Juno News - March 18, 2024


How to FIX Canada’s broken immigration system


Episode Stats

Length

48 minutes

Words per Minute

223.61674

Word Count

10,815

Sentence Count

545

Misogynist Sentences

13

Hate Speech Sentences

43


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.160 Canada's immigration system is completely broken. It doesn't need tweaks or reforms,
00:00:05.200 it needs a total overhaul. Today we're going to have an in-depth conversation with an expert who
00:00:10.320 really knows and has really thought about this issue, and we're going to talk about how to
00:00:13.840 completely change and fix our broken immigration system. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The
00:00:18.400 Candice Malcolm Show. Hi everyone, thank you so much for tuning into the podcast today. So we have
00:00:36.640 been talking about immigration recently on the show. We've been breaking down all of the numbers,
00:00:41.200 which I find truly shocking how much our immigration system has grown, how many people we are admitting
00:00:47.760 every year into this country, how many illegal immigrants enter the country every year and end
00:00:51.520 up making asylum claims. The entire situation is completely out of control. There's no other way
00:00:57.280 to put it. I am joined today by a friend of mine, Aaron Woodrick. He is the Domestic Policy Director
00:01:03.840 over at the McDonnell Laurier Institute. He was previously with the Canadian Taxpayers Federation,
00:01:08.880 that's how I know him. We worked together shortly over there, and Aaron has also practiced law in
00:01:14.240 Kitchener. He's been a corporate lawyer in London, Hong Kong and Dubai. And so basically the story is
00:01:20.560 that Aaron and I were recently on a panel together and we were talking about immigration, but there's
00:01:25.920 just so many issues when it comes to it. We had so many different kind of areas we want to talk about.
00:01:32.080 And then the panel that we did ended up being quite short. It was a great panel, great panel discussion
00:01:36.320 hosted by Colin Craig over at Second Street. But we felt that there was so much more of a need to
00:01:42.000 get into these issues more in depth, discuss them just at a deeper level. And so I invited
00:01:48.880 Aaron to come on to the podcast and discuss them. So Aaron, welcome to the show and thank you so much
00:01:54.960 for joining us. Hey, thanks for having me, Candice. Great to have a chance to talk about these,
00:01:59.200 this important issue in a little more depth. Exactly. Yeah, I thought the panel that we did was
00:02:04.320 fun, but it was like, you know, five minutes to talk about like the biggest, most important issue and
00:02:08.240 try to fix it. You know, it's like, okay, we need to spend a bit more time here. So you had a piece
00:02:12.320 over in the, on the McDonnell Laurier Institute website saying it's time for a grownup conversation
00:02:18.640 on immigration that was back in January. And if I could just sort of give a little overview,
00:02:23.920 you basically say that the challenges associated with immigration are incredibly different than they
00:02:28.160 were 50 or a hundred years ago. And that politicians, policymakers just haven't really been
00:02:33.600 willing to update the conversation on immigration. You talk about the challenges broadly being in three
00:02:40.560 categories, economic impact, infrastructure capacity, and cultural friction. So maybe we can
00:02:45.840 just go through each of those right now, or do you want to, do you want to give a little overview of what
00:02:50.000 your, what your thoughts are and what you wrote, or do you want to get right into the economic impact?
00:02:54.160 Yeah. I mean, the first thing I just wanted to say is the part of the reason I wrote this is I think
00:02:58.080 it's important to get ahead of this issue. I view this as actually a pro-immigration piece.
00:03:03.280 I'm generally pro-immigration. I think immigration has been good for Canada historically.
00:03:06.960 I make the piece, that argument in the piece, but the problem is things have changed. And then
00:03:12.640 if we don't have this conversation, if we don't grapple with these realities and face the facts,
00:03:17.280 we are going to lose support for immigration. We're already seeing that and it makes perfect sense that
00:03:21.840 we are. So I view this as trying to salvage what has been a helpful attitude towards immigration
00:03:28.240 in this country. And if we don't deal with some of the harder truths, we're going to lose them.
00:03:32.080 We're going to see a very ugly reaction that I think is going to end up hurting Canada.
00:03:35.440 So I wrote this not as an anti-immigrant diatribe or an anti-immigration diatribe,
00:03:40.320 but as a way to try and salvage the best of what I think works for Canada while shaving off the
00:03:45.840 things that are, that are doing harm both to Canada and frankly, also to immigrants themselves.
00:03:49.840 Well, it's interesting that you mentioned that because I think that there is a sort of
00:03:54.320 uniparty consensus when it comes to immigration that for a long time, you know, on the conservative side,
00:03:59.200 people said, look, it's good for the economy. It's building the country. It's good for growth.
00:04:02.800 Those are all things that we support. The liberal side, the very pro like big M dogma of multiculturalism,
00:04:09.040 like kumbaya, we can all live together. And also kind of an element of like erasing Canada's history
00:04:15.360 and planting it with this new history, the kinds of elements that you and I would probably find
00:04:19.600 pretty distasteful. But I agree that I would say in the last five to 10 years, that consensus is really
00:04:25.040 wearing away that I hear more and more from Canadians who just don't feel like immigration
00:04:30.400 is working for them anymore. They don't feel that the leaders of this country are listening to their
00:04:35.600 concerns. They don't feel that they're the ones who are at the center of the policy. And I think it's
00:04:39.600 important to sort of start at the very first principle, like why do we have immigration? Why is
00:04:44.720 Canada a country that seems to prioritize immigration? Like what is the purpose of our immigration system,
00:04:51.040 in your, in your opinion? Yeah. And if you can go back historically, right, we want,
00:04:55.120 generally people want immigration because they want people to come to the country because they
00:04:58.320 need someone to help. They need people to help build the country, especially a new country like
00:05:02.080 Canada, a small, young country. We wanted to bring immigrants here to build up the country,
00:05:06.640 to fill the space, right? There were concerns around the time of confederation. The West was this big
00:05:11.440 open piece of land. So, you know, they were advertising in Europe, come to Canada and you get free land.
00:05:16.400 And so there is a, there is a fundamental economic imperative for immigration. And maybe that's why,
00:05:22.720 you know, in my piece, I started with the economic argument because that really is the
00:05:26.240 issue that cracked the door open on allowing us to debate this. If you go back, you know,
00:05:30.800 maybe 10 years, anyone who cast, you know, anyone who expressed anything less than total enthusiasm
00:05:36.640 for like immigration in any context, anywhere was probably going to get called a racist because
00:05:40.480 there was an assumption that if you're against immigration, it must be because of,
00:05:44.240 you know, people with different skin colors who eat different foods. The housing issue was the
00:05:49.360 issue that really sort of affected so many people and it was purely a numbers game. It's about demand,
00:05:54.880 right? And adding immigrants, too many of them at one time just spikes demand. And if not enough
00:05:59.920 supply that leads to high prices, this is Econ 101. That was the sort of thing that cracked the door
00:06:05.440 open on the conversation and allowed us to at least start to begin debating this. I don't think we're
00:06:11.040 quite yet there with the adult conversation, but we are starting to see more and more mainstream
