A bigger Canada?

[kEiThZ]

Andrew Cohen wrote a piece in the national post a few months ago advocating increased immigration. He made the point that the founding fathers (on both sides of the political spectrum) understood growth to be vital to our economic and political clout.

I'd argue that a good start would be actually working towards meeting our 300 000 immigration quota. From there we can take it up.

WRT comparisons with the US, one should note that the US has a fertility rate above replacement. They don't need immigration to grow. We do. That makes it much more difficult.

Let's meet the current targets for a few years, and then we'll know how well we can handle more immigration.

 

[doady]

Push Canadian population to 100 million, scholar argues
OTTAWA — Canada should increase immigration rates to become a country of 100 million people and a proper world power instead of a nation content with “smallness” and little ambition to appreciably shape global affairs, says a rising star on public policy.

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/Push+Ca...lion+scholar/3147619/story.html#ixzz0ri6eMGx0

Er, great minds think alike?

 

[Hipster Duck]

No, I am acknowledging that if you tell a bunch of people to live in Toronto today, they'll end up living in suburban houses. But, I'm assuming that the government can act on this and make building up the norm.

You assume too much. There is no precedent to suggest that a Federal government in a liberal democracy should tell people how and where to live - nor should it.

See above. I'm sure that if you told any Canadian that they had to leave their home city/town, they'd go to the big 4/5 cities in the country. But the government could do work to encourage immigrants to create new communities and go to the smaller cities. Make housing cheaper there, encourage jobs, etc. Again, it won't be easy. But we can already see that immigrants are spreading out from the very big cities. I would only expect this trend to amplify if more people were coming into the country.

Make housing cheaper in rural areas? It already is cheap. "Encourage jobs"? What does that mean? That is such a vague statement. Why don't you tell me your airtight strategy for encouraging jobs in rural Canada. They don't exist there for a reason, why force it? I must have missed this news about immigrants spreading out from the big cities - moving to Milton or Kitchener doesn't count because that's part of Toronto's orbit. Where are the throngs of immigrants lining up to populate Corner Brook or Rouyn-Noranda?

Future generations will need to pay for our infrastructure and the debts that we are leaving now (said as a member of the younger generation.) These days, the debt we're talking about with sustainable development is a charred earth and ruined society. Looking at the big picture and when compared to society and the environment, the West really doesn't need to worry about money...So you are saying that sustainable development means no development? That's true in theory, but in reality there are almost 6 billion people on this planet that are looking for better living conditions, and they are entitled to those.

They are not entitled to move to Canada to find those better living conditions. Canada is not a humanitarian project for the world to dump its poor and huddled masses into; it is an established country that should look after the needs of its present citizens first and foremost.

I'm not sure where you've learned concepts of sustainable development, but leaving monetary debts for future generations to pay for is absolutely not sustainable. This goes straight to my argument about needs and how you cannot predict the infrastructural needs of future generations. What you can do, however, is provide future generations with the use option of securing enough capital so that they can plan projects around their needs. You don't know what future generations need, but you do know that setting aside money for them like an inheritance will allow them to pay for whatever they deem to be important. You do this by building a nest egg - similar to Norway's oil slush fund, or Alberta's heritage fund. You don't go around and spend money you don't have to build infrastructure projects that future generations may not even use but then stiff them with the bill.

Again, I'm sorry but you're sounding like a huge bigot.

I only sound like a bigot to someone who cannot grasp the socio-economic ramifications of tripling a country's population in 40 years. These are effects that we won't even be able to predict, because they are so unprecedented in the history of late-20th century liberal democracies. Another element of sustainable development is that we avoid risk wherever possible, but maybe you didn't catch that while you were reading the Wikipedia definition of the term. That's not all: you don't see the dangers of trying to force millions of people to settle in places they don't want (spreading immigrants around the country like salt on a road), or the challenge of integrating millions of uneducated, low-skilled immigrant labourers into a knowledge economy. BTW, just to show you that I'm not a bigot, I think the same kind of social disaster would exist if the most uneducated white fifth-generation Canadians were brought over to a country in Asia or Africa and forced to integrate into that society.

