“The only way to stop the Canadian aging process,” states the 2006 StatsCan report, “is to increase fertility.”
It’s no accident that the world’s most heavily taxed industrialized countries also have the lowest fertility rates. When Canadians have to work half the year just to pay the tax man, babies become economically impossible. By the time a couple achieves financial stability, the woman has often passed her best-before-date in terms of fertility.
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The time is past due for all levels of Canadian government to give birth to a new strategy to increase our population the old-fashioned way. Anything less is slow death to Canada’s way of life.
I was thinking about this the other day. I was thinking about how we subsidize farmers, farms, farm equipment, how we even have special “purple gas” that is tax-free for “producers”.
Why are these offered? Because the government, from time immemorial, has considered the production of food to be of benefit to the entire nation.
I think it is time for society to collectively get over the “overpopulation” myth. All around the world, fertility rates are plummeting, in the first world and the third. There is no slowdown in sight. At current rates of decrease, the third world won’t have any surplus population to send us to make up for our own fertility shortfalls, within 20-30 years. Then the demographic glacier that is already visible on our horizon will overtake us, and the Employment Insurance, the Welfare, the Public Health Care, the Canada Pension Plan, all these products of socialism that relies on perpetual population increase, will collapse.
My thinking is that we should start to consider families (and I mean man-woman-children families, which have already been proven to be the most cost-effective structure to produce balanced, healthy citizens) as producers. Start giving them the same kind of preferential treatment as farmers get. Without human resources, this nation will fail. Having kids contributes to the entire nation’s future. If you choose not to have kids, fine, that’s your choice, but you are not contributing to the nation’s future. Enjoying the benefits of society now comes at a cost of supporting that society’s future. It makes sense, then to have those who are not producers support to a degree the producers. It makes sense to give financial benefits to producing at the lowest cost with the best results.
I don’t question that singles could have kids, or homosexuals for that matter, with fertility treatments, etc. However, those means have a greater cost to society than the nuclear family. Using science to make babies is more expensive than using the reproductive organs the way they were designed. Plus, the cost of raising productive, healthy citizens is higher when a child lacks a parent of the opposite gender. If health care costs are higher, if socialization skills are lacking (relating to both genders in a family has a greater instructional effect than only encountering one gender outside the safety of the home), that costs society, hence they should be discouraged - or nuclear families should be preferentially encouraged. Serious thought should be given to how to encourage couple who have kids to stay together - to repair broken relationships, to live in cooperation, to think of their kids before themselves. This produces healthier adults and healthier children. And a healthier society.
Choose ye, liberals. Start scaling back government now, or start encouraging families. But get a wiggle on, eh? I kind of like Canada, and would hate to see it go away.
Abattoir wrote:
The underlying theory seems like an interested idea worth exploring, Shane. Many people on both sides of the aisle have been pushing for some kind of financial incentives for families. I haven’t seen much progress to date.
As to the specifics…you would disqualify those taking fertility treatments? Most couples have to pay the full costs of IVF out-of-pocket, so I fail to see the difference after that. The no-gays clause wouldn’t survive the first Constitutional challenge.
So other than the whole second-last paragraph, I would support moves in this direction. Ironic though that you’re calling on liberals to ’start scaling back’ - the Cons are the ones who have bloated the government to its current size.
Posted on 18-Mar-08 at 1:57 pm | Permalink
Shane Edwards wrote:
I think that pragmatism is a philosophy of convenience. On the one hand, we are expecting the government to see pragmatically the costs to the health care system increasing if smoking is not discouraged, so the government acts to discourage smoking. Yet, as we see marriages fall apart in the last 30 years and the rise of single parents distanced from the extended family, we have seen a simultaneous rise in rates of youth crime and delinquency, and schools have become war zones. Coincidence? This is what I am talking about.
I have nothing against homosexual couples per se, but looking at the situation of a gay couple raising a child, it has much the same problem as a single parent. If the child only experiences one gender in their primary growing environment, it will stunt their growth socially. Yes, this could be overcome with exceptional steps, but that is the point. If there are extra steps, extra costs involved in socializing the child, then that is a pragmatically wasteful proposition.
But to your earlier point, vis a vis IVF, this is an expensive treatment that would not be necessary in many cases if women were encouraged to look at embarking on childbearing earlier in life. Hence, pragmatically, society (and government) should look at means of encouraging earlier pursuit of children, for there to be the cheapest total cost of production of human resources.
Posted on 18-Mar-08 at 3:01 pm | Permalink
Smarter than Ezra wrote:
If your goal is the cheapest total cost of production of human resources, then the answer would be immigration. Brining in a 24 year old from somewhere else costs governments a lot less. Here is the logic. The costs of early childhood development, health care, dental care, k-12 and postsecondary education are absorbed by foreign countries and no longer become the expense of tax payers. The current immigration system selects a large portion of Canada’s immigrants based on a human capital model, whereby the average level of education is MUCH higher than that of the Canadian born citizen (again, those who governments have subsidized heavily up unilt then). Immigrant families also tend to have more children, on average, than Canadian born families, but this is the best we can hope for. You see, the children of immigrant families quickly adopt Canadian behaviors, and their birthrate levels off.
So again, if your goal is the cheapest, then look no further than China, India, and South East Asia for immigrants. There is no shortage of people wanting to come to Canada.
Is this what you mean by pragmatic and more efficient?
Just throwing that out there.
