The Canadian population sailed past the 40 million mark for the first time in history this summer and new data shows that the country continues to outdo itself, adding 430,635 people in the third quarter of the year alone.That figure, which puts Canada’s population in the ballpark of more than 40.5M...
Lately it is beginning to appear that among the many problems caused by this alarmingly rapid population growth is that it fuels anti-immigrant sentiment. We’ll be paying the price for decades to come.
This is a really important point. I’ve already seen this when talking with people. And it’s also really hard to differentiate the “immigration is good in moderation” sentiment from the “immigrants are ruining the country” sentiment.
Because in the proper numbers, immigration keeps our country alive by filling in gaps and growing the economy. But if the numbers are too high, we have more competition for work and housing and all our other economic resources.
I think nowadays the narrative is seems to be “immigration is always good and if you say otherwise you’re a bigot”. But we should certainly make sure we are intentional about how many people we bring in because we want our country to be the best it can be for everyone in it and everyone entering it.
What drives me crazy is that the population growth we’re seeing now isn’t even all that crazy.
It’s a bit higher right now, but it’s not a significant outlier when plotted on a graph going back 50 years.
Yes over the last 20 years immigration has been consuming a larger portion of that fairly consistent pie, but assuming we didn’t stop having kids 20 years ago we would be in a similar spot as we are today.
The real problem is that we stopped building housing. The rate of houses being built slowed down a few decades ago, and that was always going to be cause us problems, regardless of if we had stopped immigration, but had we done that, our population stagnating would have caused us other problems.