The future of Canada: elections part VI * section A: Canada is a dying nation.

In May 2007, Catholic Insight highlighted abortion as an election issue (pp. 11- 14). We tied the abortion problem in Canada directly to the statistical projections of coming shortages of workers and health funding due to the population crisis facing our nation. With an impending federal election, we continue with the abortion/population question, because Canadians need to look at this coming crisis and be prepared to confront our politicians with this overwhelming disaster. How can any politician still maintain a pro-abortion, pro-contraceptive, anti-family stand?

Declining fertility levels

There are two issues that worry demographers: the greying of our nation, and the accompanying decline in fertility levels among women of child-bearing age. In May, we emphasized the first. Today, let us look at the second.

Canada is in the midst of industrialized nations that have not taken seriously the declining fertility levels of their women. For example, between 1996 and 2003, the pre-school population (aged 1-4) dropped in Canada by 13 percent. (Only the United States has a fertility rate that continues close to replacement level, with 2.01 babies per woman in 2002.)

Canada has a fertility rate of 1.5 babies for each woman. This is 0.6 babies short of replacement level. We are looking at the possibility of a population decline in Canada of more than 25 per cent in one generation. If this rate continues, in 100 years the population of Canada will be at about what was in the 1930s--around 12 million people.

It is assumed that since we are a nation of immigrants, they will pull us through this calamity. However, the reality is that, of all Canada's visible minorities, only Muslim women have a fertility rate greater than 2.1, and even their rate of fertility declined by 0.3 per cent between 1996 and 2001 (Statistics Canada).

Quebec government involvement in fertility

The Quebec government spent two decades trying to reverse the province's downward fertility rate. The government saw that the erosion of French-Canadian culture was tied to this trend--as the birthrate fell, so did the culture and the possibility of a viable separate nation.

In 1985, Quebec's birthrate was 1.4 children per woman, the lowest in Canada. Today, two decades later, after the introduction of a baby bonus program for all children, the rate stands at 1.5 children per woman. This may not seem like much of a victory, but in the face of all the other provinces continuing their downward slide, it is an achievement. Yet the Quebec government cancelled the baby bonus program in 1997, considering it an expensive failure.

Today, economists say Quebec did accomplish its objective of creating more large families, even if it was costly to do so. Between 1993 and 1997, the rate of first births increased by 15 per cent per woman in Quebec, compared with 7per cent in the rest of Canada. Ironically, the funds that would have continued to pay for the baby bonus program were diverted into a new provincial daycare program in 1997.

In the March 2007 provincial election, the family-friendly Action Democratique Quebec party surged from five seats to 41, replacing the Parti Quebecois as the official opposition. It remains to be seen if the ADQ will push for measures to increase the size of Quebecois families, including limiting (or, dare we even hope, eliminating) abortion.

Valuing children

Margaret Somerville, founding director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law, says that "the trend toward delaying or avoiding childbearing is just another aspect of society's drift toward a culture of intense individualism, where children are seen more as a desirable thing to have, rather than as new individuals to join society. Whenever we start talking about children and about families, we focus on the adults' rights to have children or not to have children--we don't talk about our society and what it needs, whether it needs children" (Nat. Post, Feb. 18, 2006).

Aboriginal babies

Alone among Canadian women, aboriginals are pushing up provincial and territorial birthrates in places where their populations are most concentrated. Manitoba and Saskatchewan, where 15 percent of the population is aboriginal, have the highest birthrates in the country after the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. An Inuit woman averages about three births during her lifetime. Saskatchewan predicts that 45 percent of its kindergarten-age population will come from aboriginal and Metis ancestry within 10 years. This also presents a challenge of a cultural nature during a time of enrolment decline for non-aboriginals (Nat. Post, Feb. 21, 2006).

Abortion: the unspoken 'birth' statistic

The media, especially print, have been providing some coverage of the demographic problem in Canada over the past year. However, as Vancouver union activist Stephen Gray highlighted in a report: "Nowhere in these [National Post] articles was the issue of abortion raised as a factor in this issue of a childless culture. Abortion in Canada surely has had a role in the cause of low fertility and fewer children going to school." Also, a news item from LifeSiteNews (May 23, 2007) reported that "although largely ignored by population demographers as a factor in plunging birthrates, an estimated 46 million abortions take place annually on a global scale.

There have been over three million surgical abortions in Canada since 1969, paid for by taxpayers. It is astonishing that the media continue to ignore this national scandal, and yet deplore the fall in fertility rates. The fact is that Canadians are incredibly fertile; unfortunately, they choose to turn their backs on their fertility by killing their offspring. In doing so, they are emptying our classrooms of children, depleting our factories and offices of workers, and culturally depriving us of our own homegrown Mozarts, da Vincis, and Shakespeares, not to mention a possible future Pope from Canada.

Instead, in fewer than 10 years, adults over 65 will outnumber children 15 and under; a projection of deaths shows that they will outnumber births within 15 years; several generations of young men and women will be denied siblings and friends, and the heartache will not stop for the morns and dads who aborted their babies.

What will Canada do?

It remains to be seen if the Canadian and provincial governments will treat the issue of declining birthrates seriously or continue to look for immigrant band-aid solutions to the problem. Will the "me" generation continue to exert its influence over the country, or will the inherent values of children and the family be allowed to penetrate and affect government policy in a decisive way?

In an interview with Maclean's magazine on February 28, Prime Minister Harper stated: "In my entire career, I've made it clear that I have no intention of getting into the abortion issue. It has not been an issue in my entire career. And it won't be in the future" (Toronto Sun).

Comment: The time has come For this Prime Minister and all of us to wake up. To stop abortion is not a choice; it is a must. If Mr. Harper does not intend to listen, the Conservatives should get someone else to lead the country. As for Messrs. Dion, Layton and Duceppe, they are worse than Harper. They are ideologically committed to continue killing babies.

Canadian citizens should also wake up when they vote.

Janice Glover a retired librarian, is among the writers of News in Brief, and contributes occasional articles.