Andrea Mrozek: Canada doesn't have a "too many babies" problem
Canadian leaders need to acknowledge what the real issue is: our women want to have more babies than they can.
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By: Andrea Mrozek
Fertility rates are in global freefall. The Economist reports every rich country (except Israel) has below-replacement fertility. Canada sunk to its lowest-ever fertility rate of 1.3 children per woman in 2022 (replacement is 2.1). People of goodwill will contest the meaning of this, but the main point is this: recent surveys published by Cardus show half of Canadian women reach the end of their reproductive years with fewer kids than they wanted. Canadian women want to have more babies that they will not have.
So into this era of low fertility, what is the federal response? Either radio silence or, wait for it, free contraception. Federal budget 2024 goes so far as to print a chart with the cost of birth control from oral contraception through to IUDs and vaginal rings. It also asks us to imagine “Jenny,” who is already paying for other medical needs and is “unable to afford the $500 up-front cost of her preferred method of contraception, a hormonal IUD.” Those who have long advocated for the state to stay out of the bedroom seem quite happy for state to be in our uteruses.
This push for free contraception has continued since the 2024 federal budget. On May 24, the prime minister presented taxpayer-funded contraception as allowing Canadians to “get the medications they need … regardless of their ability to pay.” Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland spoke in terms previously only used in the abortion debate: “Women should have the autonomy to make their own choices about their health and their bodies. Our plan to make common contraceptives free — like birth control pills and IUDs, and even emergency contraception — will mean that, for nine million Canadian women, freedom of choice will be truly ‘free.’”
The choice of a political frame is obvious. The Liberals see value in talking about abortion, which is why they never miss an opportunity to bring it up, no matter how tenuous the link to the matter at hand. The contraception proposal has to be seen in that light. It’s another way to talk about one of their favourite issues. All of this speaks in broad strokes to the ideological pigeonhole where this government seems quite happy to sit. The government’s messaging takes a legitimate policy choice — pharmacare/publicly funded drugs — and mixes it with the abortion debate. Freeland’s quote really boils down to the age-old cry of abortion activists: “my body, my choice.”
Plenty of Canadians have difficulties accessing basic health care, like a family doctor. Cancer patients have to fill out forms to fund their own chemotherapy. But the government’s priority is free contraception. It’s your body, your choice, right? Not quite. Making something free does not make it a choice. Contraception has indisputably been a choice since its introduction decades ago, with high take up without state funding. Rather, “free” (or taxpayer funded) is a government decision to promote a particular choice through a subsidy. And in this era of low fertility, making a huge hullaballoo about fully funding contraception, but not adoption, seems to be missing an awfully big part of the puzzle.
To be very clear, because I know some will claim this, I’m not arguing that contraception should be made or kept expensive in order to boost the fertility rate. As a small-government person, I would dismiss any such suggestion, were it being made, as an unnecessary and unacceptable government intrusion. Contraception should be available, and should cost what it costs on the market, which, as it turns out historically as today, is not much, which is why contraception is so widely available even without government subsidy.
That said, whatever the cost of contraception, the bigger problem, the one that has the attention of many leaders outside Canada, is actually reversing low fertility. Low fertility comes with a range of repercussions, some of which we will soon be experiencing, if we aren’t already. There are social and economic consequences of a failure to have babies, which is currently a global phenomenon. Scholars are thoughtfully pursuing research and policy solutions to this issue. For example, in Canada we have Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline; in the United States more recently we have Catherine Ruth Pakaluk’s Hannah’s Children: The Women Quietly Defying the Birth Dearth. These are books all politicians should read.
Would it be so untoward to propose a couple of moderate, pro-natal policies today? It’s true that policies intended to increase fertility are notoriously ineffective, and also, to be blunt, have often gotten quite weird. (Witness Russia’s “have a baby, win a fridge” campaign from some years back.) But that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands. If various levels of government could simply recognize and talk about the fact that half of Canadian women want more children than they are currently having (on average, of course), that would be a good start. With more attention on the real issue before us, which is not the cost of contraception, we might see other solutions unfold.
