The environmental case against mass immigration
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Summary
Canadians for a Sustainable Society President and Commentator, John Mayer, lays out the environmentalist's case against mass immigration and calls for an end to the rapid growth in Canada's population and the rapid development of cities.
Transcript
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have you ever stopped to consider what kind of impact uncontrolled mass immigration has on the
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environment or what happens to all of the farmland that has to be paved over to make way for millions
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of people every single year you can't get that farmland back you can't get forests back that
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have to be completely bulldozed over to make way for sprawling subdivisions let me just give you a
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statistic to better clear up what i'm talking about here every day canada is losing over 300 acres
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of farmland remember that land is never coming back and only about seven percent of canada's land
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is even arable so yes this is a major crisis and mass immigration is to blame but who is behind this
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our save the planet prime minister justin trudeau is the man responsible for bringing in millions of
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people a year into this country millions more than previous prime ministers so to make the case that
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someone who is responsible for this rapid growth in population is also an environmentalist doesn't
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seem to jive with the facts does it well our next guest is someone who has been consistently laying
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out the environmentalists case against mass immigration and that is what we intend to explore
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right now well joining us now on the show is a commentator conservationist and outspoken
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critic of mass immigration as well as the president for canadians for a sustainable society john mayer john
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thank you so much for joining us yes glad to be here so john why don't we just begin by having
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you lay out the case lay out the environmentalist's case against mass immigration it's not something i
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don't think the canadian audience gets to hear very much well basically i i mean if you're going to
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achieve sustainability on this planet uh you have we have to stop consumption we have to stop the
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consumption uh growth and there are two ways of doing that two necessary ways one we have to use less
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stuff we have to use less energy and we can't have any more people using the same amount of stuff we
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have now so we have to reduce the load on on the planet canada is a very energy intensive resource
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intensive country in which to live it's extreme climate the distances are extreme and uh de facto
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we will end up using more energy than someone who lives in guadalajara mexico we have to have uh
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better built better insulated uh houses they have to have heating and uh we have to get our food
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a fair amount of our food from afar uh it's just uh uh unfortunately uh very uh very energy intensive
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and this has all been made possible by the immense uh reserves of fossil fuels we've exploited uh over
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the last uh century a couple of centuries but oil in particular since the 1950s uh has really driven
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the ability of us to go anywhere do anything that world is coming to an end uh for two reasons one is
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the availability of oil it's going to become more expensive as the reserves become less rich and
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the other is the climate issue where effectively we're setting the planet off into an area that it
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hasn't been before in human existence over the last three million years so bringing people into canada
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uh both for canadian rates of uh of uh emissions and for global rates is a disaster because the
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the uh carbon emissions of the immigrant stream to canada uh quadruples when they arrive in canada so bad
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loss for the planet loss for canada and it's just uh it makes no environmental sense and i i i and it makes no social sense
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social sense either i think you'll find immigration policy uh has managed to evade uh any uh social
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economic and uh environmental impact studies that's uh so it it it's a policy that needs to be reviewed
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well i find it all interesting because trudeau of course has touted himself as a major environmentalist
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he's very proud of the work that he's done on trying to save the climate but of course he has also
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been in charge during this rapid uh mass immigration experiment into our country so i feel like the
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the two just don't really mix do they uh they don't uh but you know what what trudeau says is about as a
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as relevant as what donald trump says i i mean virtually everything comes out of their mouths but it is
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interesting that donald trump uh mr uh uh climate change is a chinese plot actually outperformed his
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his america uh for three years actually outperformed canada in terms of carbon emissions our uh carbon
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emissions grew more rapidly under trudeau uh than uh mr trump's did uh uh in his term of office now there's
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reasons for that but uh trudeau like canada has never kept unfortunately canada has never kept
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its word on on any climate uh agreement uh we were of the kyoto uh uh signees i think there were 58
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uh nations which signed on to that canada was the worst uh second worst performer so we were number 57
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instead of having our emissions go down by six percent they went up by 19 percent and that's two
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reasons one was the oil sands which everybody knows about the big bad oil sands and they are dirty
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but adding i think was six or seven million people over the period of the kyoto accord time frame
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uh that contributed more uh in emissions than the oil sands did one one stat that i heard john which
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was really alarming when i was doing some research on this show and and for other projects was that
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canada is losing over 300 acres of farmland a day due to primarily this massive growth in our population
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am i right about that because that that just seems unbelievable
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yeah it is unbelievable but it's uh i i believe that is the figure and it's been increasing
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and i mean anyone who's traveled outside of any of our major metropolitan areas knows that
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but there's also the other factor the smaller centers the small towns who pride themselves on being
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small and being a viable community they are surrounded by farmland and forest and these
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uh and uh these areas uh around those small centers are just being built up uh you know you don't have
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to have kilometer after kilometer of subdivision uh to realize that uh you're losing a lot of farmland
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and and whether it's uh southern ontario central ontario where the loss is mostly forest uh or out on
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the prairie we're losing farmland all over the place and it's not just the big centers it's most apparent