So is your problem that you think that Canada should be as homogeneous and white a cultural landscape as possible?

No. Where in your sophomoric understanding of my post did you ever get that idea?

Canada should be everyone's country to appreciate, and if you disagree, than I politely ask you to leave because our Aboriginal people would prefer it if they had all their land back.

Spare me the reflexive "if you don't like my idea, you're a hypocrite because this was all native land once" diatribe. Coming out of most people's mouths it would just sound hackneyed and uneducated, but it's especially ironic coming out of your mouth since you can't recognize the irony of millions of people displacing the original population over a short period of time being exactly what happened to our Aboriginal people.

The prepackaged American dream is one of the few cultures I just can't bear, and I think a lot of people would share my same opinion.

Uh, do you think that the dream of the upwardly mobile middle class in Thailand or China or Germany or any other capitalistic society is any different? There might be slight variances in local practice and rules, but it's more or less the same thing: people become wealthy, they seek to acquire more consumer goods. What makes you think that that practice will dramatically change once people emigrate to Canada en masse?

 

[urbandreamer]

Clearly, 2nd in pie has never lived in small town Canada.

You are clueless.

 

[Second_in_pie]

You assume too much. There is no precedent to suggest that a Federal government in a liberal democracy should tell people how and where to live - nor should it.

So you subscribe to the idea that people should be able to do whatever the hell they want to? Yet you seem to complain about suburbanization and environmental destruction, which is a result of exactly what you're protesting here.

They are not entitled to move to Canada to find those better living conditions. Canada is not a humanitarian project for the world to dump its poor and huddled masses into; it is an established country that should look after the needs of its present citizens first and foremost.

Firstly, you're making it sound as though we shouldn't give a shit about the poor people of the world. Should we be kicking all of our refugees out too?
Secondly, what if there were benefits to bringing these people in? You may just be worried that new immigrants will come in and spoil your wonderful Canadian dream, but I think many Canadians would find a joy in seeing their country increase it's cultural diversity and economic power, while also seeing the infrastructure improvements that will improve the lives of all Canadians due to the demand for them which newcomers will bring.

Spare me the reflexive "if you don't like my idea, you're a hypocrite because this was all native land once" diatribe. Coming out of most people's mouths it would just sound hackneyed and uneducated, but it's especially ironic coming out of your mouth since you can't recognize the irony of millions of people displacing the original population over a short period of time being exactly what happened to our Aboriginal people.

That was kind of implying a use of your logic, that we shouldn't allow more immigrants in because this land is for Canadians currently living here. If you're going to use that logic, we should all get out of the country because we're in land that our Aboriginal people have inhabited for millennia. I myself don't subscribe to that logic. I believe that the country we've evolved into is a country for everyone to appreciate. I don't deserve to live here any more or less than someone from Bangladesh or Sudan does.

Uh, do you think that the dream of the upwardly mobile middle class in Thailand or China or Germany or any other capitalistic society is any different? There might be slight variances in local practice and rules, but it's more or less the same thing: people become wealthy, they seek to acquire more consumer goods. What makes you think that that practice will dramatically change once people emigrate to Canada en masse?

That's the point. Everyone in the world is now on the race to be the next one to achieve the american dream. By implanting a mass of new people into an already developed country, I assume (unless it'd turn our government into some evil commie dictatorship,) that we could change the social structure a bit on it's head. Destabilization is what I'm going for here. Canadian culture as it is is slowly staggering and ready to drop into a permanent coma as is that of the US. The social change necessary to adapt to all of these immigrants will allow us to help lead the way towards a new global social structure and thing to achieve to. I guess you might feel that you'll never see that day and so we shouldn't fuck with the norm so you can live comfortably in your golden years, but I think a majority of people would call that in principle very stubborn and selfish (and unsustinable )


EDIT: Oh, and Kiethz, I'd call that a great start. I wouldn't ask for us to suddenly jump our immigration rate up tomorrow, but a gradual one. Make sure that we're filling all our current quotas and improving the life for immigrants (making degrees easier to recertify and such,) while also getting everything together, to plan for what we need now and what we'll need in the future. Then, we can start raising the bar a bit higher and a bit higher, and adapt to that. It'd just require what seems like a political golden age where people are actually motivated to get their country back on track.

