The Candice Malcolm Show - CBC promotes a childless life

00:00:00.000 The CBC attempted to find out why Canadians are having fewer kids, and they failed miserably.

00:00:06.600 It's Fake News Friday, I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

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00:00:40.800 Okay, so if you saw the interview that I did with Erin Woodrick on Tuesday, we talked about immigration and everything that's wrong with Canada in terms of our broken immigration system.

00:00:50.460 The very end of the interview, we got into what I think is one of the most important and pressing issues of our time, which is the real reason why we talk about why we have an immigration system, because Canada has a below-replacement birth rate, fertility rate, and that fertility rate is dropping at an alarming rate.

00:01:08.920 I think it's the biggest issue facing our country.

00:01:11.700 Even Elon Musk recently said that he believes that it is the biggest issue facing our civilization.

00:01:17.380 Let's play that clip.

00:01:18.140 What the world will face in 20 years is population collapse.

00:01:22.980 Collapse.

00:01:23.840 I want to emphasize this.

00:01:25.160 The biggest issue in 20 years will be population collapse.

00:01:30.220 Not explosion, collapse.

00:01:34.560 It's very easy to see what the world will look like in 20 years, because humans have a 20-year boot sequence.

00:01:40.760 So like you said, okay, well, who was born last year?

00:01:43.200 Okay, now you know what the world looked like in 20 years.

00:01:44.920 That's exactly right.

00:01:46.080 And good for Elon Musk for raising this issue.

00:01:48.400 That was back in 2022.

00:01:49.740 He's made similar comments over and over.

00:01:51.980 You know, we hear a lot from the climate alarmists that the world is overpopulated and that climate change is going to be this, like, civilization-destroying event.

00:01:59.880 Elon Musk sees it the complete opposite, that we're not replacing our populations.

00:02:04.120 You can look at the demographics.

00:02:05.460 So he's raising the alarm bell in a very public way.

00:02:08.340 Demographers and researchers and sort of conservative writers and thinkers have been talking about this issue for a very, very long time.

00:02:15.920 And so I was very pleased to see that the CBC covered it.

00:02:19.680 The CBC had a documentary or a segment on one of their news shows that ended up on YouTube.

00:02:25.620 It was called The Cost of Having Kids, Why Fewer People Are Planning to Have Kids, and a program called About That with Andrew Chang, which aired on February 28th.

00:02:33.800 And given my conversation with Erin Lee Woodrick, I thought, hey, this is great.

00:02:37.220 The CBC is finally covering this issue.

00:02:39.320 All Canadians need to be aware of it.

00:02:40.820 We need to be talking about it.

00:02:41.580 We need to be thinking about how to solve this issue.

00:02:44.960 And so you can imagine my surprise when I watch this clip from the CBC.

00:02:48.260 It's about 10 minutes.

00:02:49.320 And basically, the CBC managed to get every aspect of this issue wrong.

00:02:53.960 Not only that, they produced a very cheap, very lazy, very sort of low-quality, low-budget attempt to answer this question.

00:03:02.760 So I'm going to play you parts of this documentary or part of this segment today.

00:03:06.040 And just point out all the very many ways that the CBC gets it wrong.

00:03:11.400 Look, we're talking about an organization that gets $1.4 billion from the taxpayers every year.

00:03:16.440 And this is the best that they can come up with.

00:03:18.600 This shoddy piece of journalism that doesn't even scrape the surface when it comes to what I believe is the most important issue facing Canadians and facing the future of our country.

00:03:28.560 So let's go through it now.

00:03:29.740 I want to play this segment it's with, again, a journalist named Andrew Chang,

00:03:35.200 where he explores supposedly the main reasons why people in Canada are not having kids.

00:03:40.120 So let's play this clip.

00:03:41.300 Do you want kids?

00:03:42.940 That's a pretty sensitive question, right, for a lot of people.

00:03:45.660 And maybe now more than ever.

00:03:48.420 Do I really want this?

00:03:50.140 Because kids are the ultimate decision.

00:03:52.420 There's a no-return policy on that.

00:03:54.500 Why is it so permanent?

00:03:55.860 How am I supposed to make that decision?

00:03:59.680 In the U.S.

00:04:00.560 Right there.

00:04:01.940 First, right off the bat, we have some TikTokers. 1.00

00:04:04.660 So rather than going and interviewing Canadians to find out why Canadian young women aren't just choosing to have kids, 0.79

00:04:09.620 they just pull these TikTok videos.

00:04:11.460 And we'll see there's a trend throughout this clip that these are not even Canadian people, right?

00:04:15.660 These are influencers on TikTok.

00:04:17.460 In TikTok, we looked into them.

00:04:19.780 Those are both Americans, those two women that we saw both there, both American TikTokers, 1.00

00:04:24.260 young ladies talking about whether or not they want to have kids.

00:04:26.540 Okay, let's resume.

00:04:28.420 Survey suggests only about half of people between the ages of 18 and 34 say, yes, I want to be a parent.

00:04:36.660 Now, maybe that number alone isn't shocking, but compared to 2003,

00:04:41.160 when 86% of Americans in that age group said they wanted kids.

00:04:45.480 Okay, pause it there.

00:04:46.320 Okay, so first of all, this is the CBC.

00:04:49.480 We pay them $1.4 billion to do Canadian research and tell Canadian stories.

00:04:53.440 Right off the bat, we have two American TikTokers. 1.00

00:04:55.800 The CBC is presenting American data.

00:04:57.520 They're looking at a Pew Research study and a Gallup Research study.

00:05:00.080 So my question is, why can't you find the Canadian equivalent?

