Juno News - June 04, 2024


The environmental case against mass immigration


Episode Stats

Length

22 minutes

Words per Minute

158.48032

Word Count

3,618

Sentence Count

2

Hate Speech Sentences

7


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 have you ever stopped to consider what kind of impact uncontrolled mass immigration has on the
00:00:08.880 environment or what happens to all of the farmland that has to be paved over to make way for millions
00:00:13.760 of people every single year you can't get that farmland back you can't get forests back that
00:00:18.640 have to be completely bulldozed over to make way for sprawling subdivisions let me just give you a
00:00:23.840 statistic to better clear up what i'm talking about here every day canada is losing over 300 acres
00:00:29.760 of farmland remember that land is never coming back and only about seven percent of canada's land
00:00:35.680 is even arable so yes this is a major crisis and mass immigration is to blame but who is behind this
00:00:42.880 our save the planet prime minister justin trudeau is the man responsible for bringing in millions of
00:00:49.120 people a year into this country millions more than previous prime ministers so to make the case that
00:00:55.040 someone who is responsible for this rapid growth in population is also an environmentalist doesn't
00:01:01.200 seem to jive with the facts does it well our next guest is someone who has been consistently laying
00:01:05.920 out the environmentalists case against mass immigration and that is what we intend to explore
00:01:11.920 right now well joining us now on the show is a commentator conservationist and outspoken
00:01:17.120 critic of mass immigration as well as the president for canadians for a sustainable society john mayer john
00:01:24.720 thank you so much for joining us yes glad to be here so john why don't we just begin by having
00:01:30.880 you lay out the case lay out the environmentalist's case against mass immigration it's not something i
00:01:36.240 don't think the canadian audience gets to hear very much well basically i i mean if you're going to
00:01:43.120 achieve sustainability on this planet uh you have we have to stop consumption we have to stop the
00:01:49.280 consumption uh growth and there are two ways of doing that two necessary ways one we have to use less
00:01:54.960 stuff we have to use less energy and we can't have any more people using the same amount of stuff we
00:02:03.360 have now so we have to reduce the load on on the planet canada is a very energy intensive resource
00:02:13.440 intensive country in which to live it's extreme climate the distances are extreme and uh de facto
00:02:21.760 we will end up using more energy than someone who lives in guadalajara mexico we have to have uh
00:02:29.600 better built better insulated uh houses they have to have heating and uh we have to get our food
00:02:37.120 a fair amount of our food from afar uh it's just uh uh unfortunately uh very uh very energy intensive
00:02:46.080 and this has all been made possible by the immense uh reserves of fossil fuels we've exploited uh over
00:02:52.880 the last uh century a couple of centuries but oil in particular since the 1950s uh has really driven
00:02:59.680 the ability of us to go anywhere do anything that world is coming to an end uh for two reasons one is
00:03:06.880 the availability of oil it's going to become more expensive as the reserves become less rich and
00:03:14.000 the other is the climate issue where effectively we're setting the planet off into an area that it
00:03:21.120 hasn't been before in human existence over the last three million years so bringing people into canada
00:03:29.360 uh both for canadian rates of uh of uh emissions and for global rates is a disaster because the
00:03:37.760 the uh carbon emissions of the immigrant stream to canada uh quadruples when they arrive in canada so bad
00:03:49.360 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
00:03:57.360 social sense either i think you'll find immigration policy uh has managed to evade uh any uh social
00:04:06.640 economic and uh environmental impact studies that's uh so it it it's a policy that needs to be reviewed
00:04:18.000 well i find it all interesting because trudeau of course has touted himself as a major environmentalist
00:04:23.520 he's very proud of the work that he's done on trying to save the climate but of course he has also
00:04:28.880 been in charge during this rapid uh mass immigration experiment into our country so i feel like the
00:04:35.680 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
00:04:42.960 as relevant as what donald trump says i i mean virtually everything comes out of their mouths but it is
00:04:48.880 interesting that donald trump uh mr uh uh climate change is a chinese plot actually outperformed his
00:04:58.640 his america uh for three years actually outperformed canada in terms of carbon emissions our uh carbon
00:05:07.120 emissions grew more rapidly under trudeau uh than uh mr trump's did uh uh in his term of office now there's
00:05:16.000 reasons for that but uh trudeau like canada has never kept unfortunately canada has never kept
00:05:22.960 its word on on any climate uh agreement uh we were of the kyoto uh uh signees i think there were 58
00:05:32.480 uh nations which signed on to that canada was the worst uh second worst performer so we were number 57
