The global trend is that -- as economies mature and education levels rise -- fertility drops. People shift from having lots of kids (needed sometimes in developing countries to help out in subsistence agriculture) to having fewer kids and devoting more resources to their development (e.g. higher education).
Assuming we avoid some catastrophe and existing developing economies continue to mature, that will happen in China and India too -- if it hasn't started already. Global population is projected to peak then begin falling in a few decades, something unprecedented in human history unless caused by a disaster (war, plague).
The solution is probably not policies that encourage people to have more kids -- you're fighting a global trend here. By all means, bring in family-friendly policies, but it probably isn't enough to address this demographic trend. It's probably time to start thinking about economic systems that aren't reliant on constant growth. In the near-term Canada must figure out ways to improve productivity across its entire economy -- to produce more with fewer people. Longer term, we need to think hard about what it means when your economy doesn't automatically grow every year.
I agree, this is a long-term demographic trend that we are not dealing with at all. Immigration is helping us manage it now, and that's great. But, as global fertility itself declines (as projected) there will likely be fewer immigrants -- and a need to develop economic models not dependent on constant growth. This will impact everything -- business, government spending, healthcare -- and we don't really have any solution yet.
We have relied on the cycle of production and consumption because it has worked for a period of time. The fact that much of the production has been offshored is a major factor in the move to limit family size. As well, the lack of whole of community (community meaning, in this instance, the entire country) support for ongoing, inclusive, and actually accessible programmes that are inbuilt and considered ‘normal’, as opposed to the patchwork we have because that is politically easier to do, can’t be ignored. We still punish women for having children, by making their lives difficult. As well, we see women’s decisions to not have children being characterized as supremely selfish, instead of being the result of understanding the reality of motherhood.
Women are always expected to sacrifice for the benefit of others. We don’t do that as much anymore.
Regarding your comment on "the lack of whole of community" I feel like sometime in my lifetime, we mentally switched from thinking of ourselves as citizens (which includes both rights and responsbilities/obligations) to 'taxpayers/consumers' (which is really a 'what's in this for me' mentality). The former balanced what we thought society should provide for us with some kind of minimal sense of obligation to others -- some sense of shared destiny in which one could see that things that didn't benefit oneself direction could still be important.
I believe we have to regain some kind of balance between what we all think we're 'owed' and what we feel some obligation to contribute to, but I honestly don't know if that's possible anymore.
Retail politics has a lot to do with this. Politicians with no ethics or vision beyond themselves play a Santa Claus role. Send your list. You don’t even have to be good.
The word ‘obligation’ is the sticking point, I guess. No one does obligations anymore, it seems. Everything has to be rewarded. A prime example of this, I think, is fund raising. Just donating is easy. I don’t need a package full of greeting cards, pens, stickers, etc to make a donation. The rich should not need to be courted with galas. The idea that we need to be rewarded for doing what is right is childish.
Maybe the basic issue is, in fact, the refusal to grow up. Adults do obligations. Children don’t.
I remember being a citizen. I don't like being the taxpayer/consumer even if I am both, but those tags started being more popular about 30 years ago I'm guessing and citizens only come out to vote and then they are all thinking taxpayer.
A balance is so needed and it will probably be achieved again someday, tho not soon. Like anything worthwhile, it's difficult to maintain and now that it's tilted, it's hard to come back.
I'm no economist, but it is essentially creating more output from fewer inputs. Think 'more widgets per worker' or 'more goods produced with fewer inputs'.
The big, historic example of the power of productivity increases is agriculture. Before the industrial revolution, most of the working population was employed in agriculture. Mechanization and modern fertilizers (and probably hundreds of other things) allowed us to continually produce more food with fewer and fewer people. Now only 1.421% of Canada's working population is employed in agriculture (as of 2020) yet we continue to produce more than ever.
Those people not farming found other things to do, obviously, and that has also helped drive the standard of living we enjoy today.
But, Canada, as a whole, lags in productivity improvements compared to peer countries. We tend to lag in the kind of investments that improve productivity (e.g. automation, process improvements). At the lower-skill end of the economy, we've tended to off-shore work rather than automate (as have other countries) as that's what's made the most economic sense at the individual actor level. We also have tended to lean on our currency and relatively low taxes to make us an attractive place to do business (as opposed to better productivity). It's a signficant, long-lasting problem.
We're automating ourselves out of existence. How many million jobs will be lost to self-driving trucks? railroads that used to have 4 person crews on a train are down to 2 with the railroads pushing for 1. 3 pilots on a plane is done to 2, with the builders looking at ways to do 1. All to create shareholder value....at the cost of our reason to exist.
Automating does help productivity. The issue is that we've let our economy be run by monopolies and hedge funds who are the ones who load up companies with debt, cut the number of employees to the bone, offshore jobs and make themselves wealthy enough to avoid paying taxes. Then we have the government picking the winners through bad investments ideologically based an for short term political wins.
It does to a point. I follow the railroading industry pretty closely, and the cuts to human jobs in the name of shareholder value and crappy service are why the supply chains have collapsed. Now they're trying to cut more bodies to up their chare value; read executive compensation. Cutting fat is great. Now they're cutting off limbs. When business answers to shareholders instead of customers, you know they've gone too far.
What needs to happen (and hasn't) are comprehensive investments to make it easy for people who are in industries being radically changed to train and move towards areas where there is demand.
Skilled tradespeople are retiring and we don't have enough people to replace them. But, if you are a middle-aged worker working in the oil patch or auto manufacturing or another industry that, mid-term, probably won't be increasing employment, how do you make a transition? You probably have a house and a mortgage and finanical responsibilities that you can't just put on hold while you spend a few years retraining.
Yet, supporting employement mobility wouldn't just help those workers -- it would make our economy a lot more resiliant an adaptable. I think it's worth investing significant amounts to help people make those transitions, but instead we've got a bunch of much smaller programs (maybe the gov't will help with tuition, but who is covering your mortgage?). We need to figure out a sustainable way to help people transition from shrinking to growing sectors. I don't know enough to know if there are exemplars in other economies, but what we're doing doesn't seem adequate, especially given how quickly existing industries can be radically upended.
One guy on a train with umpteen cars is insane. I know they were wanting that coming thru the Rockies and Coast mountains. I think they still have 2. And they got rid of the caboose. Rotters!
They still have 2. It sounds like the US is going to leave that as a mandate. So we should likely stay the same. Single person would be insanity for a number of reasons.....a coupler breaking being the biggest. One person, if it breaks, the line is blocked until a second person shows up.
Automation can help increase productivity, but that's not what productivity is. It's essentially more output for the same (or, ideally, less) inputs. The reason there isn't one answer as it depends on what you are trying to do!
But, 'getting more from less' is essential to sustaining prosperity. Otherwise, as you point out, you can only move the same stuff around the economy (e.g. reduce worker wages to boost profits). Canada hasn't been terribly effective at doing this across the economy. Some of that has to do with our business climate. Some of it likely has to do with our business culture, which is arguably a bit risk-adverse. A lot of that has to do with living beside one of the most vibrant markets in the world, which tends to be a magnet for talent and investment -- both are which are important drivers of productivity improvement.
That doesn't mean there aren't specific industries that have made significant productivity improvements. As you've pointed out, most manufacturing left in Canada produces more with less - less workers, less energy. A lot of resource industries have had to improve productivity to remain competitive -- finding ways to economically get more of a resource produced per dollar invested. That's great, but in terms of Canadian prosperity, what matters is the cumulative productivity improvements acorss the economy -- and we lag there.
As a pregnant woman with a career -- we are ignoring a large part of the cause on decline and thats a mysoginistic economic policy that makes it harder for families to have and support children. A woman on maternity leave gets 55% of her income only up to $60,300 - as the primary income support in my family who makes well over that cap having a child means severe economic consequences aty a time where you are introducing a great brand new financial cost of supporting another child (Ive paid into EI since I was 18 years old and have only ever used it once when I had my first child) -- add that to the increase in costs of living on top of massive costs around of school supplies and fees, health care, growing food costs -- its hardly financially viable for most families to even consider having 5, 6 or 12 kids kike our parents or grandparents did -- we live in a society wherre majority of households rely on 2 incomes and women are progressively making career moves that would sewe them as the primary financial contributors tot heir household. My family is fortunate compared to many but having our second child is going to create considerable economic challenges for our family. Until we start addressing this lopsided point of view on families we will continue to see households have less children. Teh right conservative population that spreads this replacement theory bull crap support the same partes who traditionally are the last when it comes to even considering proper funding for families., Let alone providing more funding for fertility supports or making the adoption process easier. They'd rather buy into some ridiculous white supremacist's rhetoric then actually address the issue and find concrete solutions, while being ignorant tot he fact that as our significant boomer population moves into retirement we will need to find someway to fill the vacancies they will be leaving -- so what is it far right? Economic support for families and social programs - or support for immigration -- you cant have no ways and expect to maintain the quality of life you feel so entitled to. Nor can you ignore the current funding system in place speaks more accurate to a family unit of the 1960s that to the family unit of today.
The 2nd kid was more of a financial challenge than the first. However, it would be an even bigger hurdle if we'd had a 3rd. You've got more options in housing and cars with just 2 kids - just about any car can hold 4 people, and kids can share a room in a 2 bedroom home. Add a 3rd kid, and you're looking at bigger cars and bigger houses too.
Agree to an extent as again its very situational... I think your funny if you think an 8 year old girl is going to be sharing a room with her baby brother... add that tot he range of items appropriate for kids of such a wide age gap and suddenly you need more play sdpace --- add that to the surge in remote work where many of us are already using common spaces as an office and I think it would be rare to say adding a second kid is any less challenging than a 3rd or 4th. If you have say a tiny Accent as a vehicle and a big dog or two, popping one more kid in there with any kind of luggage makes it an auto need to upgrade your vehicle. kind of goes to show having kids and the decisions around having them don't fit into a cookie cutter mold but having appropriate economic strategies for families certainly does help at least make the mold less rigid.
My 10-year-old son had to share a room with his 2-year-old sister for a couple of months while renos were going on. Tho they ran on entirely different schedules he was so insulted by it all (even tho he adored her).
Car seats are so huge now! Taking the g'kids anywhere was always a production. LOL! I had a Sprint, and a Bouvier/Golden Ret X. HUGE guy.
Of course, choices are made and lived with. I don't know anyone, including my own kids, who had more than 2, but for very few exceptions. My best friend never had kids, their choice. They travelled, everywhere. (We camped a lot) They built a great small biz. Had cats not dogs. There were times I was so jealous. It is all about choices.
While I don't think that immigration is the only answer, I think it's an important part. New Canadians are going to want to have families too, which means homes, day-care, big enough cars, sports (forget pushing hockey and go for soccer), schools, medical, all of it. All issues that we need to address soonest anyway.
