Collaborative Proposal Creation
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Reduce Canada's population growth to a moderate sustainable level
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
List of Sponsors
Amendments (1)
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Created at
16/06/2024 -
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I generally agree with what you wrote, but here is the real problem.
This is not the Green Party of 2004. Reasoned proposals about population growth don't stand a chance against knee-jerk reactions that any call for reducing immigration is xenophobic or racist, and we have have a wide open door to immigrants out of compassion for people who live in poorer countries. You see this in some of the comments here, so I am not optimistic about it passing if it is made longer, even if the additions make the policy more complete if implemented.
I am almost tempted to put right in the resolution, in capital letters "IT IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY RACIST OR XENOPHOBIC TO CALL FOR CUTS TO IMMIGRATION OR POPULATION GROWTH. IMMIGRATION POLICY SHOULD NOT BE BASED ON VAGUE FEELINGS OF COMPASSION FOR PEOPLE WHO WISH TO COME HERE (WHO ARE LIKELY FROM THE RICHEST CLASSES OF THEIR COUNTRIES, NOT THE POOREST) - OUR POLICY SHOULD BE BASED ON MAKING CANADA SUSTAINABLE AND TO MEET OUR COMMITMENTS TO REDUCE GHGS. LEAVE COMPASSION TO OUR FOREIGN AID POLICY.
Even then, the problem is there are people on both the far left and far right whose ideology is to have open borders, and this might not be enough to overcome the ones in the left who are in the GPC.
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