00:05:02.360 Why don't you show Canadian numbers?

00:05:03.860 This is a Canadian segment for the Canadian news.

00:05:06.160 It's the CBC, for goodness sake.

00:05:07.680 You get $1.4 billion a year to report Canadian stories.

00:05:10.520 And yet here you are, lazily taking TikToks from the internet to show what two American women believe is the problem. 0.96

00:05:19.060 And then you're showing this data.

00:05:20.600 And we're not even comparing apples to apples.

00:05:22.180 It seems alarming at first glance, 51% versus 86%.

00:05:26.140 You read the five print.

00:05:27.700 And the studies are different, right?

00:05:29.420 There's different age groups.

00:05:30.840 So on the left, the 2024 one is asking Americans aged 18 to 34.

00:05:36.000 On the right, 18 to 40.

00:05:39.000 One is a research study.

00:05:40.840 The other one is Gallup.

00:05:43.200 And you don't even know what the question is.

00:05:45.320 What exactly is the question?

00:05:46.360 And who is it to?

00:05:47.380 Are you asking both men and women?

00:05:49.340 Or are you asking both?

00:05:50.280 Because there's going to be a difference.

00:05:51.400 So I think this is pretty shoddy journalism to present this as just like a huge monumental

00:05:56.820 title shift in the past 20 years when, you know, the studies that I've looked at don't show this.

00:06:03.340 And just a further point.

00:06:04.360 So the Gallup poll from 2003, rather than following up with another Gallup poll, they follow up with a Pew Research poll, which is inexplicable.

00:06:12.840 When you look up the data in the updated Gallup poll from 2023, it actually shows the opposite of what the CBC is trying to present here.

00:06:21.720 So I pull up this article from Gallup, and it says that Americans' preference for larger families, the highest since 1971.

00:06:29.320 Again, this is a follow-up to that 2001 study, the same study.

00:06:32.420 This is released in 2023, and it says in this article that 47% think that one or two child is ideal.

00:06:40.440 That includes 44%, say two children is ideal.

00:06:44.280 Okay?

00:06:44.940 Even more, 45% of U.S. adults say that three or more children is the ideal family size.

00:06:51.320 Just 2% of Americans, 2%, think the ideal family includes no children at all.

00:06:57.120 And it notes that Black families, religious families, and younger adults favor larger families.

00:07:03.160 That is what the Gallup report from 2023, the latest result, shows.

00:07:07.220 So rather than showing apples to apples the Gallup poll versus the Gallup poll, the CBC went and showed a Pew Research poll that had a different criteria that wasn't the same as what they were showing that somehow found a totally different conclusion.

00:07:18.960 Rather than 2% of adults saying they don't want any kids, the CBC is presenting it that 49% of American adults don't want kids, which is, from the research that I looked at, just completely not true.

00:07:31.300 So CBC not starting out very good with this segment.

00:07:34.720 Let's resume.

00:07:36.300 Pretty good shift over just a couple of decades.

00:07:38.720 And in Canada, it's not all that different.

00:07:42.400 When young adults here were asked in a survey a couple of years ago how many kids they planned on having, 34% said none.

00:07:51.900 But a similar question in 2001, only around 7% of Canadians in the same age group said the same thing.

00:07:59.000 Okay, pause for a second there.

00:08:00.180 So when you see the numbers side by side, these are not, again, he said the same age group, but it's not the same age group because one of them was asking the Canadians age 15 to 49, and that's where you get 75% saying that they don't want kids.

00:08:15.160 Sorry, 65% saying they don't want kids.

00:08:16.820 The 2001 study was asking adults, Canadian adults, between 20 and 34.

00:08:22.040 So that's a different age group.

00:08:23.120 You're asking a 15-year-old, do you want kids?

00:08:24.940 You're going to get a different answer than if you ask a 30-year-old.

00:08:27.840 And so, again, CBC is doing, like, this weird kind of cherry-picking of data to try to make the problem seem like the real issue here is that people just don't want kids.

00:08:38.780 Whereas, again, there's other research and other data that shows that that's not the case.

00:08:42.520 It obviously depends on when in a person's life you ask them, but asking a 15-year-old if they want kids, you're not going to get a realistic idea of whether that person actually does want kids until they're a little bit older.

00:08:53.080 So not a great study.

00:08:54.320 And also, this isn't a survey.

00:08:55.540 This isn't a study.

00:08:56.200 This is actually census data, because if you look at the survey size, it's saying that they talked to 16 million Canadians, which is not a survey.

00:09:03.700 This is just what people write down in the census.

00:09:06.420 Okay, let's keep that going.

00:09:07.700 It's not entirely clear why it's taking people longer and longer, but the dating world has changed a lot over the past couple of decades.

00:09:17.340 Think about this. You can go on three dates with someone and have an amazing time and then never hear from them again.

00:09:23.980 A lot of the times, apps lead us to undervalue people that we'd actually like in real life and overvalue people we wouldn't give a second thought to.

00:09:31.520 Like, I know people that have met the love of their life on these apps, but also like the overwhelming sentiment toward these apps is they don't work.

00:09:39.120 A few years ago, Pew asked those who were single and looking to rate how their dating life was going.

00:09:45.360 75% said it's been very or somewhat difficult to find a partner in the past year because they had trouble approaching people, trouble finding someone who wants the same type of relationship, or just finding someone who meets their expectations.

00:10:00.960 About half of those respondents also agreed that dating has become more difficult over the past decade.

00:10:08.500 Okay, let's just pause it here. I think that it's an interesting perspective, and yes, I think part of the reason why our fertility rate's falling is because people are waiting longer and longer.

