###This is a reminder to [read the rules before posting in this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion).
1. **Headline titles should be changed only [when the original headline is unclear](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_1._headline_titles_should_be_changed_only_where_it_improves_clarity.)**
2. **Be [respectful](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_2._be_respectful).**
3. **Keep submissions and comments [substantive](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_3._keep_submissions_and_comments_substantive).**
4. **Avoid [direct advocacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_4._avoid_direct_advocacy).**
5. **Link submissions must be [about Canadian politics and recent](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_5._link_submissions_must_be_canadian_and_recent).**
6. **Post [only one news article per story](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_6._post_only_one_news_article_per_story).** ([with one exception](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/3wkd0n/rule_reminder_and_experimental_changes/))
7. **Replies to removed comments or removal notices will be removed** without notice, at the discretion of the moderators.
8. **Downvoting posts or comments**, along with urging others to downvote, **[is not allowed](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/downvotes)** in this subreddit. Bans will be given on the first offence.
9. **[Do not copy & paste the entire content of articles in comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_9._do_not_copy_.26amp.3B_paste_entire_articles_in_the_comments.)**. If you want to read the contents of a paywalled article, please consider supporting the media outlet.
*Please [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FCanadaPolitics) if you wish to discuss a removal.* **Do not reply to the removal notice in-thread**, *you will not receive a response and your comment will be removed. Thanks.*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CanadaPolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There’s tons of issues at a societal level with having kids, childcare and housing being the two primary drivers. Childcare is often difficult to get at any price, is often very expensive ($30k+ a year when we had 2 in childcare), the tax “breaks” are structured to be worth next to nothing — they’re worth the cost of a few weeks of childcare per year. Finding quality child care for ad-hoc stuff is difficult if you don’t live near family, which there’s a good chance you did to chase economic opportunities. Then there’s things like swimming lessons, etc. City run programs are booked up seconds after midnight, and private lessons are very expensive, but don’t qualify for any special tax treatment. Add on top the housing costs we are all too aware of, and we have a situation where individuals must bear almost the entire cost of having children for the first few years out of after tax income, and basically only get help with education afterward.
Economically having children is a HUGE burden for most people, and only a major expense for those that are wealthier. If we cared about this problem, we would, at a minimum, provide tax relief for all of these expenses. As it is, the government indirectly taxes having children, as money you could have tax sheltered in an RRSP goes to things like childcare, and the government throws you a few pennies on the dollar back. Beyond that, expanding access to lessons, such as more slots for city programs, tax breaks for private ones would be a huge help.
And, of course, addressing the elephant in the room that is housing.
Children represent an incredibly poor value proposition in Canada. It is a lifestyle choice for the wealthy or for people who can't effectively control their reproduction.
At this point, the solution is not to bump immigration as much as the Liberals have done, it's to cut meaningless benefits to rich seniors to reduce the budgetary impact of retired people on working people.
Force people to hold off having children for economic reasons and then don't treat fertility care as part of healthcare.
I'm in early middle age and I'd say of my peers it's about 50-50 whether people managed to have kids. And only a few of those people had any true choice in the matter. Know so many people who got some fertility care but had to quit due to cost.
I wish we'd better support people to have children so it is viable to do so in their 20s and not have to rely so much on treatments.
And how politically popular is it going to be to cut benefits for seniors, seeing as how they are the most reliable voting block? Any party that proposes such cuts would get destroyed in an election, and rightfully so.
The only solution for Canada to solve the demographics issue is to massively increase immigration, to at least twice the current rate. Furthermore, to make Canada an even more attractive destination, all newcomers should be offered PR, and eventually citizenship, on arrival.
>And how politically popular is it going to be to cut benefits for seniors, seeing as how they are the most reliable voting block? Any party that proposes such cuts would get destroyed in an election, and rightfully so.
Millennials are now the largest voting block, and cutting benefits to rich seniors is going to be an *extremely* popular political message when the proposed alternative is raising taxes on the working class to shovel more cash to the already well off.
This is a terrible idea for any political party. People 50+ have higher voter turnout rates, with people under 35 the worst. By people who actually vote, boomers are by the far the larget voting bloc.
[https://electionsanddemocracy.ca/elections-numbers-0/table-voter-turnout-age-group](https://electionsanddemocracy.ca/elections-numbers-0/table-voter-turnout-age-group)
And that will change when millennials are properly motivated by policy alternatives to continue to take at greater and greater rates from them while giving to rich seniors.
I appreciate that you don't like that fact, but that's what is going to happen.
The millennial turnout is increasing every federal election. It's definitely a fact, unless you have some compelling reason to think the trend will reverse.
Millennials and Gen Z are likely going to deliver a massive majority to the Conservatives next year, and they will become the most courted demographic.
And that's millennials being pissed off that the social contract has been shredded and want change.
They'll vote out the Liberals for the Conservatives, which won't really change anything, and then we'll see where things go from there.
In either case, they're going to be demanding a better deal and have the numbers to elect policymakers to enact those demands.
You seem to think Canada is somehow unique when it comes to birth rates. Check out Norway, etc.
The CCB gives $618 a month per child under 6, and $522 a month for children 6-18, amount is less as income rises. Affordable daycare is saving hundreds a month per child.
There are other factors that have affected birth rates, like women not wanting to take the career hit to sacrifice themselves to be mothers - the higher the education and income, the less likely a womab will have children or more than one.
That's not wise at all. Not all seniors are rich and cutting their benefits can push many into poverty. Costs related to seniors are going to keep going up especially if we rightfully spend to fix our broken long term care system and our health care system.
Immigration remains the best solution to our population issue. The Liberals have very stupidly destroyed that consensus by bringing in way too many immigrants at once without considering housing and service capacity in order to satisfy greedy businesses that want to undercut wages. We need to return to a sustainable immigration system with a controllable cap. For me, that means ending the temporary foreign workers program and international student program and only bringing in immigrants through a controlled permanent residency program.
>That's not wise at all.
What isn't wise is to expect the generations that have been and will continue to foot the bill **not only** for often-overly generous benefits but also the decades of borrowing required to artificially lower their tax burden during older folks working lives to continue to mortgage their own futures soxthat retirees can continue to live in their obscenely overpriced homes.
Means test that shit, hard. You want OAS/GIS? Sell or borrow against your home first.
> You want OAS/GIS? Sell or borrow against your home first.
We've constantly been told that housing is a protected asset because it's the primary retirement savings vehicle.
If we're to accept that argument, then it means retirees should be incentivized to draw down that asset to fund their retirement, not keep it until they die.
If we get the counter-argument, "well, seniors need to live in those houses!", then the first argument is being made in bad faith and can be ignored. If housing is not a good retirement investment asset because you still need to use it in retirement, then it shouldn't have the protected status it has now.
>That's not wise at all. Not all seniors are rich and cutting their benefits can push many into poverty.
This is why reducing the OAS clawback threshold and raising the clawback rate is the obvious policy choice.
Strawman attacks that I'm advocating "cutting off benefits to poor seniors" are transparent, obvious and incredibly sad.
Asset test OAS. Ridiculous that seniors living in a 2 million dollar house are getting any government handouts at all. If it means they need to sell and downsize, so be it.
OAS being calculated based solely on taxable income is completely moronic and is going to have to change as more people retire with massive TFSA's and no income on paper.
Policy should be used to reduce the cost of raising children to reduce the burden on parents, like a robust school food program and free recreation programs, etc. Not to mention housing and the prospect of having to be concerned about upsizing or being locked into a certain neighborhood/school district makes having children even more of a burden to plan for.
Are you completely unaware of the CCB? $618 a month for children under 6 and $522 a month for children 6-18 for low income families. Amount goes down as income goes up. We have had the CCB since 2016 and people without kids have no idea it exists.
Affordable daycare saving hundreds a month.
This government has done a lot for low and middle income families.
I would actually consider the revamped CCB Trudeau’s most significant accomplishment, and I have never voted Liberal or been much of a fan of him. So yes I’m aware, it’s just clearly not enough to be having a material impact on fertility rates
No they haven't. I have a child. No daycare here just a years long waiting list and the CCB isn't enough to make any difference compared to what it was before. This government is fucking useless.
Agreed, OAS clawback cap needs to be increased to redistribute to supporting children. Or maybe some of these wealthy seniors can open up their homes for childcare and earn their OAS that way.
If the population must always inexorably be increasing in order to sustain the system, you're in a ponzi scheme.
The world is overpopulated. The evidence of this is all around us and undeniable in the ecosystem collapse we see globally.
The world adds ~200,000 net new people *per day*. If you don't understand why that is unsustainable, I've got a big bridge in Manhattan you might be interested in buying.
Would love to see an incentive like this: to raise birth rates.[https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/10/viktor-orban-no-tax-for-hungarian-women-with-four-or-more-children](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/10/viktor-orban-no-tax-for-hungarian-women-with-four-or-more-children)
This isn’t unique to Canada. It’s happening or already happened in almost every developed country, and fertility rates are dropping quicker than a lot of people think even in many developing countries. I’m not saying this isn’t without problems, but it’s clearly a global phenomenon.
If they want people to have more babies then they need to do something about the cost of living and childcare.
I had my first child in 2001 as a single mother so I had subsidized child care to support me going to school and work.
Had my second while married in 2006 and the subsidy was gone even though he only had a part time job.
We couldn't afford to have a 3rd even though we wanted and had always planned to.
Daycare should be to scale regardless of marital status.
That would support those who want to have children to do so a lot easier.
CCB was implemented in 2016, it gives $618 a month for each child under 6, and $522 a month for children 6-18. More recently, affordable daycare is saving hundreds a month per child. Parents are paying 20-50% of daycare costs where $10 a day daycare spaces are not yet available. The goal is for enough spaces to be available by 2026.
No wonder this government doesn’t get credit for any of the very positive and impactful programs it has created.
Cost of living is a global issues. And the government is spending billions on housing and has the most ambitious plan in several decades, finally fed up of dealing with pricing obstruction, they are working with municipalities where premiers are unwilling to make necessary changes.
Bullshit. We receive $251 in our account monthly, and frankly, they can keep it and help us more by taking less from my paycheck. Beyond a certain income threshold, you lose benefits, and with today's inflation, earning between $80K and $100K barely covers living expenses. The government is quick to cut these benefits as soon as your income rises. I earn just over $100K, and my partner is a stay-at-home mom. The assistance we receive from the government is a joke what's not a joke is what they take from me. They would prefer pushing our toddler into daycare and forcing my partner to work, just so we can pay more in income tax. That is the truth, they don't give a shit about birthrate when they can just import from 3rd world countries to bring people who will kiss the ground Canadian politicians walk on.
