Below is a brief summary of some of the biophysical issues Canada, as well as most northern countries, face going forward. The biophysical economy differs from the commercial economy which can theoretically grow forever as it becomes more complex since its main metric, GDP, is measured in paid transactions. As we do more work to recover needed resources and as more essentials like food, water and even air (oxygen bars now in some cities) fall into the commercial marketplace, GDP (cash flow) increases while real product decreases and living standards decline.
Similarly, congestion and long commutes increase paid activity but are an expense borne by individuals whose disposable incomes decline even as GDP increases.
Biophysical economics measures real goods, standing stocks of natural resources and the physical processes which create them in physical units and thereby yields a window on reality that money metrics massive distort. We need to understand what our metrics actually measure.
We the North
Canada is a large northern nation with large diffuse resource bases. Regarded by a small number of early settlers as limitless, these resources have been subject to heavy exploitation over the past 4 centuries. In addition, the resources needed to maintain a sophisticated society in our extreme climate are substantial.
We need to understand the resource and environmental structures underpinning our society and which metrics we should use to guide our strategy towards sustainability.
Empires were sophisticated societies built on large and rich resource bases in regions of low resource demand. i.e. high levels of “disposable” resources. Canada was not one of these regions as the total Canadian population circa 1500 was 500,000 and perhaps 2000m Inuit living in Canada’s 1.4 million square km Arctic. This was compared to 90 million Europeans living on a landmass 1/3 smaller.
The Quebec City January average temperature is 19C colder than that of London or Paris. Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608 and 14 of his 23 man expedition died over their first winter. Thereafter, the settlers spend tremendous amounts of time cutting firewood.
- Canada is not England or France.
Energy
Energy is the number one resource. Without it nothing happens and nothing lives.
Canada has many potential windfarm locations and the areas suitable for solar panels are extensive but it must be recognized that capacity factors (in brief, annual output per panel) are 50% to 75% lower in Canada than more southern and drier regions. We aren’t Arizona or the Sahara.
- Energy storage is essential in a northern society where energy demand is highest when solar potential is at its lowest.
Northern communities use more energy and have to work harder to produce it. The table below is based on solar array and chemical battery systems to supply all of the energy required for a single house. Climate and latitude clearly makes a huge difference.
In many cases headlines tout the low cost of solar in more ideal regions but leave out the storage and seasonality issues which get progressively more extreme as one moves further north.
What works for Guadalajara will not work for Canada. Any serious discussion of our energy options must include a full costing of the systems necessary to provide consistent, yearlong power.
- EROI – Energy Returned on Energy Invested. Where once the richest virgin oil fields may have returned 100 barrel of oil for every energy equivalent of 1 barrel used for exploration and extraction for and EROI of 100:1, today the world average is 17:1 with the oil sands registering a world low of 3.5:1.
Metrics:
- EROI
- Net energy – the energy produced minus energy consumed in getting it
- Disposable energy – the energy in excess of that needed to provide bare necessities
- Measure in kilo Watt hours (kWh)
- Current Canadian energy consumption in Canada is approximately 330kWh per person per day.
- In a completely electrified economy, with a repatriated manufacturing sector, consumption will likely fall into the 150kWh per person per day region.
Food
Globalists don’t worry about food because they will always be able to buy anything from anywhere at any time. For the rest of us, the more food grown locally, the better for reliable supply and stable costs. Canada has extremely limited Class 1 farmland and we are paving it over at a ferocious rate.
More people and less farmland. How is that supposed to work? It is easy to print money but not food. Endless growth assumes we will always be able to buy our food from the USA and Mexico. This is a big bet.
Canada is not Okinawa or Normandy. Its soils are extremely limited and fragile.
https://ontariofarmlandtrust.ca/about/farmland-loss/
In the past 35 years, Ontario has lost 2.8 million acres (18%) of its farmland to non-agricultural land uses like urbanization. Currently, Ontario is losing 319 acres of farmland every day2. In order for future generations of Ontarians to have access to fresh, local food, Ontario’s farmland must be protected.
