Canada's Aging Population

[Devils'Advocate]

I accidently hit a link to the CFRA web site. CFRA is the ultra-right-wing "news" station here in Ottawa. But they had an interesting poll question today.

The question was, given Canada's aging population (see http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNew...hub=TopStories ) what should be done to keep the country running? There will likely be too few skilled workers to keep the country running and there won't be enough money to cover health care and old age pension. The options on the poll were:
(1) Encourage families to have more children
(2) Increase immigration
(3) Increase taxes to cover the increased costs
(4) Other

About 80% picked option 1. Which I think is horrible. I don't like Quebec subsidizing large families with extra money to those with more children. We've discussed in other threads the problems with ever expanding population problems in India and China (despite the one child law). I don't think MORE people is the right answer to any of our problems. Now I realize that the other choices given forced the typical conservative on CFRAs site into a corner.. there was no way they would want MORE immigrants or MORE taxes. But there was an OTHER option, or they could have skipped voting at all.

[4X4]

I say we institute a law like on that one episode of Star Trek where people voluntarily commit suicide when they're 60.

[Bownesian]

Originally Posted by Devils'Advocate

The options on the poll were:
(1) Encourage families to have more children
(2) Increase immigration
(3) Increase taxes to cover the increased costs
(4) Other

Here's a Devil's Advoicate question for you: Doesn't option (2) just incourage option (1), but in poor countries instead of ours?

[Devils'Advocate]

How so? Are you thinking that if we allowed more people from India into Canada, India will stop trying to control its own population?

[Traditional_Ale]

Originally Posted by Bownesian

Here's a Devil's Advoicate question for you: Doesn't option (2) just incourage option (1), but in poor countries instead of ours?

Yup. Which is why I think I'd rather make more natural-born Canadians than simply open the gates for other people to come here then tell us how to run our country.

[Bownesian]

I certainly don't think that accepting larger numbers of immigrants provides a disincentive for thirld world people to limit their family size. Only government action such as that taken by China and/or educating and liberating women in the third world can make a difference to the world's population.

Personally, I have done a lot of travelling outside of Canada (and the Americas) and what I have learned is that we have something very special here. Canadians have an enormous amount of wealth and space and individually consume an enormous number of resources per capita to live amazingly lavish lifestyles. When the people below our poverty line includes people with televisions and cars, our view of what it means to be "poor" is pretty skewed.

The reality of the uneven distribution of wealth in the world is analagous to comparing the super-rich in the first world to the average citizen there. Even if we were to liquidate all of the money owned by the forbes 500 list and split it among the members of the first world, it would work out to less than 1000$ per first world citizen. Similarly, if the wealth that we in the first world (~50 trillion dollars worth) were spread equitably among the world's population (6.7 Billion) it would work out to 7500$ per person.

The point of this rant is that immigration and wealth distribution from rich to poor is not a solution to the world's problems, hence there is almost nothing we can do to directly help the ultra-poor of the world. People in the first world who want to continue to have even a small portion of their current lifestyle should look to protecting that wealth, like our governments have been silently doing on our behalf in the years since WWII. My point in all this was to bring some intellectual honesty to the facts about how we do and must protect that wealth through methods that include limiting immigration.

Back to the point about individual family size decisions being influenced by what Canada does or does not do, one of the few ways that someone in the poorest parts of the world can do is hope that they or one of their offspring wins the lottery so to speak and gets picked for immigration to somewhere where there is real wealth and can then move the family there. Granted, it's a tenuous point at best but it's no more whispy than the idea that we can solve the world's problems by importing more members of the third world to our country while somehow not affecting our qualtiy of life.

[BlackArcher101]

I had no idea births were so low, it seems like everyone around me is having children these days.

As for the poll... if our median age is already 39 years and the worry is being able to afford that aging group, then how will having children now be able to help alleviate the problem? The way I see it, you need those children to become income earners, and assuming that won't be until they are 22-25 years old, then that's a long time to wait for a fix to help afford the aging boomers.

[octothorp]

I'd like to see a much more sophisticated temporary worker program. In an ideal situation, we bring workers over, spend a bit of time and money educating them, place them, encourage them to continue connections to their native country and make it difficult for them to achieve immigration status, and then send them home after five, ten or twenty-year terms. They get all the money they'll likely need to retire in their home country if their good with their savings (and the program can help with that), they bring skills and ideas home with them, and we get workers who won't be a drain on our system when they cease being useful as workers.