00:06:15.360 discussion about how do we have an immigration system that works well for Canada and for Canadians.
00:06:20.560 Well, it's interesting that you bring in housing because we're often told by the political leaders
00:06:24.800 in our country that the reason for like our vast open immigration system is because of labor market
00:06:31.280 shortages. Like specifically, we're talking about there are jobs in Canada that we cannot fill,
00:06:35.600 that companies are looking to hire people, but they can. I think construction is a pretty fair
00:06:40.400 example of that. Like we clearly seem to have a housing shortage and it seems that we don't have
00:06:44.800 enough people to quickly build houses. Like whenever governments come up with proposals, it's like,
00:06:48.800 okay, this is going to take like eight years. It's like, why? Why don't we just build them now?
00:06:52.480 Well, maybe we don't have enough construction workers, but then the people that they're bringing
00:06:55.760 into the country don't seem to be filling those. Like I'm not seeing huge influxes of like Polish
00:07:01.040 construction workers coming in and building houses in Canada. What I see, and I think we have a clip
00:07:06.160 of this or we can we can play it, is that we have people coming into Canada without jobs and then
00:07:12.080 they end up coming in like there's a job fair at the Toronto airport or at Walmart or McDonald's and
00:07:17.760 you see dozens or hundreds of people lining up down the street to try to get minimum wage jobs. Well,
00:07:22.560 no wage jobs historically have been for young Canadians, right? Like that's how you get your foot in
00:07:26.400 the door. Like when I was 17 years old, I worked at a fish and chips shop and that was my first
00:07:30.880 job and I learned how to have a job, right? And it's like when you have immigrants who are like
00:07:35.760 in their twenties and they're coming and they're taking those minimum wage jobs, like what are young
00:07:38.960 Canadians supposed to do? So what do you make of that sort of economic mismatch? Am I misreading it
00:07:43.600 or is that what you see happening? You're right. Like in theory, the idea of, you know,
00:07:47.840 if we've got a labor shortage, you bring in more labor, right? The problem is not all skills are
00:07:51.680 fungible. So, you know, if you have people with particular skills, say construction skills,
00:07:56.240 and you have a shortage of construction, then that's a good fit. But if you have people who come here
00:08:00.480 that don't have construction skills, that's not really going to help you on the construction
00:08:04.000 shortage issue. You reference things like service jobs, minimum wage jobs. I think you're right.
00:08:10.400 I think a lot of the people who come here and you can't really blame the immigrants, right? For them,
00:08:13.760 that is a boon. They're coming from a country where they earn far less. So for them, it's a deal to come
00:08:17.680 here and work for minimum wage at Tim Hortons. The question is, why can't we fill that labor with
00:08:22.720 Canadians? You allude to younger Canadians that used to take these jobs. You know, part of the problem
00:08:28.720 is a lot of those young Canadians, they're not willing to take those jobs. And part of the reason
00:08:33.600 they won't take them is because they look at those jobs and see, well, you know, if I earn $15 an
00:08:38.640 hour, what can I even buy with $15 an hour? You get this, there's a malaise right now amongst our
00:08:43.680 youth. And then even bigger than this, I would argue, in certain regions of the country, particularly
00:08:48.400 in Atlanta, Canada, you have a tradition of acceptance of seasonal work. And so you have,
00:08:55.280 and this was the catalyst for a lot of bringing in temporary foreign workers, is you had employers
00:09:00.960 in some parts of the country saying, we can't find anybody to work here. And that's probably true.
00:09:05.920 But then the question shouldn't just be, oh, we're just going to import all these temporary
00:09:09.280 workers to paper over. It should be to re-examine the incentive structure and whether or not some of
00:09:14.240 the entitlement programs are basically allowing Canadians to get away in some parts of the country
00:09:19.120 with working only part of the year. I mean, they're not, they're, they're papering over
00:09:24.160 the symptoms and they're not addressing the root problem here. And I think it just creates this toxic
00:09:29.920 mix of consequences that has led in large parts of the situation we're in today.
00:09:34.880 Yeah, no, that's so interesting. And look, if you're a young Canadian watching this, or if you have kids
00:09:39.200 who are in that mold, you know, it's not about making money, right? It's about getting job experience
00:09:43.600 and setting yourself up. Like I might be dating myself by making this reference. But when I was
00:09:48.400 in high school, I remember the minimum wage in British Columbia, I think it was seven or $8 an
00:09:52.240 hour. And then they brought in a new program, which if you were under a certain age, and it was your
00:09:56.800 first 500 hours working, the minimum wage dropped down to $5 an hour. So my first job, I was getting
00:10:01.840 paid $5 an hour, whereas other people, their minimum wage, if they were older and had more experience,
00:10:06.400 I think it was $8 or $10 an hour. And, you know, I worked and sometimes I would go and have a shift at my
00:10:12.640 fish and chip shop in West Vancouver, and I would have to pay for parking and the parking would be
00:10:16.400 like half of the money that I would make from the job. But it wasn't about that, right? It was just
00:10:20.720 about learning how to get up, go to work, you know, the responsibilities, I was on the till, I had to
00:10:26.240 learn a bit about money and cash register and all that kind of stuff. Like, it's not really about the
00:10:31.120 money that you're making, it's about the spill, especially when you're a teenager, and you're still
00:10:34.480 living, you still have the benefit of living at home. I want to talk a little bit, Erin, about the
00:10:39.760 student visas and how that has come to play in all of this, because it seems like it's sort of a
00:10:44.880 loophole that just allows another nine, we had 900,000 students coming to Canada last year. And
00:10:52.400 Erin, I have to say, it's kind of sad, like these aren't, these aren't 900,000 students that are going
00:10:57.040 to like, top ranked universities, like they're not going to UBC and McGill and the University of Alberta.
00:11:03.600 A lot of them are kind of getting scammed. A lot of them are going to these weird schools that you and I
00:11:07.520 have never heard of that they exist in strip malls in suburban areas. And when you think about what
00:11:13.360 these young people have done, you know, they've taken on huge risk, a lot of times they've taken
00:11:18.560 out huge loans in their home countries, they've come across the world to Canada, with the hopes of
00:11:24.720 making a better world for them, but I don't know that that's going to happen. And you know, you talk
00:11:28.800 about how minimum wage in Canada might seem low for us, it might be a lot for someone who's from like
00:11:33.920 rural India or something like that. But at the same time, they still have to afford to live
00:11:37.440 in Canada, it's still incredibly expensive to rent an apartment or to find a house to live in.
00:11:42.000 So they're still contributing to that cost of living crisis. What's your make of this whole
00:11:46.400 student visa thing? Well, I think you correctly identified part of the double tragedy here,
00:11:50.480 right? Some people think that criticizing things like this student visa loophole is anti-immigrant.
00:11:55.200 I don't see it that way at all. I see it as bad for Canadians and bad for these people who,
00:11:59.760 as you say, in many cases have been misled. They've been promised this like amazing land
00:12:04.480 of milk and honey, and they get here and they're trapped in an untenable situation.
00:12:09.040 And in a lot of cases, you know, there is some evidence that they're essentially using the student
00:12:14.160 visa approach because they can't get in through the PR stream. And so that there's sort of a perfect
