By Terry Vanderheyden
TORONTO, February 20, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Canada’s National Post is the first major Canadian news source to sound the alarm over the nation’s impending population crisis. It is publishing a four part series on the fertility crisis. In part one, aÂfront-page feature appearing Saturday titled ,ÂA childless culture, Anne Marie Owens warns of a future “where senior citizens drastically outnumber babies, schools will be replaced by old-age homes, neighbourhoods of single-family dwellings will make way for smaller condos and townhouses, and playgrounds will become disused relics of the past.”
“A dramatic decline in fertility in recent decades, combined with an ageing population, has the potential to transform every aspect of Canadian society, from schools and housing to social attitudes toward family,” warns Owens. “The sound of children’s chattering voices, once common, will be rarely heard.”
“Baby-making may come to be regarded no longer as the private prerogative of consenting adults, and more an act of national duty,” Owens adds. “This is what a childless Canada would look like. But it is not the science-fiction vision of a far-off future. In less than a decade, seniors will outnumber children in Canada; in just 15 years, deaths may outnumber births.”
Although LifeSiteNews.com has been sounding the alarm for years, it is rare for mainstream sources to acknowledge the demographic nightmare looming on our horizon. Even rarer is the proposal that Canadian parents be encouraged to have more children.
Although Owens acknowledges that immigration is unlikely to remedy the decline, she reiterates the tired excuse that encouraging childbirth is a “politically incorrect” solution, as claimed by demographer Rod Beaujot. He states that “If you start encouraging childbearing, you’re meddling in people’s lives.”
To her credit, Owens adds the perspective of McGill University professor Avi Friedman, who maintains that the only solution is monetary incentives to parents to encourage childbirth. Quebec, incidentally, is the only province so far that has seen the writing on the wall and done just that. It has offered baby bonuses of $500 for the first child, $1,000 for the second and $7,500 for the third and for each subsequent child, which helped to bolster the birthrate.
However, European nations that have tried to turn around their plummeting birthrates have found financial incentives produce only short term results. A 2004 Family Research Council report on the total failure of numerous European strategies to generate at least a replacement birth rate level points especially to deeply ingrained social and cultural conditions, including rejection of religion, that go more to the heart of the problem.
Read the full on line version of the column:
https://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/story.html?id=13e220f0-b53a-4a38-bca9-66481d9b8f89
See Family Research Council report:
The Failure of European Family Policy
https://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=PL04L01
See related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Quebec to experience most rapid demographic decline of all industrialized countries
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2005/oct/05102501.html
Population Implosion Drives Quebec To Offer Child-Birth Incentives
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2003/mar/03031702.html
No Mention of Most Obvious Solution to Canadian Fertility Decline in Report Urging Change to Immigration Policy
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2004/aug/04081005.html