[flip]

Well, good thing the government was smart enough to not let CPP pay out people who put nothing in to the program, thus ensuring that all the money that I've paid will be there waiting for me when I'm older. Oh wait...

[Bownesian]

Originally Posted by octothorp

I'd like to see a much more sophisticated temporary worker program. In an ideal situation, we bring workers over, spend a bit of time and money educating them, place them, encourage them to continue connections to their native country and make it difficult for them to achieve immigration status, and then send them home after five, ten or twenty-year terms. They get all the money they'll likely need to retire in their home country if their good with their savings (and the program can help with that), they bring skills and ideas home with them, and we get workers who won't be a drain on our system when they cease being useful as workers.

Personally, I think we should change our immigration criteria. Right now, the system is geared towards highly educated professionals - doctors, engineers, lawyers, Ph.D.s but our domestic professional associations have higher standards for those positions than in the typical immigrant's home country. (In my professional field I have met M.Sc. Geology holders who lack the skills to do the work that a B.Sc. Canadian grad is qualified to do.) This leads to the stereotypical story of doctors driving a cab or whatnot because they can't get a spot to update their credentials.

What I would propose is to seek out skilled workers whose skills are more easily transferrable like welders, plumbers, carpenters and whatnot. While there is still an education requirement in those trades to be certified in the Canadian code, the apprenticeship system is already in place for workers to hit the ground running. It would be much easier to have a tradesman/woman challenge the exams in those trades (after a shortened period perhaps) than to transfer the training of a doctor whose education would not have included the technology and pharmaceutical options available in Canada, and who would need to be retrained basically from scratch to be able to work within the immensely complex Canadian health care system, not to mention the ethical consequences of removing local doctors from the countries that paid to educate them.

I wonder if the guest worker program couldn't be a way to get a back door to this result. You bring in a skilled worker that some industry somewhere actually needs and then after they have been in the country for long enough, they could apply to become a landed immigrant and from there become a full citizen.

[Bownesian]

I was speaking more of basic competency. A graduate school-level geologist who does not understand fairly basic geologic processes, much less be able to communicate them in the working language, english, is a useless hire into a professional position. I work for a consulting company and we have hired a fair number of new immigrant "geologists" over the years into technician roles. The only one that I know of who went on to actually work in a Professional role had a Master's degree from Manitoba and became a landed immigrant on completion of his degree (another back-door).

That's not to say I am in love with professional beurocracies like APEGGA, I have no use for them outside of those whose works include projects and structures that could endanger the public. I once dropped my business card into the APPEGGA draw at the oil show that looked like:

Bownesian, B.Sc., E.I.T.
Reservoir Enginner

...and they wrote me a nasty letter saying I had to prove that had changed my business card to remove the word Engineer from it, despite being clear about my professional status (E.I.T.). Looking at the law fully, one could not even use the phrase Enginner In Training because it has the word Engineer in it. I have seen dozens of business cards like that in the years since and it's clear the industry doesn't care what APEGGA thinks either. Actually, I'm pretty sure that my current title "Manager, Geologic Engineering" would be illegal as well because I am not a professional Geologist, despite being in the middle of a Master's Degree in geology.

[Cheese]

I think at age 55 they should pay the "aging population" triple what they previously earned and shorten our work week to 24 hours until such time as we decide to retire. It would keep us "aged folks" around training you young folks how to do the job right. We would then maintain the right to determine when the young folk are properly trained enough to take over our jobs...Id say at about age 85. That should take care of the workload issue as most Gen Xers and beyond hate working anyways.

[Bownesian]

They do for technical types, it's called "consultancy". Now if I could only find the opposite product as Just For Men so I could *add* some grey to my hair so I looked old enough to be competent to be a consultant...

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Cheese

I think at age 55 they should pay the "aging population" triple what they previously earned and shorten our work week to 24 hours until such time as we decide to retire. It would keep us "aged folks" around training you young folks how to do the job right. We would then maintain the right to determine when the young folk are properly trained enough to take over our jobs...Id say at about age 85. That should take care of the workload issue as most Gen Xers and beyond hate working anyways.

Ummm.... This isn't what goes on anyway? In my office the only difference is the guys over 55 make about 10 times what we do not triple.