Solutions like medical neutrality on the issue of pregnancy — the assumption that having children is as desired as learning about the long list of birth control methods. Or attempts to shorten timelines for professional achievement, since multiple years of schooling followed by multiple years of debt repayment will never be a formula for success in starting a family. And while we are talking about starting families, we might as well talk about marriage. Not finding a life partner, ahem, correlates strongly with an inability to get pregnant. Finally, and most difficult of all, social norms need to shift, so that children are considered part of life’s adventure, a way of making meaning in a transient age, instead of viewing them as a barrier to success.
Again, it’s a fact that Canada has a low birthrate, and also a fact that Canadian women want larger families than they are having. When faced with this unique set of problems, acknowledged far and wide, Canada’s federal government, from the prime minister down, chose this as a time to offer taxpayer-funded contraception, all wrapped up in rhetoric that is obviously, and very deliberately, reminiscent of the abortion debate. Our incumbent government clearly sees political value in keeping this issue top of mind, probably (though not exclusively) due to political developments south of the border. And to be fair, the Conservatives, for their part, have thus far refused to lead on the issue, where they so obviously could, by simply recognizing that half of Canadian women wish to have more kids then they do and that not all efforts on the reproductive choice file need aim at reducing the number of births. Some could rightly set their sites on having more kids, a choice many Canadian women would like to make.
But politics after all, is politics and thus, it isn’t always leadership. But we don’t even need leadership, per se — simply an acknowledgement of reality. “Reproductive choice” includes not only preventing or ending pregnancy, but also nurturing the desire of so many women to have more children. Otherwise, a budget with the theme of “generational fairness” is truly the worst of empty marketing slogans. For behind it lies an abject failure to recognize the shrinking future generations, and all that means — to Canadian women, and to our country.
Andrea Mrozek is senior fellow at Cardus Family, and is part of the half of Canadian women who wish they might have had more kids than they have.
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Great subject: “half of Canadian women reach the end of their reproductive years with fewer kids than they wanted. Canadian women want to have more babies that they will not have”
Interesting perspective on this as a policy issue, thank you!
My husband and I have 4 children aged 5-14. The #1 reason why we have a large family by today’s standards, is that our (single) family income affords this choice - he works in mining in the Yukon on 2 week rotation, we live in the Okanagan BC, and I am able to be a full time parent to our children. I am a woman who DOES feel satisfied that I had exactly the number of children I wanted to as a life expectation (though we might have had a 5th, but since having our last at 40, that felt quite geriatric enough with regard to possible risks to me and baby, also kids are exhausting and we’re getting tired). We’ve had to make many sacrifices of course to afford this choice for our family - living within our means in order to save a down payment, then moving away from Vancouver to afford a large enough home for our family, sharing a single vehicle, opting out of expensive/most vacations and large purchases, limiting our kids’ activities over family needs, general frugality with dining out/ordering in vs groceries and home cooking, etc etc. Basically, we chose to have a larger family because we prioritized that as a core value for us, and we can (almost) afford it, and in spite of government policies that do nothing to encourage families size.
I don’t think that government subsidized childcare (though absolutely a public good and social policy service) encourages Canadian women to have more children. I do think higher income jobs and tax policy that strengthens family net income is much more vital to reversing the decline in Canadian birth rates. Personally, I would greatly like to see Income Splitting brought back as a tax policy (I see it is in the Federal Conservative Policy Declaration 2023, Section 29 Supporting Families).
Regarding subsidized birth control - I’m in BC where all forms of birth control have been “free” for several years via BC Pharmacare. In my experience (through my teens and twenties when I didn’t have extended medical drug coverage), birth control cost was never a big concern because all doctors were very happy to provide a variety of birth control pill options free in office (via samples they received). Likewise condoms from Public Health Units. Honestly, I don’t think unexpected pregnancies (for teens or any age group) are happening because of the cost of birth control so this federal pharmacare inclusion feels like a nothingburger to me.
I’m firmly pro-choice regarding women’s bodily autonomy. I actually don’t want any politician of any stripe discussing or debating or hinting at abortion however vaguely. Women are quite capable of making their own choices when necessary on that subject without any interjection by government.
The current government knows no limits on the number of petty red herring issues they can drag in front of the public in an attempt to divert our attention from the really critical areas of policy and governance. They use these diversionary tactics to keep us from asking the serious questions and demanding accountability.