I hate when people go on about immigration as if it's a monolithic block of trouble. They are just people, who want to work, raise their families and try to enjoy life just like the rest of us. They are willing to uproot their families, learn a new language, and wait for their credentials to be recognized. It takes bravery. As a first-generation Canadian (from a nice white-bread European country) I feel as Canadian as any "old stock" one. And we are encouraging our 3rd gen g'kids (Dutch, Welsh, Portuguese, & Vietnamese old stock ancestry) to consider (in the future) having only one or no kids at all. As they all still live at home it's not a big issue but planting the seeds seems only prudent. Choices.
My mother worked full-time in the 70's and 80's, raised 5 kids, never took more than a few weeks of parental leave (back when it wasn't EI eligible) and somehow survived. Of course we were latch key kids, but all 5 of us turned out fine. Why do current genertations struggle to work and raise families?
Its almost like its not all all the same socio economic world today as it was in the 70s/80s or something... has everything else in your life stayed the same as the last 50 years? I doubt it, why would raising and supporting a family be any different.. Back in the 70s and 80s everything from energy to house prices made it much more realistic for single income households to be able to support a family, not the case today.. Most households also received their primary income from the male figure so you were taking a 50% or more hit to your income every time you had a kid... Its not unreasonable for women to not want to be financially punished for having kids, especially if you pay into these services for decades but never utilize them. And much like the commenter below states, just because that's how it was doesn't mean it couldn't have been better - and it also doesn't mean that those of us raised on tight budgets and paying our own way don't want to be able to use what we have built to make things a little different for our kids. the kind of life I want to be able to give my kids has 100% impacted our decision on how many kids to have Im sure its the same for many families that ridiculous essay accused lack of children as women of not doing their biological duty. The whole back in my day argument is just so lazy...
Rhiannon life wasn't such a party back then either. From the mid 70's to the mid 80's inflation AVERAGED 10%/year. I had a mortgage at 18% and a second kid on the way. Then Trudeau senior introduced the National Energy Program and the unemployment rate was 13% (just below the high of COVID) and no CERB for us. ) My wife took a bus from St. Albert into downtown Edmonton and we paid for private child care. I drove a six year old car (I was in sales and needed it) and lived in a 1100 sq ft home. Now it seems to me that everyone thinks they deserve a 2500 sq ft home (average size of a new home vs 980 sq ft in 1955 when families were larger) two vehicles, a dog, deductions for sports, free school bus ride, taxpayer paid daycare, dinners out, foreign vacations, plus all the other things we gave up or never had in order to raise our family.
I'm sorry I missed the part where I claimed 50 years ago was a party. I was simply expressing the obvious you can't compare having and raising a family today compared to the 70s/80s.. thats like comparing apples to hand grenades. Nonones claiming it wasn't tough then.. nor is wanting the most for your family and perhaps deciding to have less children as a result of that any form of entitlement. This we must be martyrs or it your struggle doesn't count mentality is a little silly to me.
Parents today still give a lot up. And considering having less children to give our family's the most doesn't make me shameful to my gender nor does it make this whole white replacement theory bullshit it that essay remotely acceptable or true. I dont need a medal for having kids.. my husband has a couple of those does nothing to help when the government that gave him those medals left him behind. Much like families particularly mothers shouldn't be left behind because of what the essay writers claims as cultural obligation
That is what I was saying. Having children in any time period is a matter of adjusting priorities. Unless you have more than average financial resources, sacrifices will be the order of the day when you have children. I was merely pointing out that in the 70's and 80's people had to make the same choices.
It's always tough some of the time. The 70/80s had ugly fashions too but that didn't stop the fashion industry from recycling those ideas. It was tough but it wasn't that tough. There were parties. I think Dan is probably misremembering or simply being an old fart...back in my day, we walked 30 miles in 6-foot drifts of snow, to school, one way!
Today's parents have stresses we didn't have. Kids' safety is huge and has been for more than 20 years. When I went out to play I was expected to be home for dinner or when street lights came on. My kids went out and I wanted to know where they were going. Today's kids go on play dates and they are driven there and back. I'm talking the under 10 set. Not teens. Teens still manage somehow. It's different today and kids and their parents need a lot more support, from gov, and from their community from us all.
While I'm definitely and old fart, I'm not misremembering (but I did walk to school though it was only a mile but in Alberta...) We did party though most parties were held in our house or the houses of friends and consisted of BBQ fare or assorted casseroles and beer or plonk.
I will grant you that parental anxiety over child safety has increased greatly. But I remind you when you say parents need more support from community that's fine but when you say from government you are saying we should pay more taxes for that or else borrow more from future generations.
I bought my first house, $50,000, in North Van, in 1978. $5000 down and a new baby (#2) so I wasn't working at the time. Tho I did go back to work when she was about 9 months old. A 3 bdr bungalow without closets, built in 1919. Who does not put closets in a house for 60 years? I think the mortgage was 8.5% closed, tho it went double digits within a year or 2.
Somehow we managed it all on not a tremendous amount of sleep. Little kids hockey practices at 6am. All the usual house, reno, work, kid stuff, and still we managed to have fun. And we had parties.
I remember hearing 10% unemployment...discussed at said parties. We had one car with the very cool original car-seat (white moulded plastic) from GM. I worked evenings from 4pm, hubby person worked days until 4pm. I had 4 high school girls who worked in rotation, 3:30 to 4:30. So the boy child was home from school and the girl child had lovely sitters for an hour. They all lived close by and would sort it out between themselves who came over and when. They never left me without a sitter. And they sat weekends too. I was very lucky.
A 2200sf home is just about perfect (I hate vacuuming) 980 is ridiculous. Maybe it was usual for your neighbourhood but I never lived in anything so small when I was a kid. 5 in the family, we almost always had a dog and a cat and often other critters. In the city, not the sticks. But nothing posh.
Things were not necessarily better in 55. The country was not even 100 years old, for all intents. It was simply different. As today is different. How people live, condos or rental apartments or houses with big stupid lawns and a 2 car garage in the front is what it is and no one size fits all. Smarter planning is needed. But like everything it evolves and changes and all of this will sort out eventually.
Wishing for the good old days will only feed your discontent. Being discontented for other people is silly.
40 or 50 years ago was a long time ago. Things have changed if you haven't noticed. You may think you are fine but really, not so much. I'm sure if your mom could have done things differently, she would have. Was your father any help? If she is still about why don't you ask her?
Immigration to Canada at essence is about growing the economy to support the cornucopia of social programs more than anything.
Since Canadians are allergic to increasing productivity per capita (can't let the rich win!), increasing the number of Canadians is required to maintain all the goodies that the boomers have an expectation for.
The problem with Rahim's thesis is that local and provincial government through action if not words have said they don't want more population growth. What is NIMBYism, defunding of schools via property tax exemptions and even the refusal to allow private health care for added capacity if not saying "no more?" Visit Vancouver or especially Toronto and I can see, if I still vehemently disagree, why old stock Canadians don't like the new urban bigger and culturally mixed Canada.
Surveys consistently show that Canadians want a more bucolic and parochial Canada if given a choice. They also want a cradle to grave parental state. Something has to give.
Old Conservative Reform Alliance Party ( C.R.A.P.) types. The ones that want to back to the 40s or the 50s. Bucolic! Oh, and they also come from many generations of dead Canadians.
I may sound like someone who doesn't understand economics, etc. but once we Baby Boomers die off, then a lot of the stress on our health care systems and pension benefits will disappear. I have never understood why developed countries need more and more people to produce more and more stuff that requires more and more energy and natural resource depletion. Call me a fool. I'm OK with it. But when is enough, enough?
The main issues are maintaining the defined benefit pension plan and servicing accumulated government debt. Beyond perpetual population growth, the solutions are obvious, albeit politically untenable:
-transition towards individually funded, defined contribution pension plans, similar to Australia's Superannuation approach
-severely constrain government's ability to fund operations (mainly headcount related expenses) using long term debt
It is never enough. It is a Ponzi scheme in which the likes of Mr. Mohamed will never cease arguing that a never ending stream of new people is necessary for our continued prosperity.
No need to mention the fact that our per capita GDP is declining at the same time we bring in record amounts of people.
Where in this article did Rahim Mohamed claim that "a never ending stream [sic] of new people is necessary for our continued prosperity"?
Indeed, he argued quite the opposite--that relying on an influx of immigrants to make up for the shortfall of births in this country is neither sustainable nor responsible.
Sandra, I understand your "confusion" - which isn't really confusion at all; your brief analysis seems spot on to me.
Now, please allow me to propose an idea [which will be thought heretical and - horrors - fascist or communist or some other "ist," I am certain].
In my mind, the issues are ultimately that a) we all want "more," more of everything, but b) we don't want to pay for it; we want someone else (enter that fairy godmother, the "government" of whatever strip to pay for the "more.")
Ultimately, there are only so many resources to go around, just as there are only so many minutes in a day. We have to determine what we find most important and deal with that and put off to tomorrow, or whenever, that which we cannot get done today.
Assume that today is Monday and, while you really want to sleep in and then play with the kids you have to go to work or you won't get paid for the day - or at all, if you have been pulling that stunt repeatedly! See? You budgeted the time available; perhaps not in the way that you wish but in the way that worked.
In other words, just as we have to budget time we need to budget resources, whether time, money or other resources.
Our governments and those "evil" politicians tell us that we don't need to budget our resources and we can have it all right now but they are really lying to us. Just as there are only so many minutes in a day, there only so many dollars and that means that we have to budget carefully, remembering that if we overspend today we must repay tomorrow.
The idea of getting more immigrants from other countries is simply another way of trying to avoid the truth that we are spending far beyond our means. That spending includes the idea of being able to provide scarce government services to non-productive folks like me.
Perhaps I should be put out on an ice flow, don't you think? To help the remainder of society, you know. My grandkids will have pictures of me so - hopefully - I won't be forgotten but, really, should my generation cause our grandchildren and their grandchildren to be impoverished? Again, limited resources, you know.
I like immigrants; I have hired them, I have worked with them, I have many of them for neighbors, but they do not allow us to avoid the fact that we only have so many dollars, no matter how blind and how silly we are. They are like a bank loan: their presence allows us to live beyond our means for a bit longer but the country will ultimately have to look after our immigrants as they age, just as they are now looking after my generation, so it all catches up. [And, given inflation, aging immigrants will be far more costly than my generation.]
And, yes, when we baby boomers die off our costs will no longer be part of the system [well, other than the debt taken on to give us those services, of course] but please understand that the politicians of the day will then find another group to use as an excuse.