 

[Hipster Duck]

So you subscribe to the idea that people should be able to do whatever the hell they want to? Yet you seem to complain about suburbanization and environmental destruction, which is a result of exactly what you're protesting here.

The phenomena of suburbanization and environmental destruction are a little more complicated than "people doing whatever the hell they want to".

Firstly, you're making it sound as though we shouldn't give a shit about the poor people of the world.

I care, but I would prefer if we could assist them in bettering their own lives in their own country. While some people are adventurous and enjoy moving to strange and foreign lands, I think that most people in developing countries would prefer if their lot in life were better in their home country before they decide to pack up their bags and move overseas.

You may just be worried that new immigrants will come in and spoil your wonderful Canadian dream, but I think many Canadians would find a joy in seeing their country increase it's cultural diversity and economic power, while also seeing the infrastructure improvements that will improve the lives of all Canadians due to the demand for them which newcomers will bring.

First off, you don't know what my "dream" is, so you shouldn't jump to conclusions. Throughout this whole exercise, you've tried to paint me as some sort of xenophobic bigot. In fact, I'm telling you what most sociologists and demographers think is patently obvious: you cannot experience a dramatic upsurge in population growth without encountering significant and unpredictable societal and generational effects. Your belief that a) infrastructure improvements will take place, and, b) that many current Canadians will enjoy the prospect of watching their country triple in population within a generation is wholly without evidence or merit.

That was kind of implying a use of your logic, that we shouldn't allow more immigrants in because this land is for Canadians currently living here. If you're going to use that logic, we should all get out of the country because we're in land that our Aboriginal people have inhabited for millennia. I myself don't subscribe to that logic. I believe that the country we've evolved into is a country for everyone to appreciate. I don't deserve to live here any more or less than someone from Bangladesh or Sudan does.

Hey, if it was up to me, every Canadian would have to do 2 years of military or peace corps service to gain citizenship and all the rights that come with it, including access to higher education and universal healthcare. I'm certainly not a person who believes in entitlements - as you are.

That's the point. Everyone in the world is now on the race to be the next one to achieve the american dream. By implanting a mass of new people into an already developed country, I assume (unless it'd turn our government into some evil commie dictatorship,) that we could change the social structure a bit on it's head. Destabilization is what I'm going for here. Canadian culture as it is is slowly staggering and ready to drop into a permanent coma as is that of the US. The social change necessary to adapt to all of these immigrants will allow us to help lead the way towards a new global social structure and thing to achieve to. I guess you might feel that you'll never see that day and so we shouldn't fuck with the norm so you can live comfortably in your golden years, but I think a majority of people would call that in principle very stubborn and selfish

1. There is no such thing as an "American dream" - there are generic middle class desires for consumption, status and keeping up appearances that are latent in every culture.
2. "Destabilization" is not healthy - not even for the supposed good. In fact, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is a good motto to keep in the back of your mind.
3. What leads you to think that Canadian culture is "slowly staggering and ready to drop into a permanent coma"?
4. Why do you think that a surge of immigrants will allow us to "lead the way towards a new global social structure"?
5. Again, you don't know anything about me, so don't assume that I am being selfish and living out my golden years (you don't even know how old I am).
6. Where's the proof that the "majority of people" would disagree with my idea that a dramatic population growth through immigration might cause unpredictable social effects?

(and unsustinable )

You don't even know what that term means.

 

[urbandreamer]

So so funny. I wonder if 2nd in pie is an immigrant from a poor country? Only someone from some 3rd World country would take the idea of the American Dream literally.

