[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[viper37]

Built in the 70s and apparently really expensive to demolish - is it riddled with asbestos?

The construction of the stadium was rife with corruption, yes.

The Stadium is likely still riddled with asbestos in some parts, it's a possibility.  It was the norm back them.  There might have been in the concrete used to build the place.  In reality, I suspect no one wants to touch this given all the stories everyone heard, so they put the figures as high as possible.

As for corruption, well, it's not as bad as it once was, but it's still a huge construction project.  Costs have already skyrocketed since the pandemic and our productivity is low, especially for large infrastructure projects.

Demolishing the stadium means losing the good parts too.  Some parts are salvageable, like the Biodôme.  The subway station underneath is difficult to move, obviously.   Anything else built would have to be adjacent to it.

I'm guessing that no one wants to attempt a partial demolition of the problematic structure and keep the rest.

I still it's better to take the risk to dismantle it and rebuilt it anew.  This is a money pit.  And it won't be a beautiful experience.  And Montreal should pay half the costs, like Quebec city did.

[crazy canuck]

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?

Little while ago I linked an extensive article in The Globe and Mail, which examined the Canadian immigration system in some depth. The main criticism which stood out for me, is that the assumption that we are bringing in people who were younger and  offset the problems of an ageing demographic is incorrect. Rather because of policies like family reunification we are actually increasing the demographic problem and ageing our population through immigration.

[crazy canuck]

Built in the 70s and apparently really expensive to demolish - is it riddled with asbestos?

Everything built in the 70s is full of asbestos

[crazy canuck]

A minister has been removed from the BC cabinet for suggesting in a speech that the land on which Israel was created was worthless, the implication being that the land only started having value once Israel was created, and the Israelis started turning it into something valuable.  She was heavily criticized by the Muslim community. Premier defended her at first and she apologized but now she is removed.

[crazy canuck]

Surprising no one, when Trudeau threw Rota under the bus, it turns out the PMO was involved in sending out the invitation to the former Waffen SS soldier.

[Barrister]

A minister has been removed from the BC cabinet for suggesting in a speech that the land on which Israel was created was worthless, the implication being that the land only started having value once Israel was created, and the Israelis started turning it into something valuable.  She was heavily criticized by the Muslim community. Premier defended her at first and she apologized but now she is removed.

To be precise, she called it a "crappy piece of land".

Probably also worth noting she's jewish.

[Barrister]

I still it's better to take the risk to dismantle it and rebuilt it anew.  This is a money pit.  And it won't be a beautiful experience.  And Montreal should pay half the costs, like Quebec city did.

Honestly - what does Montreal need with a stadium that size?

I mean if the Expos somehow come back - sure look at building a purpose-built baseball stadium.  But otherwise why build something so large just on the chance a handful of music shows will come through?

[Jacob]

On the family reunification thing, CC if you still have the link handy I'd like to read it.

I was under the impression that we're doing a lot less of it than we used to - it used to be anyone could be brought in, but that changed some years ago. Now, to bring your parents or grandparents to Canada there's a lottery system.

Doing a bit of internet searching it seems Canada accepted 406,000 permanent residents in 2021, with 80,933 family class immigrants (20%). In 2022 the numbers were 437,180 permanent residents, with 97,165 being family class (22%). Since family class includes "spouses, common-law partners, dependent children, children to be adopted, parents, grandparents, and other eligible relatives", presumably the proportion of older folks is somewhat lower since children and spouses/partners is likely a significant proportion of those immigrants.

From the link above, it looks like 24,200 parental sponsorship invitations out of a 2023 immigration target of 465,000 - so 5%

I don't know what the proportion of "old people" is going to exacerbate demographic challenges, but on the face of it it seems like 5% from parental/grandparental unification is unlikely to do so.

Now it may be that regular immigrants tend to skew older as well, I don't know. According to this in 2021, about 64% of Canadian immigrants were in the "core working age" range (25-54), which doesn't seem so bad especially if a decent number of the remainder are younger than that.

In any case - my speculation is that the large number of foreign student visas granted in recent times could have the effect of lowering the average age of new Canadians as foreign students will tend towards being young adults (whether they stay here or move elsewhere).

[PRC]

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.

Danielle Smith recently had her interview with Tucker Carlson, and Carlson made the statement that "Canada has the highest immigration in the world" and this is "diluting the founders". 

Pretty easy to read between the lines on what he means by that.  This statement was met with applause by the crowd attending the event.  My source for this is anecdotal, a colleague was at the event in Calgary.

I don't know if this meshes with "Nobody (well almost nobody) in English Canada would say we need to reduce the number of immigrants in order to protect our culture...", but it's out there.

[Sheilbh]

@Shielbh, the Austen romance analogy is bang on.

Found the Guardian piece - really good, really grim:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jul/22/is-housing-crisis-killing-romance-modern-dating-jane-austen

This is part of why I think housing matters so much. It's like a black hole it has this distorting effect on people's lives.