00:05:40.080 instead of having our emissions go down by six percent they went up by 19 percent and that's two
00:05:48.480 reasons one was the oil sands which everybody knows about the big bad oil sands and they are dirty
00:05:54.800 but adding i think was six or seven million people over the period of the kyoto accord time frame
00:06:03.920 uh that contributed more uh in emissions than the oil sands did one one stat that i heard john which
00:06:12.880 was really alarming when i was doing some research on this show and and for other projects was that
00:06:18.320 canada is losing over 300 acres of farmland a day due to primarily this massive growth in our population
00:06:26.880 am i right about that because that that just seems unbelievable
00:06:30.720 yeah it is unbelievable but it's uh i i believe that is the figure and it's been increasing
00:06:37.600 and i mean anyone who's traveled outside of any of our major metropolitan areas knows that
00:06:43.520 but there's also the other factor the smaller centers the small towns who pride themselves on being
00:06:50.160 small and being a viable community they are surrounded by farmland and forest and these
00:06:58.480 uh and uh these areas uh around those small centers are just being built up uh you know you don't have
00:07:04.720 to have kilometer after kilometer of subdivision uh to realize that uh you're losing a lot of farmland
00:07:12.320 and and whether it's uh southern ontario central ontario where the loss is mostly forest uh or out on
00:07:21.520 the prairie we're losing farmland all over the place and it's not just the big centers it's most apparent
00:07:28.240 there but it's not just the big centers when you were bringing up you know the kyoto protocols and
00:07:34.160 canada's climate commitments and targets i don't want to put you in a political box but it does sound
00:07:39.200 to be more of a it seems to be more of a liberal argument you're making my question for you john is
00:07:44.560 where is the left on this issue if they if they actually care about the climate the same way that it
00:07:49.840 appears you do why does the left not seem to want to address immigration at all uh well please don't
00:07:56.400 call me a liberal i mean i've been called everything else but i've never really qualified as a as a
00:08:01.600 liberal uh i like to think that i uh i understand what's going on and i i deal in real physical units
00:08:08.720 and i don't like to put political um uh blocks on on any particular position i mean we're looking for
00:08:18.720 better numbers and we're not getting better numbers we aren't telling the whole story uh we aren't going
00:08:24.080 through all the impacts of the things we're doing whether it's the oil sands or population growth
00:08:28.800 i i mean uh the uh the century initiative wants to triple our population where then that's what we're
00:08:34.720 on track to do that's what we've been on track for the last 30 years to do triple our population
00:08:39.600 there's no public support for that and uh you know it it doesn't i i don't think even liberals support
00:08:45.920 that uh i think the uh what is it the i think canadians are five or six to one against uh tripling
00:08:52.400 our population and so you're cutting across all kinds of uh political spectrums so we need good
00:08:59.200 numbers we need accountable government and we need a democratic system that works and uh we don't have
00:09:04.880 that at the moment uh i'm very sorry to say right no i would completely agree i was going to bring up
00:09:10.400 the century initiative it's something we've talked about on this show before is the century initiative
00:09:15.760 behind this are they are they a major lobbying force is this also part of what developers want
00:09:22.000 who do you think is behind what we're seeing here and the loss of our prime agricultural land
00:09:26.800 obviously through such massive growth the fix is in for has been in for 50 years the the people who
00:09:34.320 wanted this to happen uh banks developers etc uh i i mean effectively uh we lost control of our media
00:09:43.120 corporations uh they they knew this was going to be unpopular uh you know canadians have never wanted
00:09:50.800 since the 50s they haven't wanted more people in the country and immigration uh has pumped it up by
00:09:57.200 about 13 million i i think uh and so it it's been a slow process of gaining control and gaining control of
00:10:08.240 the narrative uh where growth is everything uh growth is a benefit uh we're talking about the economy we're
00:10:15.600 talking about toronto we're talking about canada uh be a big nation be an important nation and left out of
00:10:23.280 all this is any kind of uh value placed on the people per capita income equality affordable housing quality of life
00:10:31.920 access to nature any of these things that never gets discussed and it's because these people have
00:10:37.600 taken control they're the biggest donors to politicians they have controlling interest in the media
00:10:46.320 and it's uh although the media tends to be corporate media tends to be growth oriented
00:10:52.000 uh because they uh uh the advertising revenue from big things like houses and cars uh vastly exceeds bob's kitchen
00:11:04.000 renovation uh kind of sources so but anyway it's been a very conscious policy and a highly rigged policy