00:10:18.720 The CPC kind of just glosses over why and pretends it's entirely because people just can't find the right partner.

00:10:24.620 In our society, young women are told to get educated, get a career, become self-sufficient, become financially independent. 0.90

00:10:30.120 You don't need a man. And then all of a sudden they're wondering like, well, hey, why aren't women and men coupling up and having kids?

00:10:35.880 It's like, well, because all of society's messages are pushing women in one direction away from wanting to get married and wanting to have children. 1.00

00:10:42.900 And then surprise, surprise, many of them are not.

00:10:46.060 And then we have this weird, very superficial analysis about how dating apps are really hard and some cherry-picked data, again, about how people who are dating on dating apps don't like it.

00:10:55.680 It's like, you know, maybe you're asking the wrong people.

00:10:58.700 Maybe these dating apps aren't the right way to find a partner.

00:11:01.900 Maybe the best way is still, you know, people finding partners and getting married through their community, people you meet in school, people you meet at work, people that you know, friends of friends.

00:11:10.540 I mean, that's the best way to meet someone, someone who comes from a similar background, shares the same values, shares the same goals in life, rather than, you know, the screen-obsessed society where everything we do is online.

00:11:21.620 Therefore, when it comes to finding a mate, you have to go online.

00:11:24.260 Like, rather than criticizing the entire framework of it, the CBC kind of just, again, does a superficial gloss-over job where they just say, like, oh, you know, it's harder than it was 10 years ago.

00:11:36.260 Again, if you're dating now, you probably weren't dating 10 years ago.

00:11:39.780 Like, most people don't date for 10 years.

00:11:41.880 Most of the people who are dating and having a hard time finding someone is because they're, like, you know, they're 25 and they're on an app.

00:11:47.340 They weren't dating 10 years ago.

00:11:49.000 They were 15 years old.

00:11:49.780 So, they don't really know, by comparison, what it was like.

00:11:53.540 And, again, not really getting into very deep analysis here.

00:11:57.280 Okay, let's keep playing.

00:12:02.840 Another reason on that list of reasons not to see kids in one's future was financial.

00:12:09.280 Children are expensive.

00:12:10.980 And they're even more expensive than industrialized nations.

00:12:13.960 In Canada, a recent report tried to put a number on just how expensive.

00:12:18.500 So, let's take a middle-income, two-parent, two-child household, just as an example, since Stats Canada found that was the most common dynamic.

00:12:27.600 Their report estimates a family in that category can expect to pay an average of $750,000, raising those two kids from birth to age 22.

00:12:38.580 So, that's if you add up food, clothes, education, childcare, transportation, everything.

00:12:45.100 Even accounting for the extra you'd pay for a bigger home.

00:12:48.200 Okay, just stop it right there.

00:12:49.880 Okay, you hear this kind of claim a lot, so I want to go through it in a bit of detail.

00:12:53.740 The CBC claims that it costs $750,000 to raise kids.

00:12:58.200 You kind of hear these big, huge numbers thrown around a lot in the media.

00:13:00.940 Notice that the CBC doesn't give you a source at all.

00:13:03.320 They don't tell you where this data comes from.

00:13:04.820 They don't show you how it's broken down.

00:13:06.440 Like, what is the monthly breakdown?

00:13:08.000 What are you talking about in terms of, like, childcare costs and a bigger house and more cars?

00:13:13.720 Like, is that universal?

00:13:15.680 Is that, like, specifically focused on someone who is, say, like, low-income and relies on daycare and has to have, like, full-time care for their child from the time they're, like, six months or something like that?

00:13:25.360 Because that's not the normal experience.

00:13:26.760 And you can literally do this with anything if you take the cost of something over 22 years, right?

00:13:32.480 So just as an example, I looked up, like, what is the cost of owning a car in Canada?

00:13:37.280 Well, according to an article that I found in the Toronto Star, it says that the annual cost of operating a car each year, so this includes registration, gas, maintenance, and, like, winter tires, wear and tear on the car,

00:13:50.920 it breaks down to approximately $1,387 per month, which would make it $16,644 a year to own a car.

00:14:01.900 If you take on top of that the cost of actually buying the car, so the average Canadian owns a used car that's worth about $39,000,

00:14:09.680 so we're talking about an $8,000 down payment and a loan payment of about $31,000,

00:14:15.840 so somewhere around $1,000 a month in car payments,

00:14:20.020 so that would get us to $13,000 a year.

00:14:23.580 So if you add that together, folks, and you want to find out how much it would cost to own that car over a 22-year period,

00:14:29.960 you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars, probably somewhere around $500,000 or $600,000 just to own a used car.

00:14:37.080 But you don't think of a used car in terms of a 22-year experience or driving a car in terms of 22-year experience.

00:14:43.600 You could do this with the cost of new clothes every year, the cost of vacations, the cost of subscriptions on your phone,

00:14:48.620 the cost of going out for dinner or your morning coffee.

00:14:51.440 You add it up over time.

00:14:52.740 The number seems really shocking.

00:14:54.540 And I think the reason that left-wing journalists and media throw this big, huge number around is to scare people.

00:15:00.960 It's a scare tactic designed to make you not want to have kids,

00:15:04.540 designed to make you think that it's just so expensive that you cannot do it.

00:15:09.280 The reality is that, yeah, of course, there's costs associated with having kids.

00:15:12.340 I know I have three kids and one on the way.

00:15:15.160 And so you have to buy diapers.

00:15:16.480 You have to buy new clothes.

00:15:17.700 The reality is you can get a lot of this stuff used.