[Barrister]

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.

Danielle Smith recently had her interview with Tucker Carlson, and Carlson made the statement that "Canada has the highest immigration in the world" and this is "diluting the founders". 

Pretty easy to read between the lines on what he means by that.  This statement was met with applause by the crowd attending the event.  My source for this is anecdotal, a colleague was at the event in Calgary.

I don't know if this meshes with "Nobody (well almost nobody) in English Canada would say we need to reduce the number of immigrants in order to protect our culture...", but it's out there.

Yes.  Tucker has been on the racist "great replacement theory" thing for awhile.  So there's no doubt what he's getting at there.

But I think I covered that off in the "(well almost nobody)".  Ye, there are racists in Canada that think immigrants are diluting our whiteness.  But I don't think they are a serious voice in public policy.

[crazy canuck]

A minister has been removed from the BC cabinet for suggesting in a speech that the land on which Israel was created was worthless, the implication being that the land only started having value once Israel was created, and the Israelis started turning it into something valuable.  She was heavily criticized by the Muslim community. Premier defended her at first and she apologized but now she is removed.

To be precise, she called it a "crappy piece of land".

Probably also worth noting she's jewish.

To be precise, that is not all she said.  She went on in some detail to describe how worthless the land was, "nothing would grow" etc.  But I appreciate that is all you may have read in the report you saw of what occurred. 

Also the Jewish organization hosting the event at which she spoke quickly made a public statement saying that her comments were not a view shared by them. 

[crazy canuck]

On the family reunification thing, CC if you still have the link handy I'd like to read it.

I was under the impression that we're doing a lot less of it than we used to - it used to be anyone could be brought in, but that changed some years ago. Now, to bring your parents or grandparents to Canada there's a lottery system.

Doing a bit of internet searching it seems Canada accepted 406,000 permanent residents in 2021, with 80,933 family class immigrants (20%). In 2022 the numbers were 437,180 permanent residents, with 97,165 being family class (22%). Since family class includes "spouses, common-law partners, dependent children, children to be adopted, parents, grandparents, and other eligible relatives", presumably the proportion of older folks is somewhat lower since children and spouses/partners is likely a significant proportion of those immigrants.

From the link above, it looks like 24,200 parental sponsorship invitations out of a 2023 immigration target of 465,000 - so 5%

I don't know what the proportion of "old people" is going to exacerbate demographic challenges, but on the face of it it seems like 5% from parental/grandparental unification is unlikely to do so.

Now it may be that regular immigrants tend to skew older as well, I don't know. According to this in 2021, about 64% of Canadian immigrants were in the "core working age" range (25-54), which doesn't seem so bad especially if a decent number of the remainder are younger than that.

In any case - my speculation is that the large number of foreign student visas granted in recent times could have the effect of lowering the average age of new Canadians as foreign students will tend towards being young adults (whether they stay here or move elsewhere).

I don't know if we are doing less family reunification now or not now.  I think the upshot of the article is the cumulative effect has been to age our population rather than make it younger and better able to support an aging population.

The other thing to factor into the numbers you cited, which for our purposes I assume are correct, is it takes some time for family reunification to occur.  There has been a rapid increase in the number of immigrants.  And even if the vast majority of them are young, they have yet to invoke whatever rights of family reunification they might have, and when that happens our population will age.

[crazy canuck]

@Shielbh, the Austen romance analogy is bang on.

Found the Guardian piece - really good, really grim:
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/jul/22/is-housing-crisis-killing-romance-modern-dating-jane-austen

This is part of why I think housing matters so much. It's like a black hole it has this distorting effect on people's lives.

Yep.  And in place of balls, we have online dating to make the economic selection process more efficient.

[Barrister]

A minister has been removed from the BC cabinet for suggesting in a speech that the land on which Israel was created was worthless, the implication being that the land only started having value once Israel was created, and the Israelis started turning it into something valuable.  She was heavily criticized by the Muslim community. Premier defended her at first and she apologized but now she is removed.

To be precise, she called it a "crappy piece of land".

Probably also worth noting she's jewish.

To be precise, that is not all she said.  She went on in some detail to describe how worthless the land was, "nothing would grow" etc.  But I appreciate that is all you may have read in the report you saw of what occurred. 

Also the Jewish organization hosting the event at which she spoke quickly made a public statement saying that her comments were not a view shared by them. 

Obviously she said more than 4 words.  But those were the words people focused on.  I have read her more fulsome remarks - "a crappy piece of land with nothing on it – you know, there were several hundred thousand people but other than that, it didn't produce an economy. It couldn't grow things it didn't have anything on it".  Context doesn't necessarily improve things, which is why she apologized.

She (her name for the peanut gallery is Selina Robinson) being jewish is probably important though.  It certainly explains why muslim groups would jump all over her, and perhaps explains why an NDP government would throw her out.