Canada's population problem

Canadians for a Sustainable Society is a research and activist NGO focused on changing our society’s pursuit of endless growth and ever higher levels of consumption. Simple growth is neither sustainable nor conducive to reducing inequality, debt, fiscal imbalance or achieving environmental sustainability.

Aging is a Transition, Not a Crisis

Aging is a natural trend towards an increase in the proportion of older people in our population and will continue until the Canadian population stabilizes. 

The aging trend is merely part of the much larger demographic transition which has accompanied the development of our modern societies.  In this transition, life expectancy has increased from under 40 years in the 1700s to nearly 80 and the number of children per woman has decreased from 6 to near 2.

This demographic transition features:
•    lower fertility rates
•    longer life spans and
•    higher proportions of seniors

Growth Doesn't Pay For It

Aging is inevitable and simply cannot be reversed except by catastrophic population collapse or exponential population growth continuing forever.  Aging cannot be supported  endlessly by fiscal deficits with the expectation that “growth will pay for it”.  Growth does not pay for past deficits as a larger version of a debt producing fiscal structure adds on even larger debts going forward.

Immigration Can't Fix It

Very high levels of immigration has been touted as a “fix” for an aging population.  The objective of this fix seems to be to maintain forever the age structure and the rate of growth of the baby boom period.  Ie make it the 1950s forever.  Attempting to boost immigration to levels which will run ahead of the aging trend will see extreme and ever-increasing levels of immigration with little effect on the age structure.

Why? 

• The age structure of our immigration stream is not different enough to "youthenize" our population
• Aging is a global phenomenon

We Need a Better Strategy

Understanding the nature of the changes and modifying our expectations of endless growth are the challenges which all countries will have to meet. Canada is fortunate in that many advanced societies are decades ahead in this transition and are providing an excellent reference for the development of policies which will allow us to deal successfully with the transition to demographic stability.

The best means of dealing with a shift to a higher proportion of seniors is to boost job quality and flexibility along with wage rates.  People must be encouraged to be healthy and the concept of working well past the age previously thought of as “retirement age” must be embraced.  

Neither Business-as-Usual nor Business-as-it-Once-Was is sustainable.  Make sure your media sources and your political representatives are clear on the need for well-informed progressive change in Canadian public policy.  “More of the same” is not a viable strategy.

For more in-depth discussion on aging see our page:   http://sustainablesociety.com/population/aging#.WCuUW8kUht
 

Who are Canadians for a Sustainable Society: 

Canadians for a Sustainable Society is a research and activist NGO focused on changing our society’s pursuit of endless growth and ever higher levels of consumption.   Simple growth is neither sustainable nor conducive to reducing inequality, debt, fiscal imbalance or achieving environmental sustainability.

Our group believes that only a comprehensive strategy with relevant national metrics and clear goals can deliver long term social stability and environmental balance.

Learn More about CSS

Canadians for a Sustainable Society
PO Box 77, Port McNicoll
Ontario, Canada  L0K 1R0
[email protected]

Only in Canada you say? Perhaps you have wondered, like me, why--- given the substantial number of Canadians who have consistently told pollsters that they want lower immigration levels---there isn't a single MP in any party who will take up their cause. Not one. At least four MPs from two different parties in the UK have done so, and in Australia, Labor MP Kelvin Thomson has loudly spoken out for lower population numbers and a cut in migration levels. But there is not a whisper about reducing immigration numbers from the trained seals on either side of the aisle in Canada's House of Commons. Why not?

Party scrutiny of politicians screens out 'surprises'

At least part of the answer, I think, came up during a panel discussion on CBC news ("The National") last night February 25th. Panellists were asked how various nominees for the three major parties are "vetted" so that there are no embarrassing "surprises" that emerge during the election campaign. They told host Peter Mansbridge that nowadays, candidates' lives are intensely scrutinized. There is a search for every possible skeleton in every possible closet. Everything they have done or said in the past is investigated. Even ex-wives or ex-husbands are approached for information, if they can be.

Since being "anti-immigration" in Canada is regarded as a sin equal to pedophilia or murder, you can imagine that anyone who is on record of making any negative comment about immigration or any class of immigrants is subject to instant excommunication from the party. There is not a chance that such an individual could ever survive as a nominee if such "racist" feelings were to come to light. Not a chance. And if it is somewhere on the Internet, it is there forever and it will be found. The party brass will hunt you down and ferret you out.

That is true of the Conservatives, the Liberals and the NDP. What about the Greens, you ask? No worries there. Obviously you can't run for the Green Party unless you are certified open-borders moron and Islamopanderer.

Pity you need to be Swiss to have Swiss-style direct democracy

My answer? We need Swiss-style direct democracy. An end to the monopoly of political parties. That should be the first reform.

But then, to bring that about, you would need to work within one of the major parties, who have a vested interest in maintaining the party system. Good luck with that. You wouldn't even get your foot in the door. Start a new party? Forget it. It has been tried. It is a ticket to oblivion. You need at least 35% of the popular vote and a bucket money just to win one seat, and without a seat, you have no profile at all.

The only option is to become a Swiss citizen. But the recent referendum has shown us that the Swiss, wisely, will not have us.

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?"