite trying to burn the jeep’s flat tire to keep warm. Hollywood does not really understand cold. The problem is aggravated with Ontario and Quebec, as the Hudson’s Bay effect on climate is to bring the cold Arctic air further south than in the Prairies. > [@Malthus](#): > > I think the Canadian Shield is probably a bigger problem for building up population density in what is now Ontario and Quebec than mere cold (though cold is a factor). > > The problem is that it affects areas far to the south of permafrost-land. > > Southern Ontario and Quebec has high population densities - as high as the US. What prevents it spreading northwards in the same way as the south is not mere cold, but geography. > > The shield is bad for populations, not only because of lack of soil for agriculture, but also because it is just incredibly rugged and intractable. Want to build a road? You are faced with multiple lumps of bedrock to be blasted through, interspersed with multiple swamps to be filled in - for _hundreds of miles_. > > The shield contains pockets of good soil covering bedrock, and where they exist, you find lots of people living. You see almost the same situation in the Appalachians as with the Laurentians in Quebec - you have a massively inhabited coastal plain, then you get up into the rugged hills/mountains, and almost nobody lives there. The difference in climate aggravates the problem in Canada; plus, north you have pine trees rather than deciduous - never underestimate the soil-creating potential of annual leaf fall. > [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > Canada strongly encouraged immigration from Europe once the CPR was built. Settlement on the Prairies exploded from 1890 to 1914. It gets back to my earlier comment, and **Malthus** ’s similar comment: the route for expansion to western Canada was through the Shield, north of the Great Lakes. To do that, you needed a railway. You can’t have a pattern of generational leap-frogging settlements. > > Immigration to the west was a key part of Macdonald’s National Policy: high tariffs to foster Canadian industry; a transcontinental railway to hold the new country together; and loads of settlement out west to firmly keep it in Canadian control and out of the hands of the grasping Yankees. 😉 In fact, for the first Riel Rebellion, the Canadian government had to make a deal with the USA to send their troops via Minneapolis and up the Red River, since north of Superior was effectively impassable before the railroad was built. British troops had to dress in civilian clothes and could not carry weapons until they reached the border of Manitoba. ---
**Author:** ![missred](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/missred/32/14096_2.png) [@missred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/missred)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/45 "2016-02-25T18:50:45Z")
> [@Aspidistra](#): > > I can’t help thinking that any talk of the _agricultural_ carrying capacity of Australia is a bit of a furphy. Australia right now is a net food exporter. The figure that’s bandied around, eg [here](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-31/australia-not-the-food-bowl-of-asia/5680282) is that we can feed about 60 million people on our current agricultural output - though obviously there are questions about long-term sustainability. I really doubt that “because we couldn’t feed them” is any sort of answer to “why don’t we have more people” > > I suspect the answer is a combination of “because this is the population the growth rates _we chose_ have lead to” and “just wait another forty years and see”. The actual nation of Australia has only existed a hundred and fifteen years, and we’ve been growing at a pretty fast clip for all that time, and are still doing so (faster than the US) > > If you stop where you are, and let us keep going, on current growth rates we’ll catch you in (_quick calculation_) a couple of hundred years. Not that I think it would necessarily be a good idea to have 300 million people in the country. About a third of that would not be entirely insane though If the area and habitable land are one and the same, the agricultural output would go down as the population went up. If Australia were to squeeze 33 1/3% more population into the available land, food production would drop to leave it a net importer. ---
**Author:** ![watchwolf49](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/e9c0ed/32.png) [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 7:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/46 "2016-02-25T19:08:21Z")
I’m wondering if part of the answer to the OP’s question lies in the reason why people emigrated from the countries they’re from. It would be kind of pointless for someone to leave the UK and move to Canada or Australia in 1850, if leaving the UK was their plan. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/47 "2016-02-25T19:12:54Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > Many of these answers seem to take it for granted that people think about the potential for population to expand when it’s time to get busy. Which conjures up the image of your lusty Canadian wench saying “Not tonight, honey. I’m ovulating and you know the taiga won’t support enough agriculture for additional population.” > > I know that wild animals will limit their population growth according to the availability of food supplies, but generally human beings seem to breed somewhat indiscriminately, my cite being that the world population has just about tripled in the past 70 years. Even if there was no room for population expansion, it still doesn’t explain why, Toronto, for example, doesn’t have the population density of Hong Kong or Mumbai. This of course does not take into account that people move around, and tend to move (unless laws or customs prohibit) to places that are economically viable. For example, half of Toronto’s population is composed of recent immigrants - not natural increase within Canada. Hong Kong’s population density is easily explained by its history - as an enclave that was and is economically attractive, but very limited by geography and politics. [Native Canadians are a bit of an exception - that proves the rule: they are often pegged by their status to reserves, often located in remote places in Canada, which are for lots of reasons mired in poverty - a big part of that is because economic opportunities are limited where the reserves are located; they are located based on treaty and custom, not for purely economic reasons - there you do have population increase, leading to poverty]. There are simply limited reasons for anyone to move to the boreal shield. There is mining, there is timber, there is tourism; but not much else. Add to that its incredible ruggedness (that you have to have attempted to walk over to believe), its typically harsh climate, and the fact that much of it is either bare rock or marshland, and its lack of population is easily explained. Even if your “lusty Canadians” had ten kids each while living on the shield, nine of them would, on average, likely move south. ---