I am retired and do not have a pension beyond CPP into which I paid for many years [and, as an accountant I do know just how rotten the return on my premiums is!] and Old Age Security Pension, which is really welfare for seniors. Oh, that last comment will get me in trouble [when I told my late father that, he was pretty cool for a while!]. But, it really is welfare for seniors. That doesn't mean that we should not have OAS but, to me, too many people get it - including me.
So, the issue is really that we should pay our way going forward - yesterday is gone so let us look to today and tomorrow. I would like it if CPP could be enhanced and people could live on it but that is quite another battle and, again, there only so many resources.
Thanks Ken. I think of it as treadmill hoping we're not going to fall off.
You and I come from the same generation which included far less personal and government debt. I still can't get my head around how much debt individuals and countries now carry, and this includes new Canadians. I guess if I was younger I'd be more accepting of this new norm.
Re immigrants - travelling to developing countries has been a big part of my life, including marrying and living in Egypt, working in high tech with very competent immigrants here in Canada, and continuing to help new immigrants settle into life here. They want (and deserve) a 1st world life style, but I'm shocked at how quickly they go into debt to get it, and in spite of housing prices continually going up to mind blowing levels.
So we scramble to provide adequate infrastructure (roads, hospitals, schools, housing, etc.) for new immigrants and new generations of Canadians. What bothers me the most is this housing trap. Developers and ourselves have bought into this fantasy that bigger is better. We've convinced ourselves we need family rooms, offices/libraries, lots of bathrooms, expensive large kitchens, etc. built on smaller and smaller lots. And developers insist they can't make any money making smaller places. All nuts to me.
I have a friend in The Netherlands so I follow events there. It's an example of what happens here too. Their population is half ours. They have the highest density of people in Europe living in a very small land mass where agriculture is a prime industry. Their government is bringing in 100K more immigrants a year, but where to house them and how to pay for their integration into life there?
I also look at the anomaly that Canada is given we are the 2nd physically largest country in the world with lots of natural resources, but have such a small population. Yet we don't manage to get a significant number of people living outside of our major centres. We keep using cold weather as a reason (?), but surely we could get more people living at the same latitude as Edmonton. But if we did, I don't know how this might benefit the country over all.
I take in as much information as possible, particularly from what I think are credible independent sources. But at the end of every day my head spins with what I see and hear. I certainly believe we live in the best time in history, even for people living in developing countries. I just hope that generations younger than us Boomers can handle all of the massive changes that will continue to come their way. Mankind does have a way of surviving!
I absolutely agree with you that we are on a treadmill and that we [that is Canadian society] will fall off of that treadmill, largely because of the insane levels of indebtedness. To use one measure of the level of indebtedness, most comparisons that we use to "justify" our debt look at federal debt as a percentage of GDP but ignore provincial indebtedness and certainly ignore personal indebtedness. I submit that if you look at overall Canadian indebtedness it is simply unsustainable. How will we fall of that metaphorical treadmill? That I don't know; I suppose it will be some future, as yet undetermined event, perhaps a large business failure or some such but, really, the details are not foreseeable right now
Yes, there is a lot of debt in the world generally but right now, I am looking at the "local" environment. It seems to me that there are really but two ways to ultimately deal with unsustainable levels of indebtedness.
The first is the obvious answer of simple default, repudiation, call it what you will. That is "attractive" to some folks because, after all, who hold the debt but the "wealthy" - the you and I of the world when we really aren't wealthy but simply have saved for our declining years.
The second is to sufficiently debase the currency through inflation that the amount repaid is but a pittance of the amount borrowed. To provide an example of this, the OFFICIAL CPI in 2000 was 93.5 whereas the OFFICIAL rate for 2022 (so far!) is 153.1. [Source: Bank of Canada] That means that in 22 years our spending power has declined by 63.7%. And, of course, those are OFFICIAL numbers; the REAL numbers for an individual could be anything, usually far higher.
When I was young, in the fifties, life in Calgary was pretty much monochrome as there were almost no visible minorities - just a fact, neither praise nor condemnation for the situation - whereas now, the population is very diverse and very colorful; very interesting, too, in my view. I have dealt extensively with folks in India and gone there on business; it is a fascinating place, full of terrifically smart folks - much smarter than I, to be honest. And, of course, I have dealt with so many of our local folk of all colors and, again, they seem to me to frequently be much smarter than I.
My only problem with immigration is that we allow / bring folks in but don't adequately support them through jobs, housing, etc., etc. Truthfully, it seems to me that Canada is being terrifically dishonest in our immigration policy and, it seems to me, we are being terrifically greedy in trying harvest the best and the brightest from other countries because we are too lazy and unwilling to have our own kids, save for our own future, etc.
Will our kids be better than us? I sincerely doubt it simply because we raised them to have those unreasonable expectations and to believe debt was a panacea and that the government would take care of them. Almost no one is willing to admit that "the government is us" and, instead, they look at the government as a fairy godmother who requires no participation or responsibility on their part.
Ultimately, I foresee Canada disintegrating as it is a lazy, unproductive, indebted society. For my part, I expect I will be dead and that unsavory reality will, very unfortunately, be faced by my children and grandchildren.
Sorry, Ken, but the rules that applied when you were working as an accountant no longer apply today.
This follows from the fact that Minister Freelunch has found a way for the government to borrow money so that Canadians don't have to. Think about that for a moment: debt of the government of Canada that is not the debt of Canadians!
Mull over that for a while and you will see that your observations about time and resources being finite no longer holds true here in little old Canada, at least the part about resources.
In Canada we can have everything we all want right now because the sky is the limit!
You say "Minister Freelunch [thank you for this delicious - pun intended - phrasing] has found a way for the government to borrow money so that Canadians don't have to" but I say that the government is we so if the government is borrowing then we are borrowing.
There are still only so many resources available. If you try to monetize those resources (money) and then increase the money without increasing the resources, how do you spell inflation? Ooops, I guess I already have; but then Tiff Macklem has gone out of his way to generate said inflation.
Oh, and I do know that you are being sarcastic but I chose to respond as if you were serious because I am certain that there are some folk hereabout who won't know the difference.
Tom, thanks for the response and I have a solution!
I am not at all worried about my career (retirement has a very predictable career path) so I will explain it to her. I am from Alberta, she is from Alberta; she is of a Ukrainian background, I am from Russian / German background.
See? It is so clear that she and I will be absolutely sympatico. Well, once we dispose of the Liberal drones who are currently surrounding her but that can't be too hard. Can it?
And if you want a billion dollar note I can send you one.
Oh, it just occurred to me that you want a billion dollar note to SPEND. Sorry, I have a billion dollar PROMISSORY NOTE. On the other hand, when I think about it, I suppose that she has been signing those rapidly each day over the last two years. So perhaps I can't help you.
As for fairy tales, as I said, I live in Alberta. I very definitely hope that Danielle Smith is elected premier and that she introduces and passes the Sovereignty Act. Then our premier can explain to Madam Minister certain facts of life. Birds; bees; currency propagation and dilution; you know, the real obvious stuff that any politico should know - but doesn't seem to know here in Canada.
Thank you for agreeing to set Madam Minister straight on the fact that the debt of the government of Canada is, in fact, the debt of Canadians.
I have every confidence, given your respective ancestries, that you and she are destined to become best buds.
However, it disappoints me to read that you are hoping for the passage of the Sovereignty Act.
The Great Climate Warrior and Little Minister Gilligan expect that you and your fellow Albertans will do your part to combat climate warming by acquiescing to the destruction of Alberta's oil and gas industry.
Yes, it will be somewhat of a discomfort to have to spend your winters shivering in a house without heat.
However, don't lose sight of the fact that thanks to your sacrifice His Exalted Self will gain important preening points to use when he fires up the jumbo jets and roars off to some distant clime spewing great clouds of GHGs emissions to talk about Canada going net zero in 2050.
So let's shelve any more talk of the Sovereignty Act and get behind Junior remembering that we are all climate warriors now!
Replacement theory/cultural survival has been driving politics in Quebec and - through it, Canada - for centuries. So, now, with Francophones deciding not to have babies, fewer people identify as speaking French as a mother tongue. Frig. It’s just math.
Our politicians tell us that climate change is the greatest hazard facing humanity and that we must significantly reduce emissions if we want to survive.
It is clear that countries with higher populations emit more CO2 into the global atmosphere.
We can reduce our personal emissions and, if population growth stabilizes, global emissions can be reduced.
The unfortunate fact is, however, that the global population continues to increase because the global population continues to grow.
Reducing emissions is an expensive mission - we are being forced by government mandate to use less fossil fuels and to transition to green energy.
Here in Canada, given our climate and geography, we use significant amounts of energy and green energy replacements are not capable, yet, of providing the power we need at a comparable cost.
In spite of this fact, the government wishes to grow our population through immigration thus creating more need for personal reductions and the need for more energy in spite of such reductions.
Most of Canada’s immigration is from higher populated countries where personal emissions are relatively low (it is the sheer number of people emitting and energy production that is the problem).
When these people emigrate to Canada, however, their personal emissions increase significantly given the standard of living they can enjoy here.
When 400,000 new emitters enter Canada, emissions increases accordingly, the existing population comes under pressure to emit even less and there is greater demand for green energy that simply already does not supply demand.
The overall impact of the green transition is reducing Canada’s artificially high standard of living as energy costs increase, fossil fuel production is curtailed and government revenues are tapped out.
New immigrants arriving in Canada face a housing as well as a medical care system that this in crisis and their arrival only exacerbates these issues.
In spite of these immigration impacts on emissions and our standard of living, government insists bringing more people into Canada is necessary so that tax revenue collected from them will sustain our social programs - this claim notwithstanding the fact they will consume much of this revenue as will the financial impacts of emissions reductions.
Simply put, the notion that Canada needs more immigrants, makes very little sense from an environmental or economic standpoint.
The idea that immigration is needed to stoke growth makes no sense when growth is being discouraged in an effort to reduce emissions, when growth cannot be accommodated and when the revenue from growth is not sufficient to offset the costs.
My experience in the past 10 years has been that new immigrants to Canada, even when they have white collar jobs, are shocked at the cost of living here. They just aren't informed enough before coming here, yet they are impatient to be able to live the Canadian dream, and thus start going into debt asap. I keep telling them not to fall for the maximum mortgage and car loans the banks tell them they can afford.
I think you will see that the CON is not anti-immigrant. In fact I would like to know why you make that claim. (If by CON you mean either CPC or small "c" conservatives.)
I think Mik was just pointing out the conundrum of trying to decrease AGW but when you have large scale immigration from 3rd to 1st world countries it causes an increase in AGW. The reason they immigrate is to have the stuff we have (quality of life, freedom, things). Perhaps if we helped the 3rd world get cheap electricity instead of taking their best people, we would be doing more good in the world.
