Reduce Canada's population growth to a moderate sustainable level

Proposal text

WHEREAS Canada’s population growth has been the highest in the G7 (double the US rate in 2019) because Canada drastically increased immigration rates after 2015, likely to meet the goal of 100 million in 2100, based on the corporate-funded Century Initiative (target of 500,000 immigrants/year, or 1.25% of population) . This is neither environmentally nor economically sustainable.

BE IT RESOLVED that Canada needs to reduce population growth to modest levels (i.e., cut permanent economic immigration, Temporary Foreign Workers & foreign students, after the numbers of refugees and family class immigrants have been determined).

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Canada's population should only grow by the minimum or modest amount necessary to meet our demographic and economic needs (maximum 0.5% of population).

Type of Proposal

Public policy that the party would represent

Objective / Benefit

Canada must have an immigration policy that is compassionate, but when people move to Canada, their environmental foot increases, including raising increasing Canada's GHG emissions, increasing our dependence on resource extraction, and increasing urban sprawl and loss of wildlife habitat.

While GDP is a flawed measure, we need to aise Canada's GDP/capita, reduce the cost of living, and be greener (saving farmland, lower emissions, etc.) by cutting immigration to pre-2015 levels or closer to US levels. Canadian might want our country to be more generous than our neighbour, but there is no justification for canada to grow at a rate double that of the US, or more.

Our immigration policy to be designed to reassure Canadians that it:

Is environmentally sustainable

Will not increase unemployment

Will not lead to underemployment

Will not be inflationary

Will not increase home prices or rents

Will not lower GDP/capita, particularly for people already here with permanent status/citizenship.

Will not mean major personal sacrifices by Canadians or see us fall farther behind the US on GDP/capita or their expectation of a middle class lifestyle

Will not add to inequality/make the rich richer at the expense of the rest of us.

If your proposal replaces an existing policy or policies, which one does it replace?

N/A

List any supporting evidence for your proposal

Traditionally, environmentalists were opposed to population growth and the idea of perpetual economic growth - read "Limits to Growth" for example, or the work of environmentalists like Herman E Daly who proposed that eventually we had to have a "steady state economy".

Yet, Canadian elites in business, media and government seem to think that bigger is better. Canada has a low birth rate rate, but so does the US and most other developed countries and even Japan and Italy are shrinking. Yet, the trudeau government has taken immigration policy to an extreme - doubling the already high 250,000 immigrants in 2015 under Harper to 500,000 in 2025, and in fact, we brought in 1.05 million in 2022. This seems in line with the goals of the Century Initiative, a bank and corporate funded group founded by Dominic Barton, thar want Canada to have 100 million people in 2100 - on the basis that bigger is better. Yet, global population will peak at 9.7 billion around 2064 then drop by a billion by 2100.

Does this proposal affect any particular group and what efforts have been made to consult with the group or groups?

N/A

Jurisdiction: Is this proposal under federal jurisdiction?

Yes

Please indicate the language the proposal is being submitted in.

English