[Ziggy Lidstrom]

Originally Posted by Bownesian

Personally, I think we should change our immigration criteria. Right now, the system is geared towards highly educated professionals - doctors, engineers, lawyers, Ph.D.s but our domestic professional associations have higher standards for those positions than in the typical immigrant's home country. (In my professional field I have met M.Sc. Geology holders who lack the skills to do the work that a B.Sc. Canadian grad is qualified to do.) This leads to the stereotypical story of doctors driving a cab or whatnot because they can't get a spot to update their credentials.

What I would propose is to seek out skilled workers whose skills are more easily transferrable like welders, plumbers, carpenters and whatnot. While there is still an education requirement in those trades to be certified in the Canadian code, the apprenticeship system is already in place for workers to hit the ground running. It would be much easier to have a tradesman/woman challenge the exams in those trades (after a shortened period perhaps) than to transfer the training of a doctor whose education would not have included the technology and pharmaceutical options available in Canada, and who would need to be retrained basically from scratch to be able to work within the immensely complex Canadian health care system, not to mention the ethical consequences of removing local doctors from the countries that paid to educate them.

I wonder if the guest worker program couldn't be a way to get a back door to this result. You bring in a skilled worker that some industry somewhere actually needs and then after they have been in the country for long enough, they could apply to become a landed immigrant and from there become a full citizen.

I think this is the most viable theory relative to the OP. The fact is that skilled worker decline is frightening and legitmate solutions have to be conceived and mandated at the federal level. Imagine the inflation which would occur in the trade industries if labor resources were unable to meet metropolitan demand.

I do think that an incentive offered by the govt to canadians to have more children works only if other social subsidies are provided along with free post secondary education to alleviate the burden of affording an education as a parent. It works, because the costs of raising a family in this part of the world with a high cost of living is difficult to maintain and smaller families are more manageable. People are time impovrished in this country and if subsidies (sounds far left) were provided to give more time and allow them to keep more of their money; this would be incentive enough for families to return to a traditional one income family. Truth of the matter, that is going to happen. I see inflation and the changing economy demanding more industriousness from NAmericans leaving us lacking both temporally and financially lacking to combat this issue.

Also, I am deeply troubled when I come across genuinely good people who have several academic qualifications in their native land, yet here they are expected to pursue the same education, only in english, to transfer their skills.

Yet one critique I have of this excerpt is the blame you lay on Canada for unethical selection practices of focusing on MD and other highly skilled workers. I believe the same thing is happening with our current health care system as well: Brain Drain. What doctors want to make a paltry sum when there is far more lucrative incentives offered by the privatized health care system of the US? Does it become Professional International musical chairs?

[Calgaryborn]

1,010,586 abortions between 1970 and 1987 in Canada. Another 1,811,707 reported abortions in Canada between 1988 and 2005. I say "reported" abortions because when the Supreme court struck down the last of the legal restrictions against abortion(1988) they also disallowed manditory reporting. In the last decade there has been less volunteer reporting to Stats Canada from Abortion clinics. Still there is about 100,000 abortions in Canada a year. That means the potentual loss of 100,000 educated workers coming into the economy each year. Canada lost about 3,000,000 tax payers from 1970 to 2005 and eventually will be loseing about a 1,000,000 a decade.

Regardless of where you stand on the abortion issue you can't look at our country's declining birth rates while ignoring the big white elephant in the room.

[habernac]

and people like you are lining up to adopt unwanted babies, right?

[Doctordestiny]

Originally Posted by 4X4

I say we institute a law like on that one episode of Star Trek where people voluntarily commit suicide when they're 60.

Then I'd be David Ogden Stiers, except for the part of him being gay.

To those who don't know, Ogden Stiers was in that episode and refused to commit suicide, shunning convention.

[Phanuthier]

I would drop the strictness on bringing over international talent as well (professionals - doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, etc, the doctor from India who is now a cabbie).

A big problem is that a lot of women are becoming more and more career focused (rather then somewhat traditional stay at home moms) at the cost of having a family. I've certainly met a lot of women who arn't looking to have a family or anything because they want a certain thing in their careers.

Encouraging more children doesn't mean having more talent, and would probably saturate the overall talent.

As for abortions, any future accidental pregnancies, I'll be sending Calgaryborn's way. Just give me your address and I'll leave the little on your doorstep and a hundread bucks.

[Devils'Advocate]

Originally Posted by Phanuthier

A big problem is that a lot of women are becoming more and more career focused (rather then somewhat traditional stay at home moms) at the cost of having a family. I've certainly met a lot of women who arn't looking to have a family or anything because they want a certain thing in their careers.

I don't actually see that as "a problem".