Bonam

But did the professor deny the existence of non-binary gender expression? No, he didn't. He merely pointed out that he doesn't think he should be forced to use special pronouns. And for making this relatively esoteric point, he was pretty much seen as the devil by his colleagues.

Sorry, that's true, I guess that was a bit off topic. Back on the actual topic though... Professors, along with everyone else, should not be required to speak in the way that emotionally sensitive people demand that they speak. The vitriol pointed at the professor in question by his colleagues for failing to comply with their ideology is by far the greater problem on university campuses (in that it is indicative of a close-minded ideological dogmatic atmosphere) than the use of pronouns.

Democrats lost because their entire message for the entire length of the campaign was "the other guys are racists". That's not a message that appeals to anyone but the already converted who like to feel their smug superiority to the supposed racists. Too much focus on identity politics (which includes all the pronoun crap discussed here), not enough on issues that matter to the mainstream. Here's a good article: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/the-end-of-identity-liberalism.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

This thread right here is why Democrats lost the election. Liberals are in a moral panic about pronoun usage, while the real economic issues of working class people are ignored. Oh, and my preferred pronoun is "His Majesty". I'm gonna report every post that doesn't refer to me with that pronoun.

There is no debate, because it is always shut down before it can even happen. But what would the debate be about? All the aspects of social justice crap that we see at universities. Safe spaces. Microaggressions. Trigger warnings. Bathrooms and pronouns. Affirmative action. Rape culture. Patriarchy. Institutionalized racism. White privilege. Voice your disagreement with the prescribed view on issues like this and you will be seen as the enemy and met with insults, ostracism, hatred, and in many cases official disciplinary action. For example, look at the torrent of insults cybercoma is unleashing on TimG in this thread for questioning the need for dozens of made up pronouns... and here it's just cybercoma, but on campuses it is the entire weight of the establishment that targets anyone who strays from the path.

A lot of people in universities find all the social justice brainwashing that goes on there as ridiculous as the onlookers. Most "young people" will be just fine. The people who don't care for this stuff tend to be more interested in their actual studies so you won't see much activism against this latest wave of idiotic ideology. Therefore the overall discourse is set by those who have nothing better to do than advocate these "causes", and people who disagree feel that it is better to be quiet about their opinions lest they be shunned by their peers. A big part of social justice brainwashing is about training people how to effectively shut down opposing opinions, which primarily involves shaming people as racists or sexists if they express opinions not in full accord with social justice ideology and encouraging friends to purge such people from their social circles and generally dehumanize them. So there's a minority of really impassioned people who shut down all debate and make universities look like ideologically homogeneous bastions of extremist social justice views, but the reality is a lot of students (and staff and faculty) do not agree, or are apathetic, and just keep their heads down and focus on their actual jobs/studies.

Good thing we don't do that anymore.

They are already major "cultural groups" in Vancouver, no need to wait a century.

In a century? Been to Vancouver lately?

Caucasians are already a small minority worldwide, and their share of the world population has been falling for generations, though Western liberals like to paint them as majority oppressors.

Yeah the Bank of Canada was included in my answer under "corporations".

End of the economy - no. Singularity - maybe, but population will likely level off without it (although ?impact is correct that some projections do have it continuing to grow). If the singularity does happen, it's hard to say anything about what will happen after that. For all we know, the idea of population might not even have any meaning post-singularity.

No kidding. We are not doing the world a service by robbing developing nations of their trained professionals, which take a far greater proportion of a developed nation's resources to train, and then we just steal them. And sadly, due to a combination of factors such as professional organizations that limit admittance, varying standards from country to country, and sometimes substandard English skills, a lot of these highly skilled immigrants, which could have been the shining stars of their countries of origin, end up working low-skilled jobs here in Canada.

Why should we care? Plenty of countries are great, prosperous, peaceful places to live without having a lot of "international clout". Ever been to, say, New Zealand? There is no reason to cram Canada full of a hundred million people just so a few politicos can feel better about themselves when chatting with their US counterparts. Where's BC2004 to point out how your Canadian psyche is affected by living in the shadow of the beast when you need him?

The last point made in the article is important. The opposition to Trump largely has a very divisive message of race/gender based privilege/victimhood which inherently casts certain demographics as oppressors and others as victims. This message inherently can only appeal to a portion of the population, it is not a unifying message but a divisive one. Until the left forsakes its shrill divisive rhetoric of identity politics, they will have trouble assembling a majority that can defeat populist right wing movements. The difference in the Democrat's message between 2008 and 2016 explains everything, honestly: 2008: "There are no red states or blue states, there are only the United States" -Obama 2016: "The people in the red states are racists, sexists, and bigots". -Hillary's supporters

The great thing is we don't really have to deal with it very much. The world population is projected to reach a maximum around about 10 billion and then slowly decline. All trends point to falling birth rates as countries develop, across all cultures. There is no reason to expect that Canada will ever have to deal with a population of 100 million unless we make it specific policy to import 65 million more people.

