Collaborative Proposal Creation
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Proposal text
WHEREAS Canada’s population growth has been the highest in the G7 (double the US rate in 2019) because Canada drastically increased immigration rates after 2015, likely to meet the goal of 100 million in 2100, based on the corporate-funded Century Initiative (target of 500,000 immigrants/year, or 1.25% of population) . This is neither environmentally nor economically sustainable.
BE IT RESOLVED that Canada needs to reduce population growth to modest levels (i.e., cut permanent economic immigration, Temporary Foreign Workers & foreign students, after the numbers of refugees and family class immigrants have been determined).
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Canada's population should only grow by the minimum or modest amount necessary to meet our demographic and economic needs (maximum 0.5% of population).
Type of Proposal
Public policy that the party would represent
Objective / Benefit
Canada must have an immigration policy that is compassionate, but when people move to Canada, their environmental foot increases, including raising increasing Canada's GHG emissions, increasing our dependence on resource extraction, and increasing urban sprawl and loss of wildlife habitat.
While GDP is a flawed measure, we need to aise Canada's GDP/capita, reduce the cost of living, and be greener (saving farmland, lower emissions, etc.) by cutting immigration to pre-2015 levels or closer to US levels. Canadian might want our country to be more generous than our neighbour, but there is no justification for canada to grow at a rate double that of the US, or more.
Our immigration policy to be designed to reassure Canadians that it:
Is environmentally sustainable
Will not increase unemployment
Will not lead to underemployment
Will not be inflationary
Will not increase home prices or rents
Will not lower GDP/capita, particularly for people already here with permanent status/citizenship.
Will not mean major personal sacrifices by Canadians or see us fall farther behind the US on GDP/capita or their expectation of a middle class lifestyle
Will not add to inequality/make the rich richer at the expense of the rest of us.
If your proposal replaces an existing policy or policies, which one does it replace?
N/A
List any supporting evidence for your proposal
Traditionally, environmentalists were opposed to population growth and the idea of perpetual economic growth - read "Limits to Growth" for example, or the work of environmentalists like Herman E Daly who proposed that eventually we had to have a "steady state economy".
Yet, Canadian elites in business, media and government seem to think that bigger is better. Canada has a low birth rate rate, but so does the US and most other developed countries and even Japan and Italy are shrinking. Yet, the trudeau government has taken immigration policy to an extreme - doubling the already high 250,000 immigrants in 2015 under Harper to 500,000 in 2025, and in fact, we brought in 1.05 million in 2022. This seems in line with the goals of the Century Initiative, a bank and corporate funded group founded by Dominic Barton, thar want Canada to have 100 million people in 2100 - on the basis that bigger is better. Yet, global population will peak at 9.7 billion around 2064 then drop by a billion by 2100.
Does this proposal affect any particular group and what efforts have been made to consult with the group or groups?
N/A
Jurisdiction: Is this proposal under federal jurisdiction?
Yes
Please indicate the language the proposal is being submitted in.
English
This proposal is being evaluated
Posted on the Continuous Motion Development Vote tab for member review prior to the all-member vote.
Amendments (1)
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Created at
16/06/2024 -
- 2
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Conversation with Barry Wijnandts
One reason why progressive people will/ cannot vote for the Green Party, is because they consider the Green Party 'Conservatives on Bikes'. A full on anti-immigration policy initiated by the Green Party will just confirm that prejudice and drive more progressive and humane voters away.
Besides the damage for the image of the Green Party done by initiating anti-immigration policies, anthropogenic climate change, pollution, over harvesting, habitat loss and ecological collapse are global problems, that need global solutions. Shutting our borders is not going to keep the Canadian 2% of the planets' surface green and pleasant, while the other 98% burns down, floods or becomes otherwise uninhabitable.
Anti-immigration sentiments are not the answer for the challenges that we face as a part of the global community. I love our parks as any other Canadian, but with or without immigration, we are going to lose our iconic glaciers nonetheless. As Joel Trail mentions, just the civil unrest and migrant streams that ecological collapse is generating elsewhere, will find its way to our shores, not in the least creating challenges in the economic and trade theatre, as markets international will collapse under the fallout of environmental pressures. Without migrants, lumber and steel prices will still do what they do and it will still be a challenge for the average Joe to find an affordable carpenter, a plumber or an affordable house.
With the impact that we have as a (former) colonial power and as part of the western hegemony over the global economy and security, but also as being a massive contributor to the woes of peoples (and flora and fauna) of the (formerly) colonized or occupied parts of the world, domestic and abroad, we do have a responsibility to the global community. Spending resources in writing anti-immigration policies look bad, look right-wing, look isolationist and show of NIMBY-ism. Us willing to keep the privilege to live here for only a few, while our banks, corporations and employees plunder and pillage the rest of the world, and we keep consuming, wasting and emitting like there is no tomorrow, does not look good. Not for progressive voters and not in a broader, geopolitical context.
