OTTAWA, Dec 23 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A report from Statistics Canada yesterday noted that the current fertility rate in Canada, at 1.55, falls far short of the replacement rate of 2.1 needed to sustain the population. The report indicates that Canada’s population die-off is related to career earnings of young Canadians which are far below that of their parents.
While some say that young Canadians are thus “priced right out of the having-babies market,” others contend that selfishness is at the heart of the issue. Jim Frideres, a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary, told the National Post, “You’ve got a feeling of relative deprivation, a generation who are not able to make what their parents are making— and they don’t want to wait 20 years to make what their parents are making. It leads to questions about how to pay the bills. You can do that by not having children—or by having fewer children.”