# 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:** 5
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/81 "2016-02-26T14:11:04Z")
Dollars to donuts I am not the only one with this question: What’s a furphy? ETA: Somehow I think people who know don’t say dollars to donuts. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/82 "2016-02-26T14:18:13Z")
> [@LC\_Strawhouse](#): > > Not a woosh and I don’t buy that argument for a moment. Look at the map I posted - are you saying nobody wants to live in 3/4 of Vancouver Island (which has some of the highest real estate values in the world) and that land basically has zero value? Please. You may not buy that argument, but it is nonetheless true. Have you ever been to Vancouver Island? Much of it is extremely rugged in terrain. As others have noted, you are confusing Vancouver the city with Vancouver the island. > [@](#): > > I think Canada’s land practices are deeply regressive, favor the entrenched elites, and one of the reasons why Canada never became the powerhouse that the U.S. became. Canada simply has less in the way of actually useable land, due to factors outside of human control such as geography and climate. The Canadian land that is usable, has much the same settlement patterns as the US. It would take a lot more evidence of actual differences in land use practices to convince me that they have had more impact than the obvious factors of geography and climate. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/83 "2016-02-26T14:32:20Z")
> [@LC\_Strawhouse](#): > > Not a woosh and I don’t buy that argument for a moment. Look at the map I posted - are you saying nobody wants to live in 3/4 of Vancouver Island (which has some of the highest real estate values in the world) and that land basically has zero value? Please. Confusing Vancouver Island with Vancouver is roughly analagous to confusing the State of Washington with Washington, D.C. Further apart, perhaps, but in terms of understanding land prices it’s equally erroneous. The northern part of Vancouver Island is rugged and, practically speaking, very far from the City of Vancouver or Victoria. Few people live there because there are few reasons to live there. Port Hardy, BC -where you can buy a house tomorrow for a perfectly reasonable price, or buy an open lot and build a house, lots are available - is further from Victoria than Lake Placid is from New York City. To get to Vancouver would take seven hours by car, if you don’t stop. I think if you wish to comment on the geography of a country you should perhaps know something about it. ---
**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 26, 2016, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/84 "2016-02-26T15:47:22Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I think if you wish to comment on the geography of a country you should perhaps know something about it. Nah! That would destroy his entire “position.” I’ve driven the length of Vancouver Island (well, from Victoria to Port McNeill, then over to Sointula Island.) It would be hard to find more rugged (but beautiful) terrain anywhere. Nobody but miners/trappers can live on most of it. Totally unsuited for homesteading except right along the coasts. ---
**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/85 "2016-02-26T16:05:58Z")
**LC Strawhouse** , to put it another way, can you point to a major urban centre in Canada that is not hemmed in by mountains / ocean / Canadian Shield, _and_ where there is Crown land suitable for residential development close to that urban centre, _and_ the Crown is refusing to sell that land for residential purposes? ---
**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 26, 2016, 4:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/86 "2016-02-26T16:34:56Z")
Sointula, on **Malcolm** Island. It helps if I include all the words. ---
**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 26, 2016, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/87 "2016-02-26T17:01:05Z")
Check out [This topographic map of Vancouver region](http://www.gokml.net/maps#ll=49.088455,-122.874144&z=9&t=t) if you want to grasp why land is so costly in the vicinity. There’s not a lot of horizontal space there to live in. ---
**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 26, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/88 "2016-02-26T17:18:14Z")
> [@Battle\_Pope](#): > > Part of it is that, AFAIK, there were no ice sheets covering Australia like there was in the US during the last ice-age, we had [land-bridges](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahul_Shelf)between mainland Australia, Tasmania and New Guinea but little glaciation. Thanks. But why was there no glaciation? I understand that the land itself is pretty arid but there is ocean in every direction to form ice sheets from. ---
**Author:** ![Count\_Blucher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Count\_Blucher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Count_Blucher)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/89 "2016-02-26T17:50:47Z")
Insufficient f… [spoiler] …f-f-feasibility? (This may call for a f-f-f-feasibility study…) [/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![Leo\_Bloom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/leo_bloom/32/10377_2.png) [@Leo\_Bloom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leo_Bloom)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/90 "2016-02-26T18:23:34Z")
I can’t believe we in the US always say (well not always, but often) that Canadaians and Australians are the nicest people around. I had to look it up myself. And I’m not even going to give a cite. Go on, go on…keep talking in your oh-aren’t-we-special Anglo code. ---
**Author:** ![Muffin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muffin/32/4341_2.png) [@Muffin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Muffin)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/91 "2016-02-26T18:49:57Z")
> [@LC\_Strawhouse](#): > > I think Canada’s land practices are deeply regressive, favor the entrenched elites, and one of the reasons why Canada never became the powerhouse that the U.S. became. What Canadian land practices would those be? ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 7:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/92 "2016-02-26T19:18:57Z")
IIRC, the land directly NORTH of Vancouver, except for the ski hills, is owned by the government and not just development but even recreational use like hiking is strongly discouraged, because it is the source of Vancouver’s drinking water and they want to keep it pristine. In fact, an aircraft that crashed in there during WWII was only found a few years ago because hiking is verboten. Since the mountains are high enough for ski hills, probably not a good idea to try to develop it anyway. When I was a kid, the Capilano suspension bridge was way up the hills in the boondocks. Today, there’s houses across the street from it and the drive down to the shore is pretty steep -and that’s the limit of development. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/93 "2016-02-26T19:23:58Z")
