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.
I agree with everything you’ve written. Two of our daughters have 4 children each; one runs an elk ranch with her husband & teaches part-time, the other is a stay at home mom who does dog-sitting to bring in add’l income. Their lives are busy & very happy. Yes, budgeting, foregoing expensive vacays in favor of family camping trips, canoeing, hiking. All the children are taught to participate in cooking family meals & gardening. Fulfilling lives, lived as we did when we raised our 3.
It seems easier to vision this type of life in Alberta where we are now. We left Toronto long, long ago. I told my husband I couldn’t envision raising a family without a house & big yard. Best move ever! We love Alberta & all it offers. We had a successful family business for 25 yrs, which we kicked off once the kiddos were in school, and because we are in a smaller community, I was 5 mins away if needed. None of this would’ve been doable in a huge city.
And taxes. Don’t get me started. As a small business owner, I am absolutely thrilled we sold our enterprise a few yrs ago. 66% 🙄
I don’t think you’ll see income splitting come back regardless what the policy convention.
The reason is that it’s hard to defend economically. In economic terms, it’s just not a very good policy.
But the second is probably more fatal. It’s not very populist.
You would benefit a great deal from it, they just aren’t enough people like you.
Single people don’t benefit at all. Couples with two similar incomes be they medium or high don’t benefit in any significant way because the split odds already fairly even. Couples with two incomes that are low don’t benefit because their tax burden is already low.
The only people who benefit significantly are people where one income is quite high and the other is very low. Well numerically there’s a lot of people like that, it’s still not most people.
Contrast this with a different tax cut that you could do instead. Radically boosting the basic personal exemption or cutting medium tax rates across-the-board
Or just shaving several points off the GST.
I suspect those would be far more popular with far more people well at the same time would get more praise from economists.
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.
Thanks for your thoughtful piece. You raise some interesting points.
As usual, when there is an ideological thrust to governing, the policy that comes out in many areas doesn't fit the reality that citizens face. At the heart of things, living in Canada is damn expensive. From rent to food, paying off educational debt, god forbid you want to drive a car or own a house... and if you do find a propsective partner, affording a child and providing for that child for years beyond 18 years of age is hard to fathom. I'm a parent of two kids around 30 and I see that the struggle is real... for them and their friends.
To my mind, our federal and provincial governments need to focus not on a "feminist agenda" or a "climate change agenda" but on tending to the issues that are front of mind for Canadians - cost of living and keeping body and soul together. We have already created structures that are helping to address feminist agenda items and we are working to understand and address climate change, but looking at these absent appreciating how they affect our cost of living and economic productivity as a nation makes us all less well-off and creates ill-fitting policy "fixes." Focusing on cost of living matters, the pain points of citizens, and creating an environment supportive of economic productivity will enrich our lives as citizens, attract immigrants who could settle here and enrich our nation with their gifts, help us rebuild our health care system etc, and make us again proud to be Canadians - we'll have our sh*t together again.
Ideological administractions take our collective eye off the ball of what matters to most citizens.
It’s not an easy or guaranteed solution, but one way to increase birth rates would be addressing cost of living issues, specifically housing and child care. With 2 kids, you can live in a 2 bedroom condo and drive a normal car. Have a 3rd kid, and you *need* a bigger house and a bigger car. There’s just not enough housing available in that range, and renting or buying, it’s all very expensive.
Child care is another issue: those first 5 years before a kid is in public school is a challenge, even more so before they’re 2. The current government program has completely botched the supply of child care; government regulations further strangle availability for under 2 children. Further, it’s a model that’s suited to people with 9-5 jobs, not the irregular schedules of people juggling 1 or more service sector/retail jobs or working in an area like health care. It also doesn’t support other child care options like family, working part time, or staying at home when kids are small.
Housing is a complex issue, requiring changes to regulations and structuring economic incentives to build. Addressing the issue would benefit parents *and everybody else.*. It’s a tough problem, but it’s a worthwhile one to address.
Child care needs less government regulation as well, and if government funding is involved, needs to be a direct transfer to parents to use as they see fit.
Even something as basic as having a school bus seems to be something governments don’t consider important.
Too many parents are expected to be their kid’s Uber driver during normal work hours when they’re supposed to be earning s a living because bussing restrictions keep getting tighter every year. And no, my kids can’t walk or bike to school. The road is absurdly unsafe because both speed and traffic volume have ballooned.
It seems trite to say but neither of those things were true when my baby boomer parents were having kids. And I grew up where I live now.
What I’m talking about doesn’t fit in with what you’re talking about.
Making public school *LESS* attractive/convenient and more of a hassle makes private school and home school more attractive by comparison.
Reducing bussing is simply a money saving reduction in services to the public which pushes society towards *reducing* government influence on child rearing.
If you "invest" more tax money in chlid-care, it just makes it cost more, as daycare workers harvest the tax money in the form of higher wages. This has happened with dental care. Since the federal dental benefit was legislated, my hygienist's fee to clean my teeth went from $250 (which already seems like a lot) to $330. She can smell less price resistance when a service is subsidized.
Regarding dental expenses, I can’t speak for your hygienist, but I know through a family member that the new federal program does not adequately cover the cost of dental care, at least not in all jurisdictions, so the only way to offset their losses is to charge non-federally covered patients more. I’ve heard of offices wanting to limit the number of senior patients for this reason. This seems like a classically ineffective government approach (both Feds and Province). One size fits none.
My kids are no longer in daycare (age 4 and 8 now). Those daycare workers were great and deserve better pay. If we don’t pay daycare workers well enough, we’ll end up with a shortage of workers, not unlike nursing. I know pay is only one factor in attracting workers, but it’s an important one. I’m concerned that Federal funding and restrictive policies are going to wreak havoc in this sector as well. I used to believe that governemnt funding was the right way to go, but it seems to cause as many problems as it solves and it has too much momentum.
