How much longer can Canada ignore its raging monster?

By Frosty Wooldridge

Canada suffers a big problem.  It’s a “big” little country, much like Australia. Big in land mass, but little in arable land.  Big in size, but small in resources needed to carry massive human population loads. Let’s discuss it with my friend Canadian environmentalist Tim Murray.

Introduction: The release of Canada’s latest Census report should have given the environmental establishment the opportunity to blow the whistle on the government’s immigration policy. It would be the ideal “teachable moment” to restore “population” to the position it once held in the environmental discussion, and to resurrect the call for the development of a Population Plan for this nation. But once again, as happened in 2007, they have nothing to say. Not a word. Not a peep. Just what their corporate benefactors want to hear.

“The raging monster upon the land is population growth. In its presence, sustainability is but a fragile theoretical construct. To say, as many do, that the difficulties of nations are not due to people but to poor ideology or land-use management is sophistic.” E.O. Wilson

“The results of the 2011 Census Report were released on February 8th of 2012, but the silence from official environmental quarters continues,” said Murray. “How could that be?

“If there had been a major oil spill on the BC coast that day, do you think the Green NGOs would have said something? If the federal government announced that it was going ahead with the Enbridge pipeline regardless of what came out of public hearings, do you think the Green NGOs would have said something? If the government announced that it would approve mining, logging or drilling at Banff National Park do you think the Green NGOs would have mentioned it, at least in passing?

“Yes they would! In fact, they would be screaming to the heavens about it. And they would be right in doing so.

“Yet two weeks have passed since the2011 Census Report was released they still have nothing to say about the biggest ecological disaster to afflict this nation since the last ice age, Canada’s silent killer, the cancer of rapid exponential population growth, 70% of which is driven by hyper-immigration, a policy that has been responsible for the addition of 7 million people to this country since 1990, when it began. Its environmental impact has been enormous. It has generated four times as much GHG emissions as oil sands project and despoiled three times as much land.

“Not boreal forest, but precious prime farmland for the most part, which has been converted to housing. In Ontario alone, according to Ontario Farmland Trust, some 600,000 acres of very good farmland was developed between 1996-2006, a period of very high immigration rates, which incidentally match Australia’s as the highest in the world. The province’s then Environment Commissioner, Gordon Miller, warned that if this intake was not curbed, the “Golden Horseshoe”, site of some of the best farmland in Canada, would have to accommodate another 6 million people in the next two decades.”

The future looks bad. How bad is it? Check out the numbers.

“Between 2001 and 2006, Canada’s population grew by 5.4% or 1.08% per year,” said Murray. “The fastest population growth rate in the G8.  Between 2006 and 2011, however, that growth rate picked up steam. It was 5.9% or 1.18% per year.  Once again, Canada had the fastest population growth rate in the G8—–for ten years running.

“In 2006, Canada’s official population was 31,612,897. By 2011, however, it was officially 33,476,688. In other words, Canada added 1,863,791 more people to its numbers over 5 years, or 372, 758 per year. Put another way, since 2006 when Halifax had almost 373,000 people, Canada has added a Halifax to its numbers each and every year. In total, Canada has added the equivalent of Hamilton and Edmonton to its population level since 2006. And this doesn’t include the hundreds of thousands of residents with temporary visas. The verdict is in. We are growing at a torrid place.

“Had Canada retained its relatively high population growth rate of 1.08%, experienced between 2001-2006, our population would double in 65 years. But now, with an even faster population growth rate of 5.9%, we are on target to double our population in 59 years. This means that by 2071, Canada would consist of 66 million people—and this assumes that we will not be called upon to accept tens of millions of refugees fleeing the impact of climate change and crippling resource shortages and the conflict which will ensue from it.”

What are the Talking Heads of Green Inc. telling us?

“We cannot allow this to happen. Someone must speak out,” said Murray. “Someone who commands attention. Someone like David Suzuki or the Executive Director of the Sierra Club. What is holding these people back? Why won’t they break the silence? Are they telling us that adding 1,863,791 more consumers to our society in 5 years is of negligible ecological impact? Are they saying that pipelines cannot be built before they are vetted by ecologists and biologists and subjected to public hearings, but there should be no environmental impact assessment of population growth as a deliberate government objective?

“The hypocrisy of Canada’s Green Pharisees is breathtaking. While the house is burning they vigorously polish the wood furniture. Our cities are bursting at the seams and sprawling over arable greenbelts and they are missing in action.”

Murray added, “ I cannot find words adequate to vent my rage at these pretentious fakes, so I will invoke the scorn expressed by Jesus in Matthew 23:23:24 when spoke of the hypocritical high priests of his time:

“You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel”

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Tim Murray can be contacted at: http://candobetter.net/node/2786