00:12:19.120 storm of incentives that's led to this, Candace. And it's this, it's that for a lot of these
00:12:23.120 institutions, because politically, it's very difficult for governments to allow tuition rates for
00:12:28.960 Canadian students to rise. So they always capped or frozen those rates or kept them artificially low.
00:12:33.680 That leaves a lot of universities and colleges looking around for other revenue streams. Well,
00:12:37.600 guess what? They can charge international students way more because, and governments don't care about
00:12:42.160 that because they obviously, these are students that obviously aren't either of age and don't live
00:12:45.760 in Canada. So charging them a lot does not impact a government's political fortune. So that's exactly
00:12:50.880 what a lot of these colleges and universities did. As soon as it became apparent that this was extremely
00:12:56.000 lucrative, a lot of colleges and universities would double down on this stream. I mean, there's
00:13:00.800 lots of evidence of some colleges, especially in Ontario and British Columbia, that like the number
00:13:05.440 of international students over the last decade decade and a half has quintupled or in some cases
00:13:09.920 gone up 10 times because there's so much money to be made. So it's just a giant cash cow for them.
00:13:15.200 And in fact, it's also spawned some of these for-profit institutes, which are essentially storefronts,
00:13:21.200 that it's just a pure money making model. And a lot of these students come here, they barely go
00:13:26.320 to the court to class at all. If they go, they simply find work, they don't pass the class,
00:13:31.200 but the institution won't fail them because of course, then they wouldn't be able to continue
00:13:34.720 to charge them. So they graduate with their degree or their diploma. Now they can qualify through the PR
00:13:40.080 stream, right? So this is basically just a, you know, a penance that they've paid to qualify through
00:13:45.840 the PR stream and now they can bring their family over. And so you can see how this, it's basically trying
00:13:50.000 to scam a system that was designed to weed these types of folks out because they did not meet the
00:13:55.520 normal criteria through the PR stream. So I think it's a great tragedy. I think it does not serve either
00:14:01.040 those folks coming or the people who are already here well. And, you know, the government has belatedly
00:14:06.160 started to act on this, but it's going to take a while before they can right size, you know, what our
00:14:10.960 carrying capacity is for a student stream.
00:14:14.000 I'm surprised to see a scam. So out in the open, like, like usually scams, you know,
00:14:19.360 a journalist does some digging, digging, they expose it. And then the scam ends because it's like,
00:14:24.400 you can't do that. That's not right. That's not proper here. We have, I mean, from, from 2013 to
00:14:29.120 29, uh, 2023, the number is three X. We went from 300,000 international students a year to 900,000.
00:14:35.840 I didn't realize that they could make that jump to permanent residency simply by what graduating
00:14:40.080 from a Canadian institution. And then they have the opportunity to get a permanent residency. Is
00:14:44.960 that, is that right? Yeah. Well, it's, it's, there's a point system, right? And when you have
00:14:48.720 that education, it increases your point. So it's, it won't, you won't always be the case that you
00:14:53.200 qualify through PR, but it increases your odds, right? And so a lot of people, if they know what
00:14:57.680 the criteria are and getting that, that credential will get them over the hump that then moves them
00:15:03.120 into a different category. So you can see they're exploiting one loophole to then give them the points
00:15:08.080 they need to access the other stream. And again, you know, we have that, we have that point system
00:15:12.320 for a reason it's designed to coming back to the labor market issue. We want the people that match
00:15:16.880 the skillset. And so, you know, if people can't get into that stream and they're trying to find a
00:15:21.440 backdoor entrance, that is undermining the whole point of having a category that's set up with certain
00:15:27.440 standards and with a certain cap on it. It's really, it's really unbelievable. And, uh, and also,
00:15:34.640 I mean, I made this point on, uh, one of my shows the other day that you also have people who could
00:15:38.560 potentially just claim asylum. Like if they know that they're not going to pass their classes and
00:15:42.240 they're not going to qualify for PR once you're physically in Canada, there's nothing stopping you
00:15:47.120 from just saying I'm a refugee. And then all of a sudden you get all these other kind of gold-plated,
00:15:52.560 uh, privileges and entitlements, uh, for refugees. I want to just quickly talk about the refugee system,
00:15:58.800 the landed asylum system. These aren't, these aren't people who have gone through the United Nations and
00:16:02.880 they're like determined to be refugees. These are people who come into Canada illegally and then
00:16:08.640 make a claim for asylum and some of them get accepted. Some of them don't. We had 143,000 people
00:16:14.400 come into Canada this way in 2023, 143,000. Erin, I, so I, I worked in the Harper government in, in,
00:16:21.760 I worked in the immigration department. I was there in 2011, 2012. And back then we were talking about
00:16:26.560 like 10 to 12,000 a year. And now we're talking about 140,000 people. Uh, what, what, what has
00:16:33.360 happened and what do you make of this? Is this also going to contribute to undermining public trust in
00:16:37.760 immigration? Yeah, I, well, I've got, I've got one point in defense of the migrants and two, I would say
00:16:43.440 against the status quo. The one in defense is, I do think we need to keep perspective sometimes in terms of
00:16:48.320 this, the amount of illegal and, you know, unlawful attempts to enter the country pale in comparison to
00:16:54.480 Europe and America. I mean, 143,000 is a lot for a country like Canada, but we're simply blessed by
00:16:59.600 geography to be harder to access. So, I mean, if we had a Southern border like the United States
00:17:04.720 does with Mexico or borders like they do in Europe with, uh, with neighboring countries, we would be
00:17:09.520 experiencing, you know, millions of people trying to come here. So we should be grateful that the
00:17:14.160 number is something like 143,000. That said, um, first of all, we got to remember that like refugees
00:17:20.960 and humanitarian, um, intakes are there's a process. And I think people have to, people have
00:17:26.720 faith in that process. You know, you have to follow the rules and it's not fair to other migrants who,
00:17:32.320 you know, follow the rules and tick all the right boxes and submit applications for others to jump
00:17:36.480 the queue and sort of just barge into this country. It's not fair to them. Um, and I think it undermines
00:17:41.920 trust in the, in the process as a whole for Canadians, right? Like I think most Canadians are willing to
00:17:47.040 accept the idea that we're going to have, we have some humanitarian obligations, but we want to be
00:17:51.040 confident about who's coming in here. Have we screened them properly? Are they following the process?
00:17:55.440 And when you have all things like rocks and road completely undermines that and rightly so, so that
00:18:00.640 you really have to have a proper process in place that people respect and that there are consequences
00:18:06.400 for people who don't follow the process. The last thing is just generally, I mean, the humanitarian
00:18:11.120 stream is different than the economic stream, right? We bring people here on the economic
00:18:15.040 stream because there's economic benefit for the humanitarian stream. It really comes down to,
00:18:19.600 you know, what is our caring capacity at any given moment in every, any given time? It's just like
00:18:24.080 a household that decides to make charitable donations, right? If you're having a good year,
