Not on Ellis anymore

Canadians. God love us for our ability to smile at a bad situation, and to blindly ignore the havok we wreak upon ourselves. Call it pluck, as many would. It's that good ol' Canadian spirit that dominates every gaze in the mirror.

Too bad the face looking back isn't our own anymore. It's an aggregate of sorts, a constantly shifting identity. I personally fear for this future we're building for ourselves in Canada; the foundation is not stable.

A new report indicates that the Canadian birth rate is not where it should be. We currently stand at 1.5 births for every married Canadian couple. That's less than reproduction rate, keep in mind. For every two people, we breed 1.5 children. It's a new age, frankly, and the writing has been on the wall for a while. Our culture demands that we never give in to growing up - the eternally young are the idols of next year. Men and women need no longer take 9-5 jobs; they can become career students, travel the world, devote time and energy to a global consciousness, etc etc. The motivation and intentions are good, I would not deny that. But we're losing the Canadian family. No one will think about settling down to have a few kids; we've championed a rootless lifestyle that sees parenting as the last marker of no longer being carefree. Having one life to live doesn't include living for lives you bring into the world.

So we have adults that refuse to grow up, a Neverland of the North. And thus, we rely on that "highly skilled workforce" that we import from other countries, not only to build our skyscrapers and economically-friendly public transportation systems, but to build the country and its ideology for us too.

Our population growth over the last 5 years has been 5.4%, and we're not acheiving that by having 1.5 kids per scarce "cookie-cutter" family, as some would sneeringly deride them. So we continue to ship people in, relying on others to maintain the size of our wonderful country. I see something wrong with this. This is not an anti-immigration statement. I believe in immigration as a social good, both for the country and for those who desire a new home. But we rely too easily on a foreign solution to a domestic problem, and only continue to lose our validity as a self-sufficient, self-supporting nation.