00:15:19.940 You can get a lot of this stuff for free off of like a Facebook group or a mom group

00:15:23.300 because whenever there's new kids, it's like other people's kids are growing older

00:15:27.400 and they have all this stuff that they can give to you.

00:15:30.260 It doesn't have to be incredibly expensive.

00:15:32.220 You don't have to use formula.

00:15:33.620 You can nurse your child.

00:15:34.740 You don't have to buy diapers.

00:15:35.860 You can use cloth diapers.

00:15:36.900 Like there's all kinds of ways that you can make it less expensive.

00:15:40.380 There's also all kinds of ways that you can make it even more expensive.

00:15:43.100 If you want to have like the latest top of the line stroller or, you know,

00:15:46.980 brand new designer clothes for kids, like you can do a lot of things to make it really expensive

00:15:51.880 to have kids, but you don't really have to.

00:15:54.060 You can also just rely on your community, rely on your group of friends or your church

00:15:57.560 or, you know, people in your family to help you with a lot of these things.

00:16:01.040 And it doesn't have to be that expensive.

00:16:02.780 So I really cringe and I reject these huge numbers, like $750,000 to have kids.

00:16:08.480 I think it's just totally false.

00:16:09.660 It's the wrong way of thinking about it, wrong way of looking at it.

00:16:11.980 Whenever you see statistics like this thrown around, just know it's propaganda.

00:16:15.580 It's propaganda and fear-mongering designed to make people not want to have kids.

00:16:19.480 Okay, let's resume the video.

00:16:21.660 For bedroom, for child.

00:16:23.060 And when you factor in all those things, you know, just the main cost of feeding, clothing,

00:16:29.340 educating a child is out of reach.

00:16:31.500 And I can't imagine bringing a child.

00:16:34.940 Okay, just stop for a second, because this is just so much of this in this video.

00:16:39.100 It's like we keep seeing these American TikTokers with their superficial analysis. 1.00

00:16:43.120 Now we finally hear from this individual.

00:16:44.920 He sounds like he's from Australia to me.

00:16:47.060 We don't know who he is.

00:16:48.080 Is he like an expert?

00:16:49.100 Is he some kind of an expert in not having kids?

00:16:51.620 I mean, he looks like a pretty young guy to me.

00:16:53.200 And we're told that he's just some guy who doesn't want kids.

00:16:56.880 We Googled this individual's name, Arden Matthews, and he was featured in another CBC story, oddly,

00:17:02.920 on the same topic.

00:17:04.300 We learned that Arden Matthews is 26 years old.

00:17:07.720 He's engaged to their longtime partner.

00:17:10.220 So pardon me, it's not a he, it's a they. 1.00

00:17:13.360 And they, he says that they're not having kids because it's too expensive,

00:17:19.400 even though he has a well-paying job in Vancouver.

00:17:21.000 So again, I have no idea why the CBC chose this person to be the spokesperson for his generation,

00:17:27.400 their generation.

00:17:28.600 When, again, like, who is he?

00:17:31.540 He just, he works in tech.

00:17:32.560 He's like, he's like a guy off the street.

00:17:34.760 And somehow he is representative of all Canadians. 0.94

00:17:38.260 Okay, great, great journalism from the CBC.

00:17:40.760 Let's keep playing here.

00:17:42.780 Well, that I couldn't afford to help thrive.

00:17:45.280 And here's the thing, that study used data from 2014 to 2017.

00:17:51.480 Since then, the cost of pretty much everything has gone up.

00:17:55.140 Thanks to terrible liberal policies, including the printing of money, shutting down our economy

00:18:00.220 during COVID, and uncontrollable inflation.

00:18:04.000 So he kind of just finally got to the point there, brushes over it.

00:18:07.720 Yeah, the cost of living has exploded, basically, since Justin Trudeau got elected.

00:18:12.280 But no analysis, nothing deeper there.

00:18:14.240 Just kind of like a throwaway line.

00:18:15.900 Oh, and by the way, these numbers are old and the new numbers are even worse because of

00:18:19.820 how devastated our economy is now.

00:18:23.120 So again, just glossing over the truth and not really hitting the nail on the head at all.

00:18:28.640 Okay, let's keep playing.

00:18:30.340 Prenatal care, doctor's appointments, the hospital bills, then after the baby's actually born,

00:18:35.540 you have, you know, diapers, food, wipes.

00:18:39.300 Okay, just stop it right there.

00:18:41.240 I don't want to be a dead horse.

00:18:42.860 But this person right here is an American influencer.

00:18:46.280 Her entire TikTok shtick is that she doesn't want kids. 1.00

00:18:49.140 You can look at her profile, child-free, happy, like her whole audience is built around

00:18:54.020 this young woman in Washington, D.C. who just doesn't want kids. 1.00

00:18:57.480 Leave her alone. 1.00

00:18:58.080 It's all about advocating for not having kids.

00:19:01.180 Again, she's American. 0.64

00:19:01.940 And this example that she's giving us about the costs of like health care costs is so

00:19:06.180 irrelevant in Canada.

00:19:07.300 It's like, hello, we have government-funded health care.

00:19:09.480 No one pays out of pocket for this stuff.

00:19:11.520 Even in the United States, they don't pay out of pocket for this kind of stuff.

00:19:15.020 Like when talking about, you know, neonatal care and having an OB and going for your doctor's

00:19:20.620 visits, like it's so irrelevant.

00:19:22.500 Why would the CBC decide to put this clip into this documentary?

00:19:26.020 Because we're talking about Canada.

00:19:27.880 We're talking about the Canadian experience.