00:18:27.520 you can give a little bit more to charity. If you're not, you have to cut back. You have to,
00:18:31.120 you have to pay your own bills first. You have to take care of your own family first. And I think that,
00:18:35.600 uh, the same as has to be true of refugees and humanity, if there are good times, I think Canada should
00:18:40.800 probably take more, but if we're experiencing tough times and we need to spend more money
00:18:44.480 on Canadians, we have to cut back. We have to reduce that number. That's just, it's the only way you're
00:18:48.800 going to maintain political support. And I think it's completely consistent with the way most people
00:18:52.720 sort of govern their own household finances. Well, this kind of goes back to the idea that
00:18:57.600 Canada had a sort of a historic purpose of its immigration system 50 to a hundred years ago.
00:19:01.760 And that, and that has changed and we haven't really caught up. Look, Canada has so many natural
00:19:05.280 advantages when it comes to immigration, which you discussed, like we don't share a border, right? It's
00:19:09.760 actually quite difficult to get to Canada and both Canada and the U S broadly have visa requirements
00:19:14.640 for, from like third world or developing countries. So it's harder for those people to even get here.
00:19:19.760 So to me, I mean, the fact that 143,000 people, yeah, it's, it's not as much as the millions of
00:19:24.640 people that are streaming across the Mexican border into the United States, but it's still a problem.
00:19:28.640 Yeah, it's not nothing. And, and, and it's so out of whack, uh, with our traditional number. One of the
00:19:33.280 things I noticed in your piece, Aaron, was that you were talking about how there was, uh, over a million
00:19:38.240 people that came to Canada in 2022, I crunched the numbers. And when you add together, so we're at
00:19:44.080 half a million for permanent residents, we're at 660,000 for, uh, for temporary foreign workers,
00:19:50.640 900,000 for students, 150,000, 140,000 for asylum seekers. Uh, we're looking at two. I mean, my math
00:19:59.600 says 2.2 million. Um, so I, I, I guess, uh, like, what do you think the right number is and how do you,
00:20:07.120 how do you calculate that? Yeah. I mean, I think the first number to look at is definitely the
00:20:11.440 students, right? That is the easiest one to reduce. Now that some of the colleges and universities
00:20:16.720 won't like it because that obviously impacts the bottom line, but other than them as the
00:20:20.160 stakeholders, that is probably the single biggest piece of that 2.2 million that you can address
00:20:26.480 most quickly. Um, the PR stream, I mean, that is on paper supposed to be the one that most closely
00:20:32.320 matches our economic needs. That's probably the toughest one. The migration one, things like tying up
00:20:36.960 rocks, rocks and road, you can probably, uh, you could probably reduce. And then the TFW is a
00:20:42.080 completely other kettle of fish, right? And we've kind of gone all over the map on this over the last
00:20:46.240 20 years. You know, there are a lot of people in the business community that said, you know,
00:20:50.000 if we don't have TFWs and I can't run my business, a lot of governments sort of exceeded to those demands.
00:20:55.760 Like I said, I think there needs to be a fundamental rethink about why is it like,
00:20:59.520 if there are Canadians in certain parts of the country or certain demographics that are not working,
00:21:03.760 and we're seeing like low workforce participation in some of these demographics.
00:21:07.680 Um, and yet we have to import temporary foreign workers. That suggests there's something else going
00:21:12.160 on. There's something wrong with the incentives. There's something wrong with government entitlements.
00:21:15.760 We need to address that first. You can't just paper over that by importing TFWs. So I think the
00:21:20.080 student stream, the TFWs are the two easiest ones from a policy standpoint to correct, uh, refugees and,
00:21:26.720 uh, you know, uh, asylum claims that as an enforcement issue. And then the toughest one to crack
00:21:31.760 is PR, but even addressing two of those four categories could easily slice that number in
00:21:36.000 half relatively quickly. Okay. Let's, let's talk about the, the permanent residence. And, uh,
00:21:40.960 I found a graph from Stats Canada. I love, I love this graph. I always look at it. This shows the,
00:21:45.680 uh, Canada's historic intake of immigrants from starting in 1952. So this goes all the way back.
00:21:52.080 For some reason, they archive this page and they stopped showing the new numbers, but you can,
00:21:57.040 and we can talk about what the new numbers are. This is just landed immigrants or they used to
00:22:01.680 call them landed immigrants, but it's actually permanent residents. And so Aaron, you could see
00:22:05.360 that this graph just from like a step away, you see peaks and valleys, peaks and valleys,
00:22:10.560 peaks and valleys. So there's a pretty big bump right around Confederation and the 1880s,
00:22:15.200 another big bump in the early, uh, the first decade of the, of the 20th century between sort of 1905 and 1910,
00:22:22.640 a little bump, uh, during world war one, huge post war bump, uh, in the fifties and then kind of up
00:22:29.360 and down and up and down and up and down. And then you hit the nineties and you just sort of see a wall
00:22:34.320 and it never goes down. It just goes up and up and stops here in 2012. Uh, you know, back when the
00:22:40.000 number was 250, we now know the number is 500. So just imagine that the graph just continues upwards
00:22:44.800 without any gaps all the way. And you know, we're at 500 that the tallest peak on this graph from 1910
00:22:51.280 was 400,000. So we're now higher than the highest peak in Canadian history.
00:22:56.800 Well, one of the things, Aaron, that strikes me, um, about this graph is that we always had
00:23:01.200 the valleys, right? So basically what would happen is that we would have a couple of years where there
00:23:04.960 would be a huge surge in immigration and we'd let in a whole bunch of people. And then the doors would
00:23:09.840 kind of close and we'd have a few years to sort of integrate everybody and to make sure that everyone
00:23:14.640 becomes Canadian and that the communities kind of merged together. And then we open it up again.
00:23:20.080 And it seems to me that starting in the nineties or maybe the early two thousands,
00:23:24.080 that, that kind of tradition just fell apart. And instead of doing the sort of gaps and open
00:23:29.840 and close, open and close, open and close, we just like left it open. And it's like,
00:23:34.080 we're living through that experiment right now. You talked a little bit about the cultural element of,
00:23:38.320 you know, multiculturalism just not quite working and some people feeling uneasy about how
00:23:42.640 much their community has changed. Uh, what, what's your comment on that?
00:23:46.480 Yeah. This is still the third rail here, right? As we can talk about the economic issues and things
00:23:50.640 like pressures on infrastructure, but people don't want to get into the cultural friction
00:23:54.720 element because it's, can be very uncomfortable for a lot of people. They don't want to seem like
00:23:58.000 a racist now to go back to your point about the peaks and valleys. I don't know if that was the
00:24:02.480 government's deliberate intention to, you know, uh, allow for these sort of breathers to allow for
00:24:07.920 integration. I suspect a lot of it was economically driven, but the effect was still to allow for that
00:24:12.880 cultural integration. And I also think when you go back a hundred years and a lot of cases you're
00:24:17.040 talking about, uh, you know, migration, for example, to rural areas, which was a lot greater
00:24:22.400 today on the overwhelming majority of migration is to urban areas, especially our already largest urban
00:24:28.560 area. So it's a very different, um, process in terms of, uh, you know, integration. I know assimilation
00:24:35.200 is a charge word for a lot of people, but just the idea of, and I think this is true of every country,