**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/48 "2016-02-25T19:33:16Z")
> [@Finagle](#): > > Many of these answers seem to take it for granted that people think about the potential for population to expand when it’s time to get busy. Which conjures up the image of your lusty Canadian wench saying “Not tonight, honey. I’m ovulating and you know the taiga won’t support enough agriculture for additional population.” > > I know that wild animals will limit their population growth according to the availability of food supplies, but generally human beings seem to breed somewhat indiscriminately Part of it is a conscious process, and part of it is unconscious. 1. all populations expand based on food availability, be it humans or animals. This naturally leads to: 2. Populations crashing because resources are exhausted. If you can’t get enough food to live either you’re not going to have kids, or large portions of your existing population will die off. The amazing change to human life in the 20th century was the explosion of food production and transportation. Famine is now a very rare event when you can ship food from around the world, but back in the day if you didn’t have enough stockpiled to get through a winter that was 3 weeks longer, you died. ---
**Author:** ![Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e19adc/32.png) [@Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/49 "2016-02-25T19:35:34Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > Want to build a road? You are faced with multiple lumps of bedrock to be blasted through, interspersed with multiple swamps to be filled in - for _hundreds of miles_. You can see this blasting if you travel between Montreal and Toronto. This difficulty is why there is, quite literally, only ONE road that goes coast to coast in Canada. And it was closed for several days this winter because a new bridge was built incorrectly. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/50 "2016-02-25T19:51:15Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > I’ll grant you Phoenix and Vegas, but the land around Houston is well-watered and fertile. And Houston did not start as a mining town. That general area was where the first colony of Texians was located and they were farmers. Yeah, his comment is borderline insane. Houston is flat and fairly fertile; they do a LOT of rice farming to the south and west of the city; where I grew up on the west side of town was a rice farming community originally. It’s not unduly hot, and is not too cold; if not for the really hard freezes every couple of decades, you could easily grow citrus there (my dad has 5 trees of various types that have been there for about 10 years). Truck farming was also a thing near there earlier in the 20th century, and small-scale ranching was also undertaken in some areas. Phoenix was also founded as an agricultural community, since it was where two rivers met, and a canal system was built. Basically the reasons I can think of why Australia and Canada aren’t so big are because in the 19th/early 20th centuries, most immigrants wanted to be farmers/ranchers, and the US has a lot more farm/ranch land than Canada or Australia. You can’t grow much of anything on the arid Outback, nor can you grow it on the Canadian Shield or tundra. ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/51 "2016-02-25T20:05:52Z")
> [@Barbarian](#): > > This difficulty is why there is, quite literally, only ONE road that goes coast to coast in Canada. And it was closed for several days this winter because a new bridge was built incorrectly. And when my daughter **elfbabe** moved from Montreal to Vancouver this November past, she only briefly considered driving the ‘all Canada’ route, as cutting thru the US (MI to WA) saved her miles and days. Along with giving her better roads. And she got me as copilot from WI to BC. Still, if time and weather were not obstacles, I think it’d be fascinating to drive across Canada. ---
**Author:** ![Rysto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ecccb3/32.png) [@Rysto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rysto)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/52 "2016-02-25T20:23:03Z")
> [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](#): > > Still, if time and weather were not obstacles, I think it’d be fascinating to drive across Canada. As a child, my family did a road trip from Ottawa to Victoria, BC and back again. On the way out we went through the US but came back through on the Trans-Canada Highway. I think that the Arrogant Worms summed it up pretty well in “Canada’s Really Big”: > [@](#): > > Our mountains are very pointy > Our prairies are not > The rest is kinda bumpy > But man do we have a lot! ---
**Author:** ![Mk\_VII](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/53 "2016-02-25T20:27:29Z")
The early explorers of the interior of Australia were keen to prove that a vast inland sea (hopefully potable) existed which, if they could find it, would solve the problem of irrigating the interior. They were disappointed. Mining (coal or gold) brought many immigrants initially but many departed again for another gold rush when they failed to strike pay dirt. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/54 "2016-02-25T20:32:53Z")
Plus the fact that literally [every living thing](http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2013/03/australias-dangerous-animals-the-top-30/) in Australia is trying to kill you. They have more deadly snakes than any other country, plus sharks, spiders, drop bears, crocodiles, stonefish, blue-lined octopus, Foster’s “beer”, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 8:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/55 "2016-02-25T20:35:11Z")
