Century Initiative

The Century Initiative is a Canadian lobby group and charity that aims to increase Canada's population to 100 million by 2100. This includes increasing the population of megaregions, which are interlocking areas with more than one city centre and a typical population of 5 million or more (e.g., the Greater Toronto Area, Greater Vancouver, and the National Capital Region).

The Century Initiative was co-founded by Mark Wiseman and Dominic Barton, who also led the Advisory Council on Economic Growth under three-term Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Initiative was supported by former Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney before his death, and by influential Liberal Party advisors including advisors to former Minister of Finance Bill Morneau. The Century Initiative has been listed on Canada's lobbyist registry since 2021 and has organized meetings with the immigration minister's office, the minister's parliamentary secretary, and Conservative and NDP members of parliament.

Mission

The Century Initiative aims to increase Canada's population to 100 million by 2100; its official mission statement reads:

Growing our population to 100 million by 2100 would reduce the burden on government revenues to fund health care, old age security, and other services.

This includes increasing the population of megaregions. It suggests a population increase for the Greater Toronto Area from 8.8 to 33.5 million, the Greater Montreal region from 4.4 to 12.2 million, the Calgary-Edmonton Corridor from 2.8 to 15.5 million, the Greater Vancouver region from 3.3 to 11.9 million, the National Capital Region from 1.4 to 4.8 million, the Southwestern Ontario region from 1.2 to 2 million, and the Winnipeg Metropolitan Region from 800,000 to 1.7 million.

The organization intends to reach its population goal through a massive increase in immigration and by investing in economic development around megaregions.

Century Initiative forecasts predict that, without changes to Canadian immigration policy, the population of Canada will increase to 53 million people by the end of the century.

Board Members

In 2023, the 8 official leaders of the Century Initiative group were:

History

Laurier Project

The Century Initiative was founded in late-2009 as the Laurier Project Foundation by Mark Wiseman and Dominic Barton, who was the head of McKinsey & Company at the time, along with other "prominent Canadians."

Initially, large-scale population expansion and immigration was not the stated goal of the project; rather, the project aimed to bring "Canada to a position of global leadership through the development and implementation of a major initiative that:

• "Successfully convenes Canadian leaders in the public, social, and private sectors to work collaboratively in its achievement;"
• "Catalyzes action to nurture and advance Canada’s strengths as a nation by leveraging best practices, scholarly research, and building on the work of active partners on the ground;" and
• "Develops a roadmap for success to drive transformative impact over the long-term."

The foundation based its aspiration on adapting the titular former Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier’s dream that, "The 20th Century will be the Century of Canada" (c. 1904) into the 21st century. Their goal was to define and drive impact through a project for the 21st Century,

a project that would define the nation, like the national railway or Confederation itself had defined the country in the 19th Century. Success for this project would be measured by Canadians in the year 2100 saying that the project had helped define the country and had a positive impact on its development in the 21st Century.

With this, the foundation's four areas of exploration were: The Arctic, Smart Nation, Virtuous Energy, and "A Genius for Getting Along."

Many prominent Canadians served on the Laurier Project's board or were advisors to the project, such as Chrystia Freeland, David Naylor, and Nadir Mohamed.

Century Initiative

In 2011, the project shifted to population expansion, and was later rebranded and reorganized as the Century Initiative.

In March 2021, The Globe and Mail hosted a virtual event in partnership with the Century Initiative examining key indicators of the Century Initiative’s progress towards growing Canada’s population to 100 million by the year 2100.

The Century Initiative has also been written about by columnists including Andrew Coyne, Terence Corcoran, and Doug Saunders, who subsequently authored the book Maximum Canada: Why 35 Million Canadians Are Not Enough.

Controversies and critiques

McKinsey & Company involvement

Multiple founders and affiliates of the organization have been employed by McKinsey & Company, a multinational consulting firm. Due to this, the Century Initiative has been connected to a scandal over McKinsey consulting expenses by Justin Trudeau's government, in which whistleblowers have highlighted McKinsey's large and growing influence over Canadian immigration policy.

Dominic Barton, co-founded Century Initiative when he was the head of McKinsey & Company. Barton also served as the Trudeau government’s ambassador to China from 2019 to 2021, and left the position during the embroiling national security issue.

Aleema Jamal, the inaugural executive director of the foundation, was also previously employed by McKinsey.

In 2016, four of the organization's five volunteers were employed by McKinsey. Also that year, one third of the initiative's manpower was employed or formerly employed by McKinsey & Company.

As of January 2023, the Century Initiative has a current McKinsey executive on its board of executives.

Connections to BlackRock

The Century Initiative Board of Directors is chaired by co-founder Mark Wiseman, who was the Global Head of Active Equities of BlackRock and ran Blackrock's Alternative Investment division at the time that the Initiative was founded. BlackRock owns $35 billion in real estate and thus will benefit from a real-estate bubble.

BlackRock's Alternative Investment division includes the firm's international real estate investment portfolio and is reported to be actively purchasing single family homes. The Century Initiative's other co-founder, Dominic Barton, is married to Geraldine Buckingham, BlackRock's Asia Pacific chief, which has previously generated conflict-of-interest concerns.

Rejection by French Canada

The idea of expanding the population through immigration is mostly rejected in French Canada, due to concerns that large amounts of immigration could cause the disappearance of the French language in North America and the assimilation of its Francophones. Some critics argue that the Century Initiative is pushing to permanently get rid of Francophones, as Quebec's separate language and culture is thought to be "problematic" for the federal government and English Canada. Quebec's premier François Legault is officially opposed to this plan and stated that "it constitutes a threat to Quebec." The Parti Québécois party is opposed to the plan as well.

Mega-regions

The Century Initiative envisions Canada in the year 2100 as a nation of "mega-regions," which it defines as interlocking areas with more than one city centre and a typical population of 5 million or more.

See also

• Lobbying in Canada
• Immigration in Canada
• Canadian property bubble
• One Billion Americans

References