We are a nation of immigrants - so what?

Thoughts on David Suzuki’s observation that Canada is FULL. Now is the opportune moment to say that on this issue, Dr. David Suzuki is right.
Suzuki has offered us a golden opportunity to resurrect a longstanding demand. We need to develop a Population Plan for this country. We need to start a conversation that would answer one critical question about Canada. "How many people do we want to live here?"

In any discussion about immigration, invariably there is one recurrent statement that never fails to grate. The oft-repeated line that "Canada is a nation of immigrants". It is a cliche that at once manages to be both untrue in the immediate sense and meaningless in its broader truth.

It is untrue because fully 79% of Canadians were born in this country. To say then that we are a nation of immigrants is like saying that the 401 is a highway of heavy trucks. Yes, there are many heavy trucks using
the 401, but the vast majority of vehicles travelling on that road are family cars. In truth, then, the only accurate observation one could make about the 401 is that it is a major conduit of motorized vehicle traffic. So what?

Ah yes, you say, but if we were born here, our parents, our grandparents or our great-grandparents were not. "So we are all immigrants". Well, that could be said of EVERY SINGLE NATION ON THE PLANET because ultimately all of humanity issued out of the Olduvai gorge. We are all then "Africans". So what is your point? That no nation has a right to determine who takes up residence in their country and how many? That unfettered migration is a divine right? That because we entered the elevator from the lobby therefore none of us have a moral right to close the door no matter how much weight is on board?

The ability to migrate, to move to areas of greater resource abundance is and has been a key fertility stimulant. Less densely populated areas offer the promise of raising larger families. The promise of greater prosperity. More material opportunities. That is what spurs migration.

But there comes a point when what Dave Foreman calls "superabundance" gives way to mere abundance and then finally to scarcity. That was the case with every continent in the world and in recent history it has been the case with North America and Australia. Yet despite this obvious transformation we---the grandchildren or great grandchildren of migrants---cling to an absurd and obsolete frontier mentality that is not appropriate to our actual predicament. That "immigrants built this country" may be a truism, but it is also true that a country can become
over-built, and that our current population level is far beyond the carrying capacity of the land to support it.

Such is the case with Canada, a large land mass with a deceptively small carrying capacity---like Antarctica.

Who will talk about fertility, immigration and global overpopulation? Who will point out that migration and global
overpopulation are intimately bound up together? And if there ever was a time to make that point, when would be better than now, after an environmental celebrity of Asian ancestry has stuck his neck out to say what the majority of Canadians are thinking? Are we going to let him hang out to dry? Are we by our silence going to feed the

McCarthyist ambition to squelch any national discussion on this issue?

Now is the opportune moment to say that on this issue, Dr. David Suzuki is right.

Suzuki has offered us a golden opportunity to resurrect a longstanding demand. We need to develop a Population Plan for this country. We need to start a conversation that would answer one critical question about Canada. "How many people do we want to live here?"