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there but it's not just the big centers when you were bringing up you know the kyoto protocols and
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canada's climate commitments and targets i don't want to put you in a political box but it does sound
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to be more of a it seems to be more of a liberal argument you're making my question for you john is
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where is the left on this issue if they if they actually care about the climate the same way that it
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appears you do why does the left not seem to want to address immigration at all uh well please don't
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call me a liberal i mean i've been called everything else but i've never really qualified as a as a
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liberal uh i like to think that i uh i understand what's going on and i i deal in real physical units
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and i don't like to put political um uh blocks on on any particular position i mean we're looking for
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better numbers and we're not getting better numbers we aren't telling the whole story uh we aren't going
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through all the impacts of the things we're doing whether it's the oil sands or population growth
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i i mean uh the uh the century initiative wants to triple our population where then that's what we're
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on track to do that's what we've been on track for the last 30 years to do triple our population
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there's no public support for that and uh you know it it doesn't i i don't think even liberals support
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that uh i think the uh what is it the i think canadians are five or six to one against uh tripling
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our population and so you're cutting across all kinds of uh political spectrums so we need good
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numbers we need accountable government and we need a democratic system that works and uh we don't have
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that at the moment uh i'm very sorry to say right no i would completely agree i was going to bring up
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the century initiative it's something we've talked about on this show before is the century initiative
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behind this are they are they a major lobbying force is this also part of what developers want
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who do you think is behind what we're seeing here and the loss of our prime agricultural land
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obviously through such massive growth the fix is in for has been in for 50 years the the people who
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wanted this to happen uh banks developers etc uh i i mean effectively uh we lost control of our media
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corporations uh they they knew this was going to be unpopular uh you know canadians have never wanted
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since the 50s they haven't wanted more people in the country and immigration uh has pumped it up by
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about 13 million i i think uh and so it it's been a slow process of gaining control and gaining control of
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the narrative uh where growth is everything uh growth is a benefit uh we're talking about the economy we're
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talking about toronto we're talking about canada uh be a big nation be an important nation and left out of
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all this is any kind of uh value placed on the people per capita income equality affordable housing quality of life
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access to nature any of these things that never gets discussed and it's because these people have
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taken control they're the biggest donors to politicians they have controlling interest in the media
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and it's uh although the media tends to be corporate media tends to be growth oriented
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uh because they uh uh the advertising revenue from big things like houses and cars uh vastly exceeds bob's kitchen
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renovation uh kind of sources so but anyway it's been a very conscious policy and a highly rigged policy
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going back to the century initiative i saw that you wrote a letter to mps who were invited to a century initiative event
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event asking them to reconsider their participation did you get any did you get anywhere anywhere with
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that with those letters i sent that letter actually not to mps it was to one official from a uh a city in
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in nova scotia i see i have not received their reply i will be following up i also sent that virtually exact
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same letter to uh ontario nature who should be standing up for nature and they had published a uh an op-ed
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basically saying don't blame immigrants for all these various impacts and we're not blaming immigrants
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we're blaming a very corrupt immigration system and the response from them i just got it this morning was
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we don't have space to accommodate a rebuttal but we are now going to be putting on our website this letter
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so that it can be downloaded modified to the individual's uh taste and sent to their mps and
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anybody if anyone cares to do that uh please send us copies of the mps responses and mps or your mayor or
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mpp whatever uh please send us copies of the responses and we'll see what uh what is being
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said but i suspect there won't be responses because i don't think they can absorb that message that
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growth won't solve all problems it seems like you're laying out the case that the canadian canadian
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leadership at both the provincial federal and at a media level have sold out the people for
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corporations yeah well absolutely and i mean they've created this juggernaut where mentioning immigration
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is is effectively death if you're a political party and and you mention that we should cut back on
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immigration for whatever reason i think a you'll be attacked maybe you'll be attacked but b you'll
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disappear off the uh the the pages uh you you won't be covered and you're asking me about political
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orientation i mean i i i guess i would put myself down as i i've always been green uh i would put myself
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down as a techno populist uh i think we should uh have all of these uh uh means of the uh determining uh
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uh welfare of the country uh welfare of the people our goals and they should be oriented uh you know
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on on the welfare of people uh and uh it had better damn well better be green right and so i'm guessing
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then john your optimism that a a change in federal government will result in a in a change on immigration
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policy that will be more geared towards conserving our country is not high no uh
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well if you look at the the people i mean i talk uh with all kinds of biophysicists and uh you know
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naturalists and this kind of thing and climatologists and no one sees a way out of this i i you've probably
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read the latest climate uh where it's now becoming official officially able to discuss that they're uh
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predicting uh most climatologists are putting uh the target uh where we will end up at two and a half to
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three and a half degrees that's that's lethal and so everybody's sort of throwing their hands up in
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the air but in terms of politically there's just no no savior on the horizon uh the uh people's party
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max bernier he's the only one talking specifically about it and uh great for him you know he's got the