00:19:29.880 So it's just blatantly obvious that this is not a Canadian person because she's talking

00:19:34.980 about something that doesn't apply to us in Canada.

00:19:37.080 Okay, let's keep playing.

00:19:38.040 There is an expectation among society and employers, probably more importantly, that if a woman 1.00

00:19:44.820 has children, her job will no longer be her priority. 0.99

00:19:48.100 And this is a measurable cost.

00:19:49.620 We know that women who have children earn less than women who don't. 0.98

00:19:53.440 And one more thing about cost.

00:19:54.360 They come so close.

00:19:55.240 They come so close to talking about the real issue.

00:19:57.300 So here's this woman, I don't know, some sociologist or some economist, feminist lady coming on telling 1.00

00:20:02.540 us that having kids contributes to the wage gap and it's not fair that women don't make 1.00

00:20:08.660 as much or something like that.

00:20:09.580 It's like, yes, that's exactly right.

00:20:11.760 You could have someone who has a very successful, very fulfilling career, something like a lawyer.

00:20:15.600 And then as soon as they have kids, they realize that law is not their top priority more.

00:20:20.500 They don't want to go and sit in an office for 14, 16, 18 hours a day when they have a

00:20:25.600 child because they would much rather spend that time with their child.

00:20:28.980 They would much rather be at home with the child.

00:20:30.920 This is like one of the real issues that we should be talking about.

00:20:33.780 They really just gloss it over and they painted it as like a negative, which is like, oh, and

00:20:38.040 this is why women get paid less. 1.00

00:20:39.740 It's like, yeah, women would, by and large, most women would rather be with their kid. 0.99

00:20:45.100 And even someone who's like hyper successful, hyper oriented that becomes a lawyer and this

00:20:49.460 very successful lawyer, when they have a child, I've seen this in my friend group, I've seen

00:20:53.580 this with friends, with people in my family, even once they become a mother, they realize

00:20:59.100 how important that job is and that nothing can compare to it.

00:21:02.900 Like going back to the law firm, going back to the long hours at your desk, it just doesn't

00:21:07.220 seem appealing at all because you would rather be at home with your child.

00:21:10.640 It's sort of like they're being awakened to the true nature of human beings that women 1.00

00:21:17.280 want to nurture and they have that motherly instinct that really comes out when you have

00:21:22.440 a baby.

00:21:22.740 So CBC came very close to hitting on an important point, but instead of making it, they paint

00:21:28.200 it as a negative and then gloss over it.

00:21:29.960 OK, let's keep playing.

00:21:30.760 Parents ever told you back in my day, we just went outside and climbed trees until it got

00:21:37.480 dark.

00:21:37.900 And meanwhile, you're zipping back and forth between soccer and gymnastics and swimming

00:21:41.800 and piano.

00:21:42.680 If you can even afford that.

00:21:44.200 And don't do those things.

00:21:45.540 This is really simple, right?

00:21:46.720 It's like don't overprogram your child.

00:21:48.500 If you're worried about things being too expensive, then don't enroll them on all those things.

00:21:52.320 Just let them have like a simple carefree childhood where they can run around and play with their

00:21:56.480 friends in their neighborhood.

00:21:57.260 Like that's not a negative thing as this may be saying that parents shouldn't be so uptight

00:22:01.760 about all these extracurricular activities.

00:22:03.800 And I don't know what's the circumstance in everyone's community, but for my son, the

00:22:08.880 afterschool programs at his school that are designed for like further enrichment, like

00:22:13.120 playing sports or being parts of clubs, they're kind of designed so that the kids can stay at

00:22:17.520 school later so that the parents don't have to do the driving around, so the parents don't

00:22:20.980 have to pick them up somewhere and take them somewhere else.

00:22:23.200 They can just stay at the school until 4 or 4.30 doing their sports or doing their

00:22:27.120 activities and then the parents can come pick them up later.

00:22:29.240 So it's like literally the opposite of what they're describing in this CBC video.

00:22:33.140 Okay, let's keep playing.

00:22:34.380 Don't have kids till you can afford them.

00:22:36.300 What does that mean that is so subjective?

00:22:38.680 Afford what?

00:22:39.740 Okay, so first of all, this documentary, this clip is so out of order.

00:22:44.120 Like it's just randomly inserting different opinions about different topics here and there.

00:22:48.500 It's almost hard to keep up with it.

00:22:49.880 It's so schizophrenic.

00:22:50.800 But here we had a woman who said, you know, why is the emphasis so much on whether you

00:22:54.740 can afford children?

00:22:56.320 It's kind of out of place, but this is the first comment that I've actually agreed with

00:23:00.600 in this entire segment here.

00:23:02.340 Because she says, you know, why is that the emphasis?

00:23:05.360 I don't know what else she says afterwards because again, it's like a three or five second

00:23:08.860 clip.

00:23:09.980 But I think this is a true point.

00:23:11.400 This is maybe the only true point that is made from a commentator in this video, which

00:23:16.520 is that we put so much pressure on young people that they have to be like perfectly ready,

00:23:20.980 that they have to like have everything done in the right order.

00:23:24.000 They have to have a job, a career, make enough money, get a down payment, buy a house, and

00:23:28.800 then they can start having kids.

00:23:30.220 And for many people, by the time they do that, you know, it might be too late.

00:23:34.240 It might be harder to get pregnant. 1.00

00:23:35.300 They might have issues with that.

00:23:36.900 I think that's wrong, right?

00:23:38.180 There's no perfect timing to have kids, like especially if you have a career.

00:23:41.600 The more you work in your career, get established, it's always going to be hard.

00:23:45.560 It's never going to be easy to take that break.