 

[Second_in_pie]

The phenomena of suburbanization and environmental destruction are a little more complicated than "people doing whatever the hell they want to".

Then what is it? Do you disagree that the government should be enforcing this? Do you disagree that for the government to fix suburbanization, they'd in some way have to tell people how to live?

First off, you don't know what my "dream" is, so you shouldn't jump to conclusions. Throughout this whole exercise, you've tried to paint me as some sort of xenophobic bigot. In fact, I'm telling you what most sociologists and demographers think is patently obvious: you cannot experience a dramatic upsurge in population growth without encountering significant and unpredictable societal and generational effects. Your belief that a) infrastructure improvements will take place, and, b) that many current Canadians will enjoy the prospect of watching their country triple in population within a generation is wholly without evidence or merit.

But your assumption that these things won't happen is wholly without evidence or merit as well.

1. There is no such thing as an "American dream" - there are generic middle class desires for consumption, status and keeping up appearances that are latent in every culture.
2. "Destabilization" is not healthy - not even for the supposed good. In fact, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" is a good motto to keep in the back of your mind.
3. What leads you to think that Canadian culture is "slowly staggering and ready to drop into a permanent coma"?
4. Why do you think that a surge of immigrants will allow us to "lead the way towards a new global social structure"?
5. Again, you don't know anything about me, so don't assume that I am being selfish and living out my golden years (you don't even know how old I am).
6. Where's the proof that the "majority of people" would disagree with my idea that a dramatic population growth through immigration might cause unpredictable social effects?

You don't even know what that term means.

1. American dream specifically being living in a large household, having many material possessions, owning a car, being able to buy a large amount of material goods for a relatively trivial monetary cost. American dream is a general cultural phenomenon that's quite distinct from others, even other ones pertaining to the "middle class."

2/3. So do you disagree that we need to change our ways of living and that over the past 90 years or so we've lived more and more bleached lives? That's my big question here. Do you think that society nowadays is functioning the way that it should?

4. As you said, it'd be a massive social upheaval to take in all these new immigrants. If a government and people were committed to changing society, that drastic change which larger scale immigration offers would make it a lot easier to break preexisting traditions and structures.

5. I'm basing my allegations on what you're saying. You're telling me that you don't find current society very lacking or much that could be improved on it. You're acting as though you're afraid of change to this society that, in at least the very unphilisophical problems that are very hard to ignore or argue, is facing huge problems when it comes to a fair global economy and environmental protection. You're saying that social upheaval is bad, but you're not saying why the results of the change are bad. When I hear that, the first thing that comes to my mind is a later generation (usually baby boomer,) who would prefer to keep a very large part of their flawed (again, at the very least in global economic and environmental senses,) lifestyle than at least attempt to change so there's a better world for their children and grandchildren. You may not fit into that age category, but I already explained why there's a higher prevalence of these people in the older demographic rather than the younger one.

6. I was talking about the principle that society shouldn't fix it's problems because it'll mess with your personal mojo. I think that a majority would call that selfish.

7. Then explain to me what it means, and what my perception of it is flawed.


urbandreamer, perhaps you'd need to live in a 3rd world country to see just how rich, luxurious, and wasteful and psychologically empty lives we're living here in the developed world. The American dream is a very real cultural phenomenon emanating from the Northeastern US and California during the baby boom period, and the basics of that dream are what a vast majority of the world is population, both developed and undeveloped, are trying to achieve in their lives.

For the record (though I don't really see how it's relevant,) I am not an immigrant from a poor country. I suppose I could qualify as a 6th generation immigrant from a poor country, Ireland and Scotland being pretty rough places back then. I was raised in the Toronto suburbs, got the little Canadian accent and "eh"s, got everything I wanted for Christmas. And I think that that way of life is stupid and flawed, and needs to be changed as quickly as possible. Though I guess it'd be way, way funnier to you if I was an uneducated Indian man raising 4 children in Thorncliffe Park who thinks that it'd be nice if all my neighbors from India could come over to live in a society that can accept, both socially and economically, more people from different countries. No, these are observations that I've taken living as a part of the norm in Canadian society.