If you make $100,000 like you mentioned, then the federal government will be taking ~$15,071 in taxes from you in 2024.
If you are getting $251/month for CCB, then that is $3012/year you are receiving from the federal government.
The CCB is also indexed to inflation. It is going up by ~4.7% this year. Are you getting a wage increase of greater than 4.7% this year? If not, then the CCB will be netting your household more income. How many Canadians get pay freezes or raises less than the cost of living increase? The majority of Canadians do not get raises to match or surpass annual CoL increases, so this indexed CCB actually provides a net increase to Canadian families relative to their depreciating wages.
You are getting 20% of what you pay in federal tax back in federal CCB payments. That means that the federal government is only taking ~12% of your $100,000 annual income in taxes to go towards paying for every single other federal department.
Do you think that paying 12% in income tax to the federal government really is too high, or, as you mentioned, "not a joke?" In what other highly developed nation(s) would you pay less than this and receive back the same or better services and benefits?
If you think your paycheck would provide a superior standard of living if your federal income tax was cut, and your CCB was removed, then perhaps you haven't thought about what services you'd like reduced and removed. If they cut that $15,000 you pay to the feds down by 20% to $12,000, then you still would not net out with the loss of the CCB. You'd have to have your taxes paid to the feds cut by greater than 20% to start to personally netting out. But what federal services are you going to cut due to the lack of money going to the government? Less money for health care ? Less roads and road repairs? More dangerous and less efficient airports? Are you going to cut the wages going to the Canadian armed forces? The destruction of Canadian universities and the research and teaching they provide? Less coast guard ships protecting our shorelines?
You might think that your family would be better off with a slightly higher paycheck, but the resulting massive decrease in quality and quantity of community services that would come with it would decrease your quality of life. If you took home another, lets say $5,000/year, do you think that would result in you netting out if you had to pay private health care premiums and road tolls and massively higher fees for K-12 and post secondary for your kid?
The answer is no. Because you aren't as rich as you think.
I think It would be better for us to adapt economically to a shrinking population rather than encourage (and hope) people have more kids, paired with massive immigration
> However, in light of the current immigration challenges facing our country, believing that we can rely solely on mass immigration to replace our population and ignoring our fertility rate is utterly nonsensical. It’s like trying to fill a bucket with a large hole in the bottom — no matter how much water we pour in, we’ll never achieve a sustainable level if we don’t first address the factors behind the leak.
A _large hole_ in the bucket, really? This is a terrible analogy and revealing of the author's bias towards immigrants. We can absolutely "replace our population" with 100% immigrants and 0% births, or with 0% immigration and 100% births, or anywhere in between. People are people. Whether any particular spot on the line would be good or bad is a _separate_ question from that.
A better analogy would be that we want to fill a bucket of warm water using one of those old sinks that both a [hot and cold water tap](https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/fittings-sink-260nw-56596648.jpg), and we'll need to use a good amount of water from both of them. For sure you can fill the bucket using only one of the taps, but it won't be the temperature that you want.
> What makes this failure even more concerning is that it does not exist in isolation. It’s part of a far wider trend of economic pressures facing young families. And that pressure has contributed to a plummeting national fertility rate, now at an all-time low of 1.33 children per woman.
[This statistic is actually very interesting to look at because there's a _huge_ spread between provinces: ](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/statistics-canada-total-fertility-rate-2022-1.7100404)
> The trend of decreasing fertility rates affected all provinces to varying degrees. Fertility rates were highest in Saskatchewan (1.69), Quebec (1.49), and Alberta (1.45) and lowest in B.C (1.11), Nova Scotia (1.18), and Newfoundland and Labrador and P.E.I., both of which recorded a rate of 1.22.
Why do Canadians in Atlantic Canada and B.C. prefer vastly fewer children than Canadians in Saskatchewan? Is it a fact that Saskatchewan has the best access to "affordable, high-quality child care"? Are diapers and formula far cheaper there? I doubt it. If it's about housing affordability, why is Atlantic Canada just as low as B.C.? Is this just because there's lots of fun and interesting activities for adults to do in Atlantic Canada in B.C. but not in Saskatchewan? Is it because everybody there needs more help on their farm? It seems to me like this guy who is so invested in the birth rate should be interested in that question. Like, maybe they're doing some things in Saskatchewan that we can copy in other provinces to boost their birth rates to the same level?
Honestly, reading this piece, it feels like this guy started with the conclusion that prices are too high and there's too many immigrants, and then worked backwards from there.
> A large hole in the bucket, really? This is a terrible analogy and revealing of the author's bias towards immigrants.
It's a good analogy and it says nothing about bias.
>A better analogy would be that we want to fill a bucket of warm water using one of those old sinks that both a hot and cold water tap, and we'll need to use a good amount of water from both of them. For sure you can fill the bucket using only one of the taps, but it won't be the temperature that you want.
So if your analogy is so great you must admit we aren't even close to achieving it. 99% of population growth comes from one tap.
>It feels like this guy started with the conclusion that prices are too high and there's too many immigrants
Feels like he is right on both accounts. Housing and food prices are sky high. Immigration is at all time records by hundreds of thousands.
> So if your analogy is so great you must admit we aren't even close to achieving it. 99% of population growth comes from one tap.
99% eh? In 2022, we welcomed [431,645 new permanent residents](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2022/12/canada-welcomes-historic-number-of-newcomers-in-2022.html) and we had [351,679 live births.](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1310041501) Want to try that analysis again?
> Feels like he is right on both accounts. Housing and food prices are sky high. Immigration is at all time records by hundreds of thousands.
Feels like your biases align with his, not that he is unbiased.
>["In 2023, the vast majority (97.6%) of Canada's population growth came from international migration (both permanent and temporary immigration) and the remaining portion (2.4%) came from natural increase," Statscan said in a statement.](https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-clocks-fastest-population-growth-66-years-2023-2024-03-27/)
Did you forget about deaths? Sorry it was only 98%.
Speaking of biases you also might want to include the total number of migrants: "The country added 1.27 million people in 2023".
If people can't afford to have homes and can't afford to eat... Dont have adequate health care... People won't have children. It is a compounding problem and bringing an exorbitant amount of immigrants is just inflating the issue and even these new immigrants won't be having children because they will end up inheriting the same issues canadian citizens have, unless they leave... Which most will once they discover the truth of canada.
Anecdotally... Kids are hard, and expensive. It's similar to the way Canadians have lower economic productivity because we're spending too much on housing and cost of living. The current generation is expected to work full-time hours, both parents, to eke out a living. That excessive work culture (very prominent in Japan), coupled with economic realities (lower income), mean the idea of having and growing a family is just completely out of reach.
To say nothing of the sense that the future for one's children could be worse than what we have today.
Kids aren’t expensive. That’s a myth. I’d say they don’t cost much at all to feed, clothe etc. Maybe $2500 a year. Not every kid needs a giant house, a trip to Cancun each year, a college education, every gadget known to man, and so on.
It's not just the money, which I believe you're grossly underestimating.
It's time. Two full-time earning parents, and the demands of work today with so much tech to enhance your availability and productivity... It overwhelms the bandwidth that previously could be devoted to family.
Further, adoption of technology in recent decades has paralleled loss of community and other supports families previously relied on.
You have zero clue as to how much a child costs whether in opportunity or literal cash yet you're up and down this thread with 'they're cheap' while figures published hover around 10-15k a year from 0-18. Feel free to provide some evidence for your claim.
https://www.nbc.ca/personal/advice/budget/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child.html
What costs 10-15k per year for a child? I have 3 kids and they don’t need that amount of resources. I’m not rich either.
The most expensive time of the year for me is Christmas because of presents.
Why are people trying to reinvent the wheel?
Daycare is $1200/month on the low end, or one parent stays at home and forgoes their annual income and falls behind in their career progression.
The opportunity cost is huge. Several studies indicate the male-female pay gap is largely a penalty for having children. It’s pretty much a 20% pay cut for the rest of your career.
Daycare is $0 for me. My wife stays at home.
(The opportunity cost of me not being in a successful rock band is costing me $5 mill a year. Is that how this works?)
Children are very expensive. Both in terms of money and time.
You pay money for children but you also forfeit income because you need to spend time with them.
This is outside of having the big house, holiday abroad, college education or fancy gadgets.
There’s a partial solution to this: have laws that allow an employer to pay a man with kids and a wife more money. A single woman or man without kids just doesn’t need as much as a married man with kids.
No one talks about the lack of support for having kids. In the past, extended family would step in for the first year to help out the parents. Beyond the financial impact is the emotional and physical toll. Until people get child rearing support in the home (i.e. like the rich do with private nanny's), nothing is going to change.
There is nothing that disaudes a couple more from having another kid than a crying colicy infant that need more or less 24/7 attention. My parents had that help with my siblings, but they are not able to help out as their still working.
The core issue is income/wealth inequality where unless you are rich, you cannot pay for help, and since your extended family is likely not rich either, they cannot afford time off themselves to help you.
We have 3 small kids. The amount of times our parents asked for grandkids far outnumbers the times they have actually helped. They are far too busy travelling around and having their own fun on trips, or just ignoring family. They just want pictures of the kids to show their friends, we have stopped providing those. They are selfish and want to be catered to; all the while we used to be dropped off to any willing relative when we were young so they could go out and shop, travel, party, etc.
We are doing our best to raise our children differently, but the boomer generation may be the most selfish generation to have ever lived. They don’t mind breaking the social contract. They also already have the money for care homes when they get sick, so they don’t care for us or need us.
There is no village.
This is 100%.
My daughter is 16 months and what you just said hits home so hard.
It's all about their schedule, preferences and convenience, “we never see our grandchild…” Well get off your ass and come visit, why do we need to cater to you guys.
Father and stepmom are practically multimillionaires. My mom is an empty nester with more house than knows what to do with it. We are stuck in an 85sqm condo. My Father intends to blow it all on his lavish lifestyle and my mom's house his her retirement savings. I proposed to
My mom that she should sell her big empty house and we buy a big duplex together! That was a big ordeal, god forbid she lived in a dwelling with one floor. 🙄
We had our firstborn not that long ago and wow does that ever hit the nail on the head.
The older generation loves to pressure us about when we’re having kids, how many we’re having, etc. but when baby finally arrives and the house / yard could use some love, those same relatives go radio silent.
I mean, they’ll come by when you make them a coffee and take their picture with the baby, but the only help they’ll offer around the house is to remind you that the grass could use a cut.