Disclaimer: I have not read the essay in question. But how is that opening line "inauspicious?" And other than maybe claiming that people generally think Albertan children are "unnecessary," what did you quote from the essay that demonstrates it going "downhill?" Again, haven't read the essay. I'm sure it takes a hard turn somewhere... I just don't see where you demonstrated that in this article. The quotes you used just make it sound like... this article. Am I missing something?
I read the essay, and, as predicted, it took a hard turn. Pretty bad stuff. But I think my point still stands... Rahim had dozens of much worse statements to use, but his intro left me wondering what the problem was. I had to go digging for the original essay to clarify it for myself.
I did. It's a dumb essay. The contents of the essay don't have anything to do with what I'm trying to say though, my point is that the chosen quotes in the intro to this article don't seem that bad.
Conspiracy theories are based on the the idea that there is some intelligent cabal shaping our lives when the real answers have to do with incompetence. The "great replacement theory" is no different. As a country, we have had a hard time building housing to keep up with immigration but during Covid, I think this came to a head. We have encouraged women in the work force but in reality they were often forced to work because couples could not afford to live on one salary. Yes, most of the immigrants are non-white but most of the world is non-white. We magnify the benefits of immigration ( cultural diversity ) but it is a sword that can cut both ways. We also have the impacts on housing, and security issues.
The PPC said that immigration to Canada should be reduced to 150,000 and the Liberals seem to want to increase it to 400,000. I really don't think our current immigration levels benefit either new Canadians or heritage Canadians. There also seems to be a lot of evidence to suggest that we are not helping the current immigrants optimize their contribution to our society. I would suggest that we put less emphasis on the numbers and more emphasis on integration.
Interesting conversation starter. I do not believe in replacement theory as its just as exspensive for all Canadian's, new immigrants or not, to afford to have more children. Economically we have already devastated most new Canadian's of any hope of a prosperous life in a G-7 country with the "no growth" ideology that has been esteemed by the progressive governments. Not just in Canada, but all western nations. We now promote having no children to save the planet and assisted suicide for any that ask. One might think that humanity has become a cancer upon the earth.
As monopolies in news media, banking and financial institutions, telecommunications and technology, insurance, agriculture, transportation, food distribution and processing continue, it puts the economy in the control of a few, the wealth as well. The continual amassment of these large and audious conglomerates is a feature in all western countries. The only country still able to turn that ship around is the US but with the division being sown there, as it has been in all western nations, due to climate change and greed, the wealth and entrepreneurship is slowly being eroded there as well, along with personal wealth.
Greed, automation, and large global conglomerates have sucked up the majority of wealth and now dictate to the peons they relieved from duties to use cheaper employees over seas. They have become the masters of the universe and now dictate and collude with Governments to do what is best for the "collective". Unfortunately, their idea of the "collective" excludes them and the progressive Governments that steal from the peons through taxation and inflation and hand it back to those same billionairs and conglomerates to build the new green utopia. They live as the wealthy priviledged, continue on as such, while they dictate to the lowly peons who must accept poverty and depletion as part of their "Utopia"! Remember its will be their " Utopia," not yours or mine.
They call this progress, while I call it enslavment. All people will be in the same boat, regardless of which country they come from, as the elite do not discriminate and consider all humanity a plague upon the planet. People are free to be able to agree or disagree for a little while longer at least. That too must end as decent can not be tolerated for the good of the "collective" (communist wording of the new utopian world they are to bring).
Apologies to the author but what he wrote is a load of crap. Canada, unlike the UK and the US, has always focused on highly skilled immigrants. And outside of Quebec immigration generally isn’t an issue that upsets Canadians. And as well the post Brexit experience shows that immigration is not an issue when the focus is on skilled immigrants*.
What I had hoped the author might had focused on is what is radicalizing these young men what is driving them to drop out of society and to embrace extremist attitudes. I’ll give him a hint, it’s not youtube or FB but the that society has neglected them (as an example women vastly outnumber men in college yet all the emphasis is on getting more women into STEM ) and secondly labelled them as not just unimportant but also white supremacists responsible for all of societies ills. The problem is compounded by the fact that this is the kiss of death for any academic studying this.
I won’t bother pointing out that the majority of hate crimes committed in America are by Black people (something the MSM is loath to cover) as it really doesn’t add anything to the conversation.
Now one point that the author is absolutely spot on about is that policy makers can’t rely on skilled immigrants long term. With Trump dominating the news cycle again many people probably are not aware of the fact that there is bipartisan agreement that the US needs to bring in many more skilled workers. It’s going to take a few years till we see concrete action but once we do Canada will struggle to get same workers. And like our HC system there are no short term fixes this.
*despite much higher post Brexit immigration attitudes towards it has shifted 180 degree from negative to positive.
Afterthought: to be fair to the author very few people are even aware there is an issue with young (mostly) white men and even fewer care. So unless you spend time following Jorden Peterson or time on right wing media you'll rarely see coverage of this.
Rahim, you appear to be playing 2 ends of the same argument against each other to some indeterminate middle ground ...
You criticize "Silver" for espousing replacement theory and the idea of '"giving medals to women for having babies" but then go on to agree that government spending more money on family supports will help raise the birthrate
Pick an argument to counter ... don't try to pit two parallel arguments against each other
I certainly felt that tension but also felt like the essay competition fracas would make a good ‘hook’ for an article on Canada’s birth rate. I maybe should have gone a smidge easier on the poor girl, although her essay was certainly rife with GRT-related talking points, dog-whistles (foreigners “replac[ing]” Albertans, “cultural suicide”, etc.)
You are assuming Silver is a woman. When I reread the essay it seemed very possible that Ms. isn't. I'm not for a moment suggesting that there are no women with exactly those views, there definitely are. After following many different issues regarding women and their children or lack thereof over the years, it's generally a man who does such a deep dive.
Is it correct that there were only 5 essays submitted?
What worries me about falling birth rates is the scenario sketched out in Mike Judge's movie "Idiocracy". Lots of smart, hardworking middle class people either forgo having kids, or have at most 1 or 2. The people who tend to have a lot of kids often aren't smart, hardworking middle class people. The movie is a dark comedy showing a future where the average intelligence has dumbed down to the point where a perfectly average person from our time (played by Luke Wilson) winds up being the smartest man on Earth, helping solve problems like crop failures by teaching people to irrigate with plain water instead of sports drinks with electrolytes.
I found that very interesting, and like most things involving government "planning", most troubling. That we have failed to what's the work; verify/validate/ accept the credentials of people coming to this country leaving them driving cabs instead of working in ER's is nothing short of pathetic. I don't know if its associations trying protect their power base; blind ignorance or bureaucratic stupidity, if we have people who are trained to do jobs, they should be doing them, or make sure they getting the upgrading training so they can. Further, the idea of interprovincial restrictions on tradespeople because of provincial associations is just stupid. If you can do it in BC, you can do it in Ontario. This isn't rocket science.
The idea that Canada will soon have to compete for immigrants was an eye-opener, but quite logical. Someone has to take up the slack of us old people as we burden systems that don't have the capacity to deal with the volume of us soon to arrive. Are they ways they can help us stay home longer?
It seems like we're sailing as fast as possible into the perfect storm of no planning.....while spending a boatload on bureaucracy we don't need, programs we can't afford while not making enough of our own, or importing enough youth to support our standard of living.....something that is starting to appear to be unrealistically high.
If I sound depressed, it's also because I'm a Leafs fan :)
I don't like the trope of the skilled immigrant professional stuck in a menial job because we're just too parochial to recognize their credentials. It's not accurate, for one thing. Credentials *aren't* the same everywhere. Medical practice in Russia, for example is often a couple of decades behind North America and Europe. A lot of people who call themselves engineers in other countries are basically glorified electricians and mechanics by Canadian standards. If you haven't got the language skills to function at a professional level in English or French, you could have a completely equivalent credential and still not be competent to work in Canada because you can't communicate. The blame for this problem belonged to the immigration bureaucrats who were granting people visas based on credentials that weren't going to be recognized, and governments who didn't provide funding for things like Canadian medical residencies needed so foreign-trained doctors could become part of the Canadian profession.
No, they aren't. But they're light years ahead of someone just starting out. So get them into a Canadian "finishing school", and get them up to standard.
Language skills are a completely separate problem that I shouldn't have ignored. I had a cab ride with a Middle Eastern telephone repairman who was driving a cab. he'd been told that exact issue; you have to get your English up to a workable standard before we can hire you. Maybe that's something we need to advertise abroad, and do a better job of supporting here. You could even argue that working skills in one of the languages is a requirement for immigration.
The Harper government actually solved a lot of these issues when they instituted immigration reforms that prioritized visas to people who had a job offer from a Canadian company. Canadian employers have a much better idea of what they need than a government bureaucracy, and as usual the free market does a better job than central planning. The government would have to fund more residencies for foreign-trained doctors, but my experience in engineering was that a fast route to credentialing for a lot of foreign-trained engineers was to do a 12-18 month course-based M.Eng. at a Canadian university. If your education was up to spec, you'd prove it by successfully completing a grad degree and upgrading your credentials at the same time. If not, the university would wash you out quickly.
If the US ever fixes it immigration system Canada is screwed. Between sky high house prices, low wages and horrible healthcare why would anyone come here. Unfortunately for Canada it is slowly changing, even the Dems realise that illegal immigration is a loser issue.
The global trend is that -- as economies mature and education levels rise -- fertility drops. People shift from having lots of kids (needed sometimes in developing countries to help out in subsistence agriculture) to having fewer kids and devoting more resources to their development (e.g. higher education).
Assuming we avoid some catastrophe and existing developing economies continue to mature, that will happen in China and India too -- if it hasn't started already. Global population is projected to peak then begin falling in a few decades, something unprecedented in human history unless caused by a disaster (war, plague).
The solution is probably not policies that encourage people to have more kids -- you're fighting a global trend here. By all means, bring in family-friendly policies, but it probably isn't enough to address this demographic trend. It's probably time to start thinking about economic systems that aren't reliant on constant growth. In the near-term Canada must figure out ways to improve productivity across its entire economy -- to produce more with fewer people. Longer term, we need to think hard about what it means when your economy doesn't automatically grow every year.
I agree, this is a long-term demographic trend that we are not dealing with at all. Immigration is helping us manage it now, and that's great. But, as global fertility itself declines (as projected) there will likely be fewer immigrants -- and a need to develop economic models not dependent on constant growth. This will impact everything -- business, government spending, healthcare -- and we don't really have any solution yet.
We have relied on the cycle of production and consumption because it has worked for a period of time. The fact that much of the production has been offshored is a major factor in the move to limit family size. As well, the lack of whole of community (community meaning, in this instance, the entire country) support for ongoing, inclusive, and actually accessible programmes that are inbuilt and considered ‘normal’, as opposed to the patchwork we have because that is politically easier to do, can’t be ignored. We still punish women for having children, by making their lives difficult. As well, we see women’s decisions to not have children being characterized as supremely selfish, instead of being the result of understanding the reality of motherhood.