 

[waterloowarrior]

For 2060, Statscan puts us at 42 million, 52 million, or 63 million in its low, medium, and high growth scenarios (respectively). So perhaps eventually we'll get to that 100 million.


But the real problem is distribution.. we have plenty of sparsely populated areas. But what reason would an immigrant or even someone born in Canada have to move there?

 

[scarberiankhatru]

If memory serves me correctly, Canada was just about the fastest growing country in the world from 1900-1930...technically, we only added a few million people, and the important thing is that many of them were added to the Prairies. Fast growth is easy when you annex land and then ship people there like cargo. Ballooning to 100 million while our household sizes dwindle down to nothing would be almost unprecedented...maybe we can lure some Quiverfulls or Mormons to fatten up the base of our demographic pyramid.

 

[cacruden]

Or maybe we can give China a 88 year lease on some prairie land - then in 88 years we get it back with all the people

 

[gristle]

Who's with me? Comments on this? It's currently at the basics, cold hard speculation fueled by imagination and hope for the future. But I think my general premise isn't too far off from the truth.

Sounds like you are proposing a big dose of social engineering in the process. There is more to a country than a big population.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Sounds like you are proposing a big dose of social engineering in the process. There is more to a country than a big population.

Yes, but I think that they go well hand in hand. We need to make at least some changes to society, so why don't we use population growth as a catalyst for that change and a way to get more bang for our buck through it? Is that social engineering a bad thing? (honest question there.)

 

[Hipster Duck]

Then what is it? Do you disagree that the government should be enforcing this? Do you disagree that for the government to fix suburbanization, they'd in some way have to tell people how to live?

Pollution and suburbanization are deeply engrained societal practices that were slowly legitimized over a period of time when we didn't understand what kind of effects either of these processes would engender. With respect to suburbia, the government has slightly more control than pollution, but even there you might find that it does not have much power. That is not to say that any individual group has any real power: building developers, people who buy houses, people involved in suburbia-related industries (like lawn care or fixing cars), the list goes on. All are at the mercy of each other and no one group is in an especially good position to radically change society for the rest of us.

There will always be some pollution and people who choose to live in a sprawl environment; the important thing is for the people who can make some decisions (not necessarily government) to offer enough of a lifestyle choice in each city; the government could even try some restrictive measures on consumption (taxes) on goods and services that run counter to what it feels is the public good. Even so, you will find that there will still be people who will drive everywhere and consume wantonly.

But your assumption that these things won't happen is wholly without evidence or merit as well.

Well I think it's pretty safe to say that there is a lot less risk involved in maintaining current growth rates (because we know that society has not collapsed yet) than in a society where growth rates are elevated to a level that we have never experienced before. To use scarberian's example, Canada did grow at rates you propose in the early 1900s, but that was because the country was a totally different society where most immigrants were farmers who were transported to the frontiers of Saskatchewan and set loose on the unpopulated prairie. They certainly were not integrating by the millions into existing cities, nor did the government have to set up a physical and social infrastructure to support them. Hell, we didn't have an income tax back then.

2/3. So do you disagree that we need to change our ways of living and that over the past 90 years or so we've lived more and more bleached lives? That's my big question here. Do you think that society nowadays is functioning the way that it should?

There's this romantic notion that contemporary society is always a fall from grace from an earlier, enlightened time into a world of cheap commoditization and plastic meaninglessness. 90 years ago, most people were semi-literate agricultural workers whose only access to culture might have been a country dance at a church social.

4. As you said, it'd be a massive social upheaval to take in all these new immigrants. If a government and people were committed to changing society, that drastic change which larger scale immigration offers would make it a lot easier to break preexisting traditions and structures.

5. I'm basing my allegations on what you're saying. You're telling me that you don't find current society very lacking or much that could be improved on it. You're acting as though you're afraid of change to this society that, in at least the very unphilisophical problems that are very hard to ignore or argue, is facing huge problems when it comes to a fair global economy and environmental protection. You're saying that social upheaval is bad, but you're not saying why the results of the change are bad.

