Time for Canada to Face Up to the Bad News (There are important lessons here for the U.S.)

The Calgary Sun ^ | April 26, 2004 | Ted Byfield

[quidnunc]

It will no doubt fascinate future historians when they come to examine us. They'll see how the whole western world in our generation walked serenely into a social calamity of unprecedented dimensions, unheeding, unthinking and uncaring.

We can't say we weren't warned. In news story after news story, we're warned every day. But we ignore the warnings because there's nothing we can do about them without "setting the clock back."

Of course, that's what you do with clocks that run too fast. Societies that change too fast are much tougher to set right.

What brought this on, you ask? It could be any one of a number of things, such as:

The fact that we do not know how to educate boys and are consequently producing a generation of social dropouts who join gangs and become very unpleasant.

The fact we have a social security net that we cannot possibly keep paying for.

The fact that we are rapidly losing the ability to sustain marriages, to raise obstreperous children without drugging them into vegetables, to go without luxuries, and to stay out of debt.

We are repeatedly being warned about all of these perils and do little if anything about them.

Last week, however, we received a jim-dandy.

The Canadian birth rate, we were told, is now at its lowest in history. It has sunk to 10.5 births per thousand population, against 14.3 in 1991, and 28.5 in 1954.

-snip-

[BerkeleyRight]

Canada? How about the these:

• Low Birth Rates Hurting Germany - April 17, 2004
• U.S. Birth Rate Reaches Record Low - June 25, 2003
• Georgian population drops by a fifth - May 7, 2003
• South Korea's dwindling population - May 2, 2003
• Birth rate in England and Wales at all-time low - December 12, 2002
• Pope urges Italians to have children - November 14, 2002
• Scots birth rate hits all-time low - October 30, 2002
• Spain's Birth Rate Drops To An All-Time Low - January 18, 2000

[Windsong]

"The Canadian birth rate..."

Sharp as an orange.

This author laments the fact people go into debt, then he laments Canadians for their insufficient birthrate. Has he done any analysis on what it costs to raise a child?

Brilliant.

[Agnes Heep]

Ah, the prophetic words of General Buck Turgidson in Dr. Strangelove:

I mean, we must be increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge!

[demlosers]

"More than one fourth of all children born in 2002 were delivered by cesarean; the total cesarean delivery rate of 26.1 percent was the highest level ever reported in the United States. The number of cesarean births to women with no previous cesarean birth jumped 7 percent and the rate of vaginal births after previous cesarean delivery dropped 23 percent. The cesarean delivery rate declined during the late 1980s through the mid-1990s but has been on the rise since 1996."

26.1%? Why are cesarean deliveries so high?

[TenthAmendmentChampion]

My guess is to avoid malpractice suits where there is the slightest possibility of birth defects?

[tiamat]

Not so much birth defects... Fear of law-suit due to Mom or Kid dying.

I had a C-section. I am tiny. My Kid was nearly 8 pounds at birth.

Had I had her the traditional way, I would certainly have died and she might have.

[Mamzelle]

Better outcomes--or better perceived outcomes. You must realize how much behavior (not just in medicine, but everywhere) is now ruled by the desire to generate a "good faith" defense in the courtroom. That's because you won't have much else going for you when the lawyer cracks his whip...

Our GDP without the parasite class lawyers--sigh--we'd all be so much better off!! And lawyers multiply without mercy, like maggots teaming on bad meat. This tax, the lawyer tax, is probably far greater than our income tax as a burden on productivity. Most of our competitors abroad do not have this tax--and this is also driving our jobs offshore. Oh,well, send your kid to law school. There's a future in parasitism and scavenging.

[Erik Latranyi]

Of course, in Africa, birth rates remain at high levels.

[Bonaparte]

"...on what it costs to raise a child?"

The highest birth rate in the US is among the poor (and, yes, these kids have a high rate of survival to adulthood). How does this square with your apparent claim that the cost of raising a child is somehow prohibitive?

[Bonaparte]

"I mean, we must be increasingly on the alert to prevent them from taking over other mineshaft space, in order to breed more prodigiously than we do, thus, knocking us out in superior numbers when we emerge!"

The problem is to do that without giving up precious bodily fluids.

[Camel Joe]

Very well put, send this to as many papers as possible.

[satchmodog9]

Pat Buchanan may be a nutcase but, read his Death of the West.

[Malesherbes]

I visit Poland twice a year. There aren't many rich people there, and about half the population is seriously and traditionally Catholic (the other half nominally Catholic.) They stand almost alone in Europe in maintaining a stable population without immigration, and one of the joys of Poland is the abundance of young people.