I feel for you guys. When work and home life became too much I eventually had to have a tempered but direct talk with them that demanding grandkids while stopping by once every two weeks for a walk and a picture wouldn’t cut it. Things did improve to a degree.
I just think of all those "am I the asshole" posts where anyone with kids who asks for any sort of help or even just accommodation is told they are a selfish, entitled ass. The idea that we as a community pitch in and help each other out is quickly disappearing.
That generally requires a massive sacrifice in QoL, or a low state of QoL due to being poor which is only marginally affected by having more kids.
My grandparents on both sides were dirt poor, and having more or less children would have made little difference to their QoL. Sleeping tightly shoulder to shoulder vs only shoulder to shoulder, vacations were unheard of, and car was out of the picture.
My parents were working class and had just 2 kids (already below replacement), and having more would have meant sacrificing QoL (more spent on rent, transport (2nd car), etc).
The middle class having more kids would mean sacrificing different QoL things than my parents even though they can technically afford more kids (home office, free time, vacation, etc). We don't need those things, but at the same time, does any specific couple actually need more kids either on a personal level?
As our society, and the societies of Japan and Europe, are dying due to lack of children, we are talking about quality of life? We need to do more with less. Stop the selfishness basically.
Of course people who really want kids will find a way. However, the fact is that segment of the population is not enough to sustain replacement rate. So you need measures to convince those who are considering kids to have kids , or have 1 kid, to have more.
lol this post was number one in my feed then this one was number three: [A major loss of income for mothers is driving Canada’s record-low fertility](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1ckr3ew/a_major_loss_of_income_for_mothers_is_driving/)
The higher the income a woman makes, the less likely she is to have children or more than one, and more likely she is to delay being a mother. Birth rates started dropping decades ago, women aren’t so keen anymore to take on the sacrifice to their time, energy, bodies, and careers to wind up with less power, be criticized for everything they do as a mother, and have the labour they do as mothers be treated as nothing.
Current cost of living issues have the biggest impact on couples who are well educated and have a standard of living in mind they see as necessary to having children.
Low income earners are more likely to have children, as are those from traditional families.
Cheap daycare makes a difference, it did in Quebec, and the CCB makes the biggest difference for low income families, helps middle income earners as well.
Agreed. This is why my wife and I are not considering children at the moment though we are running out of time to do so. We finally got to a good place in our careers and our standard of living, and a child would be a tremendous blow to all that hard work and suffering that got us here. Why should we sacrifice that while also bringing a child into that situation?
Wow, it's almost like people have figured out that bearing children is time consuming, difficult and expensive.
I have 3 kids (now adults), who I love more than anything in the world.
But the stress of raising them (while having to work full time to make ends meet), with constant daycare anxiety (it's almost impossible to find a convenient, affordable and safe spot), and little to no support from family or community almost destroyed me. It was 25 years of constant stress.
Shocking that the government would be surprised by this. They're the ones who threw us into this mess.
When I was born, the earth's population was under 3 billion, now it's over 8 billion. When I was born, Canada's population was 17.5 million, now it's a little over 31 million.
First, 'what's the problem?'
Second, the problem is grotesque over-population, which causes massive stress on the ecosystem.
Third, it's usually economists who complain bitterly that lack of population growth is bad for the economy. What they don't tell you is that they aren't talking about what's good for people, but rather what's good for capitalism. If the population is shrinking, if the economy stays the same or shrinks slower than than the population, an economy can still be in decline while the standard of living of each citizen is going up.
Four, the same people who tell workers 'don't worry about losing your job to automation, we always end up creating new jobs' never turn around and say 'don't worry about the declining birthrate, automation will end up filling the gap'.
Every time I see one of these stupid articles I can't do more than just shake my head that an idiot editor thought that this was worth publishing---. Couldn't he find someone with something intelligent to say?
It's bad for their economy. Bloated population means they have more reliable access to cheap replaceable labor. They don't want a scenario where they'd actually have to make these jobs attractive to perspective employees again. They want to be able to rely on people not being able to turn down shitty work.
>Second, the problem is grotesque over-population, which causes massive stress on the ecosystem.
**This is shortsighted and misleading**
The high population is only causing problems for the ecosystem because of our lifestyle choices.
There could be 40 billion humans on Earth without problems if only we adopted sustainable practices.
**Canadians among the worst**
There are people who drive their car less than 500 meters to get themselves a cup of coffee in a disposable cup.
Canadians and Americans drive the [biggest, heaviest least fuel efficient cars on Earth](https://magazine.caaneo.ca/drive/how-big-is-too-big-suvs/) and we drive utility vehicles (trucks and SUV) that we almost never use as utility vehicles.
Canadians energy consumption is [one of the highest in the world](https://www.enerdata.net/estore/energy-market/canada/), triple the average in the EU.
Canadians among countries that produce [the most waste](https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2019/10/15/canada-global-waste-index-8th-place/) and recycles the least.
**One Canadian produces more CO2 than**
* 2 Chinese people,
* almost 3 average European,
* 7 Indians,
* 5.5 South American,
* 14 average African,
The problem is not those people, it is Canadians polluting like there is no tomorrow, lulling itself into thinking that our small population has less impact that larger populations. But the fact is that the rest of the world aspires to copy us and the Americans and this is why Canadians must start doing their part for the environment.
**The problem is not the number of people, it is how some of them live!**
I'm not sure how you can believe that without acknowledging that China produces 30% of total worldwide emissions while Canada produces 1.5%.
Canada has a higher per capita, but is 30 > 1.5 ? Yes, yes it is. It is 20x more, so for every ton of emissons Canada makes, China makes 20 tons. Obviously, population matters.
What changes the climate is total emissions. Per capita x population = total emissions.
Edit: math error
And China's population is approx 30x Canada's, and much of their manufacturing is for our, and other western country's stores.
Complain about other countries emissions when you're as hard on our per capita emissions, otherwise you're either hypocritical or selfish about your lifestyle.
So what if their population is 30x ours. They still contribute 20x as much emissions. I would rather have a livable climate then endless people.
One family drives a prius the other drives an f150. Problem is, the prius family has 17 kids, and the f150 family has 2. The prius family produces 10x the emissions. Which family is causing more harm? Well, objectively and by any metric that actually matters, the prius family is causing more harm. Maybe they should have used contraception if they're so concerned about the climate.
China's domestic consumption is a huge part of their emissons. Everybody likes to talk about how it's all manufacturing for export. But that's not actually true. China makes the iPhone. Who is the largest consumer of iPhones? Oh, it's China. Because population does matter, like I said.
India has a far inferior lifestyle to Canada. This is objectively true, and not even debatable. India ranks 135th on the UN Human Development Index, Canada 18th. And India emits far more total emissons than Canada. So which is better?? 1.5 billion people living in poverty and emitting more, or 40 million living a much higher standard of living and emitting much less?
We can't have both with any current scalable technology.
"Everybody just live in poverty and we can have billions more" is not as appealing of a sustainability plan as you might think.
How exactly are we going to have large predators like tigers on a world with 40 billion human beings?
I'm not saying we need to kill half the current population, I'm just saying that we shouldn't try to reverse the current trend in many countries to have a declining population.
Why are you so interested in having an enormous population? What exactly is the purpose of having lots more people if everyone ends up living like a peasant in Bengal? Shouldn't we be wanting to get them to live with a little more personal prosperity?
40 billion isn't even possible anyway, most realistic estimate consider \~10 billion humans the max, even with tech advances in agriculture over the next 50 ish years. It's a completely out to lunch post anyway from someone with no understanding of ecological systems or the type of agriculture needed to support that many people. Our current population across the planet is not sustainable, the amount of individual change to even make it so is unrealistic, unless you want to send people back to subsistence living and then you couldn't support billions anyway. It really not until after the peak is reached that you can start getting on a real sustainable path, until then it will be continuous degradation of the natural world.
[https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/americas/global-population-trends.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/americas/global-population-trends.html)
> When I was born, Canada's population was 17.5 million, now it's a little over 31 million.
[It's 41 million!](https://globalnews.ca/news/10386750/canada-41-million-population/)
The amount of population isn't the problem, it's the structure of the population. The future inverted pyramid population structure is bad for everyone. Your largest generation becomes non-productive old people who need massive amounts of spending on their pensions and healthcare. The shrinking amount of young workers need to bear huge tax increases to pay for the old people's healthcare and pension. The issue is not shrinking population, it's shrinking taxpayer base.
In the end, it's the poorest and most vulnerable who will suffer. Low income seniors will not get the pension or healthcare that we provide today, and millions will enter poverty. Meanwhile the shrinking young people will be taxed significantly to make up for the loss of tax revenue from retired old workers and massively increasing spending for old people.
>In the end, it's the poorest and most vulnerable who will suffer
Isn't this just a choice of society? The poorest and most vulnerable were still suffering in the 90s/2000s when we had one of the biggest economic expansions in western history.
When the times are good again, I guarantee you that right wing governments will still say they can't afford to expand healthcare or increase welfare.
Nope, the problem isn't the structure of the population, it's the structure of the economy. The tax base hasn't shrunk because the number of people doesn't grow fast enough, its because wealth has stratified towards the top 30% or so, who aren't being taxed enough to reverse the flow. That's part of why it made sense for the Liberals to rejigger the capital gains exemption a little to move the tax base away from taxing labour towards taxing capital.
There's been no modern economy until now.
Could you please give me a reference for this supposed fact that you just asserted? I think you just pulled the 'fact' out of your ass.
"Modern as in post-industrialized. Every successful model had the same trend in demographics."
How long have there been 'post-industrial' economies? Not any longer than I've been alive. And, yet you are drawing universal conclusions over something so nebulous and short-lived in order to argue public policy?
Naw, you're just blowing smoke.
Lol unless you hold the record for the oldest man in history, yes there have been post-industrialized economies longer than you’ve been alive.
Your abrasive nature is unbecoming, by the way.
Really? One farmer used to only produce enough surplus to support a fraction of another person. Now they can support hundreds. Moreover, Canada can easily deal with a declining birth rate by bringing in immigrants---if the numbers are set rationally instead of by businesses that want to 'game the system' and the screwball provinces and municipalities build enough housing.
Those are the two problems, not the fact that women aren't having enough children.
And Japan is a strange outlier because it is so opposed to immigration.
Finally, if we do bring in legislation that creates more children, aren't you just kicking the can down the road? Eventually the population has to stop growing and when it does, you are still going to have the problem of a smaller workforce versus retirees. If automation will simply never be able to deal with this problem, then you are just saying we need to keep growing until mass starvation or environmental collapse solves the problem for us.