00:23:47.820 You can say, oh, maybe in two years, I'll have more money.

00:23:49.900 And then two years comes and you still don't like you don't need to own a home in order

00:23:54.740 to have a baby.

00:23:56.140 My husband and I rented a house and we were renting when we had our son.

00:23:59.500 And a couple of years later, we bought a house.

00:24:01.540 It doesn't it doesn't matter.

00:24:02.780 It doesn't matter at all.

00:24:03.760 So I think I think this is right.

00:24:05.600 Like if you're waiting for some perfect time to have a baby, you may wait too long.

00:24:09.860 You may regret it.

00:24:11.060 Instead, we should just encourage people, you know, once you find your partner, once you're

00:24:14.980 happily in a stable relationship, go for it.

00:24:18.040 Go have kids have kids while you can, while you're young, while you're energetic, while

00:24:21.500 you can enjoy them.

00:24:22.580 Don't wait.

00:24:23.140 Don't put it off.

00:24:23.980 That's the message that we should be sending to young people rather than this like doom

00:24:28.440 and gloom message.

00:24:29.100 Like it's so expensive.

00:24:30.380 You can't afford it.

00:24:31.140 It's going to cost you three quarters of a million dollars.

00:24:33.420 No, just ignore all that.

00:24:35.120 Just just there's no perfect timing.

00:24:36.580 It's never going to be perfect.

00:24:37.520 Just go and have kids. 0.99

00:24:38.700 That's that's the best advice that I think you can get.

00:24:40.580 Okay, let's keep playing.

00:24:45.800 So those were some of the most common reasons given for not having kids in that survey,

00:24:50.700 but still feels like something's missing, doesn't it?

00:24:53.740 Because if we come back to that pie chart for a second, remember, 56% of people said they

00:24:58.760 weren't likely to have kids because they just don't want to.

00:25:03.300 How can we explain that?

00:25:04.820 Randomly, my husband will look over at me and be like, you want to take a train to Paris

00:25:07.900 this weekend, yes, do what you want.

00:25:10.440 Have kids, don't have kids.

00:25:11.600 But hear me when I say you can live a fulfilled life without them.

00:25:16.180 Okay, just stop right there.

00:25:17.880 What she described is not a fulfilled life.

00:25:19.760 Okay, jumping on a plane, jumping on a train, going to Paris, like YOLO, you only live once,

00:25:24.040 have fun, you know, hearing this from like a 25 year old.

00:25:26.900 That's not good advice.

00:25:27.920 That's not good life advice.

00:25:29.040 She's having fun now.

00:25:31.040 That doesn't mean that she's going to live a fulfilled life.

00:25:33.020 It doesn't mean that she's going to be 60, 70, 80 years old and feel good and fulfilled

00:25:37.400 about her life.

00:25:38.320 Like ask that same lady, go find her when she's old and ask her if she still feels that

00:25:42.760 way that like, I'm free.

00:25:44.220 I can just go out for dinner and go day drinking and go to Paris and just have so much fun all

00:25:48.220 the time.

00:25:48.580 Like, like that's not going to give you fulfillment in the long term.

00:25:51.580 And it's sad that that's the message that they're promoting.

00:25:53.780 And the CBC, again, shame on the CBC for even putting that clip in this segment.

00:25:58.560 Okay, let's resume.

00:26:00.440 It's having children makes people happier.

00:26:02.920 Um, and I think that for young people, I think they recognize that.

00:26:08.500 And so they are prioritizing other things.

00:26:10.980 Okay, just stop right there.

00:26:11.920 Okay, so she says that the studies say that there's no evidence that having kids makes you

00:26:16.000 happier and that somehow Gen Z are more in tune with this.

00:26:19.320 Like they're wiser than the rest of us because they don't want kids because they know this

00:26:22.920 like eternal truth or something like that.

00:26:24.640 Uh, that's, I mean, that's just such a nihilistic way of looking at the world.

00:26:29.140 The fact that they somehow know that having kids will make you unhappy.

00:26:32.960 I think, I think that the research on that is really questionable.

00:26:36.440 They asked Americans to rank what they considered most important in order to live a fulfilling

00:26:42.360 life.

00:26:43.100 Number three was having children, but ahead of kids were two other factors and they both

00:26:49.220 commanded a lot more enthusiasm.

00:26:50.840 Number two was having close friends.

00:26:54.540 Now that's something that is, according to the researchers we spoke to, a pretty noticeable

00:26:59.120 shift from previous generations.

00:27:01.680 This generation actually really values their free time, their leisure time.

00:27:05.660 They spend more time socializing than previous generations.

00:27:08.940 And so they're not really clear.

00:27:11.360 They want to give up on those, those elements of their lives in order to have children.

00:27:16.500 Okay, so I have to stop it right there because that is not true.

00:27:19.460 Like everything you read about Gen Z is that they are the loneliest generation, that they're 1.00

00:27:23.300 addicted to their screens, that they spend upwards of like seven, eight, nine, 10, like

00:27:28.000 15 hours a day on their screens, that they're horribly depressed, that they're unprepared.

00:27:32.740 They need safe spaces.

00:27:34.300 Like this idea that somehow like Gen Z are this like carefree, happy generation that just 1.00

00:27:38.860 cares about socializing and that they're out in person having fun with their friends.

00:27:43.340 That's why they don't want kids. 1.00

00:27:44.200 That's just the opposite of everything that I've seen in my life with Gen Z-ers that I 1.00

00:27:49.100 know in my family or in like reports and sociologists looking at them.

00:27:53.900 It's like the opposite.

00:27:55.040 They're just trying to make a point here that doesn't make sense.