Ah... that makes sense. The law of unintended consequences. I chose not to sign up because I don't fundamentally believe in government health programs anymore, figuring that I can afford my own dental care. But if they are going to charge me more as a self-pay because they don't get enough from the feds to make a living --dental practices are expensive to run, I get it -- that creates the perverse incentive for me to sign up, causing them to lose me as self-pay patient who *would* pay them more than what the government pays. But if all seniors sign up, yes, there will be strong incentive for the practices to avoid covered seniors, and there won't be enough self-pay seniors to shift the costs to.
This eventually leads to a "Canada Dental Act" which sets the fees that dental hygienists are able to charge for insured and uninsured patients, and then nobody will get dental care.
As Canadians, we would rather force everyone to do without something instead of allowing some people to get more than their "fair share" just because they can afford it.
Right now, the allocation of tax dollars to programs is approximately 10:1 between the elderly and children/families. That's your problem and it needs to be corrected.
It will be as we all die off. My people( I'm at the bottom of the scale being 62) are going to be a massive burden on the country for a couple of decades. Sorry.
No, it's essentially a permanent change unless entitlements are fixed. Will be temporarily slightly relieved while Gen X is the senior cohort, but baby boomers are today not an enormous bulge in the population pyramid. It's not actually the size of boomers as a cohort, and boomers are not an any larger age group that millennials. It's the inevitable transition from a fast-growing population to a stabilizing one.
And no, despite the last few years, even the 500k permanent residents a year targeted are not going to (ever) get us back to the demographics our entitlements were predicated on.
How do you say boomers are not a bulge? They have been a bulge moving up the population pyramid since the 1950s. What's happening right now is that we are in a short calm before the storm. The generation needing expensive nursing home care now are not the boomers. They are the generation born before us during the Depression and the Second World War, a time when people put off having children. (Our parents, "The Greatest Generation" who fought WW2 and built our post-war society in the 1950s, were born in the 19-teens and 1920s. They're almost all dead now.) That Depression generation are between our parents and us boomers. They are in nursing homes now but there aren't that many of them, just as when the war ended they, having been too young to serve, were our immediate bosses all through our working lives and did well for themselves being scarce and in demand. Joe Biden is one of those, born 1943. But when we boomers start hitting our major-dependent years any day now, Watch OUT! The oldest boomer is 77, which isn't all that old. Wait until we're all in our 80s.
But you are right we can't fix our demographics with mass immigration. Immigrants get old, too, and bring their old and frail parents over, and they can't afford to have five kids any more than we can. They also earn less on average than native-born Canadians. We are importing Uber-drivers, warehouse workers, and Tim Horton's counter people, not engineers and scientists. We don't like to admit this, but the best immigrants get into the States, we get the leftovers, the ones for whom free health care is a nice perq.
Entitlements, particularly health care, have to be cut drastically.
Go look at a population pyramid and compare to one for 1965 or so. Boomers are not a bigger generation than millennials today, although yes this is partially due to immigration. Boomers were an enormous generation relative to *previous* generations, nearly twice as big as their parents' generation. They were only a little larger than *subsequent* ones, although of course the population is much larger than it would have been had the baby boom never happened (because boomers were a large group having kids even though they didn't have a lot each).
Boomers *will* enormously change demographics as they retire, but this is basically a transition to a new norm rather than a one-time thing.
OK, if you are comparing specifically to the millennials, (which you did say and I overlooked it -- sorry) then yes, I see your point. Some boomers have died off, which has shrunk us more than the millennials have had time to, although drug overdoses are whacking millennials and Gen X really hard.
That's the weird thing about us boomers. We really didn't have a lot of kids. Amazed how many couples my age are childless. Maybe we didn't figure out how to balance family with two incomes until it was too late for our women. (The Australians called us DINKs, back then: double income, no kids.) Some of us did say, I remember, it was immoral to bring more children into a world that was suffering from "over-population" but I don't know if anyone actually believed that or if was just virtue signaling like a land acknowledgement is today.
My son (an only child but he has a half-brother when his Mum remarried) has two lovely children. I now wish we had had more kids.
Even 2 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment does not fit the standard for adequate housing (National Occupancy Standard) if they are opposite sexes. People can get by, especially before the kids are teenagers (or if the parents can sleep in the living room, not always a possibility with what passes for living space in new condos). But I think we collectively need to recognize the ways we are defining down expectations from even a few decades ago.
I have tried to have this conversation with so many of my friend and acquaintance group.
It falls on deaf ears every single time, and is sometimes met with open scorn and ridicule when I suggest that we need to be having more babies, not less, if we want to avoid the fate of Japan and (increasingly) China (Mark Steyn has written extensively on this).
It's astounding to me how no one seems even a bit aware of this massive issue.
Close family members and friends continue to insist there are just too many people and that we need to have less babies and end more senior's lives. They still believe the long-since-discredited 'population bomb' moral panic: https://bigthink.com/the-present/building-population-bomb/
Abortion aside (I am not reopening the debate either) we need to have an honest conversation in Canada about demographics and fertility, and facilitate Canadian women who choose to have kids. Otherwise, as Mark Steyn has noted, our demographic family tree will be 'upside-down' with way too many grandparents and not enough children and grandchildren to help them, and also to do the work (and pay the taxes) that support Canadian society.
Thank you for bringing attention to this issue. I share the author's frustration that the CPC seems unwilling to touch this issue due to their feared aversion to talking about anything adjacent to the (long settled) abortion debate in Canada. This demography issue is not about abortion, it's about the survival of our Canadian society - immigration alone is just not going to solve the issue.