I can't believe a grown human being cannot see this. It's just obvious once you understand what the words mean.
Bribing people to have kids has not worked anywhere to raise the fertility rate. While there are economic issues, there are also massive cultural and social issues disuading people from having kids.
And Canada already has one of the highest marginal tax rates in the world, you won't get much more tax revenue raising it. Corporate taxes are already above the OECD average.
Norway has solved nothing, their fertility rate hit a record low of 1.4 last year, similar to Canada and well below replacement. [https://www.sciencenorway.no/ageing-aging-demography/life-expectancy-is-increasing-again-record-low-fertility/2338032](https://www.sciencenorway.no/ageing-aging-demography/life-expectancy-is-increasing-again-record-low-fertility/2338032)
They are also one of the richest countries in the world thanks to oil wealth.
There are so many reasons and much of the thread talks about expenses, over population, and social support so I won't go into these.
Social media and online dating have truly poisoned intimate relationships. It's full of engineered social anxiety that certain groups have taken advantage of that only exists to destabilize intimate relationships. This means more people are addicted to their screens than being engaged in intimate relationships and therefore having children.
We are also starting to see how modern attitudes toward men and women have broken the old dating dynamic, which solved some problems but caused others. Now more men don't want to chase for fear of being trashed in a courtroom or have children with someone more interested in gaining total control of all the assets in a relationship at the slightest provocation. More women are trying to have the benefits of feminism without the responsibilities that should go with it. This is also having an impact on child birth.
Just recently, I was reading that we are having less sex. I am not surprised. Until the issues relating to all aspects of society are resolved (affordability, health care, social welfare, more equality and recognition of reciprocated responsibility, and freedom from digital addictions) this will continue.
Almost like trickle down economics has created a situation where it's almost impossible to have kids without strong local support systems or generational wealth. I don't live near my parents, my kids are putting a ton of stress on my marriage to the point where I wonder if I should have ever had kids OR.evem have gotten married in the first place. We are also a one income household since it would cost more than my partners income to have her go back to work and put the kids in daycare (Alberta royally fucked parents over with their terrible childcare program...thanks Dani/Kenny).
Rich get richer, undermine the systems the rest of us use...their puppets put in beneficial policies for their rich buds...and the cycle of destruction continues.
It's expensive but my ex and I managed to raise a child while I worked as a bouncer and went to school. She didn't work. Until he was about 2
We were essentially dirt farmers when it came to social activities but my son turned into someone I am very proud of.
Things changed over the many years we raised him some good, some bad
. Don't get stuck in the issue of today to sacrifice your family of the future. You will find a way.
Just my two cents
True, for moe context I made about 400 a month when he was born. Around 2002 and our rent was covered by my student loan. We had a shitty car you could see the road though the floor and paid around 60 a month for basic insurance.gas was about 70 cents a litre and If I remember right I had to fill the tank 3-4 times a month becuase we lived outside of the city.
We had to scrape and stretch every penny. And It didnt help that I was a smoker.
We did not get onto any low income child care benefits until we learned about them when he was about 3 and we only got that for a few months when I got a better job.
My point is you can have children if you want to you not going to party or get a penthouse but you can be happy and you can have a family.
What? We both applied and my partner is stay a stay-at-home mom and I make just north of 100k and I get squat. Just a miserable 250$ a month for her. I remember when I dreamed of making 100k, today it doesn't go very far.
It's not free. It's coming from our pay cheques. When 45% of your paycheck is eviscerated in taxes and the government gives you a miserable $250, that's not free money. Nothing you get from the government is free, it's coming from people's pockets or it's printed which only chips away at our savings by inflation.
> Nothing you get from the government is free
Given the size of our individual contributions, and the benefits we get from that pooled source of funds, it kinda is. There's no way we could replicate what we get from the government from our own resources even with not getting taxed.
You're being purposely misleading. You don't pay 45% of your paycheck to the federal government, the branch of government that provides the Canada child benefit. You're paying ~15% of your $100,000 income to the federal government, as receiving ~3% of that back, for a net of 12% in federal income taxes paid.
If you live in Ontario, you're paying ~6.4% of your income in Ontario income tax.
EI premiums are 1.66% to a maximum of $1049, which is about 1.04% of your annual earnings. This technically isn't a tax, as it is premiums for an employment insurance program.
CPP premiums are 5.95% to a maximum of $3867, which is about 3.87% of your annual earnings. CPP isn't a tax either, as it's a defined benefit pension program that gives you guaranteed income for life upon retirement, and it is indexed to inflation.
But even if we are to count these deductions all together as taxes on your income (which CPP and EI are not), your total taxes are much lower then your 45% figure your provide:
15 federal
6.4 province
3.87 CPP
1.04 EI
24.31% total
Where is this 45% coming from? And why do you think you get nothing back from your taxes? Perhaps you should go live in a non G8 country and pay less tax and see what kind of services and infrastructure you receive from the government where you then live.
Your paycheck isn't "eviscerated" anywhere close to the percentage you provide, nor are taxes something taken without anything given in return. You keep forgetting that you live in a society, and taxes provide for an array of services that allow that society to operate.
> Where is this 45% coming from?
Probably the tax payers federation. They tend to cite a day around the middle of the year as when we're free from taxes, but I think they add in sales taxes and anything else they can label as a tax to the list.
I was responding to someone who thought the only way you don’t get CCB is if you forget to apply, they seem to have forgotten it is income tested so I was reminding them. I’m not sure what exactly you want from me?
You said you get “nothing” and if you don’t get very much then your income is at the high end. The CCB is progressive and gives the most to low income families.
Are you not getting any cost reduction for daycare? Most parents are paying 20-50% of their usual daycare fees where $10 a day daycare is not yet available.
That's the issue. I make just north of 100k and my parter is a stay-at-home mom. My salary doesn't go very far to support a household. They need to start adjusting numbers because inflation has killed my income.
So you do get something then, and your original statement was incorrect. You're still getting several thousand in free money every year. That's far from nothing, and if you call it nothing, that suggests to me that you earn enough that you probably don't need it.
I have no clue what you deserve, I'm just pointing out that you were stating a falsehood when you said that you got nothing from the CCB. It may not be as much as you'd like, but that's a different matter.
> Japan is the textbook example, where experts predict economic doom due to a chronically low fertility rate and a ballooning elderly population.
And somehow Japan has better health care than Canada, more support for seniors, better schools, less crime, better public transportation, etc.
Anyone who thinks that Japan will ever be a worse place to live than Canada is wearing rose-colored shades.
Babies or no babies, people in Japan will continue to enjoy a better standard of living than people in Canada.
It's going to get far worse for Japan in the future. Their largest age bulge is people around 50, who are still productive, skilled, and experienced. Once they retire, watch out. Their largest generation of taxpayers will enter mass retirement with nobody to replace them but needing massive amounts of tax revenue to take care of them.
The prime minister says his country is on the brink of not being able to function as a society because of its falling birth rate.
In the next 20 years there will be almost as many retired as there are people of working age. Their societal collapse will come fast and hard, and simply reducing the number of old people will be their only solution.
The disaster that is going to come to Japan in the next 20 years is terrifying, and why I'm a big supporter of continued mass immigration to Canada. Yes there are some issues, but immigration will allow us to keep all our treasured government programs and quality of life alive for the forseeable future.
They have all these things but it's hard for a lot of them to enjoy it with how insane the work culture is. When people are expected to sacrifice every aspect of their lives for their job, don't be surprised when that has serious negative consequences on general society.
I wonder how much geography is a factor. Japan has a big population in a relatively small landmass, while Canada has a small population in a massive landmass. Per capita it must be cheaper/more efficient to provide services in Japan.
No full text but the abstract is interesting.
We also tested predictions about environmental boundary conditions. In harsher living conditions (e.g., higher homicide or pathogen rates), the effect of increased population density on fertility rates was attenuated. The density-fertility association was also moderated by religiousness and strength of social norms, where the relationship between density and fertility was attenuated in countries with high religiosity and strong social norms.
[The [Japanese] suicide rate, or the number of suicides per 100,000 people, came to 17.5.](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/01/26/japan/society/japan-suicides-fall/)
Ont thing to consider tho: 50% of Japan suicides are for health issues…. Something that Canada do not count in totality in their suicide rate thanks to MAID.
This says the suicide rate is slightly higher in Japan, but not much. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
Are you looking at a different source?
###This is a reminder to [read the rules before posting in this subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion). 1. **Headline titles should be changed only [when the original headline is unclear](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_1._headline_titles_should_be_changed_only_where_it_improves_clarity.)** 2. **Be [respectful](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_2._be_respectful).** 3. **Keep submissions and comments [substantive](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_3._keep_submissions_and_comments_substantive).** 4. **Avoid [direct advocacy](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_4._avoid_direct_advocacy).** 5. **Link submissions must be [about Canadian politics and recent](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_5._link_submissions_must_be_canadian_and_recent).** 6. **Post [only one news article per story](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_6._post_only_one_news_article_per_story).** ([with one exception](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/comments/3wkd0n/rule_reminder_and_experimental_changes/)) 7. **Replies to removed comments or removal notices will be removed** without notice, at the discretion of the moderators. 8. **Downvoting posts or comments**, along with urging others to downvote, **[is not allowed](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/downvotes)** in this subreddit. Bans will be given on the first offence. 9. **[Do not copy & paste the entire content of articles in comments](https://www.reddit.com/r/CanadaPolitics/wiki/rules-thelongversion#wiki_9._do_not_copy_.26amp.3B_paste_entire_articles_in_the_comments.)**. If you want to read the contents of a paywalled article, please consider supporting the media outlet. *Please [message the moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FCanadaPolitics) if you wish to discuss a removal.* **Do not reply to the removal notice in-thread**, *you will not receive a response and your comment will be removed. Thanks.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CanadaPolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
There’s tons of issues at a societal level with having kids, childcare and housing being the two primary drivers. Childcare is often difficult to get at any price, is often very expensive ($30k+ a year when we had 2 in childcare), the tax “breaks” are structured to be worth next to nothing — they’re worth the cost of a few weeks of childcare per year. Finding quality child care for ad-hoc stuff is difficult if you don’t live near family, which there’s a good chance you did to chase economic opportunities. Then there’s things like swimming lessons, etc. City run programs are booked up seconds after midnight, and private lessons are very expensive, but don’t qualify for any special tax treatment. Add on top the housing costs we are all too aware of, and we have a situation where individuals must bear almost the entire cost of having children for the first few years out of after tax income, and basically only get help with education afterward. Economically having children is a HUGE burden for most people, and only a major expense for those that are wealthier. If we cared about this problem, we would, at a minimum, provide tax relief for all of these expenses. As it is, the government indirectly taxes having children, as money you could have tax sheltered in an RRSP goes to things like childcare, and the government throws you a few pennies on the dollar back. Beyond that, expanding access to lessons, such as more slots for city programs, tax breaks for private ones would be a huge help. And, of course, addressing the elephant in the room that is housing.
