Dear Colleague:

Canada's social system, the model for many progressive Americans, will
collapse soon.

Steven W. Mosher
President

PRI Weekly Briefing
10 November 2006
Vol. 8, No. 44


Our Suicidal Northern Neighbor
By Joseph A. D'Agostino


Liberals, of the sort who just won control of Congress, like to say that
the United States should become more like Canada.  So let's take a quick
look at our highly respected northern neighbor from a demographic
perspective.  Experts are always analyzing all sorts of trends to judge a
country's health, yet demographics are often ignored.  But how many
factors affect a society long-term more than birthrates, aging, and the
like?

Canada has many good qualities, such as a low violent crime rate, lots of
open space, and excellent maple syrup.  She has some unfortunate ones as
well, such as a socialist health care system that forces citizens to wait
years for major medical procedures finished within weeks in the United
States, not to mention a tendency to blame America for the world's
problems.  Yet at the rate she's going, Canada's qualities soon won't
matter one way or another, because the liberals' second-favorite nation
(France being most beloved) is committing suicide.

The United States' birthrate is 2.0, slightly below replacement level,
which is enough to cause massive aging and financial problems such as the
bankruptcy of Social Security and Medicare.  Canada's birthrate is a fatal
25% less, at 1.5.  Canadians are fading out.  Prime Minister Stephen
Harper's conservative government is considering small measures to increase
Canada's birthrate, measures that are almost certain to be too little, too
late.

Even the United Nations' overly optimistic projections say that the
proportion of Canadian 65 or over will go from 13% today to 25% by 2040,
and continue to rise from there.  Imagine living in a nation where 1 of 4
people are of retirement age.  The proportion of the oldest old, 80 or
over, will triple.  Those between 15 and 24 will drop from 13.5% to 11%.
Who will support all these elderly Canadians, with their generous social
services so attractive to American liberals?

And Canada's birthrate continues to drop.  It could easily reach 1.0 in a
decade.  It declined by 25% between 1992 and 2002, and its current
stabilized situation is unlikely to last given underlying cultural trends.
 The liberal, populous provinces of Ontario and Quebec are losing babies
the fastest, while the more conservative sparse areas in the west of the
country are doing better-but not liberal British Columbia.

French Catholic Quebec, like Latin Catholic Italy and Spain, is imploding
demographically.  The denizens of Quebec may huff and puff about
preserving their cultural and linguistic heritage, but they don't care
enough about it to actually produce more Quebecois.  The '60s hit Quebec
hard: In 1959, she had the highest birthrate in Canada.  By 1971, she
already had the lowest, though those of Italy and Spain are even lower
than hers today.  Who says the '60s revolution failed?

"Not long ago, Quebec was a Catholic Christian society, whose loyalty to
its faith and historic traditions seemed unswerving," wrote Ted Byfield in
the Calgary Sun last month.  "Now, having all but abandoned the Church, it
has the lowest attendance rates in Canada--and the highest rate of
cohabitation outside marriage, highest divorce and abortion rates and
lowest birthrate.  The cry of the Quebec separatists, who now sizably
outnumber federalists, is they must leave Canada to preserve their
heritage and culture.  This is simply a lie.  First to last, their culture
and heritage is Catholic Christian, and they have forsaken it.  What they
want to preserve is somebody else's culture, Sweden's perhaps."

Also last month, prominent Quebec leader and former premier Lucien
Bouchard generated a lot of protest when he condemned Quebec's combination
of massive debt, low productivity, and abysmal birthrate.  He pointed out
that the situation could not continue much longer.

"We don't work hard enough.  We work less than Ontarians and infinitely
less than Americans," he said.  He said that Quebec cannot sustain her
large social programs and other benefits, such as low college tuition,
while working much less than Americans and having few children.

"In Quebec it's like being in a big plane," he said.  "It's warm and
comfortable, with no problems.  But when you look out the pilot's window,
you see a big mountain, and it's certain we're going to crash into it."

If current trends continue, the rest of Canada is right behind.


Joseph A. D'Agostino is Vice President for Communications at the
Population Research Institute.

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