The Sheer Idiocy Of Fighting Ageing With Mass Immigration

Editor’s note: This article was originally published on the Canadians for a Sustainable Society website (sustainablesociety.com). It is republished here with permission of the author. This version has been slightly abridged – read the full version here.

In 2022 Canada’s population momentarily stopped ageing for the first time since 1971, driven by mass immigration policies. The median age of people living in Canada in 2023 edged down to 40.6 from 41.0 in 2021.

What was the price of this tremendous achievement?

• Record unaffordable housing
• Record farmland loss
• GHG emissions increase
• Record debt
• Declining health care
• Low quality jobs
• Declining equality
• Never-before-seen despair levels in young people

All these were accompanied by record developer, banker, cheap labour employer profits – and of course, the suppression of Canadian birth rates was a given. Hence the nonsensical “war on ageing”, which is really the promotion by any means of growth.

But beyond the benefits to a small elite, on a national policy basis, is reducing or eliminating the ageing trend a worthwhile or even realistic goal?

Ageing and population stabilization are the outcomes of a demographic trend toward longer life spans and fewer children which started in the 18th century. It will result in a much higher proportion of older people in the population than ever before in human history. We will deal with the many benefits of this below, but first it is vital to point out that the only way to “fight” ageing is to have the population grow at an increasing level FOREVER. Hardly a winning strategy on a finite and depleting planet.

Using extreme levels of immigration to hold back ageing has been a mainstay of the investment bank/developer-owned media for years. In fact, their implication is that this is a fix. A further implication is that once “fixed”, ageing will cease to be an issue. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There is no scientific basis for the media contention that fighting ageing is a one-time battle which can be won and then walked away from. A stable population brings a higher proportion of older people. Period.

For an explanation of this, one can consult a discussion of “demographic determinants” in the book Population Change in Canada (3rd Edition, Kerr and Beaujot, 2016: ch 8, pp. 197-201), which covers the causes of ageing and the stages of ageing in Canada.

In short, despite the media and growth promoter narrative that ageing must be fought and can be defeated, no demographer will support those contentions. Once embarked upon, population growth has to be maintained or ageing will re-assert itself.

The grow-or-die narrative works for the speculators, developers, debt mongers and cheap labour employers who profit massively from mass immigration – but not for the vast majority of productive Canadians. The longer the commitment to growth is pursued, the larger the structural changes will need to be when society finally wakes up or collapses.

Building an economy by paving farmland and increasing debt makes it far more difficult to transition to a broad-based economy in a sustainable society. Besides the difficulties in creating a productive infrastructure, there is the challenge of replacing ideological leadership and yes-men managers brought up in a culture of technological denial. Witness Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s rejection of the requirement that new homes be built with roughed in electric vehicle (EV) charging capability. This while his left hand courts EV production agreements.

At the federal level, Justin Trudeau talks green but walks growth. These politicians will never offer effective leadership. The Ford/Trudeau syndrome is pervasive in government and media.

Core beliefs don’t change easily, particularly if they are ideological and not subject to any kind of scientific or real-world information input or review. For these individuals, it is impossible to lift their short term horizon of deal-making to one of long term progress.

Imminent collapse or unavoidable progress?

Keep in mind that the real economy does not need growth. Only the parasitic overhead of the money economy absolutely depends on the demand and housing cost inflation population growth guarantees.

The mass immigration lobby has always known this, which is why they bought controlling interest of the media to assure the message of “grow or die” was hammered home each and every day.

The “collapse” of Japan’s economy, the implosion of Europe, and the coming catastrophe of China’s population decline are all stories central to the media’s false narrative on ageing.

But does it really mean general economic collapse, or is it just a collapse for the narrow finance and cheap labour sectors while economic improvement occurs for most people? Below we can see that Japan’s declining population growth is a disaster for developers, while bringing benefits to Japanese individuals and society in general.