I think a lot of us boomers are staring the inevitable in the face and many of us will just stop eating when it gets grim.
Grandchildren are a joy to have but they are totally useless in actually helping look after an old frail person. Adult children, meh, sometimes, but if you don't have lots of daughters don't expect a whole lot from them. Most of the job will fall on the Cinderella daughter.
You lost me the second your source was a Christian survey. Sorry, but it doesn't pass the "stink" test, nor does anything with the word "religion" involved.
I don't care who or what you pray to, and I would never try to take it away from you. But when a religion climbs into bed with a political party and attempts to impose that on a nation, I have a problem. And since what happens there usually comes here, my spidy sense is tingling. I hope I'm wrong. We'll know in 3 months, and the 4.5 years after. As for Christianity telling women what they want.....I'm pretty sure they've never been right about that. Not sarc.
Apparently you actually DO care who someone prays to and you care A LOT about it.
You care so much in fact that you think that dismissing evidence simply because the person reporting it prays at all doesn’t make you laughably ignorant.
I care a lot about it when they try an impose it on me. But can you say with any honesty that information coming out of any church has factual merit? Polling is bad enough for accuracy in the mainstream where "professional" are doing it. Polls are as useful as the people doing them, and are still wildly inaccurate. There is no church group without an agenda.
You're welcome to your opinion. I'm welcome to ignore it.
First point. No one is imposing anything. These are people making an argument based on data.
Second, you’re moving the goalposts.
The data is not coming from a church. It’s coming from a group of Christians. The difference should be obvious.
Third, it’s revealing that you insist that there is no church group without an agenda (despite the fact that this isn’t a church) while open the possibility that non-Christians and non-Christian organizations can of course function without an agenda.
I would characterize this as “people I like have the capacity to be unbiased, but people I don’t like are always biased”.
Fourth, of course data coming from a group of Christians can have merit. That’s because when it comes to bias, Christians are people like anyone else.
Like EVERYONE they come to the data and the world with their own perspective. Like EVERYONE they try with basing degrees of effort and success to consider that and examine data accounting for bias.
Because they’re like everyone else in this respect, data coming from them is as trustworthy as coming from anyone else…. it depends.
First point. Apparently, you are aren't watching what is happening in the US with any interest.
Second Point. When the source of a report announces themselves as Christian, it is coming from a specific religion. Feel free to make distinctions between the two; I don't. I consider organised religions; all of them to be humanity's worst invention. And I can think of no group with more current agendas than church groups of all stripes.
Third point. I didn't say other groups don't have agendas. They may all be biased to some extent, but that extent is variable, and should be taken into consideration.
Fourth point. "can have merit". Everything can. Not everything does,
Your last two words say it all....."It depends". We don't have to agree on this and likely won't, but until the rise in religious fundamentalism is halted, IMHO, it remains the greatest threat out our freedoms and way of life.
Just my random thought, but maybe bump up emphasis on promoting marriage, and helping marriages in crisis. I'm not talking about some big government program, but speaking as a retired marital counsellor and an author of books on rescuing marriages, there exists good knowledge out there on keeping couples together. Having kids is an easier decision inside a happy union.
Colour me skeptical when a Christian organisation advocates for anything. There has been far too long a history in this country, and others, of Christian organisations lying for Jesus.
Besides, if other types of contraceptives should be free, condoms should be handed out right, left, and centre. They prevent pregnancy, and disease. This also makes the man the one the onus is on for protection.
Regarding the actual survey, I would have loved to seen the religious leanings of the women surveyed, as some religions place a high value on women having kids,
A tax system that penalizes stay at home spouses is a major issue as well. Whether they be female or male. There is also a stigma towards stay at home parents - especially males.
Is this really true though? There's a lack of income-splitting on one hand, but on the other hand the spouse forgoing an income that would otherwise be taxable saves many costs. Not sure the balance actually means one family (say) with a single 100k income is worse off than a family with two 50k incomes, and if not it's a little hard to say they are being unreasonably penalized.
Our Accountant reminds us (single income family) every year of exactly how much money (several thousand) we’d be keeping net if Income Splitting was still allowed. There’s a huge difference between a single marginal tax rate of 46.18 or two rates of 32.79 (BC combined federal/provincial). Currently, we pay much more in taxes than another family earning the exact same income with 2 earners, definitely not tax fairness.
I agree. The penalty for one income as opposed to two isn't really onerous until the one income goes into the top tax bracket of at least 52% in Ontario. And then it's only the income in the top bracket that gets taxed that high. Having two kids in day care is enormously expensive and yes it's not low-maintenance. The parents get called out a lot to do stuff during working hours.
There should be a stigma against stay-at-home fathers. Men can almost always earn more than women and so should be out doing it, unless she's a neurosurgeon or a CEO. But then why would a woman want to marry a man who earns less than she does? I would think she would resent him after a while, and then probably dump him and take the kids with her. Really successful women who want to be mothers could easily pay for nannies and housework. No need to marry a man to do that. (The only trouble is you're not often wealthy enough to afford a nanny on your own when you're in your child-bearing years, even if you eventually become very successful. A lot of women with nannies it's their successful working husbands who pay for them.)
