I am Groot

Did you read the cite accompanying the OP? According to Wright there really isn't a labour shortage except in specific areas like the trades, and low dollar jobs like hospitality, restaurants and retail. I would add we have an obvious shortage in medical professionals but that's a result of deliberate government policy designed to limit the number of doctors and nurses.

Because they say so. Because numbers matter. Fundamentally the reason most immigrants come here is to have a more economically successful life with a nicer house and more consumer products. We won't really know until we see what values remain after the progressive left in academia and media get done destroying them. We're already seeing signs that Canadians' support for things like freedom of speech are fading and tolerance for different views diminishing. The spirit of compromise which is the bedrock of how a democratic state functions is also weakening.

Not really. I think much of the Left, and certainly the progressive element has adopted immigration as a sacred cause simply because the great majority of immigrants are non-white. Since anti-racism is now basically their religion any suggestion immigration should be lowered is akin to demanding fewer non-white people come in which of course is racism which of course is blasphemous evil. There seems to be no thinking beyond that on the part of the proponents of immigration. And since the progressives control academia and the media, these are the views which get propagated.

The only social problem we have is progressives inventing racism everywhere and doing their best to tell every visible minority that they should hate white people while inciting resentment and anger in white people. I'm sure that will turn out great.

Well, as it's an incontrovertible fact that almost everyone ought to realize so I had given you credit for realizing it, as well. I guess I gave you too much credit. If you must reduce this discussion to thoughtless cliche's could you at least make them Canadian ones instead of borrowing from the US? Calling this anti-immigration natter sweepingly rejects the again incontrovertible fact that the massive increases in the supply of labor drives down wages. The government even says so! The banks say so! Or are you going to deny this? Do you want me to cite further economists or will you just dismiss that all as "anti immigrant natter'? Tell me, is there ANY argument of any kind whatsoever against mass immigration that you would accept or would you simply jerk your knee and squeal about anti-immigration? If you want to shitpost Americana why not go down to the American groups below where you'll find like-minded posters? I suppose I could point out that our population was already stable and in fact was growing but I'm guessing facts play no role in your thinking on this topic. What conspiracy theory did I post? Or are you just jerking that knee wildly again with the usual brainless screech towards anyone who dares to question the sacred policy of mass immigration?

They're not apologizing for society. They're apologizing for their own institutions, which have been run by the progressive left longer than most Canadians have been alive. Why doesn't someone ask them why they've happily presided over racist institutions for decades and demand their resignations? Why doesn't someone ask Trudeau if he believes his father was a racist, if Jean Chretien was a racist given they each had control of the government for so long and yet did nothing about it's 'systemic racism'? Someone incapable of logic, Someone guided by emotions and believing in utopian visions while disdaining practical realities.

The comparison works quite well and you know it. In order to continue successfully more and more and ever more immigrants have to be brought in and in ever greater numbers. Slippery slope? It's more like a cliff. And I know very well how our economy works, thanks. I also know that government is funded by 50% of the population while the rest get their services for free. And that the more people in that second category the harder it is for those in the first category it is to pay for them. Because we've tried nothing and so obviously nothing will work. I'm not a demographics expert, not one in propaganda. I do know that the culture/values of our population have changed radically in a short period of time with the aid of the singular propaganda focus of our progressive media. We went from a country which disdained the kind of openly patriotic gestures we mocked Americans for to a culture where we painted our faces and wrapped ourselves in the flag in less than 20 years. We went from a country where the Liberal government with a majority had to withdraw its own marriage legislation because it's own MPs were threatening not to vote for it unless it was changed to make it clear it did not allow for gay marriage to one where gay marriage was widely accepted in the space of 20 years. The cultural values of a people can be shaped by media propaganda extolling the virtues of this or that thing. Maybe the government ought to give that a try, extolling the virtues of family life and multiple children. Of course, it's hard to do that when nobody can afford a house because we're bringing over massive waves of immigrants, students and temporary foreign workers every year.

In less than 20 years 51% of the population will be foreign born and their Canadian born kids. Given we were already bringing people over so fast we weren't able to properly integrate them - and that we've substantially increased that intake, Canada's culture and values, not to mention the governments elected, will become a product of what these foreigners and their kids desire with scant regard for Canadian traditions and values - including freedom of speech, religion and the commitment to democracy, compromise and trust.

We can't stop organized crime from funneling money. What makes you think we could stop dictators? AFAIK no Canadian reactor has ever presented much of a threat. And this is with 30-40 year old technology since no new ones have been built since then. And while I'm willing to put ourselves out to help foreigners to a degree, hobbling our economy to help countries building coal plants or spending billions on weapons is just not okay for me. Especially since no matter what Canada does it will have no noticeable impact on global emissions anyway.