00:27:57.620 That one economist lady, it's like, you know, she somehow says that Gen Z-ers earlier are

00:28:03.240 like wiser than the rest of us, that they know that having children won't bring them happiness.

00:28:07.660 And so they're more interested in just like day-to-day like joy and living for the moment.

00:28:14.740 There's just nothing true about that.

00:28:16.440 It's really superficial and it's not true.

00:28:19.080 The evidence shows us the opposite.

00:28:20.960 Okay, let's keep playing.

00:28:26.060 Indulging my inner child.

00:28:28.120 If I had kids, all of that time would be spent focusing on their schedule, focusing on

00:28:33.320 their needs, focusing on all the stuff that helps make them successful humans as opposed

00:28:38.800 to myself.

00:28:39.300 Okay, so this woman says that she wants to focus on herself and her own inner child and 0.97

00:28:43.780 that having children will get in the way of her own inner self-fulfillment.

00:28:47.680 I mean, I probably agree that this person shouldn't have kids because she seems horribly selfish 0.99

00:28:51.500 and narcissistic.

00:28:52.700 But the message that she's portraying is the exact opposite.

00:28:55.460 Look, the reality is that when you have kids, you kind of in a way, you get to relive your

00:29:00.080 own childhood, right?

00:29:00.980 You get to live, see the joy of childhood and learning and developing through the eyes

00:29:05.560 of a child, but you get to be present as the adult in their life, guiding them through it.

00:29:10.780 And having that experience, I mean, you kind of like get to relive parts of your own childhood,

00:29:15.920 like watching Disney movies with them.

00:29:18.420 You remind yourself of when you watch Disney movies or first day of school, all these kind

00:29:22.760 of milestones that happen in your child life, it brings you back to your own childhood.

00:29:27.000 And if that's what you want to focus on, I mean, being a parent gives you that opportunity. 0.79

00:29:32.800 Being like a selfish, narcissistic, singleton living in an apartment somewhere and focusing 1.00

00:29:38.420 entirely on like your inner self, that's going to take you further away from that. 0.89

00:29:43.000 So the advice this person is trying to give is just terribly all wrong.

00:29:47.980 And again, the fact that these are the kind of people that the CBC is including in their

00:29:51.580 segment just tells you everything you need to know.

00:29:53.760 All right, let's finish this up.

00:29:55.300 It may be that historically the stress on career would have been framed as in,

00:30:00.560 I want to have this good career because I need to be able to support my family.

00:30:04.080 Now we're hearing people talk about it more about their own personal satisfaction about it.

00:30:10.240 You can be ambitious and have kids.

00:30:11.660 I'm not saying you can't.

00:30:12.880 But my business is my baby.

00:30:14.240 It takes up so much time and energy, stress.

00:30:17.740 I just couldn't do that and have a kid.

00:30:19.160 It is now.

00:30:19.680 Okay, sorry.

00:30:20.360 Just final thought there.

00:30:22.000 They're just totally gaslighting us.

00:30:23.520 It's like they're purposefully choosing non-Canadians to highlight here, even though it's a Canadian

00:30:27.700 segment on a Canadian television show.

00:30:29.380 Okay, that's final thought.

00:30:30.620 Let's just keep playing.

00:30:33.300 In society, to choose to not have kids.

00:30:35.960 So you can talk about making this choice.

00:30:38.960 Oh, I want to pursue my career and not have kids.

00:30:42.860 And that's okay.

00:30:44.120 Now, to be clear, all of these studies we're talking about are capturing people's intentions

00:30:48.560 at a single point in time.

00:30:51.240 It's impossible to know how many of them will change their minds.

00:30:54.320 The number of women over 50 without children has been rising steadily in both Canada and

00:31:00.080 the United States over the past decade.

00:31:01.760 And StatsCan projects the financial reasons holding people back in particular will do much

00:31:07.460 to shape what future generations look like.

00:31:13.740 Okay, and that's it.

00:31:14.920 We don't even get like concluding thoughts.

00:31:17.080 They just kind of randomly say, you know, this is a snapshot.

00:31:19.760 People's mind could change.

00:31:21.220 And people over 50 who don't have kids, the number is growing.

00:31:24.720 So we just really like lack of thought, lack of analysis going into this.

00:31:28.480 There's a really interesting study that came out from Cardis about a year ago, January

00:31:32.720 2023, that you'd think that they would include in this.

00:31:35.580 The Cardis study showed that through an Angus Reid survey of 2,700 women in Canada, age 18

00:31:41.420 to 44, that they learned that basically more than half of Canadian women are having fewer

00:31:47.400 children than they want.

00:31:49.040 So Canadian women want children, but because of their circumstances, they're not having as 0.99

00:31:54.620 many children as they want.

00:31:56.300 So they call this like the missing children rate, which makes women unhappier. 1.00

00:32:02.300 And, you know, you'd think that that's like an important element to choose, that it's

00:32:04.980 not necessarily that women don't want children. 1.00

00:32:07.660 It's that because of their circumstances, they can't have as many children as they want.

00:32:11.900 And there's a number of reasons for that, which some of them were mentioned in the documentary

00:32:15.680 here, but not very many.

00:32:17.300 We also have other Canadian studies that show, again, the opposite.

00:32:21.120 It's like an Ipsos poll from February 2024 showed that seven in 10 Canadians rated having

00:32:27.020 children as important.

00:32:28.140 So when they showed those three points of why people weren't having children in the documentary,

00:32:34.060 you know, this is like all things that people would want simultaneously.

00:32:37.340 It's like, yes, I want to have a good job.

00:32:39.260 Yes, I want to have close friends.