> [@Northern\_Piper](#): > > **LC Strawhouse** , to put it another way, can you point to a major urban centre in Canada that is not hemmed in by mountains / ocean / Canadian Shield, _and_ where there is Crown land suitable for residential development close to that urban centre, _and_ the Crown is refusing to sell that land for residential purposes? It’s such a weird rhetorical question, really. Nobody living in or around Toronto thinks there’s a lack of develop-able land. One of the major issues here is urban sprawl - _something that, by definition, can only happen if there’s land to build on._ And unless you go south, where it’s a bit too wet to build a house, they’re building in every damn direction you can build in. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/94 "2016-02-26T19:27:20Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > It’s such a weird rhetorical question, really. > > Nobody living in or around Toronto thinks there’s a lack of develop-able land. One of the major issues here is urban sprawl - _something that, by definition, can only happen if there’s land to build on._ And unless you go south, where it’s a bit too wet to build a house, they’re building in every damn direction you can build in. Well, we do have what’s known as the “green belt”, as an attempt to limit sprawl. > **[Greenbelt (Golden Horseshoe)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenbelt_(Golden_Horseshoe))** > > The Greenbelt is a protected area of green space, farmland, forests, wetlands, and watersheds, located in Southern Ontario, Canada. It surrounds a significant portion of the Golden Horseshoe. > Created by legislation passed by the Government of Ontario in 2005, the Greenbelt is considered a prevention of urban development and sprawl on environmentally sensitive land in the province. According to the Greenbelt Foundation, the Greenbelt includes 2,000,000 acres (810,000 ha) of land. That includes 72... It is hard to picture that as an attempt by “elites” to monopolize resources, though. More like an attempt to avoid southern Ontario disappearing entirely under one huge mega-suburb. ---
**Author:** ![GreasyJack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df705f/32.png) [@GreasyJack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreasyJack)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/95 "2016-02-26T19:47:39Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Thanks. But why was there no glaciation? I understand that the land itself is pretty arid but there is ocean in every direction to form ice sheets from. Being surrounded by oceanic ice sheets isn’t going to cause glaciation on its own. Glaciers are basically accumulations of ice and snow that pile up and flow downhill, which can’t happen out at sea. In order to get continental ice sheets, you need to have a place on land where excess snow and ice is accumulating. As the snow and ice builds up, it essentially creates its own topography (ignoring subsidence for the moment) and the glaciers will flow in the direction of less accumulation, which usually means high latitudes to low latitudes. The reason why southern Greenland has a continental ice sheet and places at similar latitudes like, say, the Yukon or Scandinavia don’t is that they’re not attached to a big chunk of very high latitude land. Southern Australia is at a similar latitude to places in North America that saw glaciation during the last ice age, but Australia isn’t attached to a bunch of higher latitude land. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/96 "2016-02-26T20:44:39Z")
> [@Leo\_Bloom](#): > > Dollars to donuts I am not the only one with this question: > > What’s a furphy? I’ll give you the full drum: J.Furphy & Sons is an Australian foundry and engineering firm established in 1864 which still operates from Shepparton in regional Victoria. Their signature product was a mobile water cart made with cast iron ends and a sheet metal barrel, usually horse drawn, sometimes pulled on sleds. They were painted dark red and had the name FURPHY stenciled on the sides. _(as a bonus factoid the cast iron head where the tap was located carries the motto “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. Until your good is better and your better is the best”.)_ [Furphy water carts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Furphy) were chosen as the means to carry water for the troops at army camps in 1914 before their disembarkation for and during the The Great War. Troops who gathered around the water carts would swap stories about the war, where they had come from, things that happened in other countries, what the army top brass were planning etc. So they became the central point for originating and disseminating gossip, rumours, stories with no factual basis, wildly exaggerated or apocryphal tales … in much the same manner as the office water cooler. The camp rumours which came from around the water tank became known as … **furphys** ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/97 "2016-02-26T20:44:56Z")
> [@Malthus](#): > > A dam will not survive centuries, let alone millennia - it will eventually be washed out. Specifically, and I realize it doesn’t pertain to all dams, Hoover Dam is speculated to still be standing in [10,000 years](https://www.quora.com/If-humans-vanished-from-the-earth-how-long-is-it-estimated-that-the-Hoover-Dam-will-hold-up). ---
**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 26, 2016, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/98 "2016-02-26T20:57:50Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > Being surrounded by oceanic ice sheets isn’t going to cause glaciation on its own… Ah, thank you. Ignorance fought. ---
**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 26, 2016, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/99 "2016-02-26T21:02:18Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > I’ll give you the full drum: Wow, that’s more information than I ever had up my sleeve on the matter! (I never even knew furphy was an Australianism. Wait till I bring out my big guns, like my ‘farnarkling’) I think the meaning has morphed some though. I would say that the defining characteristic of a furphy isn’t that it’s untrue - it’s that it’s irrelevant, or not a real explanation - a Just So Story, basically (do we need to define that too? :p) ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2016, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071/100 "2016-02-26T21:04:22Z")
> [@Epimetheus](#): > > Specifically, and I realize it doesn’t pertain to all dams, Hoover Dam is speculated to still be standing in [10,000 years](https://www.quora.com/If-humans-vanished-from-the-earth-how-long-is-it-estimated-that-the-Hoover-Dam-will-hold-up). However, not all are as sanguine … > **[How long are dams like Hoover Dam engineered to last? What’s the largest dam...](https://www.straightdope.com/21343783/how-long-are-dams-like-hoover-dam-engineered-to-last-what-s-the-largest-dam-ever-to-fail)** Upshot is: the dam would probably last nearly forever if properly maintained; however, no-one really knows how long before it needs major maintenance. Huge dams can, and have, failed. I find it very hard to imagine that a concrete structure exposed directly to water erosion on a large scale and not maintained would last 10,000 years - particularly based on the say-so of a TV show. If properly maintained, that’s a different story. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-canada-and-australia-have-so-few-people/747071.md?page=6)