00:11:12.320 going back to the century initiative i saw that you wrote a letter to mps who were invited to a century initiative event
00:11:18.000 event asking them to reconsider their participation did you get any did you get anywhere anywhere with
00:11:24.640 that with those letters i sent that letter actually not to mps it was to one official from a uh a city in
00:11:33.120 in nova scotia i see i have not received their reply i will be following up i also sent that virtually exact
00:11:42.000 same letter to uh ontario nature who should be standing up for nature and they had published a uh an op-ed
00:11:53.360 basically saying don't blame immigrants for all these various impacts and we're not blaming immigrants
00:11:59.200 we're blaming a very corrupt immigration system and the response from them i just got it this morning was
00:12:08.560 we don't have space to accommodate a rebuttal but we are now going to be putting on our website this letter
00:12:16.800 so that it can be downloaded modified to the individual's uh taste and sent to their mps and
00:12:23.120 anybody if anyone cares to do that uh please send us copies of the mps responses and mps or your mayor or
00:12:33.200 mpp whatever uh please send us copies of the responses and we'll see what uh what is being
00:12:39.760 said but i suspect there won't be responses because i don't think they can absorb that message that
00:12:45.680 growth won't solve all problems it seems like you're laying out the case that the canadian canadian
00:12:51.760 leadership at both the provincial federal and at a media level have sold out the people for
00:12:57.840 corporations yeah well absolutely and i mean they've created this juggernaut where mentioning immigration
00:13:08.160 is is effectively death if you're a political party and and you mention that we should cut back on
00:13:14.480 immigration for whatever reason i think a you'll be attacked maybe you'll be attacked but b you'll
00:13:22.400 disappear off the uh the the pages uh you you won't be covered and you're asking me about political
00:13:29.520 orientation i mean i i i guess i would put myself down as i i've always been green uh i would put myself
00:13:39.040 down as a techno populist uh i think we should uh have all of these uh uh means of the uh determining uh
00:13:47.600 uh welfare of the country uh welfare of the people our goals and they should be oriented uh you know
00:13:55.360 on on the welfare of people uh and uh it had better damn well better be green right and so i'm guessing
00:14:04.160 then john your optimism that a a change in federal government will result in a in a change on immigration
00:14:11.120 policy that will be more geared towards conserving our country is not high no uh
00:14:17.440 well if you look at the the people i mean i talk uh with all kinds of biophysicists and uh you know
00:14:24.240 naturalists and this kind of thing and climatologists and no one sees a way out of this i i you've probably
00:14:30.880 read the latest climate uh where it's now becoming official officially able to discuss that they're uh
00:14:38.640 predicting uh most climatologists are putting uh the target uh where we will end up at two and a half to
00:14:46.960 three and a half degrees that's that's lethal and so everybody's sort of throwing their hands up in
00:14:53.680 the air but in terms of politically there's just no no savior on the horizon uh the uh people's party
00:15:02.480 max bernier he's the only one talking specifically about it and uh great for him you know he's got the
00:15:09.760 the guts to do it uh but uh his uh his environmental policies would make me throw up however i would
00:15:18.080 vote for him uh if uh i thought he'd i thought he had a chance of getting elected because the cutting
00:15:25.760 back on population growth is the a number one thing you can do to help this country at the moment
00:15:30.720 uh on all levels uh so but the green party is a dead lost cause that i just resigned a couple of
00:15:38.720 weeks ago uh so anyway you you've written about this this concept that that aging is not necessarily
00:15:48.080 a bad thing it's just what happens in in countries and communities and that the solution of course is
00:15:53.760 not to just keep importing people to solve that problem explain that a little bit more because that's
00:15:59.120 the argument that we are fed by people in charge that we have to solve our demographic problem and
00:16:04.640 the only way we can do it is through immigration you argue that that's not the solution why well i
00:16:10.640 thought this argument was over uh earlier in the century uh when jason kenny's paper came out and
00:16:16.560 basically said a report to him said uh you know aging uh immigration won't solve aging but there's no
00:16:25.520 need to solve aging because it's inevitable the population uh demographic transition started in the 1700s
00:16:36.320 people started to have fewer kids and they started to live longer and so now it's uh it's happening that
00:16:43.680 where populations are starting to stabilize and that means inherently that people are the percentage of
00:16:51.680 old people is going to be higher that's a permanent uh case if you want to keep the demographic profile
00:16:58.960 of the 1950s going on into the future you're going to have to grow at an increasingly rapid rate forever
