Quote:
Originally Posted by thewave46
As I get older, there's a definite wonder if we've just lost the plot completely with 'more' versus 'better' in Canada. Does rivaling South Sudan for growth make Canada a better country?
It's currently hard to see better Canada at this juncture.
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At this particular snapshot in time, population growth has absolutely been mismanaged but the conclusions some are reaching regarding population growth deserve to be challenged. The problem isn't a higher population,
it's the massive jump in the growth rate all at once. We went from 1% to 3% growth in the span of 2-3 years. Municipal governments, schools, hospitals, developers, planners have, quite predictably, all been blindsided by it.
The danger is that we'll see a knee jerk reaction where people sour on large scale immigration completely. For a country with a TFR of only 1.33, that would just as damaging to this country.
This is a time for calm heads, recognizing that 2022-2025 will very likely be an aberration, but also an acknowledgment of how Canada has benefited from a higher population. Canada is immeasurably better at 41 million than we were at 31 million. I could write 20 pages on the many ways Canada is better but that's beyond the scope of this thread.
I absolutely want a more manageable population growth rate but don't want immigration levels decreased to the point that our pensioner to worker ratio starts increasing again, our cities can't densify, or global capital starts viewing the long term demographic prognosis for Canada negatively. Let's not shoot ourselves in the foot by going from one extreme to the other. They're equally damaging.
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