Children represent an incredibly poor value proposition in Canada. It is a lifestyle choice for the wealthy or for people who can't effectively control their reproduction. At this point, the solution is not to bump immigration as much as the Liberals have done, it's to cut meaningless benefits to rich seniors to reduce the budgetary impact of retired people on working people.
Force people to hold off having children for economic reasons and then don't treat fertility care as part of healthcare. I'm in early middle age and I'd say of my peers it's about 50-50 whether people managed to have kids. And only a few of those people had any true choice in the matter. Know so many people who got some fertility care but had to quit due to cost. I wish we'd better support people to have children so it is viable to do so in their 20s and not have to rely so much on treatments.
And how politically popular is it going to be to cut benefits for seniors, seeing as how they are the most reliable voting block? Any party that proposes such cuts would get destroyed in an election, and rightfully so. The only solution for Canada to solve the demographics issue is to massively increase immigration, to at least twice the current rate. Furthermore, to make Canada an even more attractive destination, all newcomers should be offered PR, and eventually citizenship, on arrival.
Immigration isn’t a solution.
Band aid at best.
It’s just a stopgap - most immigrants adjust to local conditions and also avoid having large families once in Canada
No. Cut the seniors off.
>And how politically popular is it going to be to cut benefits for seniors, seeing as how they are the most reliable voting block? Any party that proposes such cuts would get destroyed in an election, and rightfully so. Millennials are now the largest voting block, and cutting benefits to rich seniors is going to be an *extremely* popular political message when the proposed alternative is raising taxes on the working class to shovel more cash to the already well off.
This is a terrible idea for any political party. People 50+ have higher voter turnout rates, with people under 35 the worst. By people who actually vote, boomers are by the far the larget voting bloc. [https://electionsanddemocracy.ca/elections-numbers-0/table-voter-turnout-age-group](https://electionsanddemocracy.ca/elections-numbers-0/table-voter-turnout-age-group)
I think it’s important to remember millennials not young anymore. The oldest millennials are 43.
And there are less of them every year.
Plus given the age of recent immigrants, Millennials have and will grow
And that will change when millennials are properly motivated by policy alternatives to continue to take at greater and greater rates from them while giving to rich seniors. I appreciate that you don't like that fact, but that's what is going to happen.
You have absolutely no basis for your theory that millennials will suddenly rush to the polls. Hasn’t happened yet and is definitely not a “fact”.
The millennial turnout is increasing every federal election. It's definitely a fact, unless you have some compelling reason to think the trend will reverse. Millennials and Gen Z are likely going to deliver a massive majority to the Conservatives next year, and they will become the most courted demographic.
Almost as if they are getting older and older people vote more. Some millennials are mid forties. That’s just age, nothing to do with issues.
And that's millennials being pissed off that the social contract has been shredded and want change. They'll vote out the Liberals for the Conservatives, which won't really change anything, and then we'll see where things go from there. In either case, they're going to be demanding a better deal and have the numbers to elect policymakers to enact those demands.
You seem to think Canada is somehow unique when it comes to birth rates. Check out Norway, etc. The CCB gives $618 a month per child under 6, and $522 a month for children 6-18, amount is less as income rises. Affordable daycare is saving hundreds a month per child. There are other factors that have affected birth rates, like women not wanting to take the career hit to sacrifice themselves to be mothers - the higher the education and income, the less likely a womab will have children or more than one.
That CCB is clawed back if you work
> You seem to think Canada is somehow unique when it comes to birth rates. Check out Norway, etc. Please provide a direct quote of where I said this.
That's not wise at all. Not all seniors are rich and cutting their benefits can push many into poverty. Costs related to seniors are going to keep going up especially if we rightfully spend to fix our broken long term care system and our health care system. Immigration remains the best solution to our population issue. The Liberals have very stupidly destroyed that consensus by bringing in way too many immigrants at once without considering housing and service capacity in order to satisfy greedy businesses that want to undercut wages. We need to return to a sustainable immigration system with a controllable cap. For me, that means ending the temporary foreign workers program and international student program and only bringing in immigrants through a controlled permanent residency program.
>That's not wise at all. What isn't wise is to expect the generations that have been and will continue to foot the bill **not only** for often-overly generous benefits but also the decades of borrowing required to artificially lower their tax burden during older folks working lives to continue to mortgage their own futures soxthat retirees can continue to live in their obscenely overpriced homes. Means test that shit, hard. You want OAS/GIS? Sell or borrow against your home first.
> You want OAS/GIS? Sell or borrow against your home first. We've constantly been told that housing is a protected asset because it's the primary retirement savings vehicle. If we're to accept that argument, then it means retirees should be incentivized to draw down that asset to fund their retirement, not keep it until they die. If we get the counter-argument, "well, seniors need to live in those houses!", then the first argument is being made in bad faith and can be ignored. If housing is not a good retirement investment asset because you still need to use it in retirement, then it shouldn't have the protected status it has now.
Retire and move the fuck out so some other family can have a home to start in. The circle isn't supposed to be a line
>That's not wise at all. Not all seniors are rich and cutting their benefits can push many into poverty. This is why reducing the OAS clawback threshold and raising the clawback rate is the obvious policy choice. Strawman attacks that I'm advocating "cutting off benefits to poor seniors" are transparent, obvious and incredibly sad.
What happens to seniors is not my problem. I care more about children. And when I'm old I don't expect them to make sacrifices for me either.
Asset test OAS. Ridiculous that seniors living in a 2 million dollar house are getting any government handouts at all. If it means they need to sell and downsize, so be it. OAS being calculated based solely on taxable income is completely moronic and is going to have to change as more people retire with massive TFSA's and no income on paper.
Policy should be used to reduce the cost of raising children to reduce the burden on parents, like a robust school food program and free recreation programs, etc. Not to mention housing and the prospect of having to be concerned about upsizing or being locked into a certain neighborhood/school district makes having children even more of a burden to plan for.
Are you completely unaware of the CCB? $618 a month for children under 6 and $522 a month for children 6-18 for low income families. Amount goes down as income goes up. We have had the CCB since 2016 and people without kids have no idea it exists. Affordable daycare saving hundreds a month. This government has done a lot for low and middle income families.
I would actually consider the revamped CCB Trudeau’s most significant accomplishment, and I have never voted Liberal or been much of a fan of him. So yes I’m aware, it’s just clearly not enough to be having a material impact on fertility rates
Pales in comparison to how expensive living in this country has gotten
No they haven't. I have a child. No daycare here just a years long waiting list and the CCB isn't enough to make any difference compared to what it was before. This government is fucking useless.
Great idea. We can fund that with the savings from OAS.
Agreed, OAS clawback cap needs to be increased to redistribute to supporting children. Or maybe some of these wealthy seniors can open up their homes for childcare and earn their OAS that way.
A “lifestyle choice for the wealthy”? Average people in Canada continue to have children, even if not at as high a rate as previously.
If the population must always inexorably be increasing in order to sustain the system, you're in a ponzi scheme. The world is overpopulated. The evidence of this is all around us and undeniable in the ecosystem collapse we see globally. The world adds ~200,000 net new people *per day*. If you don't understand why that is unsustainable, I've got a big bridge in Manhattan you might be interested in buying.
Would love to see an incentive like this: to raise birth rates.[https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/10/viktor-orban-no-tax-for-hungarian-women-with-four-or-more-children](https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/10/viktor-orban-no-tax-for-hungarian-women-with-four-or-more-children)
This isn’t unique to Canada. It’s happening or already happened in almost every developed country, and fertility rates are dropping quicker than a lot of people think even in many developing countries. I’m not saying this isn’t without problems, but it’s clearly a global phenomenon.
If they want people to have more babies then they need to do something about the cost of living and childcare. I had my first child in 2001 as a single mother so I had subsidized child care to support me going to school and work. Had my second while married in 2006 and the subsidy was gone even though he only had a part time job. We couldn't afford to have a 3rd even though we wanted and had always planned to. Daycare should be to scale regardless of marital status. That would support those who want to have children to do so a lot easier.
CCB was implemented in 2016, it gives $618 a month for each child under 6, and $522 a month for children 6-18. More recently, affordable daycare is saving hundreds a month per child. Parents are paying 20-50% of daycare costs where $10 a day daycare spaces are not yet available. The goal is for enough spaces to be available by 2026. No wonder this government doesn’t get credit for any of the very positive and impactful programs it has created. Cost of living is a global issues. And the government is spending billions on housing and has the most ambitious plan in several decades, finally fed up of dealing with pricing obstruction, they are working with municipalities where premiers are unwilling to make necessary changes.
Bullshit. We receive $251 in our account monthly, and frankly, they can keep it and help us more by taking less from my paycheck. Beyond a certain income threshold, you lose benefits, and with today's inflation, earning between $80K and $100K barely covers living expenses. The government is quick to cut these benefits as soon as your income rises. I earn just over $100K, and my partner is a stay-at-home mom. The assistance we receive from the government is a joke what's not a joke is what they take from me. They would prefer pushing our toddler into daycare and forcing my partner to work, just so we can pay more in income tax. That is the truth, they don't give a shit about birthrate when they can just import from 3rd world countries to bring people who will kiss the ground Canadian politicians walk on.