Women are always expected to sacrifice for the benefit of others. We don’t do that as much anymore.
Regarding your comment on "the lack of whole of community" I feel like sometime in my lifetime, we mentally switched from thinking of ourselves as citizens (which includes both rights and responsbilities/obligations) to 'taxpayers/consumers' (which is really a 'what's in this for me' mentality). The former balanced what we thought society should provide for us with some kind of minimal sense of obligation to others -- some sense of shared destiny in which one could see that things that didn't benefit oneself direction could still be important.
I believe we have to regain some kind of balance between what we all think we're 'owed' and what we feel some obligation to contribute to, but I honestly don't know if that's possible anymore.
Retail politics has a lot to do with this. Politicians with no ethics or vision beyond themselves play a Santa Claus role. Send your list. You don’t even have to be good.
The word ‘obligation’ is the sticking point, I guess. No one does obligations anymore, it seems. Everything has to be rewarded. A prime example of this, I think, is fund raising. Just donating is easy. I don’t need a package full of greeting cards, pens, stickers, etc to make a donation. The rich should not need to be courted with galas. The idea that we need to be rewarded for doing what is right is childish.
Maybe the basic issue is, in fact, the refusal to grow up. Adults do obligations. Children don’t.
I remember being a citizen. I don't like being the taxpayer/consumer even if I am both, but those tags started being more popular about 30 years ago I'm guessing and citizens only come out to vote and then they are all thinking taxpayer.
A balance is so needed and it will probably be achieved again someday, tho not soon. Like anything worthwhile, it's difficult to maintain and now that it's tilted, it's hard to come back.
I'm no economist, but it is essentially creating more output from fewer inputs. Think 'more widgets per worker' or 'more goods produced with fewer inputs'.
The big, historic example of the power of productivity increases is agriculture. Before the industrial revolution, most of the working population was employed in agriculture. Mechanization and modern fertilizers (and probably hundreds of other things) allowed us to continually produce more food with fewer and fewer people. Now only 1.421% of Canada's working population is employed in agriculture (as of 2020) yet we continue to produce more than ever.
Those people not farming found other things to do, obviously, and that has also helped drive the standard of living we enjoy today.
But, Canada, as a whole, lags in productivity improvements compared to peer countries. We tend to lag in the kind of investments that improve productivity (e.g. automation, process improvements). At the lower-skill end of the economy, we've tended to off-shore work rather than automate (as have other countries) as that's what's made the most economic sense at the individual actor level. We also have tended to lean on our currency and relatively low taxes to make us an attractive place to do business (as opposed to better productivity). It's a signficant, long-lasting problem.
We're automating ourselves out of existence. How many million jobs will be lost to self-driving trucks? railroads that used to have 4 person crews on a train are down to 2 with the railroads pushing for 1. 3 pilots on a plane is done to 2, with the builders looking at ways to do 1. All to create shareholder value....at the cost of our reason to exist.
Automating does help productivity. The issue is that we've let our economy be run by monopolies and hedge funds who are the ones who load up companies with debt, cut the number of employees to the bone, offshore jobs and make themselves wealthy enough to avoid paying taxes. Then we have the government picking the winners through bad investments ideologically based an for short term political wins.
It does to a point. I follow the railroading industry pretty closely, and the cuts to human jobs in the name of shareholder value and crappy service are why the supply chains have collapsed. Now they're trying to cut more bodies to up their chare value; read executive compensation. Cutting fat is great. Now they're cutting off limbs. When business answers to shareholders instead of customers, you know they've gone too far.
Again, the problem is that there is not enough competition. So crappy service, fewer workers, supply fragility and higher profits are the results.
What needs to happen (and hasn't) are comprehensive investments to make it easy for people who are in industries being radically changed to train and move towards areas where there is demand.
Skilled tradespeople are retiring and we don't have enough people to replace them. But, if you are a middle-aged worker working in the oil patch or auto manufacturing or another industry that, mid-term, probably won't be increasing employment, how do you make a transition? You probably have a house and a mortgage and finanical responsibilities that you can't just put on hold while you spend a few years retraining.
Yet, supporting employement mobility wouldn't just help those workers -- it would make our economy a lot more resiliant an adaptable. I think it's worth investing significant amounts to help people make those transitions, but instead we've got a bunch of much smaller programs (maybe the gov't will help with tuition, but who is covering your mortgage?). We need to figure out a sustainable way to help people transition from shrinking to growing sectors. I don't know enough to know if there are exemplars in other economies, but what we're doing doesn't seem adequate, especially given how quickly existing industries can be radically upended.
One guy on a train with umpteen cars is insane. I know they were wanting that coming thru the Rockies and Coast mountains. I think they still have 2. And they got rid of the caboose. Rotters!
They still have 2. It sounds like the US is going to leave that as a mandate. So we should likely stay the same. Single person would be insanity for a number of reasons.....a coupler breaking being the biggest. One person, if it breaks, the line is blocked until a second person shows up.
Proving Thomas Malthus wrong:)
Hedge fund, monopolists and oligarchs.
Automation can help increase productivity, but that's not what productivity is. It's essentially more output for the same (or, ideally, less) inputs. The reason there isn't one answer as it depends on what you are trying to do!
But, 'getting more from less' is essential to sustaining prosperity. Otherwise, as you point out, you can only move the same stuff around the economy (e.g. reduce worker wages to boost profits). Canada hasn't been terribly effective at doing this across the economy. Some of that has to do with our business climate. Some of it likely has to do with our business culture, which is arguably a bit risk-adverse. A lot of that has to do with living beside one of the most vibrant markets in the world, which tends to be a magnet for talent and investment -- both are which are important drivers of productivity improvement.
That doesn't mean there aren't specific industries that have made significant productivity improvements. As you've pointed out, most manufacturing left in Canada produces more with less - less workers, less energy. A lot of resource industries have had to improve productivity to remain competitive -- finding ways to economically get more of a resource produced per dollar invested. That's great, but in terms of Canadian prosperity, what matters is the cumulative productivity improvements acorss the economy -- and we lag there.
As a pregnant woman with a career -- we are ignoring a large part of the cause on decline and thats a mysoginistic economic policy that makes it harder for families to have and support children. A woman on maternity leave gets 55% of her income only up to $60,300 - as the primary income support in my family who makes well over that cap having a child means severe economic consequences aty a time where you are introducing a great brand new financial cost of supporting another child (Ive paid into EI since I was 18 years old and have only ever used it once when I had my first child) -- add that to the increase in costs of living on top of massive costs around of school supplies and fees, health care, growing food costs -- its hardly financially viable for most families to even consider having 5, 6 or 12 kids kike our parents or grandparents did -- we live in a society wherre majority of households rely on 2 incomes and women are progressively making career moves that would sewe them as the primary financial contributors tot heir household. My family is fortunate compared to many but having our second child is going to create considerable economic challenges for our family. Until we start addressing this lopsided point of view on families we will continue to see households have less children. Teh right conservative population that spreads this replacement theory bull crap support the same partes who traditionally are the last when it comes to even considering proper funding for families., Let alone providing more funding for fertility supports or making the adoption process easier. They'd rather buy into some ridiculous white supremacist's rhetoric then actually address the issue and find concrete solutions, while being ignorant tot he fact that as our significant boomer population moves into retirement we will need to find someway to fill the vacancies they will be leaving -- so what is it far right? Economic support for families and social programs - or support for immigration -- you cant have no ways and expect to maintain the quality of life you feel so entitled to. Nor can you ignore the current funding system in place speaks more accurate to a family unit of the 1960s that to the family unit of today.
The 2nd kid was more of a financial challenge than the first. However, it would be an even bigger hurdle if we'd had a 3rd. You've got more options in housing and cars with just 2 kids - just about any car can hold 4 people, and kids can share a room in a 2 bedroom home. Add a 3rd kid, and you're looking at bigger cars and bigger houses too.
Agree to an extent as again its very situational... I think your funny if you think an 8 year old girl is going to be sharing a room with her baby brother... add that tot he range of items appropriate for kids of such a wide age gap and suddenly you need more play sdpace --- add that to the surge in remote work where many of us are already using common spaces as an office and I think it would be rare to say adding a second kid is any less challenging than a 3rd or 4th. If you have say a tiny Accent as a vehicle and a big dog or two, popping one more kid in there with any kind of luggage makes it an auto need to upgrade your vehicle. kind of goes to show having kids and the decisions around having them don't fit into a cookie cutter mold but having appropriate economic strategies for families certainly does help at least make the mold less rigid.
My 10-year-old son had to share a room with his 2-year-old sister for a couple of months while renos were going on. Tho they ran on entirely different schedules he was so insulted by it all (even tho he adored her).
Car seats are so huge now! Taking the g'kids anywhere was always a production. LOL! I had a Sprint, and a Bouvier/Golden Ret X. HUGE guy.
Of course, choices are made and lived with. I don't know anyone, including my own kids, who had more than 2, but for very few exceptions. My best friend never had kids, their choice. They travelled, everywhere. (We camped a lot) They built a great small biz. Had cats not dogs. There were times I was so jealous. It is all about choices.
While I don't think that immigration is the only answer, I think it's an important part. New Canadians are going to want to have families too, which means homes, day-care, big enough cars, sports (forget pushing hockey and go for soccer), schools, medical, all of it. All issues that we need to address soonest anyway.
I hate when people go on about immigration as if it's a monolithic block of trouble. They are just people, who want to work, raise their families and try to enjoy life just like the rest of us. They are willing to uproot their families, learn a new language, and wait for their credentials to be recognized. It takes bravery. As a first-generation Canadian (from a nice white-bread European country) I feel as Canadian as any "old stock" one. And we are encouraging our 3rd gen g'kids (Dutch, Welsh, Portuguese, & Vietnamese old stock ancestry) to consider (in the future) having only one or no kids at all. As they all still live at home it's not a big issue but planting the seeds seems only prudent. Choices.
My mother worked full-time in the 70's and 80's, raised 5 kids, never took more than a few weeks of parental leave (back when it wasn't EI eligible) and somehow survived. Of course we were latch key kids, but all 5 of us turned out fine. Why do current genertations struggle to work and raise families?