Urban Sprawl Visualized by Farmland Loss in Ontario
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36iPVbnK0b8
Metrics:
- food output for energy and fertilizer input
- hectares of foodland per capita
- food produced per capita
Resource Limits
Commercial economics can paint a picture of limitless growth even while resources crash.
We have bumped into physical limits across a wide range of resource bases despite clear telltale signs of impending problems. We have to stop ignoring distress signals. For instance, Canada has very substantial hydroelectric generating capacity. There is little more to develop (perhaps another 10% to 15%) as limits are being approached. But with a growing population, we can see the available resource per capita is already in decline.
And there is only one Niagara Falls – a huge flow with the immense storage of 4 Great Lakes to assure continuous power.
Promoters who talk about filling Canada up are really talking about cramming more people into its limited habitable space to boost housing inflation. Unless responsibly managed, resource bases do indeed crash and can take many decades to centuries to recover. In 2026, we have no New Worlds to which to escape.
https://www.climatescorecard.org/2024/11/canada-has-been-losing-its-old-growth-forests
A recent (September 2026) Reuter’s report shows that Canadian primary and old-growth woodlands over the last two decades continue to be cut. Ontario shows 30% of trees harvested from 2016-2020 were at least 100 years old, and British Columbia’s old-growth forests have been reduced by more than 50% over the last two decades. A subset of these woodlands most attractive to logging companies has declined by an estimated 85%. And over the last two decades, 878,000 acres have been set aside for open-pit mines, drilling sites, and pipelines for Alberta’s oil sands.
In 400 years Canada has gone from a limitless treasure chest of resources to repeated classic resource crashes. Sustainable Canada was full decades ago.
Climate Resilience
In our changing climate, our once solid infrastructure begins to look vulnerable. We clearly understand that we should not build on floodplains but now, given the severity of sudden rainfall events, many areas can react like floodplains to massive downpours.
Furthermore, most of our cities and villages were cut out of forests. These forests can now dry out and become tinder more quickly than at any time in our history. As we have seen in Fort Mac and Denver, subdivisions of new builds can burn in minutes under the severe conditions of extreme heat, desert-like dryness and heavy wind. It doesn’t take the huge biomass of a burning forest to level communities, now, even grass fires can take out hundreds of houses.
As our climate becomes increasingly dynamic, many more populated areas become more vulnerable to different and never-before-experienced (in the New World) threats. Equally dangerous, our renewable resources are as vulnerable to climate change as our physical infrastructure.
Infrastructure Reality
The Line, a 170km long project in Saudi Arabia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Line,_Saudi_Arabia
The goal of unlimited growth through mega projects is just as untethered from reality in Canada as it is in Saudi Arabia. Even then, the massive Saudi project of “The Line” is being built on expansive desert rather than on very limited prime farmland in Canada. Which is more disconnected – paving over prime farmland or building The Line?
The Population Issue
What is the sustainable population of Canada? This number changes constantly and diminishes for every resource we deplete. But whatever the number, it is dependent on:
- level of technology
- level of consumption
- climate and its rate of change
- forced mis-consumption such as military expenditure. Which is to say, spending resources on things which will not improve well-being but may prevent decline from being imposed on us.
- Our will to pass down to future generations a nation healthier than the one we inherited
Whatever the level of sustainable population is, it is safe to say that endless growth through mass immigration is not a path that leads to social continuity.
Savior fantasies:
- Fusion (see: EROI of fusion – https://sustainablesociety.com/307-eroi-of-fusion/ )
- Power too cheap to measure at the dawn of the nuclear age in the 1950s
- Small Modular Reactor 1 per 50,000 people if economy 100% electrified. Where to put 800 SMRs and how to finance them?
- Make the economy bigger so we can afford to pay for climate and resource problems.
- Spread our ever-growing numbers throughout the unlimited universe.
- AI will figure out a solution. Maybe it already has which is why experts warn it might kill off humanity by 2030.