A population-related wish list for 2025

Population Institute Canada’s wish list for 2025 reflects our focus, globally and domestically, on population and its interconnection with environmental,  economic, social and political issues.

Globally and in Canada, growth remains the objective even as constraints become evident

In a staggering display of cognitive dissonance, political and economic leaders around the world still set growth as a primary objective. Regarding matters of environmental concern, they have focused almost exclusively on climate change. There seems to be little awareness that any effect we may have on Earth’s climate is merely one of many symptoms of a human species in overshoot. Humanity has entered into a “plague phase” as exemplified by biodiversity loss, deforestation, overfishing, depletion of water resources, pollution, and our drive to destructively scour every nook and cranny of land and water for resources to feed the demands of our “modern techno-industrial” economy which is based on a paradigm of continuous growth.

As Malthus noted over 200 years ago, every increase in food production has resulted in an increase in population. Enabled by the Haber-Bosch process and the Green Revolution, this is exactly what has happened in a spectacular way during the 20^th century, which began with 1.5 billion people and ended with 6 billion. The over-rated “Demographic Transition” has been slow to catch on in sub-Saharan Africa and several other regions in the world. And so we see, in the poorest countries, burgeoning urban slums whose residents have low prospects of finding decent employment or being able to achieve even a modest quality of life. This creates push factors to migrate to wealthier countries, legally and illegally, creating political and social tensions in those countries.

Even as support for family planning languishes, massive efforts are put into developing renewable energy, often at high environmental cost, in an effort to fight climate change. Going electric has been touted as our environmental salvation and appears to be seen by many as the path to perpetual economic growth – as if such a thing were possible on a finite planet.

The data paint a much grimmer picture. Electricity is not a primary energy source. Electricity is produced through the conversion of primary energy sources, which include fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas), and nuclear, solar, wind, hydro, and biomass energy. Although an increasing proportion of the electricity consumed is produced from primary sources other than fossil fuels (such as wind and solar), only about one-fifth of primary energy is consumed in the form of electricity.

Globally the proportion of energy consumed in the form of electricity has been fairly stable since 2020 and made up 20.6% of the final global energy consumption in 2023. Despite renewables providing a greater proportion of electrical energy, wind and solar provided only 13.7% of the power for electricity in 2023. Therefore, they provided only 2.82% (0.206 x 0.137) of total energy consumption. It does not seem realistic to expect that wind and solar will be able to come close to meeting the world’s energy needs in any foreseeable timeframe. While Canada generates much of its electricity from hydro, most countries are not blessed with such abundant water resources.

Most primary energy is still consumed in the form of fossil fuels. Although their share of primary energy has declined in the last half century, from 93.4% in 1965 to 81.5% in 2023, the rate of decline is showing no signs of acceleration.

An interactive version of the graph below, showing the share of fossil fuels in primary energy consumption from 1965 to 2023, can be viewed at Statista.

While the share of fossil fuels in primary energy consumption during the last few years has declined modestly at best, the total amount of energy consumed has risen spectacularly, from 52,523 terawatt-hours (TWh) in 1965 to 183,230 TWh in 2023. Consequently, the consumption of fossil fuels, along with other sources of energy, has increased. An interactive version of the graph below can be viewed at Our World in Data.

In a nutshell, the world still runs mostly on fossil fuels, a finite non-renewable resource. While wind and solar cannot even keep up with the annual increase in the global demand for energy, they are being touted as our salvation and used to enable more growth (for the time being). In reality, this growth will just hasten collapse.

Canada in disarray

Meanwhile, in Canada, the government is seeing the chickens of its mass immigration policy come home to roost. After years of ignoring growing concerns about the impact of this policy, the government is now feeling the full wrath of Canadians who have seen housing prices and rents skyrocket, unprecedented demands on food banks, household debt reach record levels, and job quality decline as cheap labour flooded into the country. A prime minister who said that fighting climate change was as important as being able to afford food and rent came across as stunningly tone-deaf.

In fairness, Canada’s policy of mass immigration was not initiated by the current government. It began in earnest under the government of Brian Mulroney, in 1990, when his immigration minister Barbara McDougall pushed through a policy of bringing in a quarter million new permanent residents each year, regardless of economic conditions. This madness has been pursued by every government since. But Justin Trudeau’s government cranked it up to new levels and brushed off any advice that things might go sideways.

In October 2017, then immigration minister Ahmed Hussen announced that 300,000 new immigrants each year would be the “new normal” and floated the option for even higher levels for 2018 and beyond.  And, in fact, the number of newcomers was much higher. The term “immigrant” designated only permanent residents, and did not include temporary workers or international students.

In November 2022, then immigration minister Sean Fraser announced that Canada had “welcomed over 405,000 newcomers,” the most ever, in the last year. He set permanent resident targets of 465,000 for 2023, and 485,000 and 500,000, respectively, for 2024 and 2025. Marc Miller vowed to continue with those targets after he became immigration minister in July 2023, despite mounting concerns about the housing crisis, and even chided Canadians who opposed the government’s policy for blaming immigrants and not having their best interest at heart. It did not seem to have crossed the mind of anyone in cabinet that it was the best interests of Canadians that they should be concerned about.

Even Statistics Canada was recruited to push mass immigration madness, producing a cringy propaganda video that celebrated the achievement of Canada reaching a population of 40 million in June 2023.

Meanwhile, the numbers of temporary foreign workers and international students, not included in the above-cited immigration targets, were also surging to such an extent that the government later admitted they had gotten out of control. In addition, the number of annual refugee applicants skyrocketed from about 16,000 in 2015, the year Trudeau was first elected as prime minister, to close to 147,000 from January to September 2024 (which if applied to the whole year would total almost 200,000). Since January 2017, approximately 100,000 people were also allowed to enter Canada illegally, primarily at the decommissioned border crossing of Roxham Road between New York state and Quebec. It seems that everyone except the government was aware that a large amount of fraud was being committed by people entering Canada through various routes. An immigrant from “Pangea” shared stories from his own community with me, while pointing out that similar things would be going on in ethnic communities throughout Canada.

The graph below shows the number of newcomers of all categories entering Canada each year from 1991 to 2023. Much of the increase in recent years (aside from 2020, where travel was reduced due to Covid) is from temporary foreign workers and international students.

The graph below illustrates how the number of temporary workers in various categories was allowed to rise with little oversight under the current government.

The spectacular rise in the number of annual asylum claimants between 2000 and 2023 is shown in the graph below. Except for 2024, the numbers in the table showing data for 2015 to 2024 are taken from the graph. The number for January to September 2024 is from the IRB (Immigration and Refugees Board of Canada). The projected number of asylum claimants for all of 2024 (approaching 200,000) represents a 12-fold increase since Trudeau came to power in October 2015. For that year, it was approximately 16,000. The number of asylum seekers is overwhelming the capacity of cities to shelter them. More vetting of which claims are accepted for processing would seem in order.

Which brings us to a wish list for Canada and the world