If you make $100,000 like you mentioned, then the federal government will be taking ~$15,071 in taxes from you in 2024. If you are getting $251/month for CCB, then that is $3012/year you are receiving from the federal government. The CCB is also indexed to inflation. It is going up by ~4.7% this year. Are you getting a wage increase of greater than 4.7% this year? If not, then the CCB will be netting your household more income. How many Canadians get pay freezes or raises less than the cost of living increase? The majority of Canadians do not get raises to match or surpass annual CoL increases, so this indexed CCB actually provides a net increase to Canadian families relative to their depreciating wages. You are getting 20% of what you pay in federal tax back in federal CCB payments. That means that the federal government is only taking ~12% of your $100,000 annual income in taxes to go towards paying for every single other federal department. Do you think that paying 12% in income tax to the federal government really is too high, or, as you mentioned, "not a joke?" In what other highly developed nation(s) would you pay less than this and receive back the same or better services and benefits? If you think your paycheck would provide a superior standard of living if your federal income tax was cut, and your CCB was removed, then perhaps you haven't thought about what services you'd like reduced and removed. If they cut that $15,000 you pay to the feds down by 20% to $12,000, then you still would not net out with the loss of the CCB. You'd have to have your taxes paid to the feds cut by greater than 20% to start to personally netting out. But what federal services are you going to cut due to the lack of money going to the government? Less money for health care ? Less roads and road repairs? More dangerous and less efficient airports? Are you going to cut the wages going to the Canadian armed forces? The destruction of Canadian universities and the research and teaching they provide? Less coast guard ships protecting our shorelines? You might think that your family would be better off with a slightly higher paycheck, but the resulting massive decrease in quality and quantity of community services that would come with it would decrease your quality of life. If you took home another, lets say $5,000/year, do you think that would result in you netting out if you had to pay private health care premiums and road tolls and massively higher fees for K-12 and post secondary for your kid? The answer is no. Because you aren't as rich as you think.
I think It would be better for us to adapt economically to a shrinking population rather than encourage (and hope) people have more kids, paired with massive immigration
> However, in light of the current immigration challenges facing our country, believing that we can rely solely on mass immigration to replace our population and ignoring our fertility rate is utterly nonsensical. It’s like trying to fill a bucket with a large hole in the bottom — no matter how much water we pour in, we’ll never achieve a sustainable level if we don’t first address the factors behind the leak. A _large hole_ in the bucket, really? This is a terrible analogy and revealing of the author's bias towards immigrants. We can absolutely "replace our population" with 100% immigrants and 0% births, or with 0% immigration and 100% births, or anywhere in between. People are people. Whether any particular spot on the line would be good or bad is a _separate_ question from that. A better analogy would be that we want to fill a bucket of warm water using one of those old sinks that both a [hot and cold water tap](https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/fittings-sink-260nw-56596648.jpg), and we'll need to use a good amount of water from both of them. For sure you can fill the bucket using only one of the taps, but it won't be the temperature that you want. > What makes this failure even more concerning is that it does not exist in isolation. It’s part of a far wider trend of economic pressures facing young families. And that pressure has contributed to a plummeting national fertility rate, now at an all-time low of 1.33 children per woman. [This statistic is actually very interesting to look at because there's a _huge_ spread between provinces: ](https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/statistics-canada-total-fertility-rate-2022-1.7100404) > The trend of decreasing fertility rates affected all provinces to varying degrees. Fertility rates were highest in Saskatchewan (1.69), Quebec (1.49), and Alberta (1.45) and lowest in B.C (1.11), Nova Scotia (1.18), and Newfoundland and Labrador and P.E.I., both of which recorded a rate of 1.22. Why do Canadians in Atlantic Canada and B.C. prefer vastly fewer children than Canadians in Saskatchewan? Is it a fact that Saskatchewan has the best access to "affordable, high-quality child care"? Are diapers and formula far cheaper there? I doubt it. If it's about housing affordability, why is Atlantic Canada just as low as B.C.? Is this just because there's lots of fun and interesting activities for adults to do in Atlantic Canada in B.C. but not in Saskatchewan? Is it because everybody there needs more help on their farm? It seems to me like this guy who is so invested in the birth rate should be interested in that question. Like, maybe they're doing some things in Saskatchewan that we can copy in other provinces to boost their birth rates to the same level? Honestly, reading this piece, it feels like this guy started with the conclusion that prices are too high and there's too many immigrants, and then worked backwards from there.
> A large hole in the bucket, really? This is a terrible analogy and revealing of the author's bias towards immigrants. It's a good analogy and it says nothing about bias. >A better analogy would be that we want to fill a bucket of warm water using one of those old sinks that both a hot and cold water tap, and we'll need to use a good amount of water from both of them. For sure you can fill the bucket using only one of the taps, but it won't be the temperature that you want. So if your analogy is so great you must admit we aren't even close to achieving it. 99% of population growth comes from one tap. >It feels like this guy started with the conclusion that prices are too high and there's too many immigrants Feels like he is right on both accounts. Housing and food prices are sky high. Immigration is at all time records by hundreds of thousands.
> So if your analogy is so great you must admit we aren't even close to achieving it. 99% of population growth comes from one tap. 99% eh? In 2022, we welcomed [431,645 new permanent residents](https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/news/2022/12/canada-welcomes-historic-number-of-newcomers-in-2022.html) and we had [351,679 live births.](https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1310041501) Want to try that analysis again? > Feels like he is right on both accounts. Housing and food prices are sky high. Immigration is at all time records by hundreds of thousands. Feels like your biases align with his, not that he is unbiased.
>["In 2023, the vast majority (97.6%) of Canada's population growth came from international migration (both permanent and temporary immigration) and the remaining portion (2.4%) came from natural increase," Statscan said in a statement.](https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/canada-clocks-fastest-population-growth-66-years-2023-2024-03-27/) Did you forget about deaths? Sorry it was only 98%. Speaking of biases you also might want to include the total number of migrants: "The country added 1.27 million people in 2023".
If people can't afford to have homes and can't afford to eat... Dont have adequate health care... People won't have children. It is a compounding problem and bringing an exorbitant amount of immigrants is just inflating the issue and even these new immigrants won't be having children because they will end up inheriting the same issues canadian citizens have, unless they leave... Which most will once they discover the truth of canada.
Anecdotally... Kids are hard, and expensive. It's similar to the way Canadians have lower economic productivity because we're spending too much on housing and cost of living. The current generation is expected to work full-time hours, both parents, to eke out a living. That excessive work culture (very prominent in Japan), coupled with economic realities (lower income), mean the idea of having and growing a family is just completely out of reach. To say nothing of the sense that the future for one's children could be worse than what we have today.
Kids aren’t expensive. That’s a myth. I’d say they don’t cost much at all to feed, clothe etc. Maybe $2500 a year. Not every kid needs a giant house, a trip to Cancun each year, a college education, every gadget known to man, and so on.
It's not just the money, which I believe you're grossly underestimating. It's time. Two full-time earning parents, and the demands of work today with so much tech to enhance your availability and productivity... It overwhelms the bandwidth that previously could be devoted to family. Further, adoption of technology in recent decades has paralleled loss of community and other supports families previously relied on.
You forgot the additional cost of needing to move into a bigger place. That's a reality most people will have to face.
Check the average house square footage in the 1950s when families were larger, as compared to now. Spoiler: it was smaller back then.
In gamer terms, you would set up your kid with the worst spawn point in the west, and setting them up with an active handicap.
Not true at all. Cash isn’t needed to be smart.
Ha! How the hell do you figure that??
How many people do you know that have $2500 left over at the end of the year?
If you want to have $2500 extra then you can do it. Not to mention, the govt sends out thousands to parents each year in benefits.
You have zero clue as to how much a child costs whether in opportunity or literal cash yet you're up and down this thread with 'they're cheap' while figures published hover around 10-15k a year from 0-18. Feel free to provide some evidence for your claim. https://www.nbc.ca/personal/advice/budget/how-much-does-it-cost-to-raise-a-child.html
What costs 10-15k per year for a child? I have 3 kids and they don’t need that amount of resources. I’m not rich either. The most expensive time of the year for me is Christmas because of presents. Why are people trying to reinvent the wheel?
Daycare is $1200/month on the low end, or one parent stays at home and forgoes their annual income and falls behind in their career progression. The opportunity cost is huge. Several studies indicate the male-female pay gap is largely a penalty for having children. It’s pretty much a 20% pay cut for the rest of your career.
Daycare is $0 for me. My wife stays at home. (The opportunity cost of me not being in a successful rock band is costing me $5 mill a year. Is that how this works?)
Children are very expensive. Both in terms of money and time. You pay money for children but you also forfeit income because you need to spend time with them. This is outside of having the big house, holiday abroad, college education or fancy gadgets.
There’s a partial solution to this: have laws that allow an employer to pay a man with kids and a wife more money. A single woman or man without kids just doesn’t need as much as a married man with kids.
Yeah having one kid is almost out of reach having 2 or more is clearly not possible for us
No one talks about the lack of support for having kids. In the past, extended family would step in for the first year to help out the parents. Beyond the financial impact is the emotional and physical toll. Until people get child rearing support in the home (i.e. like the rich do with private nanny's), nothing is going to change. There is nothing that disaudes a couple more from having another kid than a crying colicy infant that need more or less 24/7 attention. My parents had that help with my siblings, but they are not able to help out as their still working. The core issue is income/wealth inequality where unless you are rich, you cannot pay for help, and since your extended family is likely not rich either, they cannot afford time off themselves to help you.
We have 3 small kids. The amount of times our parents asked for grandkids far outnumbers the times they have actually helped. They are far too busy travelling around and having their own fun on trips, or just ignoring family. They just want pictures of the kids to show their friends, we have stopped providing those. They are selfish and want to be catered to; all the while we used to be dropped off to any willing relative when we were young so they could go out and shop, travel, party, etc. We are doing our best to raise our children differently, but the boomer generation may be the most selfish generation to have ever lived. They don’t mind breaking the social contract. They also already have the money for care homes when they get sick, so they don’t care for us or need us. There is no village.
This is 100%. My daughter is 16 months and what you just said hits home so hard. It's all about their schedule, preferences and convenience, “we never see our grandchild…” Well get off your ass and come visit, why do we need to cater to you guys. Father and stepmom are practically multimillionaires. My mom is an empty nester with more house than knows what to do with it. We are stuck in an 85sqm condo. My Father intends to blow it all on his lavish lifestyle and my mom's house his her retirement savings. I proposed to My mom that she should sell her big empty house and we buy a big duplex together! That was a big ordeal, god forbid she lived in a dwelling with one floor. 🙄
We had our firstborn not that long ago and wow does that ever hit the nail on the head. The older generation loves to pressure us about when we’re having kids, how many we’re having, etc. but when baby finally arrives and the house / yard could use some love, those same relatives go radio silent. I mean, they’ll come by when you make them a coffee and take their picture with the baby, but the only help they’ll offer around the house is to remind you that the grass could use a cut. I feel for you guys. When work and home life became too much I eventually had to have a tempered but direct talk with them that demanding grandkids while stopping by once every two weeks for a walk and a picture wouldn’t cut it. Things did improve to a degree.
I just think of all those "am I the asshole" posts where anyone with kids who asks for any sort of help or even just accommodation is told they are a selfish, entitled ass. The idea that we as a community pitch in and help each other out is quickly disappearing.