Gracious ... well this article certainly set-off an emotional discussion, but I believe emotion was the intent. Having never heard of Cardus - "We Are Christian", I checked their site to read their 'Policy Brief'. In terms of research, their methods are sketchy. There is no indication of who participated in their survey, their gender/age or even actual numbers - just percentage 'roughly 50%'. (50% of 5000 is different that 50% of 100). Indeed, the issue discussed is actually 'birth rates' rather than fertility rates - which is different. Certainly as referenced, global economics plays a large part in decision-making in many countries on many issues. While Canada has a lower birth rate, Nigeria has perhaps the highest rate at 7/family and a much lower GDP. Nows to 'fertility rates'. These likewise have been dropping in 1st-world countries. Couples are having difficulty with conception. There are a number of reasons for this as well. (Google it)
There appears to be some confusion (or selective mention) of federal government legislation. The Feds policy initiation aimed at supporting families economically is: Canada Child Benefit, $10/day Childcare spaces; Canadian Dental Plan; the Disability Tax Credit to support families with diabetics.
Currently, K-12 schools are jammed and there are too few teachers; healthcare across the country is short of docs/nurses - notwithstanding billions of tax dollars provided to Provinces to invest in both healthcare and education. So ... really important to understand basic civic responsibilities here!!
Affordable housing ... yet another Global issue. And, there are about 10 different reasons for this and they are not the Feds in Canada.
So, dropping birthrates, lacking of housing, dropping fertility rates - all global issues shared with Canada.
The desire to 'jump' the Feds on this birthrate issue is to be uninformed and simplistic. Life is much more complex. To associate it with funding contraceptives is weird. Family planning is important - to avoid single moms, abandoned children and poverty. It has always taken two to tango. If a young women chooses to use contraceptives because she wants to be safe in the back seat of a boy's car after the 'Youth For Christ' meeting, then she is responsible and taking charge of her life. If the cost of contraceptives is affordable, all the better in these economically trying times.
Bye-the-way ... one of the more likely reasons young people are reticent to have children has more to do with the unknown dangers of climate change and this planet's limits to growth. Just ask them. But that's not likely something a religious 'Think Tank' would cover.
Yeah I thought it was weird how of all things this so called "pharmacare" would cover is birth control. As if it wasn't already easily and cheaply available. Weird choice given all the other drugs people need to function and while our fertility rate continues to fall.
It's a trigger issue for old stock urban boomer educated women in Canada. An extension of the 2nd wave feminism they have devoted their lives to. Guess what the one remaining demographic group devoted to Trudeau is?
The Liberal's fake pharmacare program cynically only covers birth control and diabetic medications in a pathetic attempt to create wedge issues. Opposing free birth control can easily be escalated to anti-abortion or misogynist. Opposing free diabetic medication can be escalated as racism against the Indigenous population who disproportionately suffer from diabetes.
Are expectations part of the problem? I come from a family of 5 and have 6 kids of my own. Admittedly I am on the higher range of the income scale as were my parents. That being said, raising 6 kids would have been financially and logistically challenging if I'd followed the "experts". My partner and I staggered work hours, relied on neighborhood teenages as babysitters and left kids alone once they were about 11 or 12. Our childcare costs were very low. Similarily, we never drove kids to school or activities. If they couldn't walk, bike or take the public transit, it didn't happen. I feel advantaged from being an 80's latch key kid and hopefully have passed on much of that self reliance.
Ontario - I'm not sure about other provinces - provides medical support for some fertility treatments for anyone looking to start or expand their families. To me, this is the flip side of offering free birth control. So for me, or well - frankly, probably women a little younger than me - in Ontario, you can get a healthcare solution to either not get pregnant, or increase your chances of getting pregnant, with government funding.
We also live in a country with a fairly generous maternity leave policy, better low-cost day care alternatives than when my kids were little. These are very pro-family policies.
I think we also have to consider WHY the focus is on contraception. The impact of an unwanted pregnancy is devastating, for both the mother and her kids (including siblings). There is a tonne of high quality evidence and analysis in support of this. This is why it's the public policy focus.
Great article finally someone writes about what most canadians want and are experiencing. It IS a fact that Canada has a low birthrate, and also it IS a fact that Canadian women want larger families than they are having. The only people who have large families now are immigrants and very wealthy Canadians and/or government officials with great salaries and huge pensions.
Federal Liberal government policies do not help all Canadian women especially those who are middle class but who are not wealthy and would like to have more children but can not afford it. Many couples have done everything right worked hard, got an education however the government policies does not consider that Canadians want to have children. $10 / day child care is great but it basically NONEXISTENT!
The Federals Liberals have made Child care worse not better yet they continue to spew the rhetoric that they have introduced $10 day child care however they forgot to add for a cherished small number of families who have connections or some advocacy group behind them.
I speak from person experience as have babysat all my grandchildren several days a week to help my kids go back to work and build a good life. This was not my retirement plan to be full time babysitting. Thirty five years ago I had a career and worked full time with 3 children and paid a lot for quality childcare but at least it existed unlike now.
It's only "my body, my choice" and "only between me, my doctor and my God" when politically expedient in Canada. It isn't "my body, my choice" and definitely not "between my doctor and me" in Canada when it comes to how medical care is delivered and who is paying. Even the Supreme Court of Canada refuses to review a ruling by the BC Courts which explicitly denounces health care choice.
But in regards to suggest government nudging and explicitly supporting people to have more kids, that's a trap. Politicians in Canada know damn well that Canadian women are hostile to anyone even mentioning anything about reproductive health. It isn't happening.
Perhaps humans are meant to have less than replacement level of kids. Perhaps this is the earth's way of balancing itself? After all, don't even mice reduce their birth rates when stuck in an overpopulated cage?
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.
You sound like a delightful, wonderful woman. (Your husband and the children's father, too.)
I agree with everything you’ve written. Two of our daughters have 4 children each; one runs an elk ranch with her husband & teaches part-time, the other is a stay at home mom who does dog-sitting to bring in add’l income. Their lives are busy & very happy. Yes, budgeting, foregoing expensive vacays in favor of family camping trips, canoeing, hiking. All the children are taught to participate in cooking family meals & gardening. Fulfilling lives, lived as we did when we raised our 3.