I am not an immigration expert and I am not to tell how our government or its corporate partners should set targets for influx of people. Of course this should be done with care and consideration. This should be transparent and overseen by political players in the field. We should not drain the Global South of their doctors and nurses, we should keep education a primary concern for our own students, and we should be aiming to more efficiently apply local resources, both human and material, locally. We should aim to be less depended on immigration to fill our needs, but we should not slam the door in people's faces, because we want to preserve the Canadian privilege for only a few.
"full on anti-immigration policy" - where did you get that impression? Calling for 0.5% maximum is still high compared to other developed countries.
For example in the 5 years ending in 2021, Canada grew by 5% - about 1% per year. The US and UK around 3% - or under 0.6% a year, France and Germany about 1%, or 0.2% a year, while Japan and Italy lost population.
Polls show that 60% to 67% of Canadians feel current immigration levels are too high, less than 10% want further increases. Quebec already limits immigration to 60,000 per year, while the GTA gets at least 200,000/year.
The policy call for 0.5% maximum growth, which is 200,000 a year for the whole country but natural growth is low and getting close to zero, and we have immigration, so the policy is only a little below the 180,000-260,000 levels we had from 1990 to 2014, and well above the averages we had under Pearson and PE Trudeau, which dropped to under 90,000 in 1983-5 recession.
The Walrus has a good article in 2008 on Canada "poaching" foreign doctors. Canada has the highest level of education in working age population - higher than the US and close to double that of Germany, which does more apprenticeships and skilled trades training and fewer degrees. If anything, Canada lacks unskilled labour, unlike the US which doesn't use th epoints system and gives priority to family class and a smaller number of highly educated immigrants. If anything, Canada has a glut of people with university degrees, leading to low wages, underemployment and the brain drain to the US of our best and brightest.
I think a lot has to do with the phrasing. Targeting immigration (and immigrants) as a root cause of our problems, does not sound like progressive policy to me. Whether you throw it over environmental impacts of immigration or fear of cultural identity, in the core it has the potential to feed xenophobia.
Again, I do agree that we should be less dependent on immigrants (or population growth), because also the additional people in the country - no matter what source, will at some point phase out of the labour market, needs pensions adequate housing, retirement services and growing and ever complicating health care and such.
So even while your aim might be to curb population growth, the policy or policies should have a progressive, problem solving focus. Instead of just saying 'no' to growth (mostly immigrants), focus on helping our current population to get educated and skilled where needed and make more efficient use of technology to free up human resources that can be used better elsewhere.
So, instead of targeting immigration, let us identify where the pinch points are in society that we currently just throw a bunch of people from abroad to, and start creating policies to improve those points domestically. Accessibility to education, easier recognition of skills and experience, better wages and secondary employment conditions, healthier and happier labour culture, better services and support for the poorest people to get back on track, and to find fulfilling jobs.
Besides the risk of increasing xenophobia, by putting immigration in the forefront, you are not focusing on the actual underlying problems of why we are so dependent on immigration. So, imo, it is better to identify those issues and address them, and as a result we can lower our dependency on immigration.
Thank you for the long thoughtful comment.
Returning to the immigration policies and levels of 2014 (Harper) 2004 (Martin), or better yet, 1984 (Pierre Trudeau) is hardly xenophobic or likely to mean the GPC is called xenophobic. It would still be far more generous than the US, France, Germany, Italy and particularly Japan.
I usually refer to "population growth" but 95% of growth is immigration - we have births exceeding deaths, and some emigration.
We are seeing the impacts from the high Century Initiative based immigration policy and post-nationalism.
- Housing and rent - too many people, despite 40 year high starts in 2022
- GDP/capita falling - more people than capital according to economists like Mikal Skuterud
- Congestion/infrastructure - can't keep up with population
- Healthcare - partly the provinces, but demand outstrips doctors
- Protests in the streets - postnationalism and multiculturalism instead of integration.
- CO2/GHGs - more people equals more emissions
- Low wages and underemployment - brining in educated immigrants and TFWs means underemployment and low wages.
The only people happy are corporate Canada - who make out well. The Century Initiative donors aren't laughing all the way to the bank, because they are the banks.
It used to be that the unions and the left understood that high immigration benefited the rich and corporations, and hurt everyone else if it was too high. This changed in the 1960s with the New Left.
There is a great book - Ours was the Shining Future by David Leonhardt - see https://toronto.overdrive.com/media/9580771 or read this excerpt in the Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/us-immigration-policy-1965-act/675724/
The problem is that now the left, including the Green Party in Canada, sees racism everywhere and puts compassion for people who want to come here ahead of compassion for Canadians... even though the current economic immigrants are rich or upper classes, educated and social conservatives, not poor or progressive like the Southern Europeans of the 1950s
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