Saturday, June 24, 2006

Half A Million More

Like most Canadians, you've never heard of Maurizio Bevilacqua. If you follow politics closely, all you know is that he's been running for the Liberal leadership for several years now without anybody noticing.

Now you'll notice him, because he wants to bring half a million immigrants to Canada every year. Half a million! When we can't even employ all the ones we're bringing in now.

But hey, how else is the Liberal Party going to shore up its eroding electoral base?

Canada needs to double the flow of immigrants into the country to build up its population and drive economic growth, Liberal leadership candidate Maurizio Bevilacqua said Friday.

In a bold proposal to throw open the doors to the country, Mr. Bevilacqua proposed that Canada expand its immigration system beyond filling holes in the labour market, bringing in far more foreign relatives of Canadians to expand the population.

His proposal calls for Canada to increase its immigration rate immediately to 1 per cent of the population, or about 325,000 people, rather than the roughly 240,000 a year it brings in now. By 2016, he would increase immigration to 1.5 per cent of the population, which would be about 490,000 people a year based on the current population.

“We can't be timid,” Mr. Bevilacqua said in an interview Friday. “I have very much an expansionist view of Canada.”

Canada needs to recruit workers and deal with labour-market needs, but also must engage in nation-building, Mr. Bevilacqua said.

Canada's relatively low birth rate means that its future population and work-force growth will come from its aboriginal population and immigration, he said.


If you really want to be controversial, why not encourage native-born Canadians to have more children? Raise that suggestion, however, and everyone will scream racism, sexism, even homophobia for good measure.

But it's a better option for Canada in the long run than looting the rest of the world to keep our social welfare Ponzi scheme from collapsing.

Source: Globe and Mail

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is so silly it shouldn't even be a news item. We have 800,000 in the queue that we can't process. We have lost 30,000 illegal entrants into the country. We can't employ the ones we have already and many are being ghetoized in Canada. Bevilacqua must be drinking more of that Liberal koolaid. Typical Liberal headline grabbing position that is not rooted in reality. He most definately should not be the Liberal leader.

Anonymous said...

Since we need at least 1 physician