The title of the national anthem is "Poland hasn't perished yet." In a generation, not many European countries will be able to sing such an anthem.

[Grig]

"This author laments the fact people go into debt, then he laments Canadians for their insufficient birthrate. Has he done any analysis on what it costs to raise a child?"

That was just dumb.

Just how common is it for someone to finance the goceries or diapers for their kid? It's not like you have to pay their whole life's expenses up front.

Having kids pushes a parent to earn more than they otherwise would, which benifits the economy. What is really going on in a lot of cases is that people are so wraped up in having the nice house, the nice car, the home theater, the summer cottage and other luxuries that they don't want the expense, reposibility and/or 'hassle' of having and raising a large family. They borrow to the hilt to have it all now, and later on will agee and die alone and forgotten.

[John Locke]

All of which was predicted back in 1922 by Oswald Spengler...

[ConservativeStLouisGuy]

Time for Canada to face up to the bad news - Ted Byfield

It will no doubt fascinate future historians when they come to examine us. They'll see how the whole western world in our generation walked serenely into a social calamity of unprecedented dimensions, unheeding, unthinking and uncaring.

We can't say we weren't warned. In news story after news story, we're warned every day. But we ignore the warnings because there's nothing we can do about them without "setting the clock back."

Of course, that's what you do with clocks that run too fast. Societies that change too fast are much tougher to set right..

What brought this on, you ask? It could be any one of a number of things, such as:

- The fact that we do not know how to educate boys and are consequently producing a generation of social dropouts who join gangs and become very unpleasant.

- The fact we have a social security net that we cannot possibly keep paying for.

- The fact that we are rapidly losing the ability to sustain marriages, to raise obstreperous children without drugging them into vegetables, to go without luxuries, and to stay out of debt.

We are repeatedly being warned about all of these perils and do little if anything about them.

Last week, however, we received a jim-dandy.

The Canadian birth rate, we were told, is now at its lowest in history. It has sunk to 10.5 births per thousand population, against 14.3 in 1991, and 28.5 in 1954.

Alberta with 13.0 has the highest rate in the country. Newfoundland, where thousands of young people have been driven out because they couldn't find work, has the lowest at 9.1

The situation is in fact worse than these statistics make it appear. I remember some 15 years ago interviewing a population statistician at the University of Alberta where they assess populations on the average number of children per woman of child-bearing age.

This professor told me that to sustain zero population growth that number must stand at 2.1 - i.e., because males do not bear any children and some female children will die before they reach child-bearing age themselves.

During the baby boom of the '50s, the Canadian figure stood at something over 4.0. When I did the interview, it stood at about 1.8. "If it ever gets below 1.7, said the professor, "we will have a serious problem." It now stands at 1.5.

I suggested to him that the deficiency could perhaps be relieved by immigration. "Perhaps be relieved!" he said. "It must be relieved." He explained that if our population ever began a serious decline, it would certainly bring on an economic disaster. "We have no choice," he said. "We must maintain an open-door policy, and that's why we're doing it."

But the real problem, he said, is this: How can we sustain a culture, and cultural values, if the inheritors of that culture are increasingly swamped by peoples, many of whom have very different ideas on how a society should run? It's impossible.

"Luckily for our future economic and fiscal well-being," says our national guru, the Globe and Mail, "Canada is well-positioned to counter the declining population trend by continuing to encourage the immigration of talented people to this country from overcrowded parts of the world where too many of the young and ambitious are chasing too few opportunities."

Maybe somebody should tell them:

1. We don't have this open-door policy because we're "lucky," nor because of our ultra-liberal views. We have it because we must.

2. The higher the proportion of New Canadians to Old Canadians, the more difficult it becomes to sustain those liberal values so cherished by the Globe and Mail.

3. The Toronto Police Department is having an increasingly difficult time maintaining law and order in the immigrant ghettoes because too many of these "talented people" are turning out to have the wrong kind of talents.

4. Among those who do have desirable talents -- and they are far from a few -- too many are using Canada as a temporary stepping stone into the U.S., which is where they wanted to go to begin with.

So the bottom line is this: Unless Canadian-born women start having more kids and sooner, in a very few years this country won't be recognizable.

That's this week's bad news.

___________________________

Quidnunc,


There you go again....


(graphic courtesy of MeekOneGOP from over on this thread


"Did I forget to post the full article again? D'OH!!"

FReegards,

ConservativeStLouisGuy