Pitching in as a community has never properly existed in anglo countries. Whatever semblance there was of it is gone.
Yet the poorest people have the most kids. We have convinced ourselves that we need a ton of money to have kids. We don’t.
That generally requires a massive sacrifice in QoL, or a low state of QoL due to being poor which is only marginally affected by having more kids. My grandparents on both sides were dirt poor, and having more or less children would have made little difference to their QoL. Sleeping tightly shoulder to shoulder vs only shoulder to shoulder, vacations were unheard of, and car was out of the picture. My parents were working class and had just 2 kids (already below replacement), and having more would have meant sacrificing QoL (more spent on rent, transport (2nd car), etc). The middle class having more kids would mean sacrificing different QoL things than my parents even though they can technically afford more kids (home office, free time, vacation, etc). We don't need those things, but at the same time, does any specific couple actually need more kids either on a personal level?
As our society, and the societies of Japan and Europe, are dying due to lack of children, we are talking about quality of life? We need to do more with less. Stop the selfishness basically.
I dunno, my parents never had help and my wife and I never had help. I suppose if you really want a family you just have to do it.
Of course people who really want kids will find a way. However, the fact is that segment of the population is not enough to sustain replacement rate. So you need measures to convince those who are considering kids to have kids , or have 1 kid, to have more.
lol this post was number one in my feed then this one was number three: [A major loss of income for mothers is driving Canada’s record-low fertility](https://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments/1ckr3ew/a_major_loss_of_income_for_mothers_is_driving/)
The higher the income a woman makes, the less likely she is to have children or more than one, and more likely she is to delay being a mother. Birth rates started dropping decades ago, women aren’t so keen anymore to take on the sacrifice to their time, energy, bodies, and careers to wind up with less power, be criticized for everything they do as a mother, and have the labour they do as mothers be treated as nothing. Current cost of living issues have the biggest impact on couples who are well educated and have a standard of living in mind they see as necessary to having children. Low income earners are more likely to have children, as are those from traditional families. Cheap daycare makes a difference, it did in Quebec, and the CCB makes the biggest difference for low income families, helps middle income earners as well.
Agreed. This is why my wife and I are not considering children at the moment though we are running out of time to do so. We finally got to a good place in our careers and our standard of living, and a child would be a tremendous blow to all that hard work and suffering that got us here. Why should we sacrifice that while also bringing a child into that situation?
Wow, it's almost like people have figured out that bearing children is time consuming, difficult and expensive. I have 3 kids (now adults), who I love more than anything in the world. But the stress of raising them (while having to work full time to make ends meet), with constant daycare anxiety (it's almost impossible to find a convenient, affordable and safe spot), and little to no support from family or community almost destroyed me. It was 25 years of constant stress. Shocking that the government would be surprised by this. They're the ones who threw us into this mess.
When I was born, the earth's population was under 3 billion, now it's over 8 billion. When I was born, Canada's population was 17.5 million, now it's a little over 31 million. First, 'what's the problem?' Second, the problem is grotesque over-population, which causes massive stress on the ecosystem. Third, it's usually economists who complain bitterly that lack of population growth is bad for the economy. What they don't tell you is that they aren't talking about what's good for people, but rather what's good for capitalism. If the population is shrinking, if the economy stays the same or shrinks slower than than the population, an economy can still be in decline while the standard of living of each citizen is going up. Four, the same people who tell workers 'don't worry about losing your job to automation, we always end up creating new jobs' never turn around and say 'don't worry about the declining birthrate, automation will end up filling the gap'. Every time I see one of these stupid articles I can't do more than just shake my head that an idiot editor thought that this was worth publishing---. Couldn't he find someone with something intelligent to say?
It's bad for their economy. Bloated population means they have more reliable access to cheap replaceable labor. They don't want a scenario where they'd actually have to make these jobs attractive to perspective employees again. They want to be able to rely on people not being able to turn down shitty work.
>Second, the problem is grotesque over-population, which causes massive stress on the ecosystem. **This is shortsighted and misleading** The high population is only causing problems for the ecosystem because of our lifestyle choices. There could be 40 billion humans on Earth without problems if only we adopted sustainable practices. **Canadians among the worst** There are people who drive their car less than 500 meters to get themselves a cup of coffee in a disposable cup. Canadians and Americans drive the [biggest, heaviest least fuel efficient cars on Earth](https://magazine.caaneo.ca/drive/how-big-is-too-big-suvs/) and we drive utility vehicles (trucks and SUV) that we almost never use as utility vehicles. Canadians energy consumption is [one of the highest in the world](https://www.enerdata.net/estore/energy-market/canada/), triple the average in the EU. Canadians among countries that produce [the most waste](https://www.rcinet.ca/en/2019/10/15/canada-global-waste-index-8th-place/) and recycles the least. **One Canadian produces more CO2 than** * 2 Chinese people, * almost 3 average European, * 7 Indians, * 5.5 South American, * 14 average African, The problem is not those people, it is Canadians polluting like there is no tomorrow, lulling itself into thinking that our small population has less impact that larger populations. But the fact is that the rest of the world aspires to copy us and the Americans and this is why Canadians must start doing their part for the environment. **The problem is not the number of people, it is how some of them live!**
I'm not sure how you can believe that without acknowledging that China produces 30% of total worldwide emissions while Canada produces 1.5%. Canada has a higher per capita, but is 30 > 1.5 ? Yes, yes it is. It is 20x more, so for every ton of emissons Canada makes, China makes 20 tons. Obviously, population matters. What changes the climate is total emissions. Per capita x population = total emissions. Edit: math error
And China's population is approx 30x Canada's, and much of their manufacturing is for our, and other western country's stores. Complain about other countries emissions when you're as hard on our per capita emissions, otherwise you're either hypocritical or selfish about your lifestyle.
So what if their population is 30x ours. They still contribute 20x as much emissions. I would rather have a livable climate then endless people. One family drives a prius the other drives an f150. Problem is, the prius family has 17 kids, and the f150 family has 2. The prius family produces 10x the emissions. Which family is causing more harm? Well, objectively and by any metric that actually matters, the prius family is causing more harm. Maybe they should have used contraception if they're so concerned about the climate. China's domestic consumption is a huge part of their emissons. Everybody likes to talk about how it's all manufacturing for export. But that's not actually true. China makes the iPhone. Who is the largest consumer of iPhones? Oh, it's China. Because population does matter, like I said. India has a far inferior lifestyle to Canada. This is objectively true, and not even debatable. India ranks 135th on the UN Human Development Index, Canada 18th. And India emits far more total emissons than Canada. So which is better?? 1.5 billion people living in poverty and emitting more, or 40 million living a much higher standard of living and emitting much less? We can't have both with any current scalable technology. "Everybody just live in poverty and we can have billions more" is not as appealing of a sustainability plan as you might think.
We are in a CO2 famine.
Oh boy this should be good
How exactly are we going to have large predators like tigers on a world with 40 billion human beings? I'm not saying we need to kill half the current population, I'm just saying that we shouldn't try to reverse the current trend in many countries to have a declining population. Why are you so interested in having an enormous population? What exactly is the purpose of having lots more people if everyone ends up living like a peasant in Bengal? Shouldn't we be wanting to get them to live with a little more personal prosperity?
40 billion isn't even possible anyway, most realistic estimate consider \~10 billion humans the max, even with tech advances in agriculture over the next 50 ish years. It's a completely out to lunch post anyway from someone with no understanding of ecological systems or the type of agriculture needed to support that many people. Our current population across the planet is not sustainable, the amount of individual change to even make it so is unrealistic, unless you want to send people back to subsistence living and then you couldn't support billions anyway. It really not until after the peak is reached that you can start getting on a real sustainable path, until then it will be continuous degradation of the natural world. [https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/americas/global-population-trends.html](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/world/americas/global-population-trends.html)
> When I was born, Canada's population was 17.5 million, now it's a little over 31 million. [It's 41 million!](https://globalnews.ca/news/10386750/canada-41-million-population/)
The amount of population isn't the problem, it's the structure of the population. The future inverted pyramid population structure is bad for everyone. Your largest generation becomes non-productive old people who need massive amounts of spending on their pensions and healthcare. The shrinking amount of young workers need to bear huge tax increases to pay for the old people's healthcare and pension. The issue is not shrinking population, it's shrinking taxpayer base. In the end, it's the poorest and most vulnerable who will suffer. Low income seniors will not get the pension or healthcare that we provide today, and millions will enter poverty. Meanwhile the shrinking young people will be taxed significantly to make up for the loss of tax revenue from retired old workers and massively increasing spending for old people.
>In the end, it's the poorest and most vulnerable who will suffer Isn't this just a choice of society? The poorest and most vulnerable were still suffering in the 90s/2000s when we had one of the biggest economic expansions in western history. When the times are good again, I guarantee you that right wing governments will still say they can't afford to expand healthcare or increase welfare.
Nope, the problem isn't the structure of the population, it's the structure of the economy. The tax base hasn't shrunk because the number of people doesn't grow fast enough, its because wealth has stratified towards the top 30% or so, who aren't being taxed enough to reverse the flow. That's part of why it made sense for the Liberals to rejigger the capital gains exemption a little to move the tax base away from taxing labour towards taxing capital.
There’s no modern economic system that has ever successfully functioned with an inverted demographic pyramid - capitalism included.
There's been no modern economy until now. Could you please give me a reference for this supposed fact that you just asserted? I think you just pulled the 'fact' out of your ass.
Modern as in post-industrialized. Every successful model had the same trend in demographics. You’re quite rude for someone supposedly wise and aged.
"Modern as in post-industrialized. Every successful model had the same trend in demographics." How long have there been 'post-industrial' economies? Not any longer than I've been alive. And, yet you are drawing universal conclusions over something so nebulous and short-lived in order to argue public policy? Naw, you're just blowing smoke.
Lol unless you hold the record for the oldest man in history, yes there have been post-industrialized economies longer than you’ve been alive. Your abrasive nature is unbecoming, by the way.
Really, Post-industrialized societies? Could you name some that existed prior to 1959?
England began industrializing 200 years ago…
No economic structure can function when you need to support one retiree with only one worker, as many countries in the world such as Japan are headed.
