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Here is a strategic dilemma which is a helluva lot more pressing and waaaay scarier than the ‘no oil’ possibility at: http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/37017.0.html This is from today’s (19 Jan 07) Globe and Mail and it is reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070119.wrreynolds19/TPStory/Business/columnists
I have a bit more faith in immigration IF we adopt a sensible immigration policy aimed at getting 500,000 people a year (twice the current number) from, almost exclusively, China and India. The low fertility rate for (especially Chinese) immigrant women reflects that fact that the majority are in dual income families. That’s fine, so long as they have one child per family; we just need to recruit more and more of those families. I agree with Reynolds about not recruiting immigrants from ”high fertility” countries – we need sophisticated, easy to integrate immigrants. The ”high fertility” countries are, by and large, home to unsophisticated, hard/impossible to integrate immigrants.
We have economic room for many, many more productive immigrants. The question is; do we have the social room for them? I fear not; if my fears are well founded then Reynolds is right and, in a few generations, Canada will be nothing but a memory and a remote resource and recreation base for Asians.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070119.wrreynolds19/TPStory/Business/columnists
The incredible shrinking country
NEIL REYNOLDS
From Friday's Globe and Mail
OTTAWA — Why should we care that Canada's population will implode in the coming century? There are really only two reasons and one of them is profoundly irritating. The reason most cited is that governments need a minimum number of taxpayers to fund the spending that defines their purpose. By this reasoning, people exist to serve the State. The reason least cited is impossibly sentimental but more persuasive -- that we possess a civilization worthy of preservation, built across centuries of hard work and sacrifice, and that we really should try to pass it on, relatively intact, to a next generation. And that this kind of heavy lifting requires a minimum number of productive people. The reality, however, is that Canada will begin to downsize rapidly in 2030.
Immigration can't stop Canada's population from growing inexorably older. Neither can it produce enough babies to avert a precipitous, self-perpetuating decline in population. With a falling fertility rate (now 1.5 babies for each woman, 0.5 babies short of population replacement), Canada's population could drop by more than 25 per cent in any single generation -- from 34 million in 2030, for example, to perhaps 25 million. This order of decline could continue for a hundred years or more -- and by no means in Canada alone. In a 2003 report on fertility rates in 30 democratic wealthy countries, the OECD asserts: "The current levels of fertility imply that the populations of [all these] countries will shrink to about one-third of today's levels in about one century." This implies a Canadian population of 12 million in 2100, marginally more than the population recorded by the census of 1931.
The OECD report puts the average fertility rate of these 30 countries at 1.6, which is higher by 0.1 than Canada's rate -- where a fertility loss of 0.1 equals a million and a half lost people per generation. It warns of "a sharp reduction in the populations of all OECD countries in the near future." It warns that these countries will produce slower rates of economic growth, will grow relatively poorer as they grow absolutely smaller.
We are frequently assured that Canada will compensate for its critical shortage of births by accepting more immigrants. This is simply not correct. Canada's dwindling work force population might be able to pay for health care and pensions for the rising numbers of old folk. It might be able to support huge numbers of impoverished immigrants, most of them living in either Toronto or Vancouver. It will not be able to do both.
The consequences of low fertility rates will be enormous. By some demographic projections, low-fertility Japan will decline from 127 million people to 105 million people by 2050. In contrast, high-fertility Yemen will increase from 18 million to 84 million. The OECD report concludes that, aside from less prosperous economies, low fertility rates will produce a worsening of "dependency ratios" -- meaning that, in the absence of families, governments will be compelled to take care of more people.
Except for New Zealand, Iceland and the U.S., with fertility rates high enough to sustain their populations, all the democracies will decline -- some more quickly and more severely than Canada. Spain, Greece and Italy have rates below 1.3, as do the former Soviet bloc countries.
It won't help to import large numbers of people from high-fertility countries. Immigrant women don't come with reproductive guarantees. As the OECD report puts it, "the reproductive behaviour of foreign women converges toward that of native women [in the 30 democracies]."
Statistics Canada confirmed this finding in its report last year on the fertility rates of Canada's visible minorities. By 2001, Arab women alone had a fertility rate greater than 2.1: At 2.2, it had declined from 2.5 in 1996. The fertility rates of immigrant women quickly approach the Canadian average. Fertility rates for other visible-minority women in Canada: Chinese, 1.2; Latin American, 1.8; black, 1.7; Japanese, 1.1; Korean: 1.3. The average: 1.4 -- lower even than the all-Canadian rate.
As noted here earlier this week, South Korea's fertility rate has fallen to 1.0, the lowest national rate in the world. The country will now spend $35-billion (U.S.) to persuade women to have more babies. For the first time, the Planned Parenthood Federation will promote procreation. At this rate, perhaps it will soon be acceptable once again to believe that people should multiply, and fill the Earth.
nreynolds@xplornet.com
I have a bit more faith in immigration IF we adopt a sensible immigration policy aimed at getting 500,000 people a year (twice the current number) from, almost exclusively, China and India. The low fertility rate for (especially Chinese) immigrant women reflects that fact that the majority are in dual income families. That’s fine, so long as they have one child per family; we just need to recruit more and more of those families. I agree with Reynolds about not recruiting immigrants from ”high fertility” countries – we need sophisticated, easy to integrate immigrants. The ”high fertility” countries are, by and large, home to unsophisticated, hard/impossible to integrate immigrants.
We have economic room for many, many more productive immigrants. The question is; do we have the social room for them? I fear not; if my fears are well founded then Reynolds is right and, in a few generations, Canada will be nothing but a memory and a remote resource and recreation base for Asians.