Its almost like its not all all the same socio economic world today as it was in the 70s/80s or something... has everything else in your life stayed the same as the last 50 years? I doubt it, why would raising and supporting a family be any different.. Back in the 70s and 80s everything from energy to house prices made it much more realistic for single income households to be able to support a family, not the case today.. Most households also received their primary income from the male figure so you were taking a 50% or more hit to your income every time you had a kid... Its not unreasonable for women to not want to be financially punished for having kids, especially if you pay into these services for decades but never utilize them. And much like the commenter below states, just because that's how it was doesn't mean it couldn't have been better - and it also doesn't mean that those of us raised on tight budgets and paying our own way don't want to be able to use what we have built to make things a little different for our kids. the kind of life I want to be able to give my kids has 100% impacted our decision on how many kids to have Im sure its the same for many families that ridiculous essay accused lack of children as women of not doing their biological duty. The whole back in my day argument is just so lazy...
Rhiannon life wasn't such a party back then either. From the mid 70's to the mid 80's inflation AVERAGED 10%/year. I had a mortgage at 18% and a second kid on the way. Then Trudeau senior introduced the National Energy Program and the unemployment rate was 13% (just below the high of COVID) and no CERB for us. ) My wife took a bus from St. Albert into downtown Edmonton and we paid for private child care. I drove a six year old car (I was in sales and needed it) and lived in a 1100 sq ft home. Now it seems to me that everyone thinks they deserve a 2500 sq ft home (average size of a new home vs 980 sq ft in 1955 when families were larger) two vehicles, a dog, deductions for sports, free school bus ride, taxpayer paid daycare, dinners out, foreign vacations, plus all the other things we gave up or never had in order to raise our family.
I'm sorry I missed the part where I claimed 50 years ago was a party. I was simply expressing the obvious you can't compare having and raising a family today compared to the 70s/80s.. thats like comparing apples to hand grenades. Nonones claiming it wasn't tough then.. nor is wanting the most for your family and perhaps deciding to have less children as a result of that any form of entitlement. This we must be martyrs or it your struggle doesn't count mentality is a little silly to me.
Parents today still give a lot up. And considering having less children to give our family's the most doesn't make me shameful to my gender nor does it make this whole white replacement theory bullshit it that essay remotely acceptable or true. I dont need a medal for having kids.. my husband has a couple of those does nothing to help when the government that gave him those medals left him behind. Much like families particularly mothers shouldn't be left behind because of what the essay writers claims as cultural obligation
That is what I was saying. Having children in any time period is a matter of adjusting priorities. Unless you have more than average financial resources, sacrifices will be the order of the day when you have children. I was merely pointing out that in the 70's and 80's people had to make the same choices.
It's always tough some of the time. The 70/80s had ugly fashions too but that didn't stop the fashion industry from recycling those ideas. It was tough but it wasn't that tough. There were parties. I think Dan is probably misremembering or simply being an old fart...back in my day, we walked 30 miles in 6-foot drifts of snow, to school, one way!
Today's parents have stresses we didn't have. Kids' safety is huge and has been for more than 20 years. When I went out to play I was expected to be home for dinner or when street lights came on. My kids went out and I wanted to know where they were going. Today's kids go on play dates and they are driven there and back. I'm talking the under 10 set. Not teens. Teens still manage somehow. It's different today and kids and their parents need a lot more support, from gov, and from their community from us all.
While I'm definitely and old fart, I'm not misremembering (but I did walk to school though it was only a mile but in Alberta...) We did party though most parties were held in our house or the houses of friends and consisted of BBQ fare or assorted casseroles and beer or plonk.
I will grant you that parental anxiety over child safety has increased greatly. But I remind you when you say parents need more support from community that's fine but when you say from government you are saying we should pay more taxes for that or else borrow more from future generations.
I bought my first house, $50,000, in North Van, in 1978. $5000 down and a new baby (#2) so I wasn't working at the time. Tho I did go back to work when she was about 9 months old. A 3 bdr bungalow without closets, built in 1919. Who does not put closets in a house for 60 years? I think the mortgage was 8.5% closed, tho it went double digits within a year or 2.
Somehow we managed it all on not a tremendous amount of sleep. Little kids hockey practices at 6am. All the usual house, reno, work, kid stuff, and still we managed to have fun. And we had parties.
I remember hearing 10% unemployment...discussed at said parties. We had one car with the very cool original car-seat (white moulded plastic) from GM. I worked evenings from 4pm, hubby person worked days until 4pm. I had 4 high school girls who worked in rotation, 3:30 to 4:30. So the boy child was home from school and the girl child had lovely sitters for an hour. They all lived close by and would sort it out between themselves who came over and when. They never left me without a sitter. And they sat weekends too. I was very lucky.
A 2200sf home is just about perfect (I hate vacuuming) 980 is ridiculous. Maybe it was usual for your neighbourhood but I never lived in anything so small when I was a kid. 5 in the family, we almost always had a dog and a cat and often other critters. In the city, not the sticks. But nothing posh.
Things were not necessarily better in 55. The country was not even 100 years old, for all intents. It was simply different. As today is different. How people live, condos or rental apartments or houses with big stupid lawns and a 2 car garage in the front is what it is and no one size fits all. Smarter planning is needed. But like everything it evolves and changes and all of this will sort out eventually.
Wishing for the good old days will only feed your discontent. Being discontented for other people is silly.
I would so like to have a drink with your mother and hear her side.
40 or 50 years ago was a long time ago. Things have changed if you haven't noticed. You may think you are fine but really, not so much. I'm sure if your mom could have done things differently, she would have. Was your father any help? If she is still about why don't you ask her?
Absolutely every single word you write is entirely true!
And congratulations (from a mom of 2)!
Immigration to Canada at essence is about growing the economy to support the cornucopia of social programs more than anything.
Since Canadians are allergic to increasing productivity per capita (can't let the rich win!), increasing the number of Canadians is required to maintain all the goodies that the boomers have an expectation for.
The problem with Rahim's thesis is that local and provincial government through action if not words have said they don't want more population growth. What is NIMBYism, defunding of schools via property tax exemptions and even the refusal to allow private health care for added capacity if not saying "no more?" Visit Vancouver or especially Toronto and I can see, if I still vehemently disagree, why old stock Canadians don't like the new urban bigger and culturally mixed Canada.
Surveys consistently show that Canadians want a more bucolic and parochial Canada if given a choice. They also want a cradle to grave parental state. Something has to give.
Probably the narrow-minded but not too churchy style of parochial.
Hey Kico, where are these surveys? Do only Boomers take them?
Abacus Data released some gathered data recently as did Angus Reid.
So only signed up Boomers hoping for prizes or points.
Old Conservative Reform Alliance Party ( C.R.A.P.) types. The ones that want to back to the 40s or the 50s. Bucolic! Oh, and they also come from many generations of dead Canadians.
I am what Harper meant by that ridiculous term. UEL. WTF, eh?
LOL! They aren't old stock!
I know you do.
I may sound like someone who doesn't understand economics, etc. but once we Baby Boomers die off, then a lot of the stress on our health care systems and pension benefits will disappear. I have never understood why developed countries need more and more people to produce more and more stuff that requires more and more energy and natural resource depletion. Call me a fool. I'm OK with it. But when is enough, enough?
The main issues are maintaining the defined benefit pension plan and servicing accumulated government debt. Beyond perpetual population growth, the solutions are obvious, albeit politically untenable:
-transition towards individually funded, defined contribution pension plans, similar to Australia's Superannuation approach
-severely constrain government's ability to fund operations (mainly headcount related expenses) using long term debt
Thanks Doug, I forgot about our debt that grows and grows.
...when is enough, enough?
It is never enough. It is a Ponzi scheme in which the likes of Mr. Mohamed will never cease arguing that a never ending stream of new people is necessary for our continued prosperity.
No need to mention the fact that our per capita GDP is declining at the same time we bring in record amounts of people.
That would spoil the narrative!
Where in this article did Rahim Mohamed claim that "a never ending stream [sic] of new people is necessary for our continued prosperity"?
Indeed, he argued quite the opposite--that relying on an influx of immigrants to make up for the shortfall of births in this country is neither sustainable nor responsible.
Sandra, I understand your "confusion" - which isn't really confusion at all; your brief analysis seems spot on to me.
Now, please allow me to propose an idea [which will be thought heretical and - horrors - fascist or communist or some other "ist," I am certain].
In my mind, the issues are ultimately that a) we all want "more," more of everything, but b) we don't want to pay for it; we want someone else (enter that fairy godmother, the "government" of whatever strip to pay for the "more.")
Ultimately, there are only so many resources to go around, just as there are only so many minutes in a day. We have to determine what we find most important and deal with that and put off to tomorrow, or whenever, that which we cannot get done today.
Assume that today is Monday and, while you really want to sleep in and then play with the kids you have to go to work or you won't get paid for the day - or at all, if you have been pulling that stunt repeatedly! See? You budgeted the time available; perhaps not in the way that you wish but in the way that worked.
In other words, just as we have to budget time we need to budget resources, whether time, money or other resources.
Our governments and those "evil" politicians tell us that we don't need to budget our resources and we can have it all right now but they are really lying to us. Just as there are only so many minutes in a day, there only so many dollars and that means that we have to budget carefully, remembering that if we overspend today we must repay tomorrow.
The idea of getting more immigrants from other countries is simply another way of trying to avoid the truth that we are spending far beyond our means. That spending includes the idea of being able to provide scarce government services to non-productive folks like me.
Perhaps I should be put out on an ice flow, don't you think? To help the remainder of society, you know. My grandkids will have pictures of me so - hopefully - I won't be forgotten but, really, should my generation cause our grandchildren and their grandchildren to be impoverished? Again, limited resources, you know.
I like immigrants; I have hired them, I have worked with them, I have many of them for neighbors, but they do not allow us to avoid the fact that we only have so many dollars, no matter how blind and how silly we are. They are like a bank loan: their presence allows us to live beyond our means for a bit longer but the country will ultimately have to look after our immigrants as they age, just as they are now looking after my generation, so it all catches up. [And, given inflation, aging immigrants will be far more costly than my generation.]
And, yes, when we baby boomers die off our costs will no longer be part of the system [well, other than the debt taken on to give us those services, of course] but please understand that the politicians of the day will then find another group to use as an excuse.
I am retired and do not have a pension beyond CPP into which I paid for many years [and, as an accountant I do know just how rotten the return on my premiums is!] and Old Age Security Pension, which is really welfare for seniors. Oh, that last comment will get me in trouble [when I told my late father that, he was pretty cool for a while!]. But, it really is welfare for seniors. That doesn't mean that we should not have OAS but, to me, too many people get it - including me.
So, the issue is really that we should pay our way going forward - yesterday is gone so let us look to today and tomorrow. I would like it if CPP could be enhanced and people could live on it but that is quite another battle and, again, there only so many resources.
Thanks Ken. I think of it as treadmill hoping we're not going to fall off.
You and I come from the same generation which included far less personal and government debt. I still can't get my head around how much debt individuals and countries now carry, and this includes new Canadians. I guess if I was younger I'd be more accepting of this new norm.