00:24:40.160 you know, most people, when they, when they move to another country, they sort of understand
00:24:44.240 implicitly that they're supposed to over time, and certainly their children over generations,
00:24:48.320 uh, adopt the ways of that country. That doesn't mean that you have to give up everything, you know,
00:24:53.760 from the homeland, but over time, there's just this sort of natural process where people, a culture,
00:24:58.800 a culture, acclimate to where they're from. I mean, it's certainly the case in, uh, my family,
00:25:03.440 you know, my, my mother's from Hong Kong. I was born here. My wife's family's from Trinidad.
00:25:07.600 I know your, your husband's family comes from Iran. You know, these are, these are processes that
00:25:12.720 naturally occur over time and absent some kind of active government policy, trying to interfere with
00:25:18.880 that. That's, that's both what newcomers, um, expect to do and what Canadians already here sort of
00:25:25.520 expect of newcomers. Um, and we, we haven't had that. You talk about big M multiculturalism. I,
00:25:32.000 I think that is part of the problem here. It's not small and multicultural. I mean,
00:25:36.160 the idea of people kind of doing their own thing is not the problem. It's this official policy
00:25:40.480 where it's almost like state doctrine where you're supposed to try and preserve stuff from the past.
00:25:46.400 And if you don't, you're almost doing something wrong or you're, you know, you're letting go of
00:25:50.720 something and that's a bad thing. Um, that is part of the problem. And it, it, it, it has created,
00:25:56.880 um, it has created this tension between people who feel that, uh, you know, people who are coming here are
00:26:03.360 not, um, not part of a common national project and are sort of clinging to things from the homeland.
00:26:08.960 So I think that, uh, I think we need to have that open conversation, but what are the expectations,
00:26:13.760 you know, what, what, and what is our capacity, right? Because I think a lot of people, it comes down to
00:26:18.720 numbers. If you live in a community and you welcome people who come from different places
00:26:23.040 and speak different languages, you know, and if, if some of them come into your neighborhood,
00:26:25.760 that's the deal. If you wake up one morning and suddenly nine, every single one of your neighbors
00:26:29.600 is from somewhere else that can be jolting. That can be shocking for a lot of people.
00:26:33.600 And, um, it just makes, it's just human nature. Some people are uncomfortable by rapid
00:26:37.600 change of any sort. And I think we need to make accommodation for that. There's not,
00:26:41.360 it doesn't make you a bad person or make you hateful to, to say, I kind of like the way things
00:26:46.000 are and any change that comes, I want it to be gradual and I want to get used to it. And I, I,
00:26:50.880 I would resent the idea that this is just going to be, I'm just going to be overwhelmed by
00:26:55.040 different things tomorrow morning without being able to have any say in it.
00:26:58.320 Well, it's interesting. Uh, it does. I mean, so much of what you just said was super interesting.
00:27:03.760 Uh, the, the peaks and valleys that you, you didn't necessarily think that was intentional.
00:27:07.120 That was just sort of like, uh, reacting to world events or, or whatever, but that the outcome was
00:27:12.560 this sort of integration that would happen. And I think you hit the nail on the head when you said,
00:27:16.560 like, you know, if you live in a community and there's one or two newcomers, everybody's like really
00:27:20.640 excited about those newcomers. And it's like, oh, where are they from? Let's help them make sure that
00:27:24.320 they fit in the community. Like they have kids that are around my kid's age. Let's like make sure that
00:27:28.080 they are playing together. And you have a community that's focused on helping those people.
00:27:32.160 And that's what happens with the private refugee sponsorship when churches and charities sponsor
00:27:36.080 refugees. It's like, it's like the people who sponsor that refugee feel a personal obligation
00:27:41.680 to help them integrate, to make sure. It becomes a rallying point, right?
00:27:44.400 It becomes a rallying point. And, and the problem is when you, when you make it too much,
00:27:48.720 it starts to feel like an imposition. And that's the line you don't want to cross. You want the,
00:27:53.520 the attitude towards immigrants to be welcoming and help them integrate. And it's a win-win,
00:27:58.080 right? And when you go too far and you tip it too far, the other way, it starts to become a burden
00:28:02.640 and resentment. And that's where we don't want to go. And that's what I'm saying. That's part of the
00:28:05.840 reason I keep making these arguments is I do think immigration at the right level in the right way is a
00:28:10.320 good thing and we should support it, but we're over that line right now. And that's the reason we're
00:28:14.800 seeing a lot of this backlash. Well, yeah, like you're, you're really testing the, the generosity of
00:28:18.880 Canadians, because I think that when that happens, it still does happen. I think probably in small
00:28:22.480 towns, Aaron, where someone gets excited, like, Oh, we have a newcomer and they're from this different
00:28:26.080 culture and everyone's interested in the teacher wants the child to talk about it at school or
00:28:30.240 whatever. But, but then you, but then you look at neighborhoods, like, you know, I grew up in
00:28:33.360 Vancouver and I've talked about this on my show a bit before, but like the neighborhood that I grew up in
00:28:38.000 doesn't exist anymore in the way that it did when I was a child, right? Like in the, in the eighties and the
00:28:42.160 nineties, it was just a whole bunch of like, basically like stay at home moms. Every house had like three or four
00:28:46.880 kids. There's kids playing, riding their bikes all over. It was a very vibrant, lively neighborhoods,
00:28:51.840 Kerisdale in Vancouver. And like 10 years later, it just wasn't anymore. It was like the, uh, the Hong
00:28:58.080 Kong takeover announcement had happened. And, you know, thousands of people just kind of moved to that
00:29:03.200 one neighborhood, like that neighborhood. And, you know, my parents sold our house because we had an
00:29:07.920 offer on the house. It was way more than we paid. So we moved to a different suburb and like, I go back
00:29:13.440 there now and it's like, this is just such a different area. There's like no children, there's
00:29:17.040 no kids. And the, the, the community has gone. I know that I knew some people that are from
00:29:22.000 places like Brampton and they grew up there and it was a totally different scenario. Now you go back
00:29:26.560 and you almost feel like a little bit of a loss. Like the country that I grew up in isn't, isn't really
00:29:32.400 there anymore. Do you think those are valid, uh, feelings or how can you, how can you work around that?
00:29:37.120 Yeah. Look, I think, uh, change is inevitable, but the rate of change is not inevitable. And so it's not that,
00:29:42.960 you know, we have to freeze everything in time. And I do think some people fall prey to this like
00:29:46.800 nostalgia of like, everything was great the way when I was a kid. And so, so I think we have to
00:29:50.720 guard against that, but that's not to say that we just have to accept any change anywhere all the time
00:29:56.000 as this sort of fatalistic, we get to choose, we get to help, um, determine the rate of change,
00:30:01.760 the rate of change that works best for everyone. And I also think too, you know, a lot of people conflate,
00:30:07.280 um, a discomfort, they conflate what I would say, sort of, um, race with culture. I think what a lot
00:30:13.360 of people, what bothers them about the idea of change, isn't that they're going to be replaced
00:30:18.400 by someone who has a different skin tone than them. It's that the things they value as a Canadian,
00:30:23.440 you know, uh, cultural traditions, um, you know, uh, certain values, if those things are lost,
00:30:29.360 that's the real problem. So like, to give you an example, I know it's an old trope, but like,