Japan per capita income trends slightly upward over the past 30 years. Meanwhile housing affordability is better in Japan with a house price to income ratio about 20% lower than Canada’s. Also, monthly housing expenses as a share of disposable income of working households are in mild decline in Japan over the past 10 years:

How to take advantage of ageing

After the Black Plague reduced England’s population by between 30% and 50% in the mid-1300s, real wages for labourers doubled. Firstly there was a shortage of labour and secondly, crop areas were reduced to the most productive fields while less rich soils were allowed to recover with extended fallow periods.

For decades there was relative abundance and no restless body of disenfranchised poor. War, the typical solution to a nation’s resource shortages, was unnecessary.

Likewise, as populations stabilize, young men will make up a smaller share of the population and their higher levels of prosperity and hopeful prospects will make them far less willing to fight in foreign wars.

The contributions of young women and men to the nation will be far more critical. Putin’s battlefield tactic of cannon fodder and Trudeau’s economic meatwave philosophy, will die along with the economic concepts of cheap labour and growth at any cost. The demographic transition to ageing features:

• higher wages for young people
• higher employment levels for young people
• more affordable housing
• lower consumption
• no need for additional infrastructure
• emphasis shifts from “more” to “better”
• less material consumption by older population
• lower need for resources outside of one’s own borders

All these factors add up to both less of a need and lower ability to wage aggressive, imperial wars (are you listening Vladimir??). This is a first in history on a planetary basis. We can switch our priorities from paving farmland and forest and printing money to investing in our people and making them more productive. Ageing allows us to pivot from growth to progress much more easily.

Investing in tools and training boosts productivity, incomes and fiscal balance while dumping money into real estate simply transfers wealth from the productive many to the unproductive few.

The increase in equality levels will reduce debt and balance budgets while improving the social safety net. Options for the young open up as they can settle down in a good neighbourhood with well-paid jobs early enough to decide on family relationships – whereas now these opportunities are simply sailing by them.

In terms of global responsibilities and relationships, cooperative development, the building of broad-based, sustainable societies, becomes the top priority and will not be seen as a threat to any other nation. The root causes of conflict will be greatly reduced.

An era of cooperative development will end hundreds of centuries of the mentality of winners and losers where the objective has been to gain by beggaring thy neighbour.

Endless population growth means endless wars over resources as human history illustrates. This culture of war and conflict enshrines a mentality of the need to attack someone before they attack you. Population stabilization will lay a never-before-seen-in-human-history, biophysically solid foundation for world peace that doesn’t turn into whirled peas mere weeks after the ink has dried on yet another piece of paper.

We could mess up the transition to ageing – but we’d have to try really hard

Ageing automatically does a lot of the heavy lifting of the market transition to a progressive and sustainable society. It puts a high value on young people, reduces inflationary pressures, and boosts equality levels and fiscal balance while reducing consumption pressure on the planet. It will eliminate many types of predatory/unproductive business models and a great deal of the growth noise in the national conversation.

The past 40 years have seen Canadians make huge sacrifices to continue moving in the wrong direction with ever-diminishing ability to course-correct. This Pyrrhic ageing victory will constantly be eroded as the inexorable demographic transition to a stable and declining population asserts itself.

Ageing will give us a huge boost along the road to:

• full employment
• high quality jobs
• affordable housing
• life satisfaction
• strong communities
• fiscal balance
• energy and climate resiliency

In other words, ageing almost forces governments to invest in their people, which is what they should have been doing all along. Investing in Canadians will be inevitable as will be the fall of the corrupt leadership which has preached endless growth and fear of ageing to their enormous profit and our tremendous loss.

In fighting ageing, corrupt governments have attempted to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. This is futile, as the world is ageing. The world is also burning. Why continue a policy which ignores these megatrends and tries to make the past 40 years of social, environmental and economic failure permanent?

Embracing ageing produces huge benefits for individuals, families and society as a whole. However, it is Armageddon for the growth lobby of developers, speculators, debt mongers, and cheap labour employers. They won’t be persuaded – they will have to be unseated, and it will be messy. Nevertheless, this parasitic overhead has to be shown the door.

Canada has to let go of its unsustainable past and seize the opportunity of progress lying at our feet.