By Michael Bonner

The 21 st century is going to be overshadowed by a crisis that human beings have never faced before. I don’t mean war, pestilence, famine or climate change. Those are perennial troubles. Yes, even climate change, despite the hype, is nothing new as anyone who’s heard of the Roman Warm Period, the Mediaeval Warm Period or the Little Ice Age will know. Climate change and the others are certainly problems, but they aren’t new.

But the crisis that’s coming is new.

The global decline in fertility rates has grown so severe that some demographers now talk about “peak humanity” – a looming maximum from which the world’s population will begin to rapidly decline. Though the doomsayers who preach the dangers of overpopulation may think that’s a good development, it is in fact a grave concern.

In the Canadian context, it is doubly worrisome. Our birth rates have been falling steadily since 1959. It was shortly after that in the 1960s when we began to build a massive welfare state, and we did so despite a shrinking domestically-born population and the prospect of an ever-smaller pool of taxable workers to pay for the expanding social programs.

Immigration came to the rescue, and we became adept at recruiting a surplus population of young, skilled, economically focused migrants seeking their fortune abroad. The many newcomers meant a growing population and with it a larger tax base.

But what would happen if Canada could no longer depend on a steady influx of newcomers? The short answer is that our population would shrink, and our welfare state would come under intolerable strain. The long answer is that Canadian businesses, which have become addicted to abundant, cheap foreign labour through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program, would be obliged to invest in hiring, training and retaining Canadian workers.
Provincial and federal governments would scramble to keep older Canadians in the workforce for longer. And governments would be torn between demands to cut the welfare state or privatize large parts of it while raising taxes to help pay for it.

No matter what, the status quo won’t continue. And – even though Canada is right now taking in record numbers of new immigrants and temporary workers – we are going to discover this soon. The main cause is the “peak humanity” that I mentioned before. Fertility rates are falling rapidly nearly everywhere. In the industrialized West, births have fallen further in some places than in others, but all countries are now below replacement levels
(except Israel, which was at 2.9 in 2020).

Deaths have long been outpacing births in China, Japan and some Western countries like Italy. A recent study in The Lancet expects that by 2100, 97 percent of countries will be shrinking. Only Western and Eastern sub-Saharan Africa will have birth rates above replacement levels, though births will be falling in those regions also.

In a world of sub-replacement fertility, there will still be well-educated, highly skilled people abroad. But there will not be a surplus of them. Some may still be ready and willing to put down roots in Canada, but the number will soon be both small and dwindling. And it seems likely that countries which have produced Canada’s immigrants in recent years will try hard to retain domestic talent as their own populations decline. In contrast, the population of sub-Saharan Africa will be growing for a little longer. But unless education and skills-training change drastically in that region, countries there will not produce the kind of skilled immigrants that Canada has come to rely on.

And so the moment is rapidly approaching when immigration will no longer be able to make up for falling Canadian fertility. Governments will have to confront the problem directly—not years or decades hence, but now.

While many will cite keeping the welfare state solvent as the driving force, in my view this is not the reason to do it. The reason to do it is that it is in Canada’s national interest to make it easier for families to have the number of children that they want. A 2023 study by the think-tank Cardus found that nearly half of Canadian women at the end of their reproductive years had fewer children than they had wanted. This amounted to an average
of 0.5 fewer children per woman – a shortfall that would lift Canada close to replacement level.

The United Nations Population Fund (UNPF) has noticed the same challenge on a global scale. Neither Cardus nor the UNPF prescribes any specific solutions, but their analysis points to the same thing: public policy should focus on identifying and removing barriers families face to having the number of children they want.

Every future government should be vigilant against impediments to family-formation and raising a desired number of children. Making housing more abundant and affordable would surely be a good beginning. Better planning must go into making livable communities (not merely atomized dwellings) with infrastructure favouring families and designed to ease commuting. But more fundamentally, policy-makers will need to ask and answer an uncomfortable question: why did we allow barriers to fertility to arise in the first place?

The original, full-length version of this article was recently published in C2C Journal.

Michael Bonner is a political consultant with Atlas Strategic Advisors, LLC, contributing editor to the Dorchester Review, and author of In Defense of Civilization: How Our Past Can Renew Our Present.

From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

“Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork. Today I am calling on governors in every state to ensure that roadways, intersections, and crosswalks are kept free of distractions”

As “pride month” came to a close, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter to the governors of all 50 states telling them to remove potentially dangerous distractions from intersections and roadways.

Although left unsaid in the letter, Duffy made it clear in an X post that chief among those distractions are “rainbow crosswalks” which promote pro-LGBTQ+ messaging in cities large and small across the nation.

“Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks,” wrote Duffy.

“Political banners have no place on public roads,” said Duffy. “I’m reminding recipients of USDOT roadway funding that it’s limited to features advancing safety, and nothing else. It’s that simple.”

“Roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork. Today I am calling on governors in every state to ensure that roadways, intersections, and crosswalks are kept free of distractions,” Duffy told The Daily Signal, which broke the story after having obtained a copy of Duffy’s letter.

“Far too many Americans die each year to traffic fatalities to take our eye off the ball,” said Duffy. “The Transportation Department ‘stands ready to help communities across the country make their roads safer and easier to navigate.’”

“Rainbow crosswalks” promoting LGBTQ+ “pride” have been the subject of controversy in recent years, with citizens being accused of felony crimes by law enforcement simply for leaving skid marks on the pedestrian intersection crossings.

Duffy’s letter urges the nation’s governors to – within 60 days – fall in line with the “Federal Highway Administration’s Safe Arterials for Everyone through Reliable Operations and Distraction-Reducing Strategies” or “SAFE ROADS” initiative which aims to “help improve safety and mobility, eliminate distractions, and keep people and goods moving throughout the United States.”

“The SAFE ROADS national initiative will focus on the non-freeway arterials within your State, including safety and operation at intersections and along segments, consistent and recognizable traffic control devices including crosswalk and intersection markings, and orderly use of the right-of-way that is kept free from distractions,” explained the transportation secretary.

“We are getting back to the basics – using data to guide decision-making and prioritize investments that reduce distraction while improving mobility and safety for all road users,” he declared.