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 Myron Hedderson
When thinking about population growth, one should distinguish between growth in the number of people on the planet, and growth in the number of people in Canada, by moving people here. If people move to Canada, and Canada has good environmental policies relative to wherever they came from, the net effect is an environmental benefit relative to the counterfactual. And in general, moving people from one place in the world to another, does not end up having negative environmental impacts by definition - depends what their situation would have been in the place they came from, relative to what it is here.
In terms of cost of housing in urban areas, that's mostly a matter of restrictive zoning and lack of the labour force to do the building or renovating. Bring people in or train people up to do that work, and the cost goes down. So in that case, immigration could actually reduce the cost of housing, if the people we bring in have skills we need (or they free up people in Canada to develop those skills, who are currently doing other jobs). So it seems likely that a combination of changes in zoning regulations and a growing labour force in the skilled trades would reduce our price of housing - and immigration would be a benefit rather than a barrier.
In general, I'm in favour of people being able to come here. Thinking as someone who cares about how people outside the borders of Canada are doing, I'd rather everyone get to live in good societies with good laws and governance structures, and closing the borders to people who want to come here does the opposite of that. Allowing people to freely move to places that are better governed, means there's pressure on places with worse governance to reform. Push for pro-environmental laws within Canada, and let lots of people come here and live under those laws, I say.
The policy was designed to be balanced and moderate and Canada would still have a fairly generous immigration policy - 0.5% is 200,000 a year, when our natural growth is getting close to zero and we also have some emigration, so immigration would be slightly below Harper or Chretien era levels but higher than the 90,000 a year in 1983-5. Canada would still likely have the highest growth in the G7.
Canada has greener policies than most of the 200 countries around the globe, but our per capita consumption of resources and GHG emissions are among the worst of any country. Reducing that is a big challenge - trying to do so at the high levels of population growth since 2015 is far far harder and unlikely.
The immigrants we let in are middle aged and have post secondary education - the percentage of people who go into construction is low and this is unlikely to change.
The problem is not zoning - that might be true in California where YIMBYism took of and the ideas from there have spread to here, but for example, Toronto has 200,000 units rezoned and unbuilt, and 400,000 more in applications that will mostly be approved - that is 37 years of housing at current rate of 16,000/year in the 416.
So with a general maximum of 200,000 a year (0.5%) we can still let in enough people - family reunification, refugees and some economic immigrants, at a level that places less stress on housing, our environment and the economy.
Canada's GDP per capita is dropping while the US is roaring ahead, and even though Japan has a shrinking population, it beats us on GDP/capita.
Who wins? Big corporations and developers benefit and the big banks were the donors to the Century Initiative non-profit that wants canada to have 100 million in 2100 - which is also where the idea of 500,000 a year immigration comes from.
Rich countries like Canada will likely have to subsidize poor countries to become greener and do things like reducing deforestation. We also want countries with high birth rates to reduce them too. I am thinking both globally and locally in writing this policy - Limits to Growth is a book that influenced me since university and Canada cannot keep growing forever and the global population will peak around 2064, so we need to adjust to a planet where overall population stop growing, and in such a situation, it makes no sense for Canada to keep growing and building housing while other places see their population dropping.
Canada is a huge country with long distances to travel or ship things, and cold weather - and with cheap resources because of the local abundance. Chances are that Canada will always use more resources per capita than most nations - we are better off to help people in other places to have better government and other reforms than to bring people here (CO2s in air travel of course) and build concrete condos (more CO2) and have them adopt a resource intensive Canadian lifestyle.
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