In Canada's many, diverse diasporas, the country has a unique resource. So why are we not exploiting it?

In response to a job opening that the Gordon foundation had posted online, I received an application from a young Nigerian woman who was working for an international organization in London. She was in the final stages of immigrating to Canada and was beginning her job search in this country.

After reviewing her CV, I was so impressed that I decided to interview her by telephone. During the course of our phone interview, I asked about her pending move to Canada and whether or not she had family here. Without missing a beat, she said, “Everyone in Africa has family in Canada.”

An exaggeration, to be sure. But not by much, as it turns out. She could just as easily have substituted another continent or country for Africa and she wouldn’t have been too far off the mark.

The 2006 census revealed that almost 20 per cent of Canada’s population was foreign born – an increase from the 18.4 per cent reported in the 2001 census. Canada is second only to Australia in terms of the proportion of the population comprised of immigrants. The immigrant proportion of the Australian population has not changed since 1996, however, and Canada seems destined to overtake Australia as the country with the largest foreign-born population. By comparison, the third-largest immigrant-receiving country, the United States, reported that 12.5 per cent of its population in 2006 was foreign born.

Canada’s diversity comes into even sharper focus if you apply an urban filter to the data.

In Toronto, almost 46 per cent of the 2006 population was foreign-born with the proportion in Vancouver and Montreal sitting at about 40 per cent and 21 per cent respectively. In fact, Toronto and Vancouver were more diverse in 2006 than any city in Australia or the U.S. including Sydney, New York, Miami and Los Angeles. Interestingly, both Canadian cities were in the top 5 of the Economist’s international survey of most livable cities in 2006.

The census data are revealing but they mask another uniquely Canadian aspect of diversity.

While other countries and cities can claim to be diverse, their foreign-born populations tend to come from a fairly narrow range of countries. Canada, by contrast, draws immigrants from every corner of the globe. It is not diversity itself that makes Canada unique; it is the diversity of our diversity that distinguishes us from every other country in the world.

This aspect of Canadian diversity is being noticed by others. And it has even been given a name: hyper-diversity.

In a 2007 study, the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute profiled Toronto which it described as “one of the most hyper-diverse metropolitan areas in the world.” It went on to report that “no one group dominates Toronto’s immigrant stock. Nine countries account for half of the foreign-born population, while the rest of the foreign-born come from nearly every country in the world.”

So, to paraphrase the job applicant, everyone in the world has family in Canada. The proliferation and evolution of diaspora communities in Canada and their web of networks around the world provide an enormous comparative advantage to Canada. And yet, there is scant evidence that key decision makers – whether in government, the corporate sector or NGOs – are attempting to take advantage of that advantage.

This is especially puzzling given that a number of other countries far less diverse than Canada have recognized the advantages of a constructive engagement of their diasporas.

In the U.K., Africa Recruit is a joint venture of NEPAD and the Commonwealth Business Council. It facilitates the return of African migrants to offer their skills to their countries of origin on a temporary or interim basis.

USAID – the American counterpart to CIDA – has established a Diaspora Networks Alliance to help leverage the resources and expertise of migrants for more effective development.

Even the Dutch government established an initiative called IntEnt that provides support to entrepreneurial and enterprising migrants who want to establish small businesses in their countries of origin.

You would be hard-pressed to find similar Canadian examples that specifically focus on diasporas. There is certainly no strategic framework at the federal level that would allow for a more effective engagement of diasporas to advance Canada’s international interests whether with respect to trade and investment, international development, or security.

While we can and should take pride in the continuing evolution of a hyper-diverse Canada, we can no longer take it for granted. We need to devote much more attention to determining the kind of constructive roles that diaspora communities can play to advance Canada’s interests on the world stage. If we fail to do so, we will have squandered the huge advantage that diversity has given to Canada.