It seems easier to vision this type of life in Alberta where we are now. We left Toronto long, long ago. I told my husband I couldn’t envision raising a family without a house & big yard. Best move ever! We love Alberta & all it offers. We had a successful family business for 25 yrs, which we kicked off once the kiddos were in school, and because we are in a smaller community, I was 5 mins away if needed. None of this would’ve been doable in a huge city.
And taxes. Don’t get me started. As a small business owner, I am absolutely thrilled we sold our enterprise a few yrs ago. 66% 🙄
I don’t think you’ll see income splitting come back regardless what the policy convention.
The reason is that it’s hard to defend economically. In economic terms, it’s just not a very good policy.
But the second is probably more fatal. It’s not very populist.
You would benefit a great deal from it, they just aren’t enough people like you.
Single people don’t benefit at all. Couples with two similar incomes be they medium or high don’t benefit in any significant way because the split odds already fairly even. Couples with two incomes that are low don’t benefit because their tax burden is already low.
The only people who benefit significantly are people where one income is quite high and the other is very low. Well numerically there’s a lot of people like that, it’s still not most people.
Contrast this with a different tax cut that you could do instead. Radically boosting the basic personal exemption or cutting medium tax rates across-the-board
Or just shaving several points off the GST.
I suspect those would be far more popular with far more people well at the same time would get more praise from economists.
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.
Thanks for your thoughtful piece. You raise some interesting points.
As usual, when there is an ideological thrust to governing, the policy that comes out in many areas doesn't fit the reality that citizens face. At the heart of things, living in Canada is damn expensive. From rent to food, paying off educational debt, god forbid you want to drive a car or own a house... and if you do find a propsective partner, affording a child and providing for that child for years beyond 18 years of age is hard to fathom. I'm a parent of two kids around 30 and I see that the struggle is real... for them and their friends.
To my mind, our federal and provincial governments need to focus not on a "feminist agenda" or a "climate change agenda" but on tending to the issues that are front of mind for Canadians - cost of living and keeping body and soul together. We have already created structures that are helping to address feminist agenda items and we are working to understand and address climate change, but looking at these absent appreciating how they affect our cost of living and economic productivity as a nation makes us all less well-off and creates ill-fitting policy "fixes." Focusing on cost of living matters, the pain points of citizens, and creating an environment supportive of economic productivity will enrich our lives as citizens, attract immigrants who could settle here and enrich our nation with their gifts, help us rebuild our health care system etc, and make us again proud to be Canadians - we'll have our sh*t together again.
Ideological administractions take our collective eye off the ball of what matters to most citizens.
Thanks for your piece.
It’s not an easy or guaranteed solution, but one way to increase birth rates would be addressing cost of living issues, specifically housing and child care. With 2 kids, you can live in a 2 bedroom condo and drive a normal car. Have a 3rd kid, and you *need* a bigger house and a bigger car. There’s just not enough housing available in that range, and renting or buying, it’s all very expensive.
Child care is another issue: those first 5 years before a kid is in public school is a challenge, even more so before they’re 2. The current government program has completely botched the supply of child care; government regulations further strangle availability for under 2 children. Further, it’s a model that’s suited to people with 9-5 jobs, not the irregular schedules of people juggling 1 or more service sector/retail jobs or working in an area like health care. It also doesn’t support other child care options like family, working part time, or staying at home when kids are small.
Housing is a complex issue, requiring changes to regulations and structuring economic incentives to build. Addressing the issue would benefit parents *and everybody else.*. It’s a tough problem, but it’s a worthwhile one to address.
Child care needs less government regulation as well, and if government funding is involved, needs to be a direct transfer to parents to use as they see fit.
Even something as basic as having a school bus seems to be something governments don’t consider important.
Too many parents are expected to be their kid’s Uber driver during normal work hours when they’re supposed to be earning s a living because bussing restrictions keep getting tighter every year. And no, my kids can’t walk or bike to school. The road is absurdly unsafe because both speed and traffic volume have ballooned.
It seems trite to say but neither of those things were true when my baby boomer parents were having kids. And I grew up where I live now.
The role of the parents is to do the state's bidding in how the state chooses to raise it's children, whom it owns. The parents don't.
What I’m talking about doesn’t fit in with what you’re talking about.
Making public school *LESS* attractive/convenient and more of a hassle makes private school and home school more attractive by comparison.
Reducing bussing is simply a money saving reduction in services to the public which pushes society towards *reducing* government influence on child rearing.
If you "invest" more tax money in chlid-care, it just makes it cost more, as daycare workers harvest the tax money in the form of higher wages. This has happened with dental care. Since the federal dental benefit was legislated, my hygienist's fee to clean my teeth went from $250 (which already seems like a lot) to $330. She can smell less price resistance when a service is subsidized.
Or you know…. The cost of EVERYTHING has increased substantially over the last few years and hygienists are just like everyone else.
Regarding dental expenses, I can’t speak for your hygienist, but I know through a family member that the new federal program does not adequately cover the cost of dental care, at least not in all jurisdictions, so the only way to offset their losses is to charge non-federally covered patients more. I’ve heard of offices wanting to limit the number of senior patients for this reason. This seems like a classically ineffective government approach (both Feds and Province). One size fits none.
My kids are no longer in daycare (age 4 and 8 now). Those daycare workers were great and deserve better pay. If we don’t pay daycare workers well enough, we’ll end up with a shortage of workers, not unlike nursing. I know pay is only one factor in attracting workers, but it’s an important one. I’m concerned that Federal funding and restrictive policies are going to wreak havoc in this sector as well. I used to believe that governemnt funding was the right way to go, but it seems to cause as many problems as it solves and it has too much momentum.
