Canada’s population grows and shrinks based on Government Immigration policy decrees. Even when it wasn’t responsible for 100% of our population growth, Immigration’s been responsible for like 95% of our annual growth for decades. It’s sort of eugenics-like in nature, in that the government controls what nationality of people the country grows by, and which skills they arrive with (it also does a shit job of matching those skilled people to workplaces, but that’s a diff rant ;p). Local born populations have been declining for a long time, decades/generations, with the one exception being FN, which are growing considerably (where’s the equity at on this front?). If we had a population decline, it’s entirely planned by the government. Canada is a country where family trees go to die.

People whining about housing prices haven’t paid attention to the housing data. The real home price index has spikes and dips that line up to the inflows of immigrants. Ever since the liberals reversed course on immigration and put in caps on students etc, housing prices have been coming down in most areas. Like avg rent prices dropped by ~4% in Vancouver in 2024, and have been declining since. Housing prices similar, with sales in a total slump. These things pre-date the shift in American politics / international trade chaos – with the only big gov change being the change in immigration policy. Like the governing party didn’t even change, nor did they have any other major changes to other portfolios during that time frame. It seems like this sort of stuff doesn’t get reported on as much, cause it’d be anti-immigration and considered xenophobic/racist I guess, but in this case it does seem pretty clear cut to me.

It’s sorta funny – in the past, there’ve been many stories about countries like China fudging their GDP numbers through building fake cities that never get inhabited etc – legit criticisms. In Canada we took a different approach, fudging our GDP by cramming in people – we didn’t have real productivity gains, or organic growth born out of the prosperity of people living in Canada, but artificial growth, declining GDP per person, and increasingly unmanageable burdens on any system/business that targets sustainability. Inorganic and un-predictable growth doesn’t foster sustainable operations – if the fed suddenly opens the flood gates and lets in thousands of wolves, the flock of health-care providing sheep gets overwhelmed/devoured. Our universities had clearly become dependent on the revenue stream brought by a constant flow of rich immigrant students from outside our local ecosystem – they’re cutting jobs/programs like crazy as a result of the governments shift. I don’t think it’s that much of a mental stretch to reckon that other areas involving affordability / basic needs of locals have been similarly, negatively impacted by our governments approach to immigration.

Make parenting affordable, then we’ll have kids again.

So, we should now see house prices come down, healthcare improved and all our problems solved, right? Right?

Canada is by far not the only country to face a population decline. Only a few states (mainly in South America and particularly in Africa) will see population growth.

Among the larger economies, China is the country with the most severe decrease in population according to researchers, while the country is less prepared than many others. In most Western countries and other democratic states like Japan and South Korea, societies that underwent fertility decline benefited from a so-called ‘demographic dividend’ - driven by a long period of economic growth with a relatively large working population compared to smaller numbers of dependents younger than 15 and older than 65. China’s dividend period started later (in the 1980s) than in other countries, and their fertility rate is now declining faster. This left China with a relatively low per capita income and, therefore, fewer resources to tackle the issues of an aging population.

Simply speaking, China got old before it got rich. This and the fact that China has a far less developed social welfare and pension system than we in the West will be an issue that is going to share the Chinese economy in the long run, but so far there are no clear signal how the country is addressing this.

So Canada and most (all?) democratic states are much better prepared for this demographic challenges ahead of us.