Jason Kenney’s Consultation Document of 2012
In 2012, when Jason Kenney was immigration minister under Stephen Harper, Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC) published its findings on consultations conducted during the previous year with “stakeholders” and the public. The primary “stakeholders” in these consultations were business interests and organizations serving immigrants. Members of the public were not considered stakeholders, despite the major impact that immigration had on their country. While stakeholders were invited to attend several cross-country round table meetings in addition to online consultations, the only input available to the public was online. Not surprisingly, stakeholders and individuals differed in their responses. The majority of stakeholders wanted to increase or maintain the immigration level at 250,000, while almost half of the individuals who responded wanted to reduce it. Also not surprisingly, the document reflected the government’s assumption that immigration is essential to Canada’s prosperity.
Nevertheless, it is clear from the document that policymakers knew that immigration did not impact the age structure. On page 49 of the 94-page document, it is stated that, in 2009-2010, the number of births exceeded the number of deaths by 134,000, while net international migration (inflows and outflows of permanent and temporary migration and of Canadian-born individuals) contributed about 255,000 individuals to the population and accounted for about two-thirds of the growth. This is followed by the passage below:
“That being said, research underscores that immigration is not a viable remedy for population aging. A 2009 study [sic, study was in 2006] by the C.D. Howe Institute concludes that improbably huge increases in immigration (i.e. from the current 0.8% to nearly 4% of the population) in the short term would be required to stabilize Canada’s current old-age dependency ratio.”
The document acknowledges that “the number of retirements from the labour force is increasing, currently reflecting the “bulge” of aging baby boomers” (p. 49). Would that bulge then not simply be a transient phenomenon as the super-sized cohort of boomers retire and pass on, much like a huge bolus of food passes through the body of a snake? In many ways, this “baby boom” is a global phenomenon that will play out at different times in different regions depending on how fast fertility rates fall, but in all cases reflecting the spectacular increase in the global population during the 20th century.
Why then would the government continue to implement a policy of mass immigration? The answer can be summarized in this excerpt (p. 49):
“As natural population growth in Canada slows, with fertility rates below replacement levels, immigration will be an increasingly important source of population and labour force growth.”
Aha – the population and labour force must grow! But why? It’s that cursed economic paradigm of continuous economic growth for all eternity. The raison d’être of Population Institute Canada is to promote awareness of the fact that the pursuit of perpetual growth is the road to overshoot and eventual collapse.
They know it’s a lie
Jason Kenney’s consultation document from 2012 contains a graph (p. 67) showing the number of new permanent residents each year from 1860 to 2009. The graph shows a series of peaks and troughs. There was a big dip in immigration levels in the last decades of the 19th century and a plunge during the depression years of the 1930s and the war years of the early 1940s. The sharp rise during the early part of the 20th century occurred while the Great Prairies were being settled. A smaller peak followed the Second World War, with a spike in 1957 when Canada accepted 37,500 Hungarian refugees following the Hungarian uprising of October 1956. After that, smaller rises and dips are seen until 1990. |
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