00:30:33.520 you know, hockey is a essentially quintessentially Canadian thing. So if you had a whole bunch of
00:30:38.160 migrants come to a community that had a Hong, a strong hockey tradition, and all those immigrants
00:30:43.280 over time took up hockey and started playing hockey and themselves became the sort of carriers of that
00:30:47.840 tradition, I don't think anyone would care, but what does bother people is that people come and
00:30:51.920 then there's sort of no interest in hockey and the sort of that, that tradition dies out. And that's
00:30:55.440 again, that's not a racial thing. That's sort of a cultural integration thing. So I don't buy this,
00:31:00.960 you know, there's some sort of, I do think it's a racist view that, you know, replacement is,
00:31:05.680 is, is based on, um, you know, your, your skin color, your ethnic origin. I think it's a cultural
00:31:11.040 question. And I think it's a question that culture can be learned. And if you have willing partners
00:31:15.600 on the welcoming side and the new arrival side, willing to integrate, willing to assimilate,
00:31:21.520 um, you can still care and it's not replacement. It's, it's different people carrying on the same
00:31:26.560 cultural traditions. And so I, I think we ought to be very careful about that debate,
00:31:30.560 because I think some people, they mix up those things too easily and they're really not the same
00:31:34.480 thing. Yeah. I mean, it's funny that you mentioned that. Cause I, I have a personal anecdote about
00:31:38.480 that. Like I was really interested in field hockey when I was a kid. And, uh, when I went into like a
00:31:43.600 new, uh, a new team, I was in grade three and I was the only girl in grade three that wanted to play
00:31:49.440 field hockey. And, and it was partially like, you know, I had wonderful neighbors and I have friends,
00:31:53.440 uh, from that time who were from Hong Kong, whose families had moved and the things that they were
00:31:57.680 interested, it was more like, you know, piano and, and different kinds of like the arts,
00:32:02.080 which, which is great. I mean, I actually think that, um, people bringing different
00:32:06.960 kind of interests and values makes the community richer and it makes it more interesting.
00:32:10.720 Um, it just so happened that there was not enough girls in my year to create a field hockey team.
00:32:14.880 So I had to go play in a different, uh, district. Um, so it's funny that you, that you mentioned that,
00:32:19.520 but yeah, again, I think, I think it's like the difference between having, you know, a handful of
00:32:24.080 people join a district versus like having tens of thousands that all come at the same time and
00:32:28.960 kind of flood the system and just completely change the, the, the culture and the community.
00:32:33.520 It's totally about the speed in a lot of cases. And the other thing too, to remember is,
00:32:37.360 you know, in, in, in the West and especially in the Anglosphere countries, I mean, we're,
00:32:40.960 there's a reason we're very appealing destinations for people from all over the world. And so we should
00:32:45.760 bear that in mind when people, some people argue, well, you know, are we, are we, you know, imposing our,
00:32:51.360 our ourselves on these new arrivals? I mean, they're coming here because they, they already
00:32:55.440 know what it's like here. They already have a sense of what it's like. They want to join our project.
00:32:59.680 And so this idea that the first thing we do when we tell them to tell them when they show up is,
00:33:04.160 you know what, you should just keep everything the way it is. And you don't have to, I,
00:33:07.600 I think that's a strange message that hits a lot of their ears almost weirdly. And, uh, you know,
00:33:13.600 I, I obviously have no issue with people doing their own thing. And, you know, I come from, uh, you know,
00:33:18.800 my dad's side of the family's German can from Kitchener, Ontario, it says old German Canadian
00:33:22.640 community. There's still sort of old traditions that linger there. Right. But, but it's not, um,
00:33:28.080 it's not in terms of the mainstream and sort of the day-to-day life and preferences and culture,
00:33:33.360 it's, it's, it's similar to the anywhere else in the country. And I think that's the kind of thing
00:33:37.280 that, um, you know, if communities want to band together and of their own, uh, whim sort of preserve
00:33:42.320 certain traditions that they're certainly welcome to do that. They don't need the government to
00:33:46.240 have an official policy of preservation or in some cases, even subsidize that difference. Uh,
00:33:51.600 I don't, I don't necessarily, uh, you know, I have no problem with small D diversity. It's when,
00:33:57.040 I guess, Candace, when you start to capitalize a lot of these, uh, policies into government
00:34:01.200 doctrine, that's where you start to run into trouble. Yeah. When you have someone telling
00:34:04.800 you that diversity is your strength and that's not a slogan, that's like an order, right? Uh, talk,
00:34:10.080 talk about forced, uh, assimilation. You know, you're from, you're from Kitchener. It used to be called
00:34:14.640 the old Berlin, right? And then, and then the government forced, uh, you to change the name
00:34:18.800 of that community because they didn't want the German, uh, affiliation. I think they had a referendum,
00:34:22.800 but the, but the point was, the point was. But the referendum went the other way. Didn't,
00:34:26.080 didn't the referendum like. No, no, that was no, but, but there was, I mean, there was this, um,
00:34:31.680 it's interesting because at the time this was during the first world war and, uh, I guess the Berlin
00:34:37.040 city council wanted to show that German Canadians were loyal to, to the umpire and not to Germany. So they had
00:34:43.680 this referendum and they picked Lord Kitchener as the, as the name, but it was interesting because
00:34:48.240 at the time it, it seemed important to show that you were committed to the country. Right. And I
00:34:53.360 think today that is something a lot of Canadians feel like, um, it may not even be true. I do think
00:34:57.760 there are a lot of immigrants that are proud to be Canadian. And frankly, in a lot of cases would
00:35:01.120 love to shout it from the rooftop rooftops, but they, they often have governments telling them that no,
00:35:05.120 no, no, you don't need to worry about that. You can carry on, you know, everything, um, that, you know,
00:35:10.720 do you bring from, from the, from the homeland. Um, uh, so I, I just find it interesting that,
00:35:15.760 you know, if you go back a hundred years, there was a community that was so concerned
00:35:18.800 about not being seen as like sufficiently patriotic. They actually changed the name of the community,
00:35:23.360 uh, because they wanted to signal that, no, no, like we're Canadian and our loyalty is here.
00:35:28.480 It's not from, uh, not to our ancestral home. Well, that's, that's such a more optimistic way of
00:35:33.680 looking at it here than, uh, than the way I saw it. I think you still see a little bit of that today.
00:35:38.720 Like I I've talked about this in the past as well. Like my husband was born in Iran and they fled the,
00:35:43.280 the, the mullahs and they fled the Islamic regime in the nineties. And Kaz is like the most patriotic
00:35:49.120 Canadian that I know. Like he has a maple leaf tattoo and he's just like, he loves Canada. He
00:35:52.960 wants the Canadian identity. He embraces like even the cheesiest aspects of Canadiana. Right. And I,
00:35:58.720 and it's interesting because now in this like kind of like post Canada world where everyone's woke and
00:36:03.920 we have to like denounce our ancestors and everybody's so ashamed of what the Canadians
00:36:08.480 did to early Canadians did in developing the country. It's like, it, you know, it's such a
00:36:13.280 mixed message to newcomers because on the one hand they're coming to Canada because they like Canada
00:36:18.080 and they, and they're excited about the opportunity. And that's the kind of like new, like lifeline that
00:36:22.720 you want coming into your country. You want people coming in who are enthusiastic, want to start