No... it's really not. Canadian government debt is held by individual Canadian investors, corporations and retirement funds (~73%), and foreign investors (~27%). The interest that the government of Canada owes on this debt is paid to these debt holders. What they do with the money is the same thing anyone does with whatever money they have.

There's a difference between the "carrying capacity" and the capacity to enjoy the Canadian lifestyle. With advanced farming techniques and clean energy technologies we could probably have 100 billion people living sustainably on Earth. But just because all of those people could exist doesn't mean that it would be an enjoyable world to live in for those of us that like open space. Canada does not need 100 million people. And the "lower part of BC" most certainly doesn't need 30 million.

It very much has to do with the topic. The social justice movement has taught people that if they find something that they are even very slightly offended by, or feel is even very slightly inappropriate, or just hurts someone's feelings a little bit, that it is a societal problem and must be addressed on the broadest scale possible. Before this age of hypersensitivity, complaints about one instance of a possibly inappropriate religious-themed ritual in a school would have likely met responses of "get over it". Today, no such luck. If someone was a little bit put off by the ritual, then we must have comprehensive national soul-searching to determine how best to deal with this so that no one's feelings are hurt, and then we must spend years carefully educating everyone about the issue and any potential pitfalls or ways they might accidentally give offense or do something inappropriate.

Mountains out of molehills indeed. You mean like when people complain about "microaggressions" or expect "trigger warnings"? This is the culture you guys wanted, now you get to live with it.

I look forward to the day when I live in a Canada of 1 billion people and a bureaucrat in Ottawa decides what diet to feed me. So excited for that future!

To be fair, he said "the lower part of BC", not the "lower mainland". So presumably he was talking about the land area between the coast and the Alberta border, and from the US border up to like Prince George or so. And yes, you could probably fit 30 million people there. But it would involve the destruction of most of the pristine environment that exists in the area. He's talking approximately California... the lower half of BC is about the same land area as California, and California has about 40 million people.

I don't want to be "fit into" some ultra dense hive, and neither for the most part do people who come here as immigrants. I enjoy low density, open space, clean air, clean cities, parks. The "lower part of BC" is a beautiful place full of natural wonders, diverse ecosystems, and unique wildlife habitat. While you could "fit" 30 million people into this area, it would no longer have any of the above, instead just being a grey megacity. And to feed those 30 million people you'd need another Alberta or two full of farmland.

Unfortunately, I don't think those are straw man, because I've seen both of those claims sincerely made on this forum. For example, dre has argued that without continued immigration to sustain the housing markets with new demand for housing, our real estate bubble would pop, sending Canada into a US-2008 style recession. And in this very thread, smallc has made the claim that economies do not grow without population growth. So no, I'm not arguing against strawman but against real positions that people have. In regards to your example effect of 0.5% increased economic growth due to immigration... if we had solid data that could reliably trace 0.5% of our GDP/capita growth specifically to immigration, this would be a reasonable argument. But I don't see such data. The comparison to Japan (0.7% growth from your numbers above) to Canada (1.3% growth from your numbers above) showing a 0.6% difference in GDP/capita growth rate could result from the difference in immigration policy, but it could also result from any number of other factors, since Canada and Japan are very different countries. For example, Canada's economy is fueled to a large extent by the export of natural resources, some of which (oil) have gone up considerably in value over the last 25 years, and new sources of oil have been tapped (oil sands) that now contribute to Canada's economy. Meanwhile, Japan is a huge net resource importer, and is now more reliant on fossil fuel imports than ever after having shut down most of its nuclear plants 5 years ago. Additionally, Japan's economy is largely based on the development and export of advanced technology, in which they had little competition in Asia 25 years ago, but which is now dominated by South Korea (Samsung). I expect these factors have had an impact on Canada's relative growth to Japan over the last 25 years, and therefore the 0.6% difference you noted in average GDP/capita growth cannot be clearly attributed to the difference in immigration policy.

Devout Christians are very much interested in imposing Christian law on non-Christians. Just look at the right wing in the US, who want to impose their hatred of gays and abortion on the entire population. Devout Muslims, too, want to impose their laws on non-Muslims, with the most significant difference being that more of them seem to be willing to use violence in their attempt to do so.