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No Mention of Most Obvious Solution to Canadian Fertility Decline in Report Urging Change to Immigration Policy

OTTAWA, August 10, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Tom Kent, one-time social policy advisor for the Liberal party of Canada, in a newly published essay for the Institute for Research and Public Policy, is urging the Martin government to change Canada's immigration policy to attract young immigrants. Kent's recommendation is in response to plummeting fertility rates among Canadians and the serious economic repercussions of a rapidly aging Canadian population.

Mr. Kent told the National Post "If we want to restore a balanced group of ages in the population, then we need young people." He stresses the importance of importing youngsters from overseas, arguing that the younger they come, the better they adjust.

Statistics Canada reported a steady decline in the fertility rate (live births per woman of child-bearing age) over the last 12 years. The April 19, 2004 report revealed that in 2002 the fertility rate reached 1.5%, an all-time low for Canada and among the lowest in the world. The figure is well below the minimum replacement rate of 2.1%. Immigration is the reason Canadians have noticed little change in population levels. As the Canadian fertility rate has continued to drop, policy makers have stubbornly continued to look to immigration as the only solution.

Both Mr. Kent and Canada's current policy-makers seem unwilling to consider the other obvious solution: a shift in government policies that have for decades actively discouraged Canadian families from having more children. In Europe, where even worse policies have been in place for over two decades, leaders are now alarmed at unstable populations and unmet labor-force demands. Consequently, in some European countries, governments are revisiting their social engineering mechanisms and encouraging couples to have children.

Canada's leaders may eventually be forced to follow Europe's policy reversal. For the moment, however, it seems that they scarcely consider it an option and likely believe it would seriously undermine their many decades of world leading efforts to destroy respect for new human life and the traditional family.

Jim Hughes, National President of Campaign Life Coalition, says the current blindness of Canadian leaders is not at all out of character. "We have been pointing out for years that the deliberate removal of two and one-half million children from Canada's population by abortion will have serious economic repercussions as well as moral ones," said Hughes in an August 9 press release dealing with Mr. Kent's article. "Our aging population will have no financial base to keep our economy healthy and growing. Mr. Kent and the policies of the Federal Liberal Party are in large part responsible for the current situation."

For National Post coverage: http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/news/story.html?...

See the Complete Campaign Life Coalition press release at
http://www.campaignlifecoalition.com/press/2004/040809theabs...

jmo

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