Growing up in Canada (now living in usa) every student was propagandized about how population growth was bad, etc.
Now we are told how much immigration is indispensable i.e. more people are needed.
Were we lied to?
Now we are told how much immigration is indispensable i.e. more people are needed.
Were we lied to?
India has about 1.3 billion people in under 3.3 million square km. with 1/6 Canada's per capita GDP. Population is a huge problem for them.
If Canada were to double its population in this century, they'd probably be better off. If the World does, we'll be screwed.
Agricultural yields per acre or hectare are often less than in the USA, as well.
You say it like it's a bad thing :)
What do you even mean by this statement?
By giving food and economic aid to African countries (the small portion that actually goes to the people after the dictator filter) we subsidize their birth rate in an unsustainable way. Specifically, if the Western counties that support them have an economic crash, for example, and become no longer able to support them, they'll be left with mouths they can't feed. Mouths they never could feed on their own. It will be a tragic loss of life.
Starvation is often caused by war. It is often essentially a means to beat one side without going to battle.
When aid is sent, it may rot on the docks or be resold to fatten the pockets of local corrupt politicians.
When it gets distributed at all, it is typically Western fare. You now have locals who could afford the traditional local vegetarian diet craving hamburgers and French fries that they can't afford.
When loans are given to developing countries, the need for hard currency to pay it back means locals raise beef to sell to other countries to pay the loans while people go hungry at home.
Etc
And I have just realised this book is part of why I didn't really want a handout while homeless. This book is why I understood I needed earned income of my own, not charity, and how insidious charity can be in destroying your ability to make your own life work.
Essentially humans are K/r adaptive - if they are risky they go r (quantity). If they are safer they tend to go K quality.
We have a better handle on much of this, in part due better ways of turning ocean water into fresh drinking water. Of course, we are still suffering from pollution and waste issues that theoretically would go down as the population drops.
On the other hand, we have uneven population growth, so some places are still exploding (Africa and some asian countries, for example). Birth control isn't readily available to all, neither is some modern hygiene and medicine. Population growth is still a problem for parts of the world.
On the other hand, other populations are shrinking and people aren't having enough children to simply replace their parents. This creates all sorts of issues in itself. Partly because of manpower issues: Who is going to take care of the elderly? Will we have enough doctors, nurses, and farmers in these areas? And things of that nature.
Some countries have addressed this through sex education, teaching both how to avoid pregnancy and how to get pregnant (and things that go along with that). Others have not. The best-bet solutions would be things like more service jobs and more automation where humans don't need to physically work, robots for care, and more open immigration policies so countries that are having overpopulation issues can freely relocate to countries with shrinking populations.
IT wasn't that you were lied to, it is just a complicated situation that has changed over time.
Canada has had an the immigration rate of ~0.7% of the population since at least the 1960s. It's long been among the highest in per capita immigration rates among countries of its size, and it is one of the few western nations in which public support for immigration has remained consistently strong.
Do you buy insurance?
More population is vital for economic reasons.
Its two competing philosophies. (i.e. Do the financially practical things for an individual/country vs. the wisest thing for the collective species)
It's not just about "growing the economy", it's about ensuring that the economy is strong enough to support the population as it ages people out of the workforce.
I think people under-estimated the impact of working educated women and modern financial constraints on having more children and thus projected Canadian growth more aggressively than it is so not a deliberate lie.
Immigration in Canada is definitely needed as we've been under the replacement rate for 40 yrs and it will be very hard with such a small population albeit declining and maintain the country in terms of taxes, pensions etc.
I find this bizarre.
If people are not having enough kids than the 1st-order solution is to 'have more kids'. Not 'bring in others' - that would somewhere down the list of solutions.
There are plenty of things that can be done to encourage this, but they're not even trying. It's not even a policy. In Quebec, they have socialized early stage childcare and that seems to have actually made some of a difference.
"Objectively, I think Canada does need more population growth,"
As a Canadian, I don't see for a moment why this is true.
Most newcomers go to Toronto, Van or Montreal - Toronto has doubled in size since I was a kid and it can take 4 hours to drive from end to end: a sea of identical looking homes, malls and Starbuckses. Vancouver has become one of the most unaffordable places in the world to live. It's like SF but with much lower wages.
Contrary to reasonable intuition - in the last 30 years, as we have increased 'diversity' in our population, paradoxically our industrial base has become less diverse. We are no more than ever dependent on basic things like banking, making cars, exporting natural resources and construction. In addition, our ability to make sophisticated products has gone down. Switzerland and the US lead the pack with creating high-end exports like software, financial services, drugs, machinery. UK, Germany, France, Japan do well there. But Canada has gone down on the value chain. This is illustrated by the weird trade paradox Canada has with China: China buys raw materials from Canada and sells finished goods back to Canada, but usually the mapping is the other way around for 'rich/poor' countries, i.e. US buys raw materials from 'some poor place' and that 'poor place' buys iPhones, software and machinery from the US.
I think we really need to think about sustainability in population and it starts first with families, and then includes migration as a secondary but important factor.
Maybe if Canadian companies paid competitively the talent would stay.
Point being, that's an issue of equilibrium.
The problem in my mind is product leadership. Canada has ample technical talent, but few are thinking in brand, product marketing terms etc., also, there's a weird open relationship with the US. The US provides stability, and opportunity for people to develop, but they have to leave so. So the US-CAN symbiosis basically turns Canada into a 'nice suburb' where things are generally very good, but there's nothing very important happening. The talent/exceptional things happen south of the border.
But in the context of migration, it's definitely an odd paradox that as 'cultural diversity' increases, that 'industrial diversity and sophistication' decreases. They may not be drivers of each other though ... the later may be a function of globalization, NAFTA etc..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_the_United_St...
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immigration_to_Switzerland).
I was talking about how elderly people would get increasingly less of their pensions or benefits if there are less young people to pay govt. taxes in the future because of a declining population below the replacement rate as you can see in Japan. I think you're a bit politically charged in thinking that I was talking about cultural diversity or industrial base, it could be just encouraging more White European immigrants if thats what you want, note that I even said increase more kids from Canadians in my first comment, doesn't have to specify the immigrant population but rather needs to resolve the number of workers per elderly person as I was trying to look at an objective economical data perspective and to increase labour supply via economics.
Moreover, continuing on my argument, Canada has an aging population and more seniors than children (https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/what-the-census-tells-us...) and it will be hard to maintain productivity with an growing aging population especially if estimates put one in four canadians will be above 65 by 2031 although it can be a flawed projection.
Moreover, most Canadian immigrants have to meet quotas as either having some kind of skill or some kind of degree before being able to immigrate, refugees is still a small number so if not economically productive, its not because of lack of skills (https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/were-missing-the...)
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/opinion/were-missing-the...
The US has many more migrants but they make up a little less of the population.
Switzerland has an altogether view on migrants - they have a high rate of 'foreigners' but they are ultimately ex-pats. Canada brings in people to settle, Switzerland brings in people for labour.
I have no idea what you are on about regarding 'charged politics' or 'white immigrants'.
As someone who actively hires immigrants in Canada from all over the world, I'm aware of the system, their level of education etc.
The solution to Canada's aging population is mostly to accept that we are now living a very long time, and most of that time is not productive, which means slightly lower standard of living. Second - more babies and the policies that ensue.
Immigration is a helper to the above, not a primary solution.