00:36:26.240 businesses, who want to start jobs, who love the country, like wrap themselves in the flag.
00:36:29.760 Uh, but then you have the sort of like elites or the, the, the, the kind of old stock Canadians
00:36:35.280 sitting here talking about how awful Canada is and how this is horrible, racist, uh, you know,
00:36:41.120 Dennis vital country. It's, it's so, it's so sad. It can be bewildering for new mark migrants who come
00:36:46.720 here and to be told that Canada is this horrible place. That's got a racist. I mean, a lot of these
00:36:51.120 people, the first thing they say is, you know, where I come from, I mean, compared, compared to where I
00:36:55.440 come from, you know, the problem, we have real problems back where I'm from. I mean, Canada,
00:36:59.520 these problems pale in comparison. I think a lot of Canadians lack that context. Like,
00:37:03.280 is there racism in Canada? Of course there is, but like relative. And as someone who's, you know,
00:37:07.200 in a mixed race relationship, who's lived in many places around the world, I mean, I've experienced
00:37:11.920 racism everywhere. I've experienced the least racism in Canada compared to all these other places,
00:37:16.640 including other, uh, developed countries. So I, I think, you know, it's one thing to say,
00:37:21.440 yeah, of course we always want to, uh, combat racism, but the idea that Canada is sort of
00:37:26.160 uniquely or particularly racist is just, uh, mind boggling to most people who have lived anywhere
00:37:33.040 else. Well, uh, yeah. And, and a lot of the sort of racism that you do encounter, like one of my best
00:37:38.400 friends growing up was half Chinese and half, uh, her mom was from Newfoundland. So she was like a Newfie,
00:37:44.320 uh, half Chinese and people kind of came up with silly little nicknames to describe her ethnicity,
00:37:49.600 but it was always like in a kind of loving way. And I remember asking her once if it bothered her
00:37:54.240 and she was like, no, it's hilarious. Right. Like it's, it's, it's not meant to be mean. It's
00:37:58.640 like kids kind of make jokes maybe to like ease attention. And, and we used to be able to do that.
00:38:03.040 And now it's like, everything's so politically correct. You can't even, you can't even make
00:38:06.320 jokes like that. Yeah. And I firmly believe that most of what's called racism in a lot of cases is
00:38:12.000 just the lack of familiarity or in some cases, clumsiness. Right. I think that, uh, you know,
00:38:17.280 there's very few people that have some sort of deep ideological belief in like racial superiority
00:38:23.280 or purity. There's just not very many of those people, most people, it is just a casual, um,
00:38:28.080 unfamiliarity, or in some cases discomfort. And that's a natural thing, right? Like the analogy
00:38:32.160 I made has been, uh, to people who people have different, uh, food preferences, right? Like some
00:38:36.480 people love trying new things. Other people, like they know exactly what they like and they don't want
00:38:40.160 to try anything new. And I think that's like that with personalities and cultures, some people just
00:38:44.320 know what they like and they, other stuff seems weird and strange and other people,
00:38:48.240 they just love trying new stuff and they love sort of learning about new cultures and languages,
00:38:53.680 things like that. Neither of those things is right or wrong. It's just a personality difference.
00:38:57.120 And I think we do a disservice to like truly like deep seated ideological racism when we kind of
00:39:02.320 conflate clumsiness or just discomfort with some sort of really nefarious, like evil racism.
00:39:09.280 Yeah. I mean, when, when I listened to Jordan Peterson talk about personality traits and he talks
00:39:13.440 about like trait openness versus like people who are low in openness, that's basically what it is.
00:39:17.920 Like I happen to be really high in openness. I love traveling around the world. You know,
00:39:21.280 I'm interested in other cultures. I married someone from a different culture. Like I just
00:39:24.320 happen to be high in openness where someone else, um, might not be. And that's not their fault. It
00:39:28.720 doesn't make me a bad person. It's just who they are. Okay. Well, Erin, I want to talk about
00:39:32.640 one other thing. I know, I know you've got to run in a minute here. We've had a great conversation.
00:39:36.000 I really appreciate it. Uh, what, what, let's, let's get into the kind of crux of the matter, right?
00:39:40.480 Like we're told that part of the reason why we need mass migration, why we need so many people,
00:39:45.200 it's not just economic, it's not cultural. It's, it's about fertility rates and it's about the
00:39:49.200 declining birth rate. The numbers in Canada have come out and it's truly shocking. Our fertility
00:39:53.360 rate is 1.1 right now. Okay. Replacement is 2.1. Uh, it used to be that women used to have,
00:39:59.440 you know, many, many children, uh, obviously things have changed and, and most children now survive
00:40:04.000 into adulthood. Uh, but, but it seems to me that immigration kind of covers up this other issue,
00:40:08.880 uh, which is that Canadian families aren't having as many kids as they used to. And, and we, we talked
00:40:14.720 about this in the other interview we did. There's a Carta study showing that most women want to have
00:40:18.960 more children than they're actually having. Um, about 25% of women don't end up having kids,
00:40:25.520 even though they wanted kids, uh, because they can't find a right partner. They can't make it work. Like,
00:40:30.320 to me, this is a huge, huge issue in our culture and in our world that just gets like no attention. Like,
00:40:37.440 nobody talks about it maybe because it's such a personal choice and it's, it's so personal
00:40:41.600 that people feel uncomfortable talking about it in terms of public policy. Um, but you know,
00:40:45.920 we're here to have an uncomfortable conversation. So, you know, you've got a big family, you've got
00:40:49.200 a bunch of kids, so, uh, maybe you can, you can give us some insights and talk about what, what you
00:40:53.440 think needs to be done. Yeah. I'm great. I'm doing what I can to pull up that, uh, 1.1. I've got three,
00:40:58.240 but, uh, I wish I had more. Um, look, it's hard to think of any other issue where if women had this big
00:41:05.840 a concern, the government would just completely ignore it. Right. I mean, if it got, if there was
00:41:09.520 a survey that showed, you know, 60% of women said that they're paying too much for, uh, for,
00:41:15.280 for, uh, hygienic products, I mean, the government would drop everything and like fix that. And yet,
00:41:19.520 here we have a lot of evidence that, you know, a vast majority of women are not having as many
00:41:23.760 children as they want. Well, what are governments doing about that? That seems to me like it should be a
00:41:28.160 central like policy fixation for any government that's concerned, not just about women, but about,
00:41:33.360 you know, the, the birth rate generally, you're absolutely right. That immigration is just being
00:41:38.000 used to paper over that. And that's a problem for a couple of reasons. One, it's not, it's not going
00:41:41.600 to be enough. Uh, you know, you, you probably need a mix of higher birth rates and immigration to
00:41:46.320 maintain growth. And I am pro growth. I'm not one of these people that believes you can shrink,
00:41:49.920 you know, people talk about Japan, um, shrinking. I'm like, talk to me in 20 years. I think Japan has
00:41:56.320 other issues there. No, it's a tragedy in Japan when you go to the suburbs and there's just like ghost
00:42:01.280 towns right outside of Tokyo. It is a real problem. I think people fixate on, on the fact,
00:42:06.080 all Japan's still a wealthy place. They are, they're coasting and they are, they're slowly
00:42:10.400 shriveling and declining. And then that is a real problem. The other thing too, that people who
00:42:14.000 mentioned is a lot of the immigrants we do get, once they come here, guess what? They start to adopt
00:42:18.960 the same lifestyle choices. And so the fertility rate actually drops among second generation immigrants.
