WHAT AN IMMIGRATION POLICY DEBATE WOULD LOOK LIKE---A LETTER TO BRUCE CHEADLE OF CANADIAN PRESS

Re. “Immigration policy debate lacking” (CP story Tuesday, March 13/07)

Mr.Cheadle, if ever such a debate was to take place:

a. It would be too late. The environmental damage has been done.
b. The “debate” would likely be moderated by a CBC journalist and the panelists would be an economist from the Royal Bank, Stephen Lewis, someone from the Laurier Institute or the Ethnocultural Council and a Liberal senator. Biologists, ecologists, analysts like Richard Embleton, authentic environmentalists like Paul Watson, or passionate animal rights advocates like Farley Mowat would not have a voice. The words “carrying capacity” or “biophysical limits” will never enter the conversation. The staggering loss of biodiversity and farmland to population growth in Canada would never be mentioned.

Instead, all we would hear about would be our job requirements, our aging population, and most of all, our moral obligation to draw from a bottomless pit of refugees. In other words, the discussion would be all about what economists and bleeding hearts want rather than what our environment can sustain.

All debates in Canada are constrained by Political Correctness and the Thought Police in the CBC and other media outlets will filter out any input that fails to meet their narrow test of political acceptability. In Canada it s now socially outrageous to speak the truth---that, for example, government-induced growth is not working.

So panelists and talk-show guests are hand-picked to conform to the State Ideology, the ideology shared by all the parties and the chattering classes, despite their superficial differences. All of them repeat the mantra---“Growth is good”, “Immigration is good”, “All refugees should be accepted”.

And when the Census Report reveals that we have indeed grown beyond all expectations, the media gushes. Therefore we know it to be true. Growth is good.

And if the media says so, why do we need the debate?