00:32:40.380 Sure, you need money to live.

00:32:43.500 And having children and being married is important to the majority of Canadians.

00:32:48.100 So it doesn't really make sense that they were like pitting those reasons against each other.

00:32:51.320 And also, obviously, there's going to be a difference between men and women because 0.84

00:32:55.180 men might value having a career as being the most important thing, whereas women might 1.00

00:32:59.440 value having children as the most important thing.

00:33:02.120 So just like even taking a step back, again, this documentary is entirely one-sided.

00:33:08.580 They didn't talk about the other side at all.

00:33:10.200 They didn't talk to any parents.

00:33:11.300 They didn't talk to anybody who wanted to talk about the upsides of having children.

00:33:14.840 They didn't talk about anyone who might feel regretful or remorseful once they're older

00:33:19.380 about not having children at all.

00:33:21.780 And then on top of that, it's not at all critical of this mindset about not having kids and how

00:33:26.780 that's superior.

00:33:27.800 They just talked to like two researchers who, I'm sorry to say, they both seem like middle-aged

00:33:32.100 women who don't seem very happy in their lives. 0.96

00:33:34.740 They're not exactly like role models in our society.

00:33:38.220 They're just talking about like all the negatives and how bad things are.

00:33:41.160 They don't talk about anything positive.

00:33:43.720 And then every single TikTok that they grabbed went one way.

00:33:47.240 None of them went the other way.

00:33:49.140 The CBC glossed over any kind of societal problems that could come from falling fertility rates,

00:33:54.080 right?

00:33:54.220 You had Elon Musk talking about how this is the biggest problem in the world.

00:33:57.320 CBC didn't even mention the fact that with low fertility rates, and 2022, by the way,

00:34:02.500 was the lowest year on record in Canada.

00:34:05.300 We saw a StatsCan report come out saying that 2022, we're way below replacement rate here,

00:34:12.220 folks.

00:34:12.440 We're talking about 1.33 children per women, the lowest in recorded history.

00:34:18.140 Basically, it's just gone downhill since the pandemic.

00:34:21.660 Not talking about, you know, what are the social consequences?

00:34:23.900 What will happen to big government programs?

00:34:25.360 What will happen to our health care system?

00:34:27.260 What will happen to OAS and GAS and all these unfunded liabilities that we have when you

00:34:31.480 have retirees making up a bigger and bigger percentage of the population?

00:34:35.900 They didn't talk at all about the shift in gender roles, the idea that feminism tells women

00:34:40.680 to go on this certain path.

00:34:42.840 And this certain path leads to them not having as many children as they want.

00:34:47.560 So if you want to do a deep dive and you want to learn more about this issue, I think

00:34:51.660 it's really important, I recommend a documentary called Birth Gap by the documentarian and journalist

00:34:57.800 Stephen Shaw.

00:34:58.940 He talks about it.

00:34:59.580 It's called Birth Gap, A Childless World. 0.98

00:35:02.040 And he does a tough, tough journalism.

00:35:03.920 He goes all over the world, talks to women, talks to people who have, you know, unfortunately

00:35:08.740 not been able to find a partner and how hard it is for them and how it's not just this like,

00:35:14.400 you know, carefree YOLO life that most of them end up deeply regretting it.

00:35:19.220 And you can see that in the numbers as well.

00:35:21.820 Like I mentioned earlier in this segment that 2% of people say that they don't want kids.

00:35:28.100 That's pretty consistent.

00:35:29.460 When you look at the data, there's something called childless versus being childfree.

00:35:35.380 And if you look at the numbers, it's pretty consistent that the number of people who are

00:35:40.400 childfree because they don't want children has consistently been somewhere between 1% and

00:35:45.460 2%, right?

00:35:47.100 And then the people who are childless, people who don't have kids, that's the number that's

00:35:51.700 more concerning because there is a gap.

00:35:53.500 We're talking about somewhere between 10% and 15% of women wanted kids and don't have 0.99

00:35:59.080 them.

00:35:59.260 And I think that that is a bigger reason why we see the declining birth rate, why we see

00:36:04.800 the declining fertility rate.

00:36:06.340 So the CBC at least attempted to cover this, which is, again, the most important issue of

00:36:12.700 our time facing our civilization in 10, 20, 30 years to come.

00:36:16.460 And rather than promoting a real alternative, rather than getting to the bottom of what the

00:36:20.240 problems are and promoting a solution, even presenting it as a problem that needs to have

00:36:25.540 a solution promoted.

00:36:26.800 Instead, the CBC just shows us this like impulsive, selfish, self-fulfilling, like I want it now

00:36:32.640 nihilistic view of this upcoming generation and kind of applauds them for not wanting

00:36:38.240 children.

00:36:38.680 It is absolutely the wrong message, completely backwards to what we should be hearing, what

00:36:44.020 we should be telling young people.

00:36:45.920 But what more do you expect from the CBC?

00:36:48.260 They are ideological and their journalism is very low quality, despite the $1.4 billion

00:36:54.220 they get from taxpayers every year.

00:36:57.000 Thanks so much for tuning in.

00:36:57.960 It's Fake News Friday.

00:36:58.800 I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:37:02.640 Thank you.

00:37:03.540 Thank you.

00:37:03.800 Thank you.

00:37:05.980 Thanks towards that.

00:37:08.120 Thank you.

00:37:09.420 Thank you.

00:37:19.380 Bye.

00:37:23.660 Bye.

00:37:29.880 doen

00:37:30.400 awesome

00:37:30.900 cut

The Candice Malcolm Show - March 22, 2024

CBC promotes a childless life

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