You're lying. You know perfectly well the difference between promotion and suppression. But like all other Quebec separatists, including Legault you despise English and see nothing wrong with forcing people to use your dreadfully inefficient language or leave. And hope for the latter. A province with 6.5 million French should be allowed to violate as many human rights as it cares to because somehow or other French is threatened, though it's not, and must survive regardless of costs to others. And you simply take it for granted that a French Quebec prime minister would abandon his father's insistence on equal treatment and kowtow to the separatists in Quebec. All while increasing federal government support for Francophone groups outside Quebec. Tell me, how would you and the rest of Quebec react if the federal government deliberately brought in English speaking immigrants to Quebec in order to increase its English population? You don't have to answer. We all know how you'd react. Yet bringing in French immigrants to increase the size of minority language communities elsewhere in Canada is precisely what the federal government has been doing. And no one would dare question it.

That is a pretty damned finicky callout on your part. What does closer to being on par mean then? Because technically they are already closer to being on par with us than they were ten years ago. Happy now? Yes, that is what I said. Everything we do here is based on the cost of energy. The more expensive a component of costs we make energy the poorer we will be. That's without funneling hundreds of billions to third world countries. You just said above that you expect ours to drop. But why should we be blamed if their corrupt governments funnel money into their secret bank accounts or build gigantic monuments to themselves, or put massive amounts of money into their military instead of either helping their people or cutting back on CO2 emissions? China is not alone in its crappy regard for human rights. And the Paris accord makes no notice or distinction between developing countries which are genuinely trying to lower Co2 emissions and those which put billions into their military like China, India and others do. Should we send money to help fund Iran's weapons production so they can send more to Russia? Should we fund Turkey so it can better slaughter the Kurds? What about Venezuela? Nicaragua? Uzbekistan? Myanmar? Canada has increased its population significantly, and intends to continue doing so. Perhaps a higher emission amount is related to that. The West has put a ton of effort into this. The rest of the world, nada. If I'd won the day we'd be building lots of nukes, not hobbling our economy by increasing the cost of energy while shipping dollars to countries building coal power plants.

You know very well that is a ponzi scheme which can have only one ending. The higher our population goes the more immigrants would be needed to keep it growing at the new pace. Eventually it's simply not possible. Plus, this new increase will grow our population more than anyone in the G7. We didn't need it. We were doing fine with the number we were bringing in under Harper. And unlike the current numbers, those were manageable and we didn't need to decrease our standards to achieve them. Saying immigration is necessary is itself bowing to the inevitability of the current birth rate staying as it is despite no actual effort by any level of government to improve it. And then there's the question of how many are necessary. The present increased immigration amount is demonstrably NOT necessary.

All you need to understand is fundamental logic. If every organization known to be extremely liberal/progressive engages in self-flagellation for its racism, oppression towards minorities and white supremacy then the logical assumption is that these are the very people who cause racism, oppression towards minorities and white supremacy. I mean, it's the same down south, where cities and police forces which have been run by the Democrats for decades are self-admitted hotbeds of racism and must needs be purged and cleansed somehow. The same goes for American universities, museums, school boards, etc. Why does no one ever ask why? Why is it an institution, organization and government controlled by the most liberal elements of society for a very long time claim to still be systemically racist and seek to grovel and apologize for their misdeeds? You know why. Because they're all full of so much bullshit. It's a pantomime whereby they virtue signal by crying crocodile tears and making obsequious noises towards non-whites for their almost entirely non-existent racism. That was bad enough when it was confined to academia - though lately even there it's gotten worse in them lowering their requirements not only for admittance but lowering their teaching standards to accommodate lesser educated minorities. But we've let this ludicrous faux racism mea culpa spread to every area of society. And while I can tolerate the eye-rollingly dumb sniveling confessions from various organizations and our woke prime minister it offends my sense of justice to see policy being implemented which sees hundreds of millions of dollars squandered on this crap. Likewise I heartily dislike hiring and promotion based on race, not to mention allotting government contracts and awards for the same reason. I also deeply dislike how it is deliberately dividing society along racial lines and pitting different identity groups against one another. I dislike how it causes resentment, suspicion and dislike both on the part of minorities who have been repeatedly told they are being oppressed and discriminated against through no fault of their own and in whites like myself who know damned well that's so much putrid, lying bullshit.

Whoever calls China to account for anything? Why should they have the same living standard as us? Why are we the median? And what makes you think that simply pumping out more CO2s is going to EVER allow them to catch up to our living standards given the massive corruption and incompetence of most developing world governments? As I pointed out, China has already exceeded the entire contributions of the UK since the industrial revolution. Why then is the UK expected to pay billions of dollars while China is to actually receive money? There is no question. None, that the redistribution scheme has Marxist origins. Even your own words attest to that. We must all have equal living standards regardless of which of us is more skilled, talented, organized, educated, capable, honest and hard-working? What is that but Marxism, where no one ever gets ahead and everyone lives in poverty? China and India don't have the same standard of living as us? Maybe if they stopped funneling so much money into their militaries, including nuclear weapons and submarines we can't afford they'd do better. Blunting what actions? The West has spent hundreds of billions on lowering CO2 while the developing world has essentially spent nothing while vastly increasing their CO2 emissions, often through the building of new coal power plants. And we're expected to keep doing this because equal living standards.

Perhaps I address them according to my perception of their age as derived from the maturity of their postings.

