It has been said that the latest influx of immigrants is of different mentality than those who preceded them. Immigrants of an earlier generation, according to this sentiment, were anxious to join in and fuse with the mainstream culture, but immigrants now feel no such impulse. Rather, it is argued, they wish to nestle in the warm bosom of a neighbourhood or enclave of those of similar ethnicity and remain distinct and seperate from the mainstream culture. This is a perilous assumption.

It seems that in their search for greener pastures Australian planners, polticians and demographers have seized on "the Vancouver model" or "the Canadian experience" to justify their mad dream of cramming another 14 million people into the country. But the Canada they speak of must exist in a parallel universe, because it is not the one that Canadians "experience". Managing growth is like grabbing a tiger by the tail-----we are the ones who get "managed"---one bite at a time.

Grandiose fantasies about filling up a continent to create a great and powerful nation are not exclusive to Australia. Demographic hubris is alive and well in Canada too, and even now, after the loss of 20% of our best farmland to development, with more than a thousand species at risk and an immigrant population that has, over the last two decades, generated four times as much GHG emissions as the Albert Tar Sands megaproject, there are people who believe in a Big Canada concept. Irving Studin of the University of Toronto is one of them.

In urban Canada, we have imported a slave labour caste and condemned them for their apparent inability or unwillingness to assimilate. The truth is, they want to become Canadians, but are too exhausted and pre-occupied with survival to become full participants in mainstream society. The irony is, they are victims of their own arrival. Immigrant-driven population growth has inflated housing costs to the point that they must run even faster and longer than other Canadians to eke out an insufficient living. The solution is cross-cultural solidarity, but higher wages for shorter hours is its prerequisite.

Canada has a two-tiered policy on family planning. Pro-choice at home and No-Choice abroad. The consequences of this double-standard will be enormous. Canada is about to deny women of other nations the same right that Canadian law affords women here---the right to a safe and legal abortion.

European Parliament made history when it voted overwhelmingly to ban trade in seal products. Over one and a quarter million seal pups have been clubbed or shot to death over the last four years during Canada's annual seal slaughter. Seals and their pups do not owe swelling human populations a living, and this atrocity is morally unsustainable and unethical.
(photos of harp seals from Wikipedia commons)

Majestic picture inside. They had to build the animals their own crossing (especially the elk) because that was where the natural crossing was and after the highway was built there were far too many accidents. Pity Australia's developers and road makers seem to be too mean to do this kind of work for animals, although there are a few, small exceptions. Let's hope that Australia will follow this example. Unfortunately, on population policy, Canada is nearly as bad as Australia.

This comment, by Canadian Tim Murray, was originally posted to the ABC Background Briefing program, 'Housing for Millions'. In response to statements by a planner which implied that the doubling of Vancouver's population in 15 years had been accomplished without pain, he writes, "Vancouver is a success story only if compared to other major urban failures."

Our primary concern should not be about how people in our lifeboat treat each other, where they are from or how they look, but how many damn passengers the boat can carry sustainably past the tumultuous storms of peak oil, peak water and peak everything that loom over the horizon.

In Canada, as well as in Australia, the Government has kept open the immigration floodgate in the midst of the recession. One supposed justification is that this is all necessary so that their economy can be ready to take off when the recession ends. In reality, this is a self-serving lie to allow the profits that the Canadian growth lobby gains at the expense of their fellow Canadians, the environment, and the Third World, to continue.

Original article by Dan Murray published on Immigration Watch Canada on 11 Apr 09.

Madeline Weld, President of the Population Institute of Canada (www.populationinstituteofcanada.ca), shows how, since 1990, voices questioning immigration have been effectively silenced in spite of evidence of harm caused to Canada's environment and harm caused to the interests of ordinary Canadians.

Contents: Canada's record high immigration intake, The character lynching of Ontario's environment commisioner, Mass immigration supported by all national Canadian political parties, Population growth and immigration: myth and reality, 1. Human population growth and the environment: globally and in Canada, 2. Arguments used to justify Canada's immigration policy, 3. Assessment of the arguments used to justify Canada's immigration policy, Conclusion.

See also: "How skills migration has denied careers to Canadian engineering graduates" of 8 Feb 09, www.immigrationwatchcanada.org, and Immigration Watch Canada articles on this web site.

A report by Engineers Canada (Ingenéurs Canada) found that in 2006, well before the current economic crisis, Canada's seemingly thoughtless policy of acquiring practically unlimited numbers of engineers from all over the world had caused a massive glut of engineeers in Canada. As a consequence, "Two thirds of persons with a Canadian university degree in engineering were employed outside engineering occupations." Yet, in spite of this and in spite of the global financial meltdown, Canada, like Australia, continues with its high immigration program.

Originally published as "New jobless figures should drive the last nail into high immigration's coffin" on 6 Feb 09 on www.immigrationwatchcanada.org.

The former Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, once offered Australia a choice. It could sustain jobs and economic security by using its brains, by being a smart economy, by adding value to the products it produces and by transforming manufacturing. Or it could continue to be a “lazy Australia” that depends on job growth simply by driving up population numbers and depending on the growth you get by building homes and shopping malls. ... That the home building industry is the prime mover and catalyst of our ecological ruin was never more clearly illustrated than by statements recently made by University of West Florida economist Rick Harper, director of the UWF’s Haas Centre for Business Research.