Re immigrants - travelling to developing countries has been a big part of my life, including marrying and living in Egypt, working in high tech with very competent immigrants here in Canada, and continuing to help new immigrants settle into life here. They want (and deserve) a 1st world life style, but I'm shocked at how quickly they go into debt to get it, and in spite of housing prices continually going up to mind blowing levels.
So we scramble to provide adequate infrastructure (roads, hospitals, schools, housing, etc.) for new immigrants and new generations of Canadians. What bothers me the most is this housing trap. Developers and ourselves have bought into this fantasy that bigger is better. We've convinced ourselves we need family rooms, offices/libraries, lots of bathrooms, expensive large kitchens, etc. built on smaller and smaller lots. And developers insist they can't make any money making smaller places. All nuts to me.
I have a friend in The Netherlands so I follow events there. It's an example of what happens here too. Their population is half ours. They have the highest density of people in Europe living in a very small land mass where agriculture is a prime industry. Their government is bringing in 100K more immigrants a year, but where to house them and how to pay for their integration into life there?
I also look at the anomaly that Canada is given we are the 2nd physically largest country in the world with lots of natural resources, but have such a small population. Yet we don't manage to get a significant number of people living outside of our major centres. We keep using cold weather as a reason (?), but surely we could get more people living at the same latitude as Edmonton. But if we did, I don't know how this might benefit the country over all.
I take in as much information as possible, particularly from what I think are credible independent sources. But at the end of every day my head spins with what I see and hear. I certainly believe we live in the best time in history, even for people living in developing countries. I just hope that generations younger than us Boomers can handle all of the massive changes that will continue to come their way. Mankind does have a way of surviving!
Sandra, thank you for your thoughts.
I absolutely agree with you that we are on a treadmill and that we [that is Canadian society] will fall off of that treadmill, largely because of the insane levels of indebtedness. To use one measure of the level of indebtedness, most comparisons that we use to "justify" our debt look at federal debt as a percentage of GDP but ignore provincial indebtedness and certainly ignore personal indebtedness. I submit that if you look at overall Canadian indebtedness it is simply unsustainable. How will we fall of that metaphorical treadmill? That I don't know; I suppose it will be some future, as yet undetermined event, perhaps a large business failure or some such but, really, the details are not foreseeable right now
Yes, there is a lot of debt in the world generally but right now, I am looking at the "local" environment. It seems to me that there are really but two ways to ultimately deal with unsustainable levels of indebtedness.
The first is the obvious answer of simple default, repudiation, call it what you will. That is "attractive" to some folks because, after all, who hold the debt but the "wealthy" - the you and I of the world when we really aren't wealthy but simply have saved for our declining years.
The second is to sufficiently debase the currency through inflation that the amount repaid is but a pittance of the amount borrowed. To provide an example of this, the OFFICIAL CPI in 2000 was 93.5 whereas the OFFICIAL rate for 2022 (so far!) is 153.1. [Source: Bank of Canada] That means that in 22 years our spending power has declined by 63.7%. And, of course, those are OFFICIAL numbers; the REAL numbers for an individual could be anything, usually far higher.
When I was young, in the fifties, life in Calgary was pretty much monochrome as there were almost no visible minorities - just a fact, neither praise nor condemnation for the situation - whereas now, the population is very diverse and very colorful; very interesting, too, in my view. I have dealt extensively with folks in India and gone there on business; it is a fascinating place, full of terrifically smart folks - much smarter than I, to be honest. And, of course, I have dealt with so many of our local folk of all colors and, again, they seem to me to frequently be much smarter than I.
My only problem with immigration is that we allow / bring folks in but don't adequately support them through jobs, housing, etc., etc. Truthfully, it seems to me that Canada is being terrifically dishonest in our immigration policy and, it seems to me, we are being terrifically greedy in trying harvest the best and the brightest from other countries because we are too lazy and unwilling to have our own kids, save for our own future, etc.
Will our kids be better than us? I sincerely doubt it simply because we raised them to have those unreasonable expectations and to believe debt was a panacea and that the government would take care of them. Almost no one is willing to admit that "the government is us" and, instead, they look at the government as a fairy godmother who requires no participation or responsibility on their part.
Ultimately, I foresee Canada disintegrating as it is a lazy, unproductive, indebted society. For my part, I expect I will be dead and that unsavory reality will, very unfortunately, be faced by my children and grandchildren.
Sorry, Ken, but the rules that applied when you were working as an accountant no longer apply today.
This follows from the fact that Minister Freelunch has found a way for the government to borrow money so that Canadians don't have to. Think about that for a moment: debt of the government of Canada that is not the debt of Canadians!
Mull over that for a while and you will see that your observations about time and resources being finite no longer holds true here in little old Canada, at least the part about resources.
In Canada we can have everything we all want right now because the sky is the limit!
If that isn't the coolest thing!
Tom, I respectfully disagree.
You say "Minister Freelunch [thank you for this delicious - pun intended - phrasing] has found a way for the government to borrow money so that Canadians don't have to" but I say that the government is we so if the government is borrowing then we are borrowing.
There are still only so many resources available. If you try to monetize those resources (money) and then increase the money without increasing the resources, how do you spell inflation? Ooops, I guess I already have; but then Tiff Macklem has gone out of his way to generate said inflation.
Oh, and I do know that you are being sarcastic but I chose to respond as if you were serious because I am certain that there are some folk hereabout who won't know the difference.
OMG!
With the greatest respect, Ken, I think, after long reflection, that you are correct.
But that means someone is going to have to explain it all to Madam Minister.
What a career ending move that would be!
So we are probably doomed to continue to live on in the fairy tale until the wheels really do fall off the bus.
But, then again, I have always wanted to get my hands on a billion dollar note!
Tom, thanks for the response and I have a solution!
I am not at all worried about my career (retirement has a very predictable career path) so I will explain it to her. I am from Alberta, she is from Alberta; she is of a Ukrainian background, I am from Russian / German background.
See? It is so clear that she and I will be absolutely sympatico. Well, once we dispose of the Liberal drones who are currently surrounding her but that can't be too hard. Can it?
And if you want a billion dollar note I can send you one.
Oh, it just occurred to me that you want a billion dollar note to SPEND. Sorry, I have a billion dollar PROMISSORY NOTE. On the other hand, when I think about it, I suppose that she has been signing those rapidly each day over the last two years. So perhaps I can't help you.
As for fairy tales, as I said, I live in Alberta. I very definitely hope that Danielle Smith is elected premier and that she introduces and passes the Sovereignty Act. Then our premier can explain to Madam Minister certain facts of life. Birds; bees; currency propagation and dilution; you know, the real obvious stuff that any politico should know - but doesn't seem to know here in Canada.
Good afternoon:
Thank you for agreeing to set Madam Minister straight on the fact that the debt of the government of Canada is, in fact, the debt of Canadians.
I have every confidence, given your respective ancestries, that you and she are destined to become best buds.
However, it disappoints me to read that you are hoping for the passage of the Sovereignty Act.
The Great Climate Warrior and Little Minister Gilligan expect that you and your fellow Albertans will do your part to combat climate warming by acquiescing to the destruction of Alberta's oil and gas industry.
Yes, it will be somewhat of a discomfort to have to spend your winters shivering in a house without heat.
However, don't lose sight of the fact that thanks to your sacrifice His Exalted Self will gain important preening points to use when he fires up the jumbo jets and roars off to some distant clime spewing great clouds of GHGs emissions to talk about Canada going net zero in 2050.
So let's shelve any more talk of the Sovereignty Act and get behind Junior remembering that we are all climate warriors now!
Baby Boomers are not all going to drop dead all of a sudden. It will take years to knock us all off.
Replacement theory/cultural survival has been driving politics in Quebec and - through it, Canada - for centuries. So, now, with Francophones deciding not to have babies, fewer people identify as speaking French as a mother tongue. Frig. It’s just math.
Our politicians tell us that climate change is the greatest hazard facing humanity and that we must significantly reduce emissions if we want to survive.
It is clear that countries with higher populations emit more CO2 into the global atmosphere.
We can reduce our personal emissions and, if population growth stabilizes, global emissions can be reduced.
The unfortunate fact is, however, that the global population continues to increase because the global population continues to grow.
Reducing emissions is an expensive mission - we are being forced by government mandate to use less fossil fuels and to transition to green energy.
Here in Canada, given our climate and geography, we use significant amounts of energy and green energy replacements are not capable, yet, of providing the power we need at a comparable cost.
In spite of this fact, the government wishes to grow our population through immigration thus creating more need for personal reductions and the need for more energy in spite of such reductions.
Most of Canada’s immigration is from higher populated countries where personal emissions are relatively low (it is the sheer number of people emitting and energy production that is the problem).
When these people emigrate to Canada, however, their personal emissions increase significantly given the standard of living they can enjoy here.
When 400,000 new emitters enter Canada, emissions increases accordingly, the existing population comes under pressure to emit even less and there is greater demand for green energy that simply already does not supply demand.
The overall impact of the green transition is reducing Canada’s artificially high standard of living as energy costs increase, fossil fuel production is curtailed and government revenues are tapped out.
New immigrants arriving in Canada face a housing as well as a medical care system that this in crisis and their arrival only exacerbates these issues.
In spite of these immigration impacts on emissions and our standard of living, government insists bringing more people into Canada is necessary so that tax revenue collected from them will sustain our social programs - this claim notwithstanding the fact they will consume much of this revenue as will the financial impacts of emissions reductions.
Simply put, the notion that Canada needs more immigrants, makes very little sense from an environmental or economic standpoint.
The idea that immigration is needed to stoke growth makes no sense when growth is being discouraged in an effort to reduce emissions, when growth cannot be accommodated and when the revenue from growth is not sufficient to offset the costs.
My experience in the past 10 years has been that new immigrants to Canada, even when they have white collar jobs, are shocked at the cost of living here. They just aren't informed enough before coming here, yet they are impatient to be able to live the Canadian dream, and thus start going into debt asap. I keep telling them not to fall for the maximum mortgage and car loans the banks tell them they can afford.
That is the Liberal paradox.
I think you will see that the CON is not anti-immigrant. In fact I would like to know why you make that claim. (If by CON you mean either CPC or small "c" conservatives.)
I think they believe that it should be legal immigration and that their plan is to bring in skills that are needed in Canada. See Section 137 - 142. https://cpcassets.conservative.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/15090948/9f7f204744e7480.pdf
I think Mik was just pointing out the conundrum of trying to decrease AGW but when you have large scale immigration from 3rd to 1st world countries it causes an increase in AGW. The reason they immigrate is to have the stuff we have (quality of life, freedom, things). Perhaps if we helped the 3rd world get cheap electricity instead of taking their best people, we would be doing more good in the world.