00:42:24.320 So you're not actually solving the problem in the long run. Um, I would say Candace, this is a,
00:42:29.120 this is a problem afflicting the whole world, especially the developed world. You know, Canada is
00:42:34.720 even middle of the pack. This places like Korea are down to like 0.8 children. It is a real problem.
00:42:40.560 Um, I know what you, and you've mentioned places like in Hungary, there are some other countries where
00:42:44.560 they're attempting some pretty radical policy leap, pulling some really levers like, you know, making
00:42:50.320 income tax free. If you have four children or more there, you know, there's some encouraging
00:42:54.080 examples. Japan has a few examples like that, that are encouraging. You know, I do fear a bit that
00:42:59.120 part of this is cultural, um, that we live in a very increasingly atomized individualized world where
00:43:06.240 sort of self-fulfillment and career and sort of, um, you know, individual needs or adult needs are, are
00:43:12.800 supplanting what used to be like longstanding, uh, uh, evolutionary driven needs to have children.
00:43:19.120 And that's hard to reverse, but we should try and we should pull every lever we can.
00:43:23.760 And I think that governments have, like, we basically haven't emptied the tank yet on seeing
00:43:27.440 what, what governments can do to move the needle on fertility, because we're not even talking about
00:43:31.440 it at all, as you say. And I think that's a conversation in the coming years that
00:43:35.360 policymakers really need to focus on. Well, I find that there's so much pessimism
00:43:38.960 around it. Like, it's like, okay, so Asia has been dealing with this issue for decades
00:43:42.640 and they've tried a lot of stuff, right? Like Singapore has tried a lot of different policies
00:43:46.400 to encourage, uh, families to have kids. And basically what they found was that the people
00:43:50.720 who already probably planned on having kids just had kids sooner, but it didn't actually
00:43:54.880 like increase the total number. And so then we just like throw those policies out and we're like,
00:43:59.200 okay, we're not going to do those anymore, but it's like, we haven't tried those in Canada, right?
00:44:02.560 The idea of, um, you know, providing longer, uh, parental leave or allowing mom to stay home with the
00:44:09.280 kids for like three or four years. And like, I, I think that there's a lot, I think, I think that,
00:44:14.000 I mean, when I think of my generation, a lot of my friends, you know, we were really told
00:44:18.800 that we could be anything and do anything. And the emphasis was to go to university,
00:44:22.720 like figure out what you want to do, the whole like personal fulfillment thing.
00:44:26.240 And then by the time you're done university, you're kind of on a track to either go to
00:44:29.840 professional school or go get a career. Okay. Well, I've put all this effort into school.
00:44:33.840 I don't want to leave the market place when I'm 25. I want to stay. Yeah. I want to stay.
00:44:38.000 And I want to focus on my career. And then by the time you're like looking around at having kids,
00:44:42.160 you're like into your thirties and your window is really small. A lot of people struggle to even
00:44:47.040 get pregnant and have kids in their thirties. And that's the norm. Like the norm is that women
00:44:51.680 are having kids in their thirties. In my friend group, it was like, it was like mid thirties that
00:44:55.920 people were, were starting to have kids. And you know, that's that if you wanted, if you always
00:45:00.400 wanted to have three kids, you always want to have four kids and you start when you're 35, like you just
00:45:05.200 it's really hard to do that. And I don't think that women are being told the truth. That's why I think
00:45:09.360 it is feminism. It's like lies that we tell women that they're going to have personal fulfillment
00:45:14.000 from some career that they may love. You may love your career, but look, if you're, if you're in your
00:45:18.640 forties and you miss that window and you can't have kids, that biological instinct that you talked about,
00:45:22.960 it's going to come up and it's going to hit you hard. And it's, it's just, it's tragic. It's really
00:45:27.360 sad when that does happen. I really deeply feel for women who miss the opportunity. And, and I feel like
00:45:33.520 more people need to talk about that so that younger women don't make those same mistakes.
00:45:36.800 Yeah. I, uh, we have to, I mean, we have to do another podcast just on this issue. Cause I,
00:45:40.960 I do think there's a, um, there's a cultural challenge in that like parenting is hard,
00:45:47.760 but it's rewarding. And we live in a society now where increasingly everything is, is, is all about
00:45:53.280 you and parenting is a sacrifice and the, and the sort of benefits of it, the sort of rewards of it
00:45:59.680 are diffuse and over time. And in a lot of cases they, you only notice them years later. That's a,
00:46:05.360 that's a hard sell to people where it's like, you can have a career, you can travel and you can sort
00:46:10.240 of get everything you want well into your thirties. And then, as you say, even if you want kids,
00:46:14.640 then maybe you're having one or maybe two, you're not having three or four anymore.
00:46:18.480 And it's just everything else in our culture is pushing against this idea of the value of parenting,
00:46:24.480 which seems like a whole lot of work, uh, to, to people that want to have a busy career and travel
00:46:29.520 and help do those other self-fulfillment things. So, um, you know, it's, it's, it's going to take
00:46:33.680 some work, but, uh, I do think, I do think there's going to be a reckoning at some point, because we're
00:46:38.240 going to reach a point where birth rates could continue to decline to the point where now we have
00:46:42.480 problems, uh, even sustaining the sort of the, the, the social safety net that we have, for example,
00:46:47.440 there's not going to be enough people work, especially with longer lifespan. So, um, it's, uh, it is a
00:46:52.240 challenge and I agree with you as a parent, you know, I, uh, it's the most rewarding, the most important
00:46:56.880 thing I do in my life. And it's really hard to explain that to somebody who doesn't have kids
00:47:01.360 without sounding kind of sappy and sentimental, but, um, it, it does have real consequences. Once,
00:47:06.320 once you miss that window, there's no going back. Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's, I think you're
00:47:11.120 right. We're going to have to do a whole other podcast on this, Aaron, because you could talk
00:47:14.000 about the macro issues like social safety nets, and then you can talk about the individual feelings
00:47:17.440 of people. Uh, there's been some interesting, uh, I feel like at least the conversation is being had
00:47:22.000 more and I, and I see it more in podcasts, but, uh, I, I think it's going to take a lot more than just,
00:47:27.520 uh, you know, the two of us talking about how great it is, uh, to be parents and how wonderful
00:47:31.120 and fulfilling it is to have little kids. I, I, I have, uh, three kids and we actually have, uh,
00:47:35.360 one on the way, so we're going to have four kids. Congratulations. Thank you. Yeah. We're pretty
00:47:39.360 excited and pretty overwhelmed, but anyway, Aaron, thank you so much for joining us. I, I enjoyed and
00:47:44.720 appreciate the conversation on immigration. And I think, I think we really have our work cut out for us,
00:47:48.640 uh, as a country, but I like your optimism when it comes to, you know, this, we have to have these
00:47:52.880 difficult conversations so that we can save our immigration system so that we don't lose that
00:47:56.480 consensus. And I think that's a really important takeaway message. Yeah, this was great. Thanks
00:48:00.800 so much for the wide raising chat. Pleasure to be here. Okay. All right, Aaron, take care. That's
00:48:04.640 Aaron Lee Woodrick from the McDonald Laurier Institute. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm
00:48:07.840 Candice Malcolm, and this is the Candice Malcolm Show.