Madeline Weld on the myths of Canada's "need" for more immigrants

Jason Kenney has been deceiving us but being the likable person that he is, Conservatives don't want to admit that the man has been responsible for importing close to two million immigrants on his watch so far.   And, his watch is far from over.  You can expect a lot more immigrants from Afghanistan, Libya and other Muslim countries,  and YES, again on this same Minister's watch while he tries to allay  Canadians' apprehensiveness to the new breed of immigrants from the Muslim countries by pretending that the bulk of new immigrants will come from European countries like Ireland.  I am willing to bet my bottom dollar that at the end of 2012, if the government gives us an accurate figure on the immigration numbers, the large percentage of new immigrants will be again from the Muslim countries of the Middle East and Africa.  Anybody wanna take me on, on that statement?

Here are the figures from 1984 to 2008  ...  the Coservatives gained a minority govt from 2006 until  election day 2011 at which time they won a majority.

Here are the figures from 2008 to 2010     (see for yourselves how Jason Kenney has increased the immigrant quota.  Don't forget that he has been the Minister of Immigration from 2008 and the previous two years were also in somewhat similar mandates.   Look minutely at the figures for the  "Economic class immigrants"  those immigrants who have the money sans the language skills and oft times lack the kind of  skills and temperament that would  benefit Canada, can enter the country only because of their money.  Which countries, pray tell, would those immigrants be coming from if not from the oil rich Arab countries?

Here are the preliminary  numbers for 2011.   How does more than a quarter mil new immigrants in 2011 gel with you.... especially you folks who have lost your jobs from the start of the recession and are still  unemployed?

Yup ... I know.  I know that Madeline Weld is pro-choice with a capital P and a capital C and an atheist and population control enthusiast to boot.   But, so what ???!!    I think of abortion as murder but I will still defend a woman's right to choose to do whatever she wants with her body.  I might criticize and nag her about her choice and I would definitely not want to fund the infanticide  with my tax dollars ... but stop women from getting abortions?  No.  Educating them on why they should not abort and how they can prevent pregnancy ... Yes.  

After you read her analysis below, you will come to the same conclusion I did.  People we differ with on many subjects, might be the very same people who have the best views on the things that matter to us the most.  Keep an open mind always.

Madeline Weld writing at WomenMakeNews
Every so often policy wonks or talking heads  hyperventilate about Canada's need for more people. The growth boosters take the crude numbers for Canada's land surface area (about 9.1 million square kilometers) and divide it by Canada's population (34 million) and conclude that there's a desperate shortage of people, a paltry 3.3 per square kilometer. In the summer of 2010, no amount of coverage seemed too much for a proposal by Irvin Studin that Canada could better meet its potential and have more international clout if there were 100 million of us. In January of 2011, Canada's nationally read paper, the Globe and Mail, printed an editorial by Neil Reynolds called "Go forth, multiply and fill the provinces" which urged Canadians to do exactly that.

Such ecological illiteracy in an era when we are allegedly all becoming more aware about the human impact on the environment is stunning. The best explanation that I can think of for the media promoting such ideas is that the media tend to be owned by those who benefit from growth. Most Canadians do not.Satellite images of the world at night do show that most of Canada is as dark and uninhabited as Antarctica. But a bit of thought would lead to the conclusion that those parts of Canada are "underpopulated" for the same reason that Antarctica is: they are inhospitable to humans. Moving people to Canada's "empty" spaces would significantly raise their energy consumption and greenhouse gas production - and Canada's are already among highest in the world.

Each new Canadian, whether arriving through the maternity ward or the airport, is highly likely to live in the southern part of Canada. With our current low birth rate (averaging 1.6 children per woman), population growth is driven by immigration. Canada receives one-quarter to half a million newcomers annually, including immigrants, "temporary" workers, students and refugees. Most settle in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal, and only a handful settle outside Canada's 12 largest urban centres. Our large cities are already bursting at the seams with increasing congestion and smog and ever more stressed infrastructure, and have trouble dealing with their own wastes. When one considers the parts of Canada that are realistically capable of supporting a large population, they are already densely populated. Canada has lost over 15,000 square kilometres of farmland to urbanization. This loss is irreplaceable and farmland constitutes only about 5% of Canada's surface area. How smart is it to demolish one's own food security?.....

......The earnings of the average Canadian have remained essentially unchanged since 1980 (despite Canada growing by 10 million people since then), while those of the richest have risen substantially and those of the poorest have fallen substantially. The policy of hyper-immigration initiated in the early 1990s has had very little impact on the age structure of the general population or of the workforce. As for those pensions we've been promised: as a result of our generous system of social support and other (e.g., language training) programs, newcomers now receive tens of billions of dollars more from the government than they pay in taxes each year. Many immigrants of recent decades lack the skills (including an adequate knowledge of English or French) needed to work in Canada, and are lagging far behind established Canadians in their earnings. Unlike newcomers of earlier generations, they are not catching up. And, to use Reynolds' terminology, it is an "absurd delusion" to think that people working at a low-paying "McJob" or even two will be paying anyone's pension.....

....Canada has no good reason to increase its population and many reasons not to. The economic reasons to do so are bogus and the negative environmental impact is evident. Canada should set an example to the world by stabilizing its own population and supporting ethical family planning efforts in its foreign aid.....


Also,Weld says this at a yahoo forum on islam:
....Sharia would definitively not be so accomodative   to other sects. Under the Islamic concept of Jahiliyya ("age of ignorance"), everything in Arabia before Islam was the dark age of ignorance. The concept of Jahiliyya has been extended to everything outside of Islam, so western societies are in a state of Jahiliyya. It is on the basis of the concept that everything pre-dating or outside of Islam is evil that the Taliban dynamited the giant Buddha statues of Bamiyan in March of the same year that al-Qaeda flew airplanes into the Twin Towers. Since anything outside of Islamic law, sharia, is Jahiliyya, religious requirements of other sects would never make it into the mainstream (sharia) legal system. Christians and Jews can (or, more and more it seems, could) practise their faith in Muslim countries with inferior dhimmi status. ....