300,000 more refugees coming to Canada.

[cannuck]

This thread brings up a LOT of topics, but let me cherry-pick.

Where is it written in stone that we must have "population growth"? What is supposedly so good about it??

The issue of child care, increased birth rate, etc. was brought up. So was the issue of real estate costs.

If you stop and think about things logically, the reasons we are suffering staggering increase in real estate

values is that we give it a free ride on what should be taxable income, and we build crap housing that has to

be replaced ever two generations. One of the reasons we need child care is that the cost of real estate is so

far out of proportion to income, Mamma has to work her whole life just to pay the developer's margin. One

reason we have a lower birth rate is that Mamma can only afford to take a few months off for child birth and

then has to go back to work to pay for the house (and the "stuff" we think we need). Kill off real estate

speculation, and she can stay home and have as many kids as she wants. Raising a family is a FULL time job,

not another "service" that can be jobbed out to the state or newly arrived Canadian contractors.

I don't mind immigration, but I am not crazy about the idea of allowing immigrants who do not have the money,

language and technical skills to be productive. The idea that we have a "service economy" is not untrue, it

is just that those services are NOT a benefit to the economy (unless we can export them), they are a cost that

ties up human and financial resources that could be spent on creating wealth instead of merely re-distributing.

I have spent a lot of time working in many countries, and I love learning about their culture - in its native

setting. Not at all crazy about it being in my back yard when I come home. BUT: what the hard line anti-

immigration bunch do not seem to realize: the vast majority of the "non-Canadian" behavior is diluted a great

deal by the second generation - who to me are as much Canadian as I (third generation Irish/English/German),

but admittedly NOT as "Canadian" as my wife (Selkirk settler/Metis).

Sadly, I have to observe that the most divisive force in society is not ethnicity or culture, but religion and politics. I

would be fine was banning that BS.

Edited May 12, 2016 by cannuck

[G Huxley]

Can you please give an example of the bolded part above? I know niqabs and turbans in place of helmets are a thorny issue (for the record I'm against both), but I don't exactly see us moving toward a niqab society or turban wearers.

How exactly are their values 'becoming' ours?

I can give one that really irks me. Religious fundamentalists who take 'be fruitful and multiply' literally.

[G Huxley]

Argus is right, all you have to do is read about what is happening in Britain... there's an article here worth reading, he was fired for his views but he got it right.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/2014/07/the-bradford-head-teacher-who-got-it-right-on-islam-and-education/

Not just Britain, the whole of Europe.

[G Huxley]

The part which is of particular interest, I thought, was his saying that Muslims (and some others)who do not primarily identify as British, can set themselves up as apart from the common culture and values and beliefs and social understandings the rest of us take for granted. And thus comes the question of what is the national identify, and how the social order is developed.

Fundamentalist Islam also believes in overpopulating and overrunning the world. Same with other Abrahamic religions as well.

[eyeball]

It's unconscionable to me that the planet is borderless for money but not human beings and I'll never malign anyone for seeking to move just as freely.

[G Huxley]

Then you care not an ounce about the planet for you allow the unfettered destruction of its ecosystems by humans.

[Bonam]

It's unconscionable to me that the planet is borderless for money but not human beings and I'll never malign anyone for seeking to move just as freely.

Why? What about the fact that if you buy something from China, the money goes to China implies to you that a billion Chinese people should be able to freely come to Canada without Canadians having any say in the matter?

[G Huxley]

I think we better offer eyeball a tour of Beijing to open his eyes.

[cybercoma]

If any additional Syrians coming in are anything like the dozen or so that I've already met, they'll be a welcome addition to our communities. Some of you need to get out of your houses once and awhile.

[G Huxley]

I've met lots of Syrians and like them very much, in fact Islamic people in general, but the high family sizes that are traditional in Islam, you'd have to be insane to want in Canada.

[cybercoma]

I've met lots of Syrians and like them very much, in fact Islamic people in general, but the high family sizes that are traditional in Islam, you'd have to be insane to want in Canada.

Have you heard about Catholics?

[G Huxley]

Not many Catholics have children like that anymore in Canada. In Africa yeah.

I'm opposed to all religion and believe in restrictions on family size.

Incidentally I watched a Canadian documentary on Dublin recently. The government in the 60s or 70s cleared out the Dublin slums as depicted in one of my favourite Python clips which you posted and sent them out to the suburbs. Then the government in the 90s allowed an influx of immigrants into the depopulated city center to 'stimulate the economy.'

Effectively that is genocide against one's own people.

Edited May 12, 2016 by G Huxley

[cannuck]

Not many Catholics have children like that anymore in Canada. In Africa yeah.

