The major point in this report is that Canada’s resources are not limitless and that Canada has to restrict its immigration and slow down its population growth. If Canada does not do these things, it will jeopardize its own food and energy supply, and severely curtail both its standard of living and its national sovereignty. It is almost certain that if a group of Canada’s best sciences were to research this subject today, their conclusions would be even stronger.
The Science Council’s recommendations, which were made in 1976, are very relevant today. As most will see, the thinking of the Science Council towers above that of Canada’s immigration industry which, unbelievably, has convinced some politicians and others that notions such as diversity, multiculturalism and perpetual high immigration should become Canada’s highest national goals.
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SOME MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE SCIENCE COUNCIL OF CANADA’S REPORT :
The Science Council of Canada consisted of the best scientists in this country. It existed for over 25 years (1966 to 1993). Its job was to provide scientific evidence for government policy on many matters.
In 1976, it was asked to provide evidence on what would be an optimum population for Canada. It told the government that Canada’s population was growing too fast and that Canada had to restrict immigration and work towards stabilizing its population at around 34 million.
Anticipating critics who would say Canada was empty, the Science Council stated that geographical size does not count for much when “so much of Canada is desert and rock, swept by winter’s wind.” In other words, Canada’s hostile climate required caution about increasing its population.
Canada had to achieve food security. It had to protect its very limited amount of agricultural land which comprised only 13% of its land area. Considerably less than half of that was capable of sustained production of common field crops. Prior to 1976, Southern Ontario, the area that contained the best agricultural land in Canada, had lost over a million acres of prime farmland to urban sprawl and was in danger of losing much more. In 1976, the only province that had protected its agricultural land was B.C.
The Science Council argued that capping the population and instituting protection for farm-land was a huge future opportunity for Canada. Canada should use its agricultural land to produce extra food and improve its future balance of payments. Instead Trudeau has foolishly declared : “Regardless of who you are or where you come from, there’s always a place for you in Canada.”—implying that Canada has room for unlimited numbers of people.
Canada also needed to achieve energy self-sufficiency. It stated : “We need to conserve our own available energy supply. It should be treated as a critical and strategic national resource to be used only when needed. ” In other words, our cold climate tells us we must conserve our energy supplies for the future needs of our own population.
The overall major point in The Science Council’s report was that Canada’s resources are not limitless. If Canada did not exercise care, it would jeopardize its own food and energy supply, severely curtail its standard of living and increase its dependence on other countries.
In response to politicians and others who say that Canada is obligated on humanitarian grounds to take large numbers of immigrants and refugees, the Science Council stated that “the biggest international contribution Canada can make is to moderate its population growth in order to strengthen its position as an exporter of food, services and technologies. Even with the most generous immigration policies, Canada could accommodate only a tiny fraction of the over-population of other countries as to be insignificant.”
To those who might say that the Science Council report is old and out of date because it was written in 1976, Ontario’s Environment Commissioner warned several times in the early 2000’s that immigration-driven population growth was endangering Southern Ontario’s farmland and water supply. He concluded that immigration-driven population growth was not sustainable. A UBC report written in the mid-1990’s said something similar about Metro Vancouver. In 1970, the late American Democratic Senator Gaylord Nelson, the founder of Earth Day, said something very similar to what the Science Council of Canada said. Is Nelson’s message out of date? The point is that Canada’s Science Council was not alone in its views and that those views have been repeated by authoritative sources before and after 1976. . (720 words)