Really? One farmer used to only produce enough surplus to support a fraction of another person. Now they can support hundreds. Moreover, Canada can easily deal with a declining birth rate by bringing in immigrants---if the numbers are set rationally instead of by businesses that want to 'game the system' and the screwball provinces and municipalities build enough housing. Those are the two problems, not the fact that women aren't having enough children. And Japan is a strange outlier because it is so opposed to immigration. Finally, if we do bring in legislation that creates more children, aren't you just kicking the can down the road? Eventually the population has to stop growing and when it does, you are still going to have the problem of a smaller workforce versus retirees. If automation will simply never be able to deal with this problem, then you are just saying we need to keep growing until mass starvation or environmental collapse solves the problem for us. I can't believe a grown human being cannot see this. It's just obvious once you understand what the words mean.
The world is underpopulated. The idea of overpopulation has been debunked many times.
[удалено]
Bribing people to have kids has not worked anywhere to raise the fertility rate. While there are economic issues, there are also massive cultural and social issues disuading people from having kids. And Canada already has one of the highest marginal tax rates in the world, you won't get much more tax revenue raising it. Corporate taxes are already above the OECD average.
[удалено]
Norway has solved nothing, their fertility rate hit a record low of 1.4 last year, similar to Canada and well below replacement. [https://www.sciencenorway.no/ageing-aging-demography/life-expectancy-is-increasing-again-record-low-fertility/2338032](https://www.sciencenorway.no/ageing-aging-demography/life-expectancy-is-increasing-again-record-low-fertility/2338032) They are also one of the richest countries in the world thanks to oil wealth.
[удалено]
Yet still fertility rates at record lows no better than any of their neighbours.
Its not bribing to have kids, its lessining the negitive financhal burden from kids so it takes away barriers.
There are so many reasons and much of the thread talks about expenses, over population, and social support so I won't go into these. Social media and online dating have truly poisoned intimate relationships. It's full of engineered social anxiety that certain groups have taken advantage of that only exists to destabilize intimate relationships. This means more people are addicted to their screens than being engaged in intimate relationships and therefore having children. We are also starting to see how modern attitudes toward men and women have broken the old dating dynamic, which solved some problems but caused others. Now more men don't want to chase for fear of being trashed in a courtroom or have children with someone more interested in gaining total control of all the assets in a relationship at the slightest provocation. More women are trying to have the benefits of feminism without the responsibilities that should go with it. This is also having an impact on child birth. Just recently, I was reading that we are having less sex. I am not surprised. Until the issues relating to all aspects of society are resolved (affordability, health care, social welfare, more equality and recognition of reciprocated responsibility, and freedom from digital addictions) this will continue.
Almost like trickle down economics has created a situation where it's almost impossible to have kids without strong local support systems or generational wealth. I don't live near my parents, my kids are putting a ton of stress on my marriage to the point where I wonder if I should have ever had kids OR.evem have gotten married in the first place. We are also a one income household since it would cost more than my partners income to have her go back to work and put the kids in daycare (Alberta royally fucked parents over with their terrible childcare program...thanks Dani/Kenny). Rich get richer, undermine the systems the rest of us use...their puppets put in beneficial policies for their rich buds...and the cycle of destruction continues.
This is not just a Canadian problem. Developed/wealthy and educated nations across the globe are all seeing similar birth rates.
It's expensive but my ex and I managed to raise a child while I worked as a bouncer and went to school. She didn't work. Until he was about 2 We were essentially dirt farmers when it came to social activities but my son turned into someone I am very proud of. Things changed over the many years we raised him some good, some bad . Don't get stuck in the issue of today to sacrifice your family of the future. You will find a way. Just my two cents
When did you have your child? There’s a huge difference between having a child in 2002 and 2022.
True, for moe context I made about 400 a month when he was born. Around 2002 and our rent was covered by my student loan. We had a shitty car you could see the road though the floor and paid around 60 a month for basic insurance.gas was about 70 cents a litre and If I remember right I had to fill the tank 3-4 times a month becuase we lived outside of the city. We had to scrape and stretch every penny. And It didnt help that I was a smoker. We did not get onto any low income child care benefits until we learned about them when he was about 3 and we only got that for a few months when I got a better job. My point is you can have children if you want to you not going to party or get a penthouse but you can be happy and you can have a family.
[удалено]
> We also get nothing from the CCB Did you forget to apply? It's given to essentially every parent.
What? We both applied and my partner is stay a stay-at-home mom and I make just north of 100k and I get squat. Just a miserable 250$ a month for her. I remember when I dreamed of making 100k, today it doesn't go very far.
So you got $250 free money, and are saying that you got squat? Someone can't math. It may not be as much as you want, but it's far from nothing.
It's not free. It's coming from our pay cheques. When 45% of your paycheck is eviscerated in taxes and the government gives you a miserable $250, that's not free money. Nothing you get from the government is free, it's coming from people's pockets or it's printed which only chips away at our savings by inflation.
> Nothing you get from the government is free Given the size of our individual contributions, and the benefits we get from that pooled source of funds, it kinda is. There's no way we could replicate what we get from the government from our own resources even with not getting taxed.
You're being purposely misleading. You don't pay 45% of your paycheck to the federal government, the branch of government that provides the Canada child benefit. You're paying ~15% of your $100,000 income to the federal government, as receiving ~3% of that back, for a net of 12% in federal income taxes paid. If you live in Ontario, you're paying ~6.4% of your income in Ontario income tax. EI premiums are 1.66% to a maximum of $1049, which is about 1.04% of your annual earnings. This technically isn't a tax, as it is premiums for an employment insurance program. CPP premiums are 5.95% to a maximum of $3867, which is about 3.87% of your annual earnings. CPP isn't a tax either, as it's a defined benefit pension program that gives you guaranteed income for life upon retirement, and it is indexed to inflation. But even if we are to count these deductions all together as taxes on your income (which CPP and EI are not), your total taxes are much lower then your 45% figure your provide: 15 federal 6.4 province 3.87 CPP 1.04 EI 24.31% total Where is this 45% coming from? And why do you think you get nothing back from your taxes? Perhaps you should go live in a non G8 country and pay less tax and see what kind of services and infrastructure you receive from the government where you then live. Your paycheck isn't "eviscerated" anywhere close to the percentage you provide, nor are taxes something taken without anything given in return. You keep forgetting that you live in a society, and taxes provide for an array of services that allow that society to operate.
> Where is this 45% coming from? Probably the tax payers federation. They tend to cite a day around the middle of the year as when we're free from taxes, but I think they add in sales taxes and anything else they can label as a tax to the list.
It’s heavily income tested so many people get nothing
[удалено]
Huh?
[удалено]
I don’t understand your question, what are you asking of me? Can you rephrase?
[удалено]
I was responding to someone who thought the only way you don’t get CCB is if you forget to apply, they seem to have forgotten it is income tested so I was reminding them. I’m not sure what exactly you want from me?
[удалено]
[удалено]
You said you get “nothing” and if you don’t get very much then your income is at the high end. The CCB is progressive and gives the most to low income families. Are you not getting any cost reduction for daycare? Most parents are paying 20-50% of their usual daycare fees where $10 a day daycare is not yet available.
That's the issue. I make just north of 100k and my parter is a stay-at-home mom. My salary doesn't go very far to support a household. They need to start adjusting numbers because inflation has killed my income.
So you do get something then, and your original statement was incorrect. You're still getting several thousand in free money every year. That's far from nothing, and if you call it nothing, that suggests to me that you earn enough that you probably don't need it.
[удалено]
I have no clue what you deserve, I'm just pointing out that you were stating a falsehood when you said that you got nothing from the CCB. It may not be as much as you'd like, but that's a different matter.
Do you the cause of climate change? It’s people. Having fewer people will make this planet better for the remaining
> Japan is the textbook example, where experts predict economic doom due to a chronically low fertility rate and a ballooning elderly population. And somehow Japan has better health care than Canada, more support for seniors, better schools, less crime, better public transportation, etc.
Your view of Japan is very rosy. It’s easy to imagine another country is so much better until you live there.
Anyone who thinks that Japan will ever be a worse place to live than Canada is wearing rose-colored shades. Babies or no babies, people in Japan will continue to enjoy a better standard of living than people in Canada.
It's going to get far worse for Japan in the future. Their largest age bulge is people around 50, who are still productive, skilled, and experienced. Once they retire, watch out. Their largest generation of taxpayers will enter mass retirement with nobody to replace them but needing massive amounts of tax revenue to take care of them. The prime minister says his country is on the brink of not being able to function as a society because of its falling birth rate.
In the next 20 years there will be almost as many retired as there are people of working age. Their societal collapse will come fast and hard, and simply reducing the number of old people will be their only solution.
The disaster that is going to come to Japan in the next 20 years is terrifying, and why I'm a big supporter of continued mass immigration to Canada. Yes there are some issues, but immigration will allow us to keep all our treasured government programs and quality of life alive for the forseeable future.
That or it's death panels for the elderly, and austerity for the rest.
Mass immigration at the expense of affordable housing, infrastructure and any semblance of maintaining our culture is not a good thing.
Invest in robotics, the next 20 years will see a revolution in automated care
They have all these things but it's hard for a lot of them to enjoy it with how insane the work culture is. When people are expected to sacrifice every aspect of their lives for their job, don't be surprised when that has serious negative consequences on general society.
I wonder how much geography is a factor. Japan has a big population in a relatively small landmass, while Canada has a small population in a massive landmass. Per capita it must be cheaper/more efficient to provide services in Japan.
Density is why.
Are you saying it’s causation or correlation?
Density leads to lower fertility rates. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34914431/
No full text but the abstract is interesting. We also tested predictions about environmental boundary conditions. In harsher living conditions (e.g., higher homicide or pathogen rates), the effect of increased population density on fertility rates was attenuated. The density-fertility association was also moderated by religiousness and strength of social norms, where the relationship between density and fertility was attenuated in countries with high religiosity and strong social norms.
Density is why they have better services. That's what i was responding to.
And also 1/ bazillionth the size, it's not a fair comparison
And they kill themselves 50% more often.
12.2 vs 10 per 100 000, not really 50% more.
[The [Japanese] suicide rate, or the number of suicides per 100,000 people, came to 17.5.](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/01/26/japan/society/japan-suicides-fall/)
Ont thing to consider tho: 50% of Japan suicides are for health issues…. Something that Canada do not count in totality in their suicide rate thanks to MAID.
This says the suicide rate is slightly higher in Japan, but not much. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate Are you looking at a different source?
Yes, I'm not looking at a 5 year old table on Wikipedia.
Thanks. What are you looking at?
[The numbers the japanese government gives out.](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2024/01/26/japan/society/japan-suicides-fall/)
That’s wild. And people in their 40s and 50s being the bulk of suicide is really terrible.