I'm opposed to all religion and believe in restrictions on family size.

that got me wondering...and you called Africa on the money. I expected larger family sizes in Islamic states

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN

[Icebound]

I've met lots of Syrians and like them very much, in fact Islamic people in general, but the high family sizes that are traditional in Islam, you'd have to be insane to want in Canada.

High birth rates have very little to do with culture. High birth rates have to do with poverty. As cultures climb out of poverty, the birth rate declines. Canada used to have a much higher birthrate when it was poor, too. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2014002-eng.htm

But People, in general, are an asset. They work, they produce, they contribute. Unfortunately, Canada's declining birth rate opened the door... in fact, REQUIRED... the importation of such assets from the rest of the world.

Canada is a long, long from the point in the X-curve where the additional benefits of people are outrun by their costs.

Of course, it does not help that the production of all these people is being sucked off by the 1% instead of being re-invested into the country, but that is another thread.

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[Icebound]

Why? What about the fact that if you buy something from China, the money goes to China implies to you that a billion Chinese people should be able to freely come to Canada without Canadians having any say in the matter?

Maybe not.... but foreigners now control about 30% of Canada's operating revenues, and more than 20% of its assets. With that kind of financial clout, they are going to be coming and going at will, anyway.

Would I rather have a big Canadian corporation controlled by the Syrian Refugee next door... who buys his groceries in my town, helps out in Canada in emergencies, and loans me his lawn mower.... or by some nameless Trump-like in a tower in Beijing?

[PIK]

Climate change is being caused by over population. Let call a spade a spade for once and get rid of this political correct thinking.

[G Huxley]

that got me wondering...and you called Africa on the money. I expected larger family sizes in Islamic states

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN

Yeah saw some stats recently. Apparently Africa's population has doubled in the last 20 or so years. Also the AIDS rate in Lesotho is about 1 quarter of the entire population.

Maybe the Catholic Church might suggesting using protection and birth control instead?

[G Huxley]

Climate change is being caused by over population. Let call a spade a spade for once and get rid of this political correct thinking.

Indeed.

[G Huxley]

"

High birth rates have very little to do with culture. High birth rates have to do with poverty. As cultures climb out of poverty, the birth rate declines. Canada used to have a much higher birthrate when it was poor, too. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/11-630-x/11-630-x2014002-eng.htm

"

Poverty will not be eradicated, unless by robotics. The neoliberal capitalist system needs poverty to function.

"

But People, in general, are an asset. They work, they produce, they contribute. Unfortunately, Canada's declining birth rate opened the door... in fact, REQUIRED... the importation of such assets from the rest of the world. "

No people are not an asset. They are a scourge to the environment.

"

Canada is a long, long from the point in the X-curve where the additional benefits of people are outrun by their costs."

Because you are looking at this from a monetary anthropocentric attitude. Even at 30+ million the environment is grossly overtaxed here by our society and Canadians per capita use a much higher number of resources than other countries so the effect is multipled multiple times.

[G Huxley]

Maybe not.... but foreigners now control about 30% of Canada's operating revenues, and more than 20% of its assets. With that kind of financial clout, they are going to be coming and going at will, anyway.

Would I rather have a big Canadian corporation controlled by the Syrian Refugee next door... who buys his groceries in my town, helps out in Canada in emergencies, and loans me his lawn mower.... or by some nameless Trump-like in a tower in Beijing?

What was wrong with my actual Canadian neighbour next door?

[eyeball]

Climate change is being caused by over population. Let call a spade a spade for once and get rid of this political correct thinking.

Unfortunately this misses the politically incorrect mark which is the fact that overpopulation is caused by our desire to grow the economy.

[scribblet]

Have you heard about Catholics?

Muslims are the 'new Catholics' when it comes to large families, in Canada RCs have fewer babies than other religions. According to the Vatican, Islam has overtaken RC as the biggest single religious denomination in the world and according to Wikki is the fastest growing religion in the world .

[Hudson Jones]

Climate change is being caused by over population. Let call a spade a spade for once and get rid of this political correct thinking.

It's being caused by how we're creating energy and our inability to move fast enough to let go of the bad ideas and adopting the good ideas.

It sounds like that you've moved on from denying climate change is happening. That's good, I guess.

[Icebound]

What was wrong with my actual Canadian neighbour next door?

You didn't have one, because his mother only had 2 children and he would have been the 3rd

[Icebound]

No people are not an asset. They are a scourge to the environment.

People solve problems. And when the entire world pulls itself out of poverty, birth rates will go down.

People LEARN. When they realize that they have been wasteful, they learn to conserve. They learn how to do more with less. The learn "outside the box" and come up with solutions that we have not yet dreamed of.

CYNICS are not helpful, but fortunately there are few enough of them.

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