this makes more sense, and aligns more with canada's historical immigration priorities of getting people on the ground to stop the americans from invading. it seems like they're listening. that's good.

the thing is that rural canada is a cold, dark place, full of dangerous animals, eight month winters, angry natives (still.) and minimal access to services. despite our large expanses of forests, we're one of the most urbanized countries in the world, and something like 80% of us live 100 km from the united states border. this is a 200 year old problem that we've had minimal successes in resolving.

the one thing that worked was trying to attract immigrants from similar geographic spaces, which is why we have these spaces in western canada with large ukrainian, finnish, russian and norwegian populations. there's no longer a czar to escape from. russian nationalism is at a historical peak.

the reality is that population density is kind of sparse at our parallel, and in our climate. maybe that might change, over time; for right now, rural canada is a hard sell.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/hussen-immigration-rural-pilot-1.4990875