Canada is currently controlled by the developer lobby which is bent on using mass immigration to triple our population by 2100. No Green Party leader has spoken up against this and, in fact, the new-again leader of the Federal Party, Elizabeth May, endorses rapid population growth.
That leaves the question of who is carrying the ball for the environment, not to mention the welfare of Canadians.
Tripling Canada’s population is not something a responsible green (or any other) party would touch but the growth lobby has a tight stranglehold on the national conversation. Consequently our political parties have been completely compromised. If they stray beyond the parameters of priorities laid out by the corporate media they assure themselves of non-coverage.
In effect, the Green and other parties in Canada tacitly support the disastrous population growth policies which will make achievement of any of their most basic goals impossible.
All political parties should ideally have a well presented means of achieving their goals. Conservatives should know how to add. The NDP should be focused on job quality and equality. But above all, a party which has taken on the critical work of maintaining the viability of our society in a healthy environment needs to have a biophysically coherent strategy for achieving this. Without a population policy, no such strategy is possible nor is even rational discussion.
At least Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford has the honesty to say that to accommodate many millions more immigrants the Green Belt and a large portion of the provinces farmland will have to be paved over. Where we will get the food or even the energy to support the ~35 million extra Ontario residents are questions no one has bothered to ask.
But surely it is the job of the so named Green parties at the federal and provincial levels to ask exactly that and to also point out the extreme environmental costs of such growth. The NDP might also mention the economic gap unaffordable housing and cheap labour will continue to open up as well as the quality of life declines Canadians are experiencing.
The Conservatives could rail against the resulting structural fiscal deficits as the proportion of tax-negative working poor continues to increase and public infrastructure costs skyrocket.
But most of all, the party that was created to make this country green has to begin to live up to its name.