> [@Barbarian](#): > > You can see this blasting if you travel between Montreal and Toronto. > This difficulty is why there is, quite literally, only ONE road that goes coast to coast in Canada. And it was closed for several days this winter because a new bridge was built incorrectly. Every once in awhile, the question comes up as to what, of all humanity’s creations, would visibly survive humanity’s disappearance should we all die off, and remain visible for thousands of years. My go-to answer is the blasting of highways and railways through the shield. Perfectly straight (or gently curving) trenches blasted through solid rock would likely be visible for a long, long time (long after our cities are mounds of rubble) - shield weathers very slowly, soil build up is notoriously slow … I’m not sure if even the next glaciation would scrape the cuttings away. ---
**Author:** ![notquitekarpov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@notquitekarpov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notquitekarpov)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/56 "2016-02-25T20:48:41Z")
This has been debated here previously. On earth it is probably either a large dam, a large mine or quarry, in an area that will not be subject to near future ice-age erosion. Otherwise either one of the moon landers or the mars explorer. Beating everything will be one of the space craft that have now already left the solar system - they will probably long survive the earth and our sun. ---
**Author:** ![Aspidistra](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspidistra/32/3894_2.png) [@Aspidistra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspidistra)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/57 "2016-02-25T20:56:02Z")
> [@missred](#): > > If the area and habitable land are one and the same, the agricultural output would go down as the population went up. If Australia were to squeeze 33 1/3% more population into the available land, food production would drop to leave it a net importer. I have no idea what kind of maths you’re using to come to that conclusion. But if you built six more Melbournes around the country, (and Melbourne is a pretty sprawling low-density city) AND deliberately went out of your way to plonk them down straight of existing arable land, you’d only use up 10% of the arable land, while doubling the country’s population. Alternatively, if you knocked down the whole city and rebuilt it like Singapore, you could fit 60 million people in, without touching farmland at all. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/58 "2016-02-25T21:10:21Z")
> [@notquitekarpov](#): > > This has been debated here previously. > > On earth it is probably either a large dam, a large mine or quarry, in an area that will not be subject to near future ice-age erosion. > > Otherwise either one of the moon landers or the mars explorer. Beating everything will be one of the space craft that have now already left the solar system - they will probably long survive the earth and our sun. A dam will not survive centuries, let alone millennia - it will eventually be washed out. A mine or quarry will survive, if it is in hard rock; however, they are more easily mistaken for natural features after some erosion and filling in (if open-pit) or hard to find (if not). Spacecraft are extra-terrestrial, so do not count for the question as I understand it. The excavations for roads or rails are more favorable simply because they are (a) in the open air; (b) in hard rock; and (c) simply cannot be mistaken for a natural feature. The issue of glaciation, I admit, I do not know how that would play out. It may be 100,000 years in the future, though. The best would be road or rail cuttings in hard rock closer to the equator, admittedly. ---
**Author:** ![notquitekarpov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@notquitekarpov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notquitekarpov)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/59 "2016-02-25T21:31:55Z")
[http://www.mining.com/bingham-canyon-mine/](http://www.mining.com/bingham-canyon-mine/) Bingham Canyon Copper Mine is over 2 miles in diameter and 3/4 mile deep located south of any glaciation in a stable geological arid area. I don’t see that being filled in or mistaken for a nature structure anytime soon. Tunnels and cuttings in contrast are long and narrow - natural features are long and narrow. I would bet on a very large open pit in Australia or South Africa - very stable geology and arid. No erosion or much plant growth. But who knows? ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [February 25, 2016, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/60 "2016-02-25T21:44:28Z")
> [@Barbarian](#): > > This difficulty is why there is, quite literally, only ONE road that goes coast to coast in Canada. And it was closed for several days this winter because a new bridge was built incorrectly. Just to clear up a few things … There is not “only one road”, literally, figuratively, or in any other sense, across Canada. There many. The Trans Canada Highway is a route, not a road – it’s a designated optimal route along a network of highways for coast-to-coast travel. The Nipigon bridge in northern Ontario is an unusual single point of failure on the Trans Canada route for a simple geographic reason. If you look at a map, there is a small pond in the area called Lake Superior which takes up parts of three US states and a good chunk of northwestern Ontario. Already the most northerly of the Great Lakes, it forces roads and settlements along that longitude of Ontario to beyond its northern shoreline, and there’s not very much there in the way of population. So this is one place where the Nipigon Bridge is the only practical way to get between those two parts of Ontario, though there are probably rough forestry roads further north. There are certainly highways heading up to Armstrong Station in the eastern part and Savant Lake in the western part, but no real designated road directly between them because there wouldn’t be enough traffic. I don’t know where you get your conclusion that the bridge “wasn’t built correctly” as I have yet to hear of a definitive cause being identified, other than a strong winter storm. Obviously it shouldn’t have happened but I haven’t yet heard an official explanation of cause. In any case, the bridge is now fully open. The bridge plan called for two new bridges providing four lanes of traffic via two independent spans, and the second span will be completed next year, so there will be both extra capacity and redundancy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071.md?page=4)