00:17:06.240 and nobody's proposing that i i mean you can say oh we won't have that problem if we keep up with mass
00:17:13.040 immigration and we get to 100 million well at 100 million you will have that problem if you try and
00:17:18.480 stabilize you're going to have to go to 700 million uh in another a couple of hundred years so it it just
00:17:24.960 doesn't work and we should there are a lot of benefits to aging first of all old guys like me
00:17:31.680 we don't use up as many resources we've got the infrastructure we don't have to buy new stuff we don't
00:17:38.080 have our egos as much attached to the cars we drive or whatever and we just energy demand resource demand is
00:17:47.920 going to go down and also the value of young people is going to increase because they're going to be
00:17:54.560 fewer of them so they will be more valuable their wage rates are going to go up we're going to invest
00:18:00.000 to get their productivity up so and housing is going to become more affordable plus no society is a society
00:18:08.960 is far less likely to squander its young men in a in a war particularly a foreign war if there they be they
00:18:17.040 are such a valuable commodity as they will be in an aged in a an aging society so do you think that
00:18:25.840 there's any justification to use data like gdp to justify whether or not a country is doing well
00:18:33.200 it's something you've written about that you know everybody who's involved in this growth agenda
00:18:37.600 always fixates on gdp you have an economics background why why do you say that that's that's just not worth
00:18:43.920 considering or not worth you know using as a barometer the gdp it was a great system uh it it
00:18:50.080 outlines the uh uh the the makeup and the the size of the uh commercial economy it was created uh to be
00:19:00.640 the basis for an equitable tax system in an increasingly uh complex economy and the people who
00:19:07.120 created it said it should never be used as a measure of welfare it should not be used as a measure
00:19:14.160 as a tool to define national policies but in fact it has become that because the money economy
00:19:23.680 has sort of overridden the real economy and the money economy loves inflation it loves cash flow and
00:19:33.760 people have are accumulating immense wealth without producing it uh holding up gdp as their banner but
00:19:41.120 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
00:19:48.080 owners it is not an accounting system it is simply cash flow right do you think the the solution to this
00:19:58.080 can come from politics do you think politicians will eventually come around to this if there's
00:20:03.200 enough public support behind it or do you think that the solution needs to simply just uh be besides
00:20:08.560 politics it needs to be involved with with local communities pushing back um and kind of organizing
00:20:14.400 at a ground level well i've been to two meetings locally uh in uh here in uh western nova scotia southern
00:20:22.880 nova scotia and uh one was liberal and one was grassroots populist same theme the people that
00:20:30.000 showed up same theme uh and you could hardly believe it was a liberal meeting uh you know uh it it's all
00:20:37.680 the same complaint and everybody sees the same problem but it just hasn't translated to a leader who's
00:20:44.240 going to stand up and say you know we have to change we have to do this and this um the uh century
00:20:51.680 initiative uh the people they represent uh the control that they have in the media these people
00:20:56.800 are very good at what they do uh and they're not going to give up uh their cash cow uh they know how
00:21:03.280 to control things they know the terms they know the means and uh you know they've got other politicians
00:21:08.880 lined up uh i don't i don't know what's going to happen mind you trump happened and who would have
00:21:14.960 thought that someone like trump could ever become president of the united states but uh it uh it
00:21:22.000 happened and uh that was on the riding on the anger of uh a huge proportion of the society right
00:21:30.560 absolutely well i think that the work you're doing and the the kind of the kind of voice that you're
00:21:34.560 adding to this conversation is extremely important uh john where can our audience find your your work
00:21:39.840 and where can they connect with canadians for sustainable society well website is sustainable
00:21:46.320 society.com i've written a couple of books the renewable energy transition realities for canada in
00:21:56.320 the world and second one is a little bit more arcane but basically the website is the place to go and
00:22:06.880 uh you know we need to i think it's got a lot of good information that people can use to bolster
00:22:12.080 their arguments we've broken it down so that people can can use it pick it apart and use it on all
00:22:17.440 kinds of different topics and hopefully they will and start talking to their politicians and demand that
00:22:26.480 the politicians talk back to them absolutely and a link to sustain canadians for a sustainable society you
00:22:33.840 can find in the description of this video if you're watching on youtube facebook or rumble
00:22:38.400 mr john meyer thank you so much for joining us okay thanks it's been a pleasure