Brunopolis

I've never included the tundra as actual usable territory. About 1/5 of Canadian lands are usable which is approximately 2 million square kilometres. That is still lots of territory for 34 million people. Thanks for all the comments to my posts. I still think we have room to grow but you've given me something to think about. 8) I enjoy the forums a lot more than the ones in other places. Mainly due to the civil discourse and the fact that we seem to have a bit of every leaning politically. One thing is clear though. We're using immigration as a crutch to fix our own social problems(expensive to have children, lack of skilled workers, etc)

It's used as an excuse for our rather poor military. Many people care about the military. Just not enough to actually invest in it. It's easier to blame your woes on something else than take personal responsibility. People do it, political parties do it, and in this case a whole nation does it.

Half the green party votes, if not more, are all protest votes. They don't want to support any "mainstream" party so they vote for the green party. Personally, I find Elizabeth May's treasonous behaviour to her own party despicable. Screwing over all her other candidates so she has a shot of winning her riding? I completely agree with Bryan that she should not be allowed into the debates next time. Particularly with how she backed the Liberals at the last minute.

It's all a matter of political will. Was the government at the time willing to spend the money and time in these kind of military projects? Canadian's as a whole tend to have other priorities than investing in their military so the government generally follows suit and doesn't invest in the military either. Also, with the neighbours that we have and their military spending there's really no point to try to compete. Maybe thats why Canadians don't really care about their military in general.

I was trying to list various other benefits(obviously not as important) but the largest benefit is as regenade put it the "pyramid scheme of social benefits". If we stopped accepting immigrants we would see our nation become(on average) much older) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_ageing This decreases productivity and increases health care costs dramatically. This is very important to our economic power as a nation. I'm not trying to say population growth is nothing but gains. Their are disadvantages but we are in a country that is very under-populated and we have plenty of room to grow both our nation and economy.

40% of the people don't vote because we have one of the least democratic most ridiculous voting systems in the world. I've been to and voted in countries which have proportional representation systems and the interest in politics is far greater than I've ever seen in Canada. Every single election I've voted in Canada has been a throw-away vote for me yet I still go. I'm not surprised people don't care when they are disenfranchised to such an extent. So if you're against public funding and want pure private funding why do we even have a dollar limit? If I want to donate 50 million dollars to my political party who are you to tell me it's too much? Why do we have these "arbitrary" donation cap numbers at all? Why not have a level playing field for all political parties? One voter has the exact same power as another voter. Not more power because he has more money to donate.

The problem with unions is that they are exempt from monopoly laws. A union that controls all car manufacturing workers? No problem! One big company that is the only one that builds vehicles? Then it seems we have a problem. Unions should be treated like any other company and shouldn't be allowed to group together. This keeps their power in line with the company's power and helps prevent abuse.

I dont even know what data the government uses to determine who gets and pays what in the equalization pot. Considering the fact it can change so drastically from 1 year to another I think the government just makes up the data on the spot to make sure the payments are ¨correct¨.

Firstly, Hydro is a near infinite resource and trees can grow back. Sure they are not infinite but we are a long way away from running out. If it werent for the fact our entire economy is geared towards shipping our resources over to the USA we would have no problem at all. Secondly, many European nations build wealth with people and not resources. They are starting to have a crowding problem but that is due to a combination of the European Union and their close proximity to poor nations. Thirdly, large cities can be very liveable if they are built properly. Sometimes the small size of a city makes things worse. Ive lived in Ottawa for 17 years and I must say that city could really benefit from an increased population and densification. Right now the current size(approximately 1.2 million metropolitan area) doesnt justify the construction of a metro and the cities extended nature makes going to work an absolute chore. Torontos metro service is amazing and even though the city isnt as pretty it is a lot more comfortable to live in. Also comparing Canadian cities to American cities is a little disengenious. American cities as a whole have more crime and worse public services than Canadian cities. I could compare Modesto, California to say Toronto and come to the conclusion larger cities are better. Size isnt everything when it comes to how liveable a city is. http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0921299.htm I have never said we have to increase population growth. Just keep it as it is until we reach the amount of people we need. And we can still grow our economy with more people and as long as we make sure they dont end up all in Toronto(this will be hard) we should do just fine. Anyways, as for your comment on equalization. I agree with you that it reduces rational choices. However, the alternative is increasing densification even further as people move to where there are more people. Something it seems you are opposed to. In Uruguay and Argentina their is no equalization and everybody packs into the same city. Buenos Aires has 13 million people and the nation only has 40 million and Uruguay has 3.5 million yet its capital city has over 1.8 million inhabitants. That is a system that doesnt work.

Because usually the taxpayer and the voter are one and the same? If 40% of the population support a particular party then that party should get 40% of election financing. For some people $1100 is more than they can afford. What about low income or minimum wage earners? They are generally not fiscally able to support their party as well as a higher income voter.

Damn this spanish keyboard(Im posting from Uruguay). A lot of the shift and alt keys are in different locations making it hard to use the punctuation keys. Anyways, I agree with your first point. We just differ what the sustainable population of Canada can be without large side effects. As for my comment on other resources Im refering to the tremendous amounts of lumber, hydro, and minerals at Canadas disposal. As for my vision of increased growth, the densification of urban areas cannot really be completely avoided. People choose to live where they choose to live. Equalization wealth distribution moves money to less populated regions encouraging people to stay there helping Canada spread itself out a little more populationwise. Imagine if Quebec didnt have access to equalization money? They would go bankrupt in half a second and a large portion of their population would move to Ontario. Also, densification, in and of itself, isnt as bad as you make it out to be. For one, their is the economy of scale where services are cheaper to provide in more dense areas and second a larger economy provides more competition. That is why many things are considerably cheaper in the United States. Im not saying their are no downsides. I think their are downsides to increased population growth. However, my opinion is that the benefits outway the detriments. As a side note I dont agree with the Equalization plan. Its intentions are noble but the way wealth transfers work between provinces are completely flawed. Using the money allocated to the equalization plan to give citizens of poorer and more remote regions larger tax breaks would probably be a better idea. Then the people of those regions can choose how the money is spent.