Posted on 18-Mar-08 at 6:42 pm | Permalink
Smarter than Ezra wrote:
You can tell I have been working way too long today (and not making babies). Sorry for all the typos, guys.
Posted on 18-Mar-08 at 6:48 pm | Permalink
Shane wrote:
You haven’t factored in the costs of socialization and integration, nor have you examined the article I linked to which deals with the reality that immigrants do not solve the problem of an aging population. Take in older people and you get an older population. The demographic crisis is only delayed by a handful of years by relying on immigration.
Secondly, immigration will only be a stopgap as within 30 years, there will be no more surplus population in the 3rd world to immigrate here. What then? Attitudes and patterns have to change before then.
Posted on 19-Mar-08 at 7:04 am | Permalink
Smarter than Ezra wrote:
Indeed, Shane, I am quite familiar with those arguments vis-a-vis immigrant integration and am very aware of the “costs of socialization and immigration.” I work in the field. For the most part, those costs are for basic language training - immigrants have access to integration programming until they become citizens, which on average, takes just over 3 years. The Government of Canada gives grants to organizations like the YMCA to help immigrants develop the language skills they require to find jobs. Only 30-40% of immigrants actually use these services, depending on their availability and jurisdiction. I have read the articles you have posted, and hundreds more. In fact, I have published a few of my own research papers on the topic. You are right when you say that immigration is not a panacea for the “problem” of reduced furtility or population ageing. BUT it certainly is the cheapest option (which was what SE put forward). If you look at total government spending on immigrant integration vs. total spending on early childhood development, health care, k-12, postsecondary education, etc., you will see that there is no comparison in costs at all (less than 1% actually). So again, if cheap is what you want, then immigration is the the best option.
One of the topics I like to think about, and write about, is the drivers or demands for more people in Canada. Labour force shortages are by far the main factor. There is a large school of thought out there that if Canadian inddustry is not growing at x% each year that there is a problem. Sadly, this growth far outstrips any reasonable forcasts for population growth (babybooms aside), and so we look elsewhere for people.
Indusry in Canada cannot bring people in fast enough to fill the demands. And yet, they often ignore one of the largest sources of untapped human capital (and the only young and still growing population) in Canada. On average, Aboriginal people are 10 - 15 years younger than non-Aboriginal Canadians. They are also still having children at a rapid rate (one might say, it is there turn to have a babyboom after the residencial school war/disease). Yet governments and employers look elsewhere for their needs. I often wonder why we encourage people to cross oceans to work here, when we could drive a few hours north and find 1000s of young people who just need a little help and someone to take a chance on them. Again, if you are looking at cost reduction, well, it doesn’t cost anything to process the immigration applications of people who are already born here - and who are incidently still having children.
Yes, people are ageing, and eventually they will die, just like everyone else. The babyboom was a phenonena of unprecidented population growth following two world wars. Steady population growth, otherwise, has been the trend for centuries. Demographers like to talk about the effect of the babyboom on population ageing because they have never seen it before. First, this is the longest war free period for our population, second, advances in health care and safety measures in the work place have all contributed to the longevity of our citizens. Sure, our population will start to decrease when they all begin to die, but won’t that trend be the same as, say, another war or plague? The only difference is that this time people will die from old age, instead of machine guns and disease.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I am all for governments spending money now to improve the outcomes of children in Canada. If the research is right, spending on early childhood development is the most efficient investment possible - considering the returns are better health and education, and lower poverty and crime.
I guess what I take issue with is the simplistic way the argruments were framed above when there are so many other factors at play. Encouraging Canadians to have more children is overly simplistic (just as the push to bring in more imigrants). In fact, one could make a very good argument against encouraging more Canadians to have children given labour market shortages (playing devil’s advocate here), because women would, by necessity, have to remove themselves from the labour force for X number of years in order to do that (right when the demand for labour is at its peek). Indeed, another factor that has been left out of your thinking is the financial independence women have gained through making strides in the labour force over the past 20 years. This has impacts on a many of the topics you have raised, to name one, divorce rates.
What is needed is a good hard look at whether or not our labour force growth is sustainable, what the pros and cons of allowing national demographics to determine the size of the labour force (and therefore Industrial growth) or whether we should put measures in place to encourage the migration (be that from heaven or India) of newcomers to Canada to meet a demand that is in most likelyhood not sustainable at all.
Posted on 19-Mar-08 at 9:15 am | Permalink
Shane wrote:
Thanks for that. I actually enjoyed reading it.
I’ll comment on the native issue. The difference between utilizing them as an untapped labour pool vis a vis immigration - immigrants, when they move to Canada, have the expectation of work (in general), and do not expect substantial government support. Whereas, aboriginal populations have been raised in a situation where they are guaranteed an income and all kinds of other subsidies simply for being aboriginal. Why work when you don’t have to? I am not saying all aboriginals think this but I think it is fair to say that a larger percentage than the general population does. Hence, it is harder to actualize them into job training and direct employment than immigrants.
I think this is even true of aboriginals versus mainstream Canadians. Natural progeny of mainstream Canadians do not expect to have college paid for by the government. They don’t expect to have a home, and living stipends provided by the government. Maybe from their parents, but not from the government. Hence, it is easier to actualize them into the workforce than it would be for aboriginals.
I know these are sweeping generalizations, but I can’t think of another reason why they wouldn’t be actualized.
Posted on 19-Mar-08 at 9:30 am | Permalink