But we are still taking their most talented and hurting their home country.
I am not “anti-immigrant”.
I have no problem with admitting people to Canada when it makes sense to do so.
The point I am making is that increasing Canada’s population at this point in time does not make sense given the issues our country is facing.
If this concern is not part of a political platform, it should be.
Disclaimer: I have not read the essay in question. But how is that opening line "inauspicious?" And other than maybe claiming that people generally think Albertan children are "unnecessary," what did you quote from the essay that demonstrates it going "downhill?" Again, haven't read the essay. I'm sure it takes a hard turn somewhere... I just don't see where you demonstrated that in this article. The quotes you used just make it sound like... this article. Am I missing something?
Yes.
What am I missing? I'm genuinely asking, not trying to be snarky here.
I read the essay, and, as predicted, it took a hard turn. Pretty bad stuff. But I think my point still stands... Rahim had dozens of much worse statements to use, but his intro left me wondering what the problem was. I had to go digging for the original essay to clarify it for myself.
I did. It's a dumb essay. The contents of the essay don't have anything to do with what I'm trying to say though, my point is that the chosen quotes in the intro to this article don't seem that bad.
Maybe just accept that everyone else got it and you didn't.
Good grief, why is everyone replying to this so hostile? I genuinely want to know what I'm missing.
Conspiracy theories are based on the the idea that there is some intelligent cabal shaping our lives when the real answers have to do with incompetence. The "great replacement theory" is no different. As a country, we have had a hard time building housing to keep up with immigration but during Covid, I think this came to a head. We have encouraged women in the work force but in reality they were often forced to work because couples could not afford to live on one salary. Yes, most of the immigrants are non-white but most of the world is non-white. We magnify the benefits of immigration ( cultural diversity ) but it is a sword that can cut both ways. We also have the impacts on housing, and security issues.
The PPC said that immigration to Canada should be reduced to 150,000 and the Liberals seem to want to increase it to 400,000. I really don't think our current immigration levels benefit either new Canadians or heritage Canadians. There also seems to be a lot of evidence to suggest that we are not helping the current immigrants optimize their contribution to our society. I would suggest that we put less emphasis on the numbers and more emphasis on integration.
Interesting conversation starter. I do not believe in replacement theory as its just as exspensive for all Canadian's, new immigrants or not, to afford to have more children. Economically we have already devastated most new Canadian's of any hope of a prosperous life in a G-7 country with the "no growth" ideology that has been esteemed by the progressive governments. Not just in Canada, but all western nations. We now promote having no children to save the planet and assisted suicide for any that ask. One might think that humanity has become a cancer upon the earth.
As monopolies in news media, banking and financial institutions, telecommunications and technology, insurance, agriculture, transportation, food distribution and processing continue, it puts the economy in the control of a few, the wealth as well. The continual amassment of these large and audious conglomerates is a feature in all western countries. The only country still able to turn that ship around is the US but with the division being sown there, as it has been in all western nations, due to climate change and greed, the wealth and entrepreneurship is slowly being eroded there as well, along with personal wealth.
Greed, automation, and large global conglomerates have sucked up the majority of wealth and now dictate to the peons they relieved from duties to use cheaper employees over seas. They have become the masters of the universe and now dictate and collude with Governments to do what is best for the "collective". Unfortunately, their idea of the "collective" excludes them and the progressive Governments that steal from the peons through taxation and inflation and hand it back to those same billionairs and conglomerates to build the new green utopia. They live as the wealthy priviledged, continue on as such, while they dictate to the lowly peons who must accept poverty and depletion as part of their "Utopia"! Remember its will be their " Utopia," not yours or mine.
They call this progress, while I call it enslavment. All people will be in the same boat, regardless of which country they come from, as the elite do not discriminate and consider all humanity a plague upon the planet. People are free to be able to agree or disagree for a little while longer at least. That too must end as decent can not be tolerated for the good of the "collective" (communist wording of the new utopian world they are to bring).
Wow that really touched a nerve!
So some, hopefully, coherent thoughts.
Apologies to the author but what he wrote is a load of crap. Canada, unlike the UK and the US, has always focused on highly skilled immigrants. And outside of Quebec immigration generally isn’t an issue that upsets Canadians. And as well the post Brexit experience shows that immigration is not an issue when the focus is on skilled immigrants*.
What I had hoped the author might had focused on is what is radicalizing these young men what is driving them to drop out of society and to embrace extremist attitudes. I’ll give him a hint, it’s not youtube or FB but the that society has neglected them (as an example women vastly outnumber men in college yet all the emphasis is on getting more women into STEM ) and secondly labelled them as not just unimportant but also white supremacists responsible for all of societies ills. The problem is compounded by the fact that this is the kiss of death for any academic studying this.
I won’t bother pointing out that the majority of hate crimes committed in America are by Black people (something the MSM is loath to cover) as it really doesn’t add anything to the conversation.
Now one point that the author is absolutely spot on about is that policy makers can’t rely on skilled immigrants long term. With Trump dominating the news cycle again many people probably are not aware of the fact that there is bipartisan agreement that the US needs to bring in many more skilled workers. It’s going to take a few years till we see concrete action but once we do Canada will struggle to get same workers. And like our HC system there are no short term fixes this.
*despite much higher post Brexit immigration attitudes towards it has shifted 180 degree from negative to positive.
Afterthought: to be fair to the author very few people are even aware there is an issue with young (mostly) white men and even fewer care. So unless you spend time following Jorden Peterson or time on right wing media you'll rarely see coverage of this.
I don’t think that’s actually true.
What an excellent and thoughtful op-ed. Thank you.
Rahim, you appear to be playing 2 ends of the same argument against each other to some indeterminate middle ground ...
You criticize "Silver" for espousing replacement theory and the idea of '"giving medals to women for having babies" but then go on to agree that government spending more money on family supports will help raise the birthrate
Pick an argument to counter ... don't try to pit two parallel arguments against each other
I certainly felt that tension but also felt like the essay competition fracas would make a good ‘hook’ for an article on Canada’s birth rate. I maybe should have gone a smidge easier on the poor girl, although her essay was certainly rife with GRT-related talking points, dog-whistles (foreigners “replac[ing]” Albertans, “cultural suicide”, etc.)
You are assuming Silver is a woman. When I reread the essay it seemed very possible that Ms. isn't. I'm not for a moment suggesting that there are no women with exactly those views, there definitely are. After following many different issues regarding women and their children or lack thereof over the years, it's generally a man who does such a deep dive.
Is it correct that there were only 5 essays submitted?
My thought exactly, Lou.
Lol, yeah, I figured it was a hook ... but, don't do that 'k 🤪
You reminded me of Mark Steyn's line "The future belongs to those who show up for it." So I looked it up, it shows up first in 2008: https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/is-canadas-economy-a-model-for-america/
In it, his focus is more economics than family policy. It holds up mostly well, and makes the point without being racist.
Peter Zeihan is another interesting follow. He's focused on demographics as an economics driver. Countries with low birth rates don't do well.
What worries me about falling birth rates is the scenario sketched out in Mike Judge's movie "Idiocracy". Lots of smart, hardworking middle class people either forgo having kids, or have at most 1 or 2. The people who tend to have a lot of kids often aren't smart, hardworking middle class people. The movie is a dark comedy showing a future where the average intelligence has dumbed down to the point where a perfectly average person from our time (played by Luke Wilson) winds up being the smartest man on Earth, helping solve problems like crop failures by teaching people to irrigate with plain water instead of sports drinks with electrolytes.
See America today...... :)
There's some social housing units in my neighbourhood, and I think the $500/month/child is working effectively to boost the bpw.
That is a disgusting comment Neil.
I found that very interesting, and like most things involving government "planning", most troubling. That we have failed to what's the work; verify/validate/ accept the credentials of people coming to this country leaving them driving cabs instead of working in ER's is nothing short of pathetic. I don't know if its associations trying protect their power base; blind ignorance or bureaucratic stupidity, if we have people who are trained to do jobs, they should be doing them, or make sure they getting the upgrading training so they can. Further, the idea of interprovincial restrictions on tradespeople because of provincial associations is just stupid. If you can do it in BC, you can do it in Ontario. This isn't rocket science.
The idea that Canada will soon have to compete for immigrants was an eye-opener, but quite logical. Someone has to take up the slack of us old people as we burden systems that don't have the capacity to deal with the volume of us soon to arrive. Are they ways they can help us stay home longer?
It seems like we're sailing as fast as possible into the perfect storm of no planning.....while spending a boatload on bureaucracy we don't need, programs we can't afford while not making enough of our own, or importing enough youth to support our standard of living.....something that is starting to appear to be unrealistically high.
If I sound depressed, it's also because I'm a Leafs fan :)
I don't like the trope of the skilled immigrant professional stuck in a menial job because we're just too parochial to recognize their credentials. It's not accurate, for one thing. Credentials *aren't* the same everywhere. Medical practice in Russia, for example is often a couple of decades behind North America and Europe. A lot of people who call themselves engineers in other countries are basically glorified electricians and mechanics by Canadian standards. If you haven't got the language skills to function at a professional level in English or French, you could have a completely equivalent credential and still not be competent to work in Canada because you can't communicate. The blame for this problem belonged to the immigration bureaucrats who were granting people visas based on credentials that weren't going to be recognized, and governments who didn't provide funding for things like Canadian medical residencies needed so foreign-trained doctors could become part of the Canadian profession.
No, they aren't. But they're light years ahead of someone just starting out. So get them into a Canadian "finishing school", and get them up to standard.
Language skills are a completely separate problem that I shouldn't have ignored. I had a cab ride with a Middle Eastern telephone repairman who was driving a cab. he'd been told that exact issue; you have to get your English up to a workable standard before we can hire you. Maybe that's something we need to advertise abroad, and do a better job of supporting here. You could even argue that working skills in one of the languages is a requirement for immigration.
The Harper government actually solved a lot of these issues when they instituted immigration reforms that prioritized visas to people who had a job offer from a Canadian company. Canadian employers have a much better idea of what they need than a government bureaucracy, and as usual the free market does a better job than central planning. The government would have to fund more residencies for foreign-trained doctors, but my experience in engineering was that a fast route to credentialing for a lot of foreign-trained engineers was to do a 12-18 month course-based M.Eng. at a Canadian university. If your education was up to spec, you'd prove it by successfully completing a grad degree and upgrading your credentials at the same time. If not, the university would wash you out quickly.
Still in place, or did some "genius" have a new plan?
If the US ever fixes it immigration system Canada is screwed. Between sky high house prices, low wages and horrible healthcare why would anyone come here. Unfortunately for Canada it is slowly changing, even the Dems realise that illegal immigration is a loser issue.