I personally think party funding should be solely based on votes. Every party getting paid an X amount based on each vote cast. Every voter should be treated equally and I´m not a big fan of seeing wealthy voters having more pull in elections due to the ability to donate larger amounts. If you want to donate something to your party it should be your personal time and nothing else. This way we´re all on an even playing field. I´d personally like to see the Election Canada subsidy pot double and then remove all private financing options altogether.

Realistically, food is really all you need to sustain a population. Nations that produce a lot of food tend to also have a massive population. Our weather diminishes this to some extent but we can definitely support a larger population. Naturally, a population with just food and nothing else leads to severely reduced standards of living but I believe that Canada has enough of other resources to avoid this. However, I do agree with you that in general our major cities will still be responsible for the vast majority of growth and crowding will happen. As technology improves we need less and less people on the field gathering resources(agricultural, mining, drilling, etc) and thus it leads to increase urbanization. This has been happening in almost every industrialized nation in the world and part of the reason the Canadian equalization program was put in place was to alleviate this. Do we need to stop population growth? In my opinion, Canada´s economy will benefit from higher population growth throughout the next few decades. We should definitely address the issue but not at this moment.

Not every senior works beyond the age of retirement. Many have illness' that require much care. In addition seniors, by default, require more health care than the rest of the populous. Finding this extra staff will get harder and harder if we have a declining population. We'll have to pay them more and more to do the same jobs and overall it'll be just a more difficult situation. Can we manage a declining population? Yes we can but, in my opinion, our standard of living will decrease.

With all these extra rules Quebec requires beyond that of the rest Canada we may as well severe the bond and just give them their independence. Why not make our country the "United Provinces of Canada" where we are all seperate countries except we share our military and have free trade with each other. Kind of like United Arab Emirates. I think it would work out just splendidly. 8)

I tried working part-time at a call center where I had to call to raise money and donations for the Liberal Party. Oh man did Stefan Dion make it difficult to be able to gather any donations. Nothing is worse than having every 2nd call end up being an attempt of a discussion about how poor Stefan Dion was doing. I couldn't lie to myself to actually like the Liberal party while I worked there so I quit rather quickly. 8P

I was refering to usable land. Even though 4/5 of Canada is more or less worthless territory the remaining 1/5 is still 2 million square kilometres. You can support a lot more than 35 million people in 2 million square kilometres of good land. http://www.statcan.ca/english/freepub/15-5...4001/export.htm Canada has plenty of food to feed it's people as our current exports indicate.

I wouldn't doubt it. Corruption in Russia is rampant. Some people sure made a killing during the Soviet switch to "Capitalism".

Population on the decline is a problem for retirees. Not enough young people to take care of the elderly easily. We're big enough and have enough usable land that we don't have to worry about overpopulation for at least the next 100 years so why not grow?

Well the real problem is why are we bringing over so many "skilled" immigrants that have trouble with the language. Are we that desperate? We should be spending our money to educate our own work force rather than rely on foreign countries to do it for us. The only problem is that increased costs on the tax payers would make this option unpalatable for many.

I think what you're talking about regarding resource extraction is called "dutch disease". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease

What a terrible comparison. Comparing Alberta to Venezuela? It's hard to be poor in Alberta(try surviving winter being homeless) and Alberta only has 3.5 million citizens to take care of compared to Venezuela's 28. Alberta also has the rest of Canada to rely on should things go sour. Norway seems to be doing fine with their nationalized petroleum sector and that is a far better comparison to Alberta than Venezuela is. Don't just assume socialism is the only cause of their woes. Particularly when you are picking and choosing examples that fit your theory. Disregarding the fact that Venezuela had privatized oil fields for the longest time(before 1999) the poverty has been getting worse. http://www.iadb.org/sds/publication/publication_9_e.htm Are things better with Chavez? A little bit. Poverty has decreased significantly and education and health spending has gone up. I'm hardly saying he's perfect. I personally think he's a pretty lousy leader but he's miles ahead of the previous Venezuelan leaderships.

That's not the only reason why language barriers weren't too big of an issue. The fact that the majority of the work done by these asian immigrants was manual in nature and language wasn't really needed at all. It was repetitive work done for thousands of miles.

I think he's refering to the "base" cost of raising a child. Still who here wants to raise a child like that? When I plan to have my own children I definitely want to have them to be in all sorts of activities beyond school. Having them learn to play the guitar, be able to kick a soccer ball half decently, or even speak a second/third language will help them in the future. Personally, think the point in life is to be happy and have fun. Making sure your kid grows up with tons of hobbies and a busy schedule is a great way to help him or her in this.

I don't think we should force our citizens to renounce their foreign citizenship when they come to Canada. We're supposed to be a welcoming nation and the I don't want us to emulate USA's citizenship policy. However, if someone is living in another nation for extended periods of time(6 months or more) they should have their Canadian citizenship temporarily suspended until they return to live here. This way we can be sure that anybody enjoying Canadian rights at the very least is usually paying taxes and playing by our rules. 8P I don't want a repeat of the Lebanon incident were we are expected to save thousands of people with a Canadian passport of conveniance.