Ah... that makes sense. The law of unintended consequences. I chose not to sign up because I don't fundamentally believe in government health programs anymore, figuring that I can afford my own dental care. But if they are going to charge me more as a self-pay because they don't get enough from the feds to make a living --dental practices are expensive to run, I get it -- that creates the perverse incentive for me to sign up, causing them to lose me as self-pay patient who *would* pay them more than what the government pays. But if all seniors sign up, yes, there will be strong incentive for the practices to avoid covered seniors, and there won't be enough self-pay seniors to shift the costs to.
This eventually leads to a "Canada Dental Act" which sets the fees that dental hygienists are able to charge for insured and uninsured patients, and then nobody will get dental care.
As Canadians, we would rather force everyone to do without something instead of allowing some people to get more than their "fair share" just because they can afford it.
Right now, the allocation of tax dollars to programs is approximately 10:1 between the elderly and children/families. That's your problem and it needs to be corrected.
It will be as we all die off. My people( I'm at the bottom of the scale being 62) are going to be a massive burden on the country for a couple of decades. Sorry.
No, it's essentially a permanent change unless entitlements are fixed. Will be temporarily slightly relieved while Gen X is the senior cohort, but baby boomers are today not an enormous bulge in the population pyramid. It's not actually the size of boomers as a cohort, and boomers are not an any larger age group that millennials. It's the inevitable transition from a fast-growing population to a stabilizing one.
And no, despite the last few years, even the 500k permanent residents a year targeted are not going to (ever) get us back to the demographics our entitlements were predicated on.
How do you say boomers are not a bulge? They have been a bulge moving up the population pyramid since the 1950s. What's happening right now is that we are in a short calm before the storm. The generation needing expensive nursing home care now are not the boomers. They are the generation born before us during the Depression and the Second World War, a time when people put off having children. (Our parents, "The Greatest Generation" who fought WW2 and built our post-war society in the 1950s, were born in the 19-teens and 1920s. They're almost all dead now.) That Depression generation are between our parents and us boomers. They are in nursing homes now but there aren't that many of them, just as when the war ended they, having been too young to serve, were our immediate bosses all through our working lives and did well for themselves being scarce and in demand. Joe Biden is one of those, born 1943. But when we boomers start hitting our major-dependent years any day now, Watch OUT! The oldest boomer is 77, which isn't all that old. Wait until we're all in our 80s.
But you are right we can't fix our demographics with mass immigration. Immigrants get old, too, and bring their old and frail parents over, and they can't afford to have five kids any more than we can. They also earn less on average than native-born Canadians. We are importing Uber-drivers, warehouse workers, and Tim Horton's counter people, not engineers and scientists. We don't like to admit this, but the best immigrants get into the States, we get the leftovers, the ones for whom free health care is a nice perq.
Entitlements, particularly health care, have to be cut drastically.
Go look at a population pyramid and compare to one for 1965 or so. Boomers are not a bigger generation than millennials today, although yes this is partially due to immigration. Boomers were an enormous generation relative to *previous* generations, nearly twice as big as their parents' generation. They were only a little larger than *subsequent* ones, although of course the population is much larger than it would have been had the baby boom never happened (because boomers were a large group having kids even though they didn't have a lot each).
Boomers *will* enormously change demographics as they retire, but this is basically a transition to a new norm rather than a one-time thing.
OK, if you are comparing specifically to the millennials, (which you did say and I overlooked it -- sorry) then yes, I see your point. Some boomers have died off, which has shrunk us more than the millennials have had time to, although drug overdoses are whacking millennials and Gen X really hard.
That's the weird thing about us boomers. We really didn't have a lot of kids. Amazed how many couples my age are childless. Maybe we didn't figure out how to balance family with two incomes until it was too late for our women. (The Australians called us DINKs, back then: double income, no kids.) Some of us did say, I remember, it was immoral to bring more children into a world that was suffering from "over-population" but I don't know if anyone actually believed that or if was just virtue signaling like a land acknowledgement is today.
My son (an only child but he has a half-brother when his Mum remarried) has two lovely children. I now wish we had had more kids.
Ain't gonna happen now.
Even 2 kids in a 2 bedroom apartment does not fit the standard for adequate housing (National Occupancy Standard) if they are opposite sexes. People can get by, especially before the kids are teenagers (or if the parents can sleep in the living room, not always a possibility with what passes for living space in new condos). But I think we collectively need to recognize the ways we are defining down expectations from even a few decades ago.
I have tried to have this conversation with so many of my friend and acquaintance group.
It falls on deaf ears every single time, and is sometimes met with open scorn and ridicule when I suggest that we need to be having more babies, not less, if we want to avoid the fate of Japan and (increasingly) China (Mark Steyn has written extensively on this).
It's astounding to me how no one seems even a bit aware of this massive issue.
Close family members and friends continue to insist there are just too many people and that we need to have less babies and end more senior's lives. They still believe the long-since-discredited 'population bomb' moral panic: https://bigthink.com/the-present/building-population-bomb/
Abortion aside (I am not reopening the debate either) we need to have an honest conversation in Canada about demographics and fertility, and facilitate Canadian women who choose to have kids. Otherwise, as Mark Steyn has noted, our demographic family tree will be 'upside-down' with way too many grandparents and not enough children and grandchildren to help them, and also to do the work (and pay the taxes) that support Canadian society.
Thank you for bringing attention to this issue. I share the author's frustration that the CPC seems unwilling to touch this issue due to their feared aversion to talking about anything adjacent to the (long settled) abortion debate in Canada. This demography issue is not about abortion, it's about the survival of our Canadian society - immigration alone is just not going to solve the issue.
Have you heard of Peter Zeihan?