Yeah, funny thing about that. There was a column in the Post a few days back which pointed out that since the Paris accord emissions from the West have more or less levelled off but China, who we continue to portray as a 'developing' country has quadrupled their emissions. They now emit more than all the developed world combined. And as for the justification that the West is obligated to compensate others because the warming due to CO2 is their fault China has emitted more CO2 in the last eight years than the UK has done since the Industrial Revolution. And in just the first quarter of this year they greenlighted 8.3 gigawatts of new coal powered electricity. Yet somehow they're exempt, not only for paying money to poorer nations but from cutting their emissions. Really? So you're saying this climate change accord is really designed as an income redistribution system rather than for climate change? That is what the opponents have been saying for some years, after all. The inevitable result of such an outlook would be that the standard of living in Canada would have to plummet to levels not seen in generations.

Of course. The only purpose of this bill in its entirety is to allow the Liberals to pretend to ignorant urbanites who know little about firearms but that they don't like them that they are protecting them. And to portray the conservatives as being of the same mentality and mind as those crazy Republican gun nuts down south for daring to oppose the legislation. Have you seen the outraged columns in newspapers because some Montreal hockey player dared to say he was a hunter and opposed the legislation? He's been accused of betraying the memory of the sainted martyrs of l'ecole polytechnique elements of the Left have wallowed in every single year for thirty three straight years now.

I don't believe the Citizen was one of the places which described itself as hopelessly racist and oppressive to minorities? Are you alleging the universities are hotbeds of conservatism?

There was an article I posted the other day about the parliamentary budget officer, using UN stats on climate saying that basically we were going to spend more money on trying to diminish our own CO2 than the economic damage which might be caused in eight years by unrestrained climate change. And the people it's mainly harming are rural and poor.

Well, either all those liberal organizations are lying or they're all terrible racists and white supremacists. Which is it? If the latter then we clearly must stop liberals from controlling all organizations in Canada! Otherwise we'll just see more white supremacy and oppression! I mean, liberals have controlled Canadian university campuses for DECADES! And yet, every university campus is overflowing with racism and white supremacy! Every visible minority at those universities is oppressed! The same goes for people who work in liberal institutions like libraries, galleries, museums and theaters! It certainly appears liberals are the ones responsible for racism and oppression.

And do you know how long it will take before our population shrinks? Many decades. Besides which, no one is suggesting we completely eliminate immigration. But there never was any justification for the huge increases we've seen from this government. And those increases are helping to make housing unaffordable even as they push down wages. Immigration is nothing but a political tool for the Liberals. So is refugee policy. Neither is based on principle, or any forecasted need for Canada. And obviously, the wider the net you cast, the more people you seek to bring in, the lower your standards have to be. We saw that earlier in the year when the CD Howe Institute, which has always been pro-immigration, warned that the government's plans to lower the skill level required for immigration would result in lower economic success for immigrants. The biggest problem for international corps is how to ensure they pay proper taxes in the countries where they operate. They should never receive more favorable tax treatment than native companies, but they do.

It was, of course, meant in a mocking way. Justin Trudeau has demonstrated over the past seven years that he has no principles, and that his interests are laser focused on self-promotion.

Needless to say they still think helping French communities outside Quebec is extraordinarily important. But the English in Quebec will lose language rights in federally regulated industries. Pierre Trudeau made bilingualism a basic principle but his son is trading that principle away in the name of pandering for votes from the anti-English nationalists of Quebec. Bill C-13 has many flaws, but here are the most significant: •It recognizes French as the sole official language of Quebec, when the Canadian Constitution ensures English as the language of the legislature and the courts; •It uses Quebec’s Charter of the French Language, Bill 96, as the standard for federally regulated businesses in Quebec, which means banks, transport and communication companies will be subject to the Office Québécois de la Langue Française; •It creates a distinction between the rights and recourses afforded to French minority communities and those for the English minority in Quebec. While seeking to grow Francophone minority opportunities in business and government, it suppresses them for Quebec Anglophones. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/andrew-caddell-liberals-rushing-to-help-quebec-suppress-english

Don Wright, former head of the BC public service, and PHD in economics thinks the federal government is deliberately driving down wages on behalf of business and against the interests of ordinary Canadians. I find this odd since this government is the self-proclaimed government of the 'middle class'. Why would it do such a thing? The federal government, supported by most provinces, has decided to oblige the business lobby with significant changes to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, increasing the number of hours per week that international students can work, as well as pushing immigration levels higher. In other words, they are engineering an increase in the supply of labour to hold down wages. That has come after a virtually non-stop narrative over the last few years about a “worker shortage” in Canada. Businesses are regularly quoted complaining that they cannot find enough workers, and business associations constantly lobby governments to do something about it – usually by bringing in more workers from other countries, either on a temporary or permanent basis. But in economics, the notion of a shortage of supply in any market is, at best, half-baked. A market balances supply and demand. If there is a “shortage” of supply, then the price in that market rises until the amount supplied is equal to the amount demanded. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-about-that-worker-shortage-why-are-governments-helping-drive-down/

This is Canada, son. Wake up. Apparently, in Canada, the places which are calling THEMSELVES racist and oppressors are all the institutions we've entrusted to liberals! What am I to take from this but that liberals are racist and white supremacists?!