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the guts to do it uh but uh his uh his environmental policies would make me throw up however i would
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vote for him uh if uh i thought he'd i thought he had a chance of getting elected because the cutting
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back on population growth is the a number one thing you can do to help this country at the moment
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uh on all levels uh so but the green party is a dead lost cause that i just resigned a couple of
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weeks ago uh so anyway you you've written about this this concept that that aging is not necessarily
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a bad thing it's just what happens in in countries and communities and that the solution of course is
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not to just keep importing people to solve that problem explain that a little bit more because that's
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the argument that we are fed by people in charge that we have to solve our demographic problem and
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the only way we can do it is through immigration you argue that that's not the solution why well i
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thought this argument was over uh earlier in the century uh when jason kenny's paper came out and
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basically said a report to him said uh you know aging uh immigration won't solve aging but there's no
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need to solve aging because it's inevitable the population uh demographic transition started in the 1700s
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people started to have fewer kids and they started to live longer and so now it's uh it's happening that
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where populations are starting to stabilize and that means inherently that people are the percentage of
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old people is going to be higher that's a permanent uh case if you want to keep the demographic profile
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of the 1950s going on into the future you're going to have to grow at an increasingly rapid rate forever
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and nobody's proposing that i i mean you can say oh we won't have that problem if we keep up with mass
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immigration and we get to 100 million well at 100 million you will have that problem if you try and
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stabilize you're going to have to go to 700 million uh in another a couple of hundred years so it it just
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doesn't work and we should there are a lot of benefits to aging first of all old guys like me
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we don't use up as many resources we've got the infrastructure we don't have to buy new stuff we don't
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have our egos as much attached to the cars we drive or whatever and we just energy demand resource demand is
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going to go down and also the value of young people is going to increase because they're going to be
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fewer of them so they will be more valuable their wage rates are going to go up we're going to invest
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to get their productivity up so and housing is going to become more affordable plus no society is a society
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is far less likely to squander its young men in a in a war particularly a foreign war if there they be they
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are such a valuable commodity as they will be in an aged in a an aging society so do you think that
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there's any justification to use data like gdp to justify whether or not a country is doing well
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it's something you've written about that you know everybody who's involved in this growth agenda
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always fixates on gdp you have an economics background why why do you say that that's that's just not worth
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considering or not worth you know using as a barometer the gdp it was a great system uh it it
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outlines the uh uh the the makeup and the the size of the uh commercial economy it was created uh to be
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the basis for an equitable tax system in an increasingly uh complex economy and the people who
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created it said it should never be used as a measure of welfare it should not be used as a measure
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as a tool to define national policies but in fact it has become that because the money economy
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has sort of overridden the real economy and the money economy loves inflation it loves cash flow and
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people have are accumulating immense wealth without producing it uh holding up gdp as their banner but
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it's a completely false god it's it's not uh it's a cash flow for any accountants out there or any business
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owners it is not an accounting system it is simply cash flow right do you think the the solution to this
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can come from politics do you think politicians will eventually come around to this if there's
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enough public support behind it or do you think that the solution needs to simply just uh be besides
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politics it needs to be involved with with local communities pushing back um and kind of organizing
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at a ground level well i've been to two meetings locally uh in uh here in uh western nova scotia southern
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nova scotia and uh one was liberal and one was grassroots populist same theme the people that
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showed up same theme uh and you could hardly believe it was a liberal meeting uh you know uh it it's all
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the same complaint and everybody sees the same problem but it just hasn't translated to a leader who's
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going to stand up and say you know we have to change we have to do this and this um the uh century
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initiative uh the people they represent uh the control that they have in the media these people
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are very good at what they do uh and they're not going to give up uh their cash cow uh they know how
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to control things they know the terms they know the means and uh you know they've got other politicians
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lined up uh i don't i don't know what's going to happen mind you trump happened and who would have
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thought that someone like trump could ever become president of the united states but uh it uh it
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happened and uh that was on the riding on the anger of uh a huge proportion of the society right
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absolutely well i think that the work you're doing and the the kind of the kind of voice that you're
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adding to this conversation is extremely important uh john where can our audience find your your work
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and where can they connect with canadians for sustainable society well website is sustainable
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society.com i've written a couple of books the renewable energy transition realities for canada in
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the world and second one is a little bit more arcane but basically the website is the place to go and
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uh you know we need to i think it's got a lot of good information that people can use to bolster
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their arguments we've broken it down so that people can can use it pick it apart and use it on all
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kinds of different topics and hopefully they will and start talking to their politicians and demand that
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the politicians talk back to them absolutely and a link to sustain canadians for a sustainable society you
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can find in the description of this video if you're watching on youtube facebook or rumble
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mr john meyer thank you so much for joining us okay thanks it's been a pleasure