Norm Smith, who stood as an anti-growth grass-roots candidate for Mayor of Chilliwack, in elections held on 15 November, warns that Chilliwack faces a water crisis as growth and overdevelopment, encouraged by the City of Chilliwick, dangerously depletes the Sardis-Vedder Aquifer, one of the rare pristine water sources in Canada that requires no chlorination.

With limited time and energy at one's disposal, it is wise to deploy it to its best effect. And that certainly is not by wasting hours on Internet forums debating with PC cornucopians with exclusively anthropentric human rights agendas and limited numbers of neural pathways that are set in concrete. Better to target those with flexible minds who have yet to consider our message and intuitively know that something is amiss with unending growth.

Sometimes staying home and not casting a vote is casting a vote. In fact is casting a vote twice. It is casting a vote of no-confidence in the politcal parties that are asking for your vote and it also casting a vote against representative democracy, against the proposition that I must delegate my sovereign power to someone else to make decisions on my behalf. Well I have no confidence in the growthist monolith that presents itself before me, and I will not give them credibility with my vote.

Those who shout "carbon tax" , green shifting, reduced consumption and green living are like carnival barkers playing a shell game. They want to take your attention away from the fact that with a slight of hand they have removed the "immigration" pea from the table. And thus, an important variable in the generation of greenhouse emissions is not on the table of discussions or the agenda of politicians or green politically correct hypocrites.

James Bissett, former head of Immigration Services and former career diplomat, hopes that the parties contending for Government at the national elections scheduled for 31 October, most of whom are attempting to out-bid each other in promises to increase Canada's already record high immigration rate, don't keep their promises.

Original article Published in Ottawa Citizen on 18 Sep 08.
See also by James Bissett: "Immigration must be an election issue" of 13 Sep 08.

Brian Gordon, endorsed candidate for the Green Party of Canada has argued that Canada must conduct a 'sustainability audit' to determine how many people Canada can realistically support if it produces all of is own necessities, ceases the destruction of old-growth forests and excludes the usustainable mining of tar sands and coal.

Original article Immigration: How Much is Enough for Canada? published on 6 March 2008. The standard of much of the discussion that ensued was very high.
See also: Is there intelligent life on Planet Green? of 9 Sep 08, Is it reactionary to oppose immigration? of 19 Dec 07 on webdiary.com.au; Will "the great immigration debate" take place? of 21 May 08 on larvatusprodeo.net; Have the Greens lost the plot on immigration? of 11 Jul 08 on Online Opinion.

Rainforest Action Network (ran.org) greenwashes destruction of half of Ontario, Canada's boreal forests; despite lack of any detail regarding vague promised protections, and without scientific findings that doing so is ecologically sufficient.

Originally published on 28 Aug 08 on forests.org.

US Democrat Barrack Obama and Canadian Social Democrat Jack Layton are just two different kinds of ventriloquists' doll, and the voice we hear through their lips is paid for by Wall Street. It's not what they say; it's who pays them that matters.

Canadian Prime Minister apologises for the extinction of Canadian wildlife via ill-judged policy of growing Canada's human population

For all of the high consumption of non-renewable natural resources by today's middle class Canadians, and the consequent ecological damage, how does their quality of life compare to those of Canadians of the 1950's with their much lower ecological footprint?

See also: Living standards and our material prosperity of 6 Sep 2007 on Online Opinion and discussion.

Communication with Canada's flagship Environmental NGO is a one-way street. Questionairres are sent to you that they expect you to answer but they will not respond to any inquiries of yours, especially impertinent politically incorrect questions, which make them squirm.

Article was originally posted to Sinking LifeBoat.

The Growth Management Industry, consisting of planning departments and pink and green growthists who belief that growth can be rendered ecologically benign by being channelled or fenced behind boundaries speak of "smart" growth the way the Pentagon speaks of "smart" bombs. Surgically targetted away from collateral damage like greenbelts and parks. But Brishen Hoff in this letter to a Green Party member, proves that no matter where they are distributed, people impact the environment. Numbers matter.

The winner of a National Post contest to describe Canada “in six words or less.” was: ‘Canada – a home for the world’. Given the arrival of 10 million immigrants of diverse origins since the end of the Second World War, this motto is revealing of the new Canada. This is Canada perceived as a country with little underlying coherence in the sense of sustaining a primary national identity aside from being a desirable place to settle. This is Canada viewed as a home away from home for a range of peoples whose identities are rooted not in Canada but in countries and regions of origin.

Article originally published earlier on the web site of Immigration Watch Canada (www.immigrationwatchcanada.org) on 4 Jun 08.

Days before Bill C-50 was approved, experts warned that Canadians must start taking a realistic look at the country's immigration policies.

This story was originally published in the Canadian foreign policy weekly magazine Embassy on 11 Jun 08.

A broadcast debate on the Canadian Broadcasting Commission between, on the one hand, Paul Watson of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, and, on the other hand, Elizabeth May, now leader of Canada's Green Party showed two poles of North American environmentalism, one authentic and one counterfeit.

See also: Sea Shepherd appeals for Greenpeace's cooperation in fight against whale slaughter
Were "Intact Aboriginal Cultures" really good custodians? of 19 Jun 08.

As long as the claimed short term economic benefits of growth can be said to be shared equitably Canada's New Democratic Party remains unconcerned by the resultant ecological devastation.

In 2006, David Suzuki told Australians the truth, that is, that their country was over-populated. Why won't he tell his fellow Canadians the truth about their country?