Painting by Belynda Wilson Thomas
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist. Kenneth E. Boulding
It takes courage to speak the truth, but what is truth? This is the question I keep asking myself. Is it true that the powers that be in Canada want to increase our population to 100 million by 2100? Is it true they expect the greater Toronto area to go from a population of 8.8 million to 33.5 million? If you are one of the people who can’t find a house or think your children or grandchildren can’t get a house, what do you think their chances will be when the population is 33.5 million and growing?
Why do we want the population to increase quickly? Who does it benefit? Will this give Canadians cleaner air, a better standard of living per capita, lower greenhouse emissions, better access to healthy food, great education, and opportunity? Will other species we share this great land with be better off?
I don’t ask this only as a White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant, which I am, but also for immigrant families, I know who came here for a better life but whose children had to go outside of Canada to become doctors and a dentist.
Now I know, (heard yesterday on the radio) that Anglo-Saxon is considered a dog-whistle to white supremacy. Have we gone completely mad?
Canada has the highest immigration rate of the G7 countries and people come from around the world to make Canada their home to live in peace and plenty. I have a bombshell to drop. If we want to live beside someone who speaks our language and shares our religion that doesn’t make us racist, or am I racist for thinking we get to choose our friends, neighbors, and what religion to follow even if that is no religion at all. We get to choose who we date, marry and create families with. Self-interest is not racism but we are being made to believe it is. In an article, I found on the internet by Eric Kaufmann from March 2017 titled “Racial Self-Interest Is Not Racism Ethno-demographic interests and the immigration debate.
In his article, he states, “Only a minority of American and British respondents consider it racist for people to want immigration reduced or selectively increased to give their group a demographic advantage. A majority of all racial backgrounds consider this a racially self-interested rather than racist preference.”
“White Americans are somewhat more likely to consider white majority own-group immigration preference racist (32%) than white British people (24%). Liberals, especially white American liberals, are more inconsistent in their view of which immigration preferences are racist rather than conservatives. Liberals are also more likely than conservatives to call ethnic preferences racist despite the fact the questions explicitly state people’s immigration preferences are driven by ethno-demographic interests, not an irrational fear or hatred of the other.”
“73% of white liberals say a white American who wants to reduce immigration to maintain their group’s share of the population is being racist, but just 11% of conservatives agree.”
We are creating a problem we don’t need to create. Canada does not need to increase its population so quickly that the people here feel the effects negatively as a housing shortage, lack of educational opportunities for their children and grandchildren, and higher taxes to mitigate our carbon footprint that can’t help but grow with a higher population. We also risk paving over our best farmland if we are to provide the housing that is needed.
Overconsumption and overpopulation underlie every environmental problem we face today. Jacques Yves Cousteau
What is the end goal, why do we have to grow so rapidly that we can’t accommodate who is here or who is coming adequately? I could be wrong, I am not an advocate for bigger is always better. Canada was and still is, for the most part, a great country with opportunity. But, when people can’t own a home, they don’t have the security a home brings, their happiness quotient goes down, and with that comes a host of problems we are already seeing in homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction, suicide, and crime. Happy counties are for the most part safe countries. I don’t want Canada to have been a safe and happy country to grow up in. I want it to remain a safe and happy country to grow up in. I want this for my grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and on down the line. I wish the same for every person in Canada.
We have problems we need to look after because we are not perfect. Focusing on growth instead of the quality of life for all of our citizens doesn’t seem like what we should focus on. This doesn’t mean I am right. We won’t know if we went in the best direction, we will only know what we did and look back. I hope we don’t look back with regret.
Unless things go better for Canadians in the next eighty-eight years as we grow rapidly toward 100 million people I don’t see more equality, opportunity, life satisfaction, or harmony among people as more people compete for scarce resources.
A finite world can support only a finite population; therefore, population growth must eventually equal zero. Garrett Hardin
The negative impact of population growth on all of our planetary ecosystems is becoming appallingly evident. David Rockefeller
If we do not voluntarily bring population growth under control in the next one or two decades, then nature will do it for us in the most brutal way, whether we like it or not. Henry W. Kendall
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