You have no idea what will happen when you break preexisting traditions and structures. Upheaval is not bad, but it is completely uncertain and unpredictable...and more often than not, unmanageable.

6. I was talking about the principle that society shouldn't fix it's problems because it'll mess with your personal mojo. I think that a majority would call that selfish.

You're not fixing any problems, you're jumping into the unknown.

7. Then explain to me what it means, and what my perception of it is flawed.

Sustainability is a pragmatic problem-solving tool that is applied to deal with complex, systemic problems that:
1. are societal, economic and environmental in scope.
2. are complicated by conflicting, subjective values about what the problem is
3. have long-term dynamics (they affect current generations as well as future generations)

Unlike a traditional discipline, like mechanical engineering or English, sustainability doesn't have any set guidelines for practice (there isn't one specific way to solve a sustainability problem that you then apply again and again). It does, however, outline key principles or aspects to consider: in a systemic problem (something that involves multiple actors and actions that contribute to issues arising), you should avoid risky manoeuvers that is beyond comprehension; since problems are often generated by diverse groups of people operating without any awareness of their actions but based on very personal needs and long-established rules and codes, we have to make sure that a sustainable problem-solving strategy is a jointly negotiated process between (ideally) all stakeholders involved in the problem. As such, sustainability advocates for small-scale transitions (little regions, neighbourhoods, farming communities) where it is easy to get a grasp of the problem and the people involved. It also stresses the need for participatory democracy and shared ownership of both the problem and the solution.

Here is why your development strategy is not sustainable:

1. You are advocating some kind of top-down Stalinist social engineering agenda. If it were sustainable, it would be a jointly negotiated process between people who actually live in the rural communities of Canada that you are planning on disrupting to house millions of new immigrants

2. You are ready to act without considering the consequences of your actions. Sustainability demands that action be small and measured, incrementally proceeding toward a goal.

3. You are ready to act without considering the complexity of the system. This is very neatly tied into the concept of risk avoidance and is sort of a follow-up to the point above.

4. You are not accounting for the values of your stakeholders. Human beings are just numbers to be moved around like the zeros on an accountant's ledger. This follows point 1 and is a classic example of why top-down modernist planning schemes (the old Regent Park, collective farming in the Soviet Union, forced migration of urbanites to the Cambodian countryside under Pol Pot) were such catastrophic failures.

 

[Second_in_pie]

Your definition of sustainability isn't the widely accepted definition. The widely accepted definition (said by the UN,) is that "sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs." Your definition is a functionalist "solution" for sustainability, which totally disregards the fact that our society today is very much unsustainable, and that there are about 6 billion more people looking to adopt the most unsustainable society that is Western society. Like it or not, those 6 billion people's lifestyles will become exponentially less sustainable in the next 100 years, and we're already dreadfully unsustainable with less than 1 billion people consuming a majority of the world's resources and producing a large sum of global pollution.

Am I asking here for a Stalinist government to forcibly relocate people to the prairies? No, and I don't understand how you'd even think that. I'm asking for a democratically elected government which carries out it's plans by doing things like raising or lowering taxes, making it easier to do things that are in the plan, outlawing very bad things like dumping waste, and building infrastructure to make it easier for people to live certain lifestyles. Nowhere is it forcing people to give up their old ways or whatever you, just making it easier for people to pick up new ones.
I'm sure that there are many immigrants that want to live in the country, or make their own communities where they can find a niche, but can't because it's too hard to. So these people are forced to live in the cities, where there is a way of doing things that makes it easier for immigrants to live there. I'm sure a bunch of people who want to live in their hometowns or cities, but can't because the economy can't support them. So they move to new places. Do you think it would be a command economy if the government just made it easier for people to live there?

EDIT: Though interestingly enough, the only country in the world that meets global sustainability requirements of "high" HDI and under the sustainably footprint for the globe is Cuba, one of the only communist command economies in the world.