He wrote a book about demographics and in particular China’s that I think you’d love.
https://zeihan.com/end-of-the-world/
I cannot recommend this enough.
His YouTube feed is good too, but the book is better.
I follow him on YouTube & have read his material. Excellent analyst!
I think a lot of us boomers are staring the inevitable in the face and many of us will just stop eating when it gets grim.
Grandchildren are a joy to have but they are totally useless in actually helping look after an old frail person. Adult children, meh, sometimes, but if you don't have lots of daughters don't expect a whole lot from them. Most of the job will fall on the Cinderella daughter.
Tough to like this.
That's terribly sad if that's your experience 😔
You lost me the second your source was a Christian survey. Sorry, but it doesn't pass the "stink" test, nor does anything with the word "religion" involved.
Glad to see we have some open minds in the commentariat, here. /sarc
I don't care who or what you pray to, and I would never try to take it away from you. But when a religion climbs into bed with a political party and attempts to impose that on a nation, I have a problem. And since what happens there usually comes here, my spidy sense is tingling. I hope I'm wrong. We'll know in 3 months, and the 4.5 years after. As for Christianity telling women what they want.....I'm pretty sure they've never been right about that. Not sarc.
Apparently you actually DO care who someone prays to and you care A LOT about it.
You care so much in fact that you think that dismissing evidence simply because the person reporting it prays at all doesn’t make you laughably ignorant.
I care a lot about it when they try an impose it on me. But can you say with any honesty that information coming out of any church has factual merit? Polling is bad enough for accuracy in the mainstream where "professional" are doing it. Polls are as useful as the people doing them, and are still wildly inaccurate. There is no church group without an agenda.
You're welcome to your opinion. I'm welcome to ignore it.
First point. No one is imposing anything. These are people making an argument based on data.
Second, you’re moving the goalposts.
The data is not coming from a church. It’s coming from a group of Christians. The difference should be obvious.
Third, it’s revealing that you insist that there is no church group without an agenda (despite the fact that this isn’t a church) while open the possibility that non-Christians and non-Christian organizations can of course function without an agenda.
I would characterize this as “people I like have the capacity to be unbiased, but people I don’t like are always biased”.
Fourth, of course data coming from a group of Christians can have merit. That’s because when it comes to bias, Christians are people like anyone else.
Like EVERYONE they come to the data and the world with their own perspective. Like EVERYONE they try with basing degrees of effort and success to consider that and examine data accounting for bias.
Because they’re like everyone else in this respect, data coming from them is as trustworthy as coming from anyone else…. it depends.
First point. Apparently, you are aren't watching what is happening in the US with any interest.
Second Point. When the source of a report announces themselves as Christian, it is coming from a specific religion. Feel free to make distinctions between the two; I don't. I consider organised religions; all of them to be humanity's worst invention. And I can think of no group with more current agendas than church groups of all stripes.
Third point. I didn't say other groups don't have agendas. They may all be biased to some extent, but that extent is variable, and should be taken into consideration.
Fourth point. "can have merit". Everything can. Not everything does,
Your last two words say it all....."It depends". We don't have to agree on this and likely won't, but until the rise in religious fundamentalism is halted, IMHO, it remains the greatest threat out our freedoms and way of life.
Just my random thought, but maybe bump up emphasis on promoting marriage, and helping marriages in crisis. I'm not talking about some big government program, but speaking as a retired marital counsellor and an author of books on rescuing marriages, there exists good knowledge out there on keeping couples together. Having kids is an easier decision inside a happy union.
Colour me skeptical when a Christian organisation advocates for anything. There has been far too long a history in this country, and others, of Christian organisations lying for Jesus.
Besides, if other types of contraceptives should be free, condoms should be handed out right, left, and centre. They prevent pregnancy, and disease. This also makes the man the one the onus is on for protection.
Regarding the actual survey, I would have loved to seen the religious leanings of the women surveyed, as some religions place a high value on women having kids,
A tax system that penalizes stay at home spouses is a major issue as well. Whether they be female or male. There is also a stigma towards stay at home parents - especially males.
Is this really true though? There's a lack of income-splitting on one hand, but on the other hand the spouse forgoing an income that would otherwise be taxable saves many costs. Not sure the balance actually means one family (say) with a single 100k income is worse off than a family with two 50k incomes, and if not it's a little hard to say they are being unreasonably penalized.
Our Accountant reminds us (single income family) every year of exactly how much money (several thousand) we’d be keeping net if Income Splitting was still allowed. There’s a huge difference between a single marginal tax rate of 46.18 or two rates of 32.79 (BC combined federal/provincial). Currently, we pay much more in taxes than another family earning the exact same income with 2 earners, definitely not tax fairness.
I agree. The penalty for one income as opposed to two isn't really onerous until the one income goes into the top tax bracket of at least 52% in Ontario. And then it's only the income in the top bracket that gets taxed that high. Having two kids in day care is enormously expensive and yes it's not low-maintenance. The parents get called out a lot to do stuff during working hours.
There should be a stigma against stay-at-home fathers. Men can almost always earn more than women and so should be out doing it, unless she's a neurosurgeon or a CEO. But then why would a woman want to marry a man who earns less than she does? I would think she would resent him after a while, and then probably dump him and take the kids with her. Really successful women who want to be mothers could easily pay for nannies and housework. No need to marry a man to do that. (The only trouble is you're not often wealthy enough to afford a nanny on your own when you're in your child-bearing years, even if you eventually become very successful. A lot of women with nannies it's their successful working husbands who pay for them.)
Kids don't vote. I think it might be that simple.
Gracious ... well this article certainly set-off an emotional discussion, but I believe emotion was the intent. Having never heard of Cardus - "We Are Christian", I checked their site to read their 'Policy Brief'. In terms of research, their methods are sketchy. There is no indication of who participated in their survey, their gender/age or even actual numbers - just percentage 'roughly 50%'. (50% of 5000 is different that 50% of 100). Indeed, the issue discussed is actually 'birth rates' rather than fertility rates - which is different. Certainly as referenced, global economics plays a large part in decision-making in many countries on many issues. While Canada has a lower birth rate, Nigeria has perhaps the highest rate at 7/family and a much lower GDP. Nows to 'fertility rates'. These likewise have been dropping in 1st-world countries. Couples are having difficulty with conception. There are a number of reasons for this as well. (Google it)
There appears to be some confusion (or selective mention) of federal government legislation. The Feds policy initiation aimed at supporting families economically is: Canada Child Benefit, $10/day Childcare spaces; Canadian Dental Plan; the Disability Tax Credit to support families with diabetics.
Currently, K-12 schools are jammed and there are too few teachers; healthcare across the country is short of docs/nurses - notwithstanding billions of tax dollars provided to Provinces to invest in both healthcare and education. So ... really important to understand basic civic responsibilities here!!
Affordable housing ... yet another Global issue. And, there are about 10 different reasons for this and they are not the Feds in Canada.
So, dropping birthrates, lacking of housing, dropping fertility rates - all global issues shared with Canada.
The desire to 'jump' the Feds on this birthrate issue is to be uninformed and simplistic. Life is much more complex. To associate it with funding contraceptives is weird. Family planning is important - to avoid single moms, abandoned children and poverty. It has always taken two to tango. If a young women chooses to use contraceptives because she wants to be safe in the back seat of a boy's car after the 'Youth For Christ' meeting, then she is responsible and taking charge of her life. If the cost of contraceptives is affordable, all the better in these economically trying times.
Bye-the-way ... one of the more likely reasons young people are reticent to have children has more to do with the unknown dangers of climate change and this planet's limits to growth. Just ask them. But that's not likely something a religious 'Think Tank' would cover.
Yeah I thought it was weird how of all things this so called "pharmacare" would cover is birth control. As if it wasn't already easily and cheaply available. Weird choice given all the other drugs people need to function and while our fertility rate continues to fall.
It's a trigger issue for old stock urban boomer educated women in Canada. An extension of the 2nd wave feminism they have devoted their lives to. Guess what the one remaining demographic group devoted to Trudeau is?
The Liberal's fake pharmacare program cynically only covers birth control and diabetic medications in a pathetic attempt to create wedge issues. Opposing free birth control can easily be escalated to anti-abortion or misogynist. Opposing free diabetic medication can be escalated as racism against the Indigenous population who disproportionately suffer from diabetes.
Exactly. They take an issue that is universal, like health care, and politicize it. They make it us vs them.
They are obsessed with how other people live their lives. It's weird.
Are expectations part of the problem? I come from a family of 5 and have 6 kids of my own. Admittedly I am on the higher range of the income scale as were my parents. That being said, raising 6 kids would have been financially and logistically challenging if I'd followed the "experts". My partner and I staggered work hours, relied on neighborhood teenages as babysitters and left kids alone once they were about 11 or 12. Our childcare costs were very low. Similarily, we never drove kids to school or activities. If they couldn't walk, bike or take the public transit, it didn't happen. I feel advantaged from being an 80's latch key kid and hopefully have passed on much of that self reliance.
Ontario - I'm not sure about other provinces - provides medical support for some fertility treatments for anyone looking to start or expand their families. To me, this is the flip side of offering free birth control. So for me, or well - frankly, probably women a little younger than me - in Ontario, you can get a healthcare solution to either not get pregnant, or increase your chances of getting pregnant, with government funding.
We also live in a country with a fairly generous maternity leave policy, better low-cost day care alternatives than when my kids were little. These are very pro-family policies.
I think we also have to consider WHY the focus is on contraception. The impact of an unwanted pregnancy is devastating, for both the mother and her kids (including siblings). There is a tonne of high quality evidence and analysis in support of this. This is why it's the public policy focus.
Great article finally someone writes about what most canadians want and are experiencing. It IS a fact that Canada has a low birthrate, and also it IS a fact that Canadian women want larger families than they are having. The only people who have large families now are immigrants and very wealthy Canadians and/or government officials with great salaries and huge pensions.
Federal Liberal government policies do not help all Canadian women especially those who are middle class but who are not wealthy and would like to have more children but can not afford it. Many couples have done everything right worked hard, got an education however the government policies does not consider that Canadians want to have children. $10 / day child care is great but it basically NONEXISTENT!
The Federals Liberals have made Child care worse not better yet they continue to spew the rhetoric that they have introduced $10 day child care however they forgot to add for a cherished small number of families who have connections or some advocacy group behind them.
I speak from person experience as have babysat all my grandchildren several days a week to help my kids go back to work and build a good life. This was not my retirement plan to be full time babysitting. Thirty five years ago I had a career and worked full time with 3 children and paid a lot for quality childcare but at least it existed unlike now.
It's only "my body, my choice" and "only between me, my doctor and my God" when politically expedient in Canada. It isn't "my body, my choice" and definitely not "between my doctor and me" in Canada when it comes to how medical care is delivered and who is paying. Even the Supreme Court of Canada refuses to review a ruling by the BC Courts which explicitly denounces health care choice.
But in regards to suggest government nudging and explicitly supporting people to have more kids, that's a trap. Politicians in Canada know damn well that Canadian women are hostile to anyone even mentioning anything about reproductive health. It isn't happening.
Perhaps humans are meant to have less than replacement level of kids. Perhaps this is the earth's way of balancing itself? After all, don't even mice reduce their birth rates when stuck in an overpopulated cage?