[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[viper37]

I was referring to our profession generally.  If you were were referring to the few people you know personally, then there may be a sample size problem. 

I'm looking at one of Canada's self described biggest law-firm (no idea if it's true, don't care either, never would hire them), but their profiles page seem to indicate that it's a well mixed team:
McCarthy Tetrault


I think it may be more common for self-employed lawyers to be more male-centric, maybe?  This may not just be for lawyers.  Any SMB/autonomous work requires long hours and you're more likely to find it male-centric than anything else.  Realtors might be the exception.

[crazy canuck]

Here is some scholarly work to make the point.

Career-family compatibility
The recent empirical regularities point to fertility behavior in high-income countries today that is driven by factors not immediately captured by the quantity-quality trade-off nor the opportunity cost of time. Researchers across disciplines had to contemplate alternative mechanisms responsible for within- and across-country fertility patterns in high-income countries (see Rindfuss and Brewster 1996 and Ahn and Mira 2002 for early contributions). A common theme has emerged from this broad scholarly discussion: the compatibility of women's careers and families.

There has been a fundamental economic transformation: in many high-income countries women now participate in the labor force for much of their lives. The earlier pattern of a woman entering the labor market but dropping out following marriage and children is now the exception rather than the norm. Most women today want the option of both a fulfilling career and a family. From a historical perspective, we can interpret this shift as a convergence of women's and men's overall life plans after a long period of sharply divided gender roles.

While the shift in women's career plans is shared across high-income countries, there is still substantial variation in how compatible women's careers and families really are. Four factors explain the variation in career-family compatibility across countries: family policies, cooperative fathers, favorable social norms, and flexible labor markets.

A key determinant of career-family compatibility is women's access to affordable alternatives to the time devoted to caring for children, time historically provided exclusively by mothers. In some countries, such as the United States, these alternatives are largely organized in private markets, while many European countries offer publicly provided childcare. Cheap and easily available childcare frees up women's time and allows them to combine motherhood with a career, which ultimately increases fertility. In countries such as Sweden and Denmark, where public childcare is widely available for children of all ages, female employment and fertility rates today are higher than in countries where childcare is sparse. Not surprisingly, these countries also spend a larger fraction of their GDP on public early childhood education. Other policies that influence career-family compatibility include parental leave policies, tax policies, and the length of the school day.

Fathers can of course care for children as well. Although historically fathers have spent little time caring for children, the data show an increase in recent decades. The division of childcare between parents has important implications for fertility when parents contemplate the decision to have children. Doepke and Kindermann (2019) show that in countries where fathers engage more in childcare and housework, fertility is higher than where such labor falls disproportionately on women. Japan, where men share little in caring for children, bears this out: fertility there continues to be ultralow.

A third influence on modern fertility decisions is social norms regarding a mother's role at home and in the workplace. Low fertility can be a result of traditional social norms. For example, the characterization of a full-time working mother as a Rabenmutter (bad mother) is still common in Germany and imposes an implicit penalty on mothers who aspire to both family and career.

Finally, labor market conditions also affect career-family compatibility. In Spain, for example, a country with a two-tier labor market where jobs are either temporary or for a lifetime, women tend to postpone childbearing in hopes of landing a stable job first. Such labor market conditions naturally dampen fertility. More generally, when unemployment is high, temporary jobs are common and permanent jobs are hard to obtain—even taking temporary leave to start a family can have long-term repercussions for women's labor market prospects. Fertility rates may consequently be lower than in a setting where secure, long-term jobs are easy to find.

edit - here is the link https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Analytical-Series/new-economics-of-fertility-doepke-hannusch-kindermann-tertilt

[crazy canuck]

I was referring to our profession generally.  If you were were referring to the few people you know personally, then there may be a sample size problem. 

I'm looking at one of Canada's self described biggest law-firm (no idea if it's true, don't care either, never would hire them), but their profiles page seem to indicate that it's a well mixed team:
McCarthy Tetrault


I think it may be more common for self-employed lawyers to be more male-centric, maybe?  This may not just be for lawyers.  Any SMB/autonomous work requires long hours and you're more likely to find it male-centric than anything else.  Realtors might be the exception.

I was not making the claim that there are no female lawyers.  There are.  My own firm has well over 50%.  I was making the claim that there is a lot of pressure on them not to have children or few children.

[Jacob]

From kids to immigration...

In the public discourse there's a lot of discussion about immigration recently, especially about the immigration from India. A bunch of it is in the context of housing - "we're letting all these immigrants in without building enough housing, that's why housing is unaffordable" being a fairly common position.

There's also the apparent rise in anti-Indian antipathy. Beyond the "they're the largest group of immigrants, so they get the brunt of anti-immigration animus" I've seen it explained with a "many of the Indian immigrants are coming to Canada to pursue BS degrees at BS institutions, essentially to exploit a loophole in Canadian policy - so they're a 'lower quality' group of immigrants than the silicon valley engineering types they get in the US."

Thinking of it on a demographic level (and putting aside housing, other infrastructure, and the ethics of diploma mills for the moment), is it so bad?

We were just talking of relatively low rates of childbirth among Canadians. Left on its own, this is going to lead to a rising proportion of old folks supported by the work of a lower proportion of working adults - with the various problems that entails. It seems to me that bringing in immigrants close to the beginning of their productive working lives (without having had to fund their education and child healthcare) is a pretty good way to avoid (or at least postpone) the ticking demographic time bomb?

[Barrister]

We were just talking of relatively low rates of childbirth among Canadians. Left on its own, this is going to lead to a rising proportion of old folks supported by the work of a lower proportion of working adults - with the various problems that entails. It seems to me that bringing in immigrants close to the beginning of their productive working lives (without having had to fund their education and child healthcare) is a pretty good way to avoid (or at least postpone) the ticking demographic time bomb?

So on the one hand yes.  We'd have a decreasing population without immigration.  I think everyone recognizes that.  No reasonable person suggests reducing immigration to zero.

The issue is perhaps twofold.

First, is we are taking in WAY more immigrants then is needed just to maintain our population, or to increase at a small rate.

Second is family unification.  Young people immigrate to Canada - then bring in their retired parents.  Those parents then become a net drain on Canada's finances as they haven't contributed, but become an expense to the healthcare system.  This also does not help Canada's population pyramid.

[Caliga]

I was sorry to hear that HM The King of the United Kingdon has cancer.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah, I agree with that. The inability to afford a home is one of a constellation of factors.  But I think a lot of it can be linked with the fact that real wages have not increased for decades.  Having children is expensive and most people just don't have the disposable income to afford kids.  The inability to purchase a home is really the last nail in the coffin (kick in the teeth).

I mentioned in the UK thread but I think part of it is not even choosing to have children (or being able to afford it) butbeing able to form a household in the first place.

I'm incredibly lucky and work in a very well paid profession, but it took me 15+ years to be in a position where I could afford to live alone - especially because I quite like being single. A knock on effect of this is also that we're in a bit of Jane Austen romantic economy again - there was a great piece in the Guardian about this. It's not fully buying for your wealth but that often you need to be in a couple to afford your own place and I've definitely had friends who look at their relationship and the fact that splitting up would mean moving back into a shared house or flat in the mid-to-late-30s and think "it'll do".

And - which is even more Jane Austen - in the UK, and I suspect in Canada, there is a weird wealth inheritance thing coming of 30-somethings whose parents were able to buy in London or Toronto or Vancouver in the 80s or 90s now sitting on very expensive family homes that's going to come to them.

I don't know that it has a direct observable impact on having kids - but I think it must do on some level - but I think property and wealth are distorting people's lives and the choices they make, both personal and romantic, in ways that they didn't for most of the 20th century.

I have heard it claimed that there are distinct career advantages for women for being pretty. I wouldn't be completely surprised that in a competitive like law you'd see a bias towards better looking for women.

Yes. Although it may not necessarily be what you think. When I joined the firm I trained at as a trainee I was about 3 years older than everyone else because I'd taken a long route in and I'd worked as a paralegal at the firm for a couple of years on a big case and had associates and partners backing me getting a training contract. There were maybe one or two other people who were a bit like me and had taken a slightly odd route into law.

The rest generally were all quite good looking, basically straight from university - something like four or five of them had actually met at (non-Oxbridge) university - and almost all of the girls were basically pretty, blonde young women. And all of them looked exactly like the head of graduate recruitment, who also went to that university The year after that there was a very, very conscious effort to make it a more diverse field in all ways as I think the actual lawyers were feeding back that it was ridiculous.

I only have anecdotes and subjective observations, but my impression is that the career impact of taking maternity leave is very real even in businesses where they're supposed not to be. I think unionized fields may be the exception.

Again I have limited experience in not many industries and I've not had kids. My observation would be that the biggest change on this is possibly from men, especially senior men. If they take paternity leave in full, very clearly make time and make it clear that they're making time for their family - and sort of that they expect more junior men to do the same - that changes things.

But it's definitely a thing in law. In private practice I think every level in the firm I was in was majority woman until around senior associate - so 6-8 years into your career - when that started to change and by the partnership was very much not majority women. This is reported in the UK because of mandatory pay gender pay gap reporting and I think it has lead to a very conscious effort to promote more women to partnership, but I'm not sure if the work culture changed, I don't know. The other side was that I think the majority of clients I worked with were women because other sectors were better at managing life/career balance and particularly if you have or want a family.

But in terms of the pipeline over half of solicitors in England and Wales are women, law graduates are 2 to 1 women - and at some point the profession will start to look like that. I think recently only 30% of law students are men so it will, I think, change quite rapidly once it happens.

Thinking of it on a demographic level (and putting aside housing, other infrastructure, and the ethics of diploma mills for the moment), is it so bad?

No but surely that's a little "aside from that, how was the play, Mrs Lincoln?" I don't think you're wrong that in theory if you put aside practical challenges it might make perfect sense. But if you're not addressing the actual practical issues around it (especially housing and infrastructure) it's not going to work no matter how good an idea is.

Edit: Also maybe we all just need to be more French (my standard solution to everything):

[viper37]

I was referring to our profession generally.  If you were were referring to the few people you know personally, then there may be a sample size problem. 

I'm looking at one of Canada's self described biggest law-firm (no idea if it's true, don't care either, never would hire them), but their profiles page seem to indicate that it's a well mixed team:
McCarthy Tetrault


I think it may be more common for self-employed lawyers to be more male-centric, maybe?  This may not just be for lawyers.  Any SMB/autonomous work requires long hours and you're more likely to find it male-centric than anything else.  Realtors might be the exception.

I was not making the claim that there are no female lawyers.  There are.  My own firm has well over 50%.  I was making the claim that there is a lot of pressure on them not to have children or few children.

Can't speak for other provinces.
Having few children is kinda the norm here.  And didn't we discussed this, recently?  1.33 children per couple for Canada, around 1.5 for Quebec?

Again, observational data, but in the few lawyer firms I have had dealings with, I was aware that some of the female lawyers did stop their career for up to a year to have children.  Might be because they have maternal leave that allows them and more protection against discrimination than in other provinces.

Then again, even Jean Charest is suing his law firm for age-based discrimination because he isn't made a partner, so maybe we have something to review in what we allow to proceed.

[viper37]

Thinking of it on a demographic level (and putting aside housing, other infrastructure, and the ethics of diploma mills for the moment), is it so bad?

Too many people?

As BB said, we're receiving way too many people for what we need.  We're at levels way above what any countries are receiving.  And you can't simply put aside all other variables as if they didn't exist.  Everything is there, and that's why there are limits.

Also, there's always a question of culture.  A huge part of England went from Celtic to Anglo-Saxon due to immigration pressure.  Good or bad, it depends on which point of view.  There were certainly tensions in some part of the island, given the number and types of castles built at the time, the battles wage in the west, and the Welsh clinging a little longer to their Celtic roots than the rest of England.

At some point, you feel the pressure to the society, even when it's a large one like Canada, but even more so for a small one like Quebec.  It was already tough to get French services in Montreal, it's getting tougher in Quebec city due to immigration pressure.  And you don't want to hear about the pressure on short term social services like food, shelter and clothing, but it's there.  The provincial government had to grant emergency funding again for these charities to keep working.  We're in January.  The year's budget is exhausted.  You don't want to talk about this variable, but it's there.

It's coming too fast.  We don't have time to adapt.  It's not about rejecting anyone.  It's the difference between seeing your 24 friends all at once at your flat or seeing them one couple at a time every month or so.  (Coming from someone who let himself be convinced of doing it all at once for 80 people "it's better than to do it once than family by family, you'll see!" - just don't )


I don't think there's any specific group of people that is good or bad based on their ethnicity.  Every group has their problems.

Western Europeans might be less likely emigrate here en masse though, compared to other groups, and the probability of having Swedish or Finnish refugees is likely nil (I hope so!) compared to an East Asian or African country.

Also, there's temporary workers coming directly at an employer's request.  We increase immigration, therefore pop level, we need more people to work in the fields, in the farms and in the slaugther houses.  Or the wineries.  Like all employers, farmers get fed up with people not showing up for work or showing up completely stoned and leaving after a couple of weeks because it's too hard.  So they pay big money to request foreign workers happy to work the fields for 20$/hour and they build them barracks.  But in turn, it takes other workers to feed them while they are here...

[Sheilbh]

Also, there's always a question of culture.  A huge part of England went from Celtic to Anglo-Saxon due to immigration pressure.  Good or bad, it depends on which point of view.  There were certainly tensions in some part of the island, given the number and types of castles built at the time, the battles wage in the west, and the Welsh clinging a little longer to their Celtic roots than the rest of England.

This is often brought up by people who are pro-immigration here "we're an island of immigrants: Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Romans, Normans" and, as someone who is pro-immigration, I never feel that quite sends the message they're wanting to send

FWIW I think there's lots of debate over what happened but my read - purely based on how few Briton words or even placenames survived - is that it was absolutely brutal.

[Barrister]

Also, there's always a question of culture.  A huge part of England went from Celtic to Anglo-Saxon due to immigration pressure.  Good or bad, it depends on which point of view.  There were certainly tensions in some part of the island, given the number and types of castles built at the time, the battles wage in the west, and the Welsh clinging a little longer to their Celtic roots than the rest of England.

This is often brought up by people who are pro-immigration here "we're an island of immigrants: Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Romans, Normans" and, as someone who is pro-immigration, I never feel that quite sends the message they're wanting to send

FWIW I think there's lots of debate over what happened but my read - purely based on how few Briton words or even placenames survived - is that it was absolutely brutal.

So of course key is that Viper is from Quebec in talking about culture.

Nobody (well almost nobody) in English Canada would say we need to reduce the number of immigrants in order to protect our culture, and I certainly didn't make that argument.

[Barrister]

And on a totally different note:

Montreal announces plans to have a $870 million dollar new root put on Olympic Stadium in Montreal.  Just a roof mind you.  The building has no major tenant and no prospects of getting one.

They further say they can't just replace Olympic Stadium because it would cost $2 billion to demolish.

You guys are getting so badly scammed!

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-to-spend-870m-on-a-new-roof-for-the-olympic-stadium-1.7104971

[HVC]

We were just talking of relatively low rates of childbirth among Canadians. Left on its own, this is going to lead to a rising proportion of old folks supported by the work of a lower proportion of working adults - with the various problems that entails. It seems to me that bringing in immigrants close to the beginning of their productive working lives (without having had to fund their education and child healthcare) is a pretty good way to avoid (or at least postpone) the ticking demographic time bomb?

So on the one hand yes.  We'd have a decreasing population without immigration.  I think everyone recognizes that.  No reasonable person suggests reducing immigration to zero.

The issue is perhaps twofold.

First, is we are taking in WAY more immigrants then is needed just to maintain our population, or to increase at a small rate.

Second is family unification.  Young people immigrate to Canada - then bring in their retired parents.  Those parents then become a net drain on Canada's finances as they haven't contributed, but become an expense to the healthcare system.  This also does not help Canada's population pyramid.

Wonder how common the parents thing is. my experience is mostly with Portuguese immigrants, but bringing over parents isn't very common in my generation, nor in my parents. Maybe it's a cultural thing? Some are more prone to it?

[Barrister]

We were just talking of relatively low rates of childbirth among Canadians. Left on its own, this is going to lead to a rising proportion of old folks supported by the work of a lower proportion of working adults - with the various problems that entails. It seems to me that bringing in immigrants close to the beginning of their productive working lives (without having had to fund their education and child healthcare) is a pretty good way to avoid (or at least postpone) the ticking demographic time bomb?

So on the one hand yes.  We'd have a decreasing population without immigration.  I think everyone recognizes that.  No reasonable person suggests reducing immigration to zero.

The issue is perhaps twofold.

First, is we are taking in WAY more immigrants then is needed just to maintain our population, or to increase at a small rate.

Second is family unification.  Young people immigrate to Canada - then bring in their retired parents.  Those parents then become a net drain on Canada's finances as they haven't contributed, but become an expense to the healthcare system.  This also does not help Canada's population pyramid.

Wonder how common the parents thing is. my experience is mostly with Portuguese immigrants, but bringing over parents isn't very common in my generation, nor in my parents. Maybe it's a cultural thing? Some are more prone to it?

It seems to be very common in South and East Asian communities (who often wind up living in multi-generation homes) but admittedly I have no statistics.

Probably in South East Asian communities too - but they're a separate group.

[Grey Fox]

Hey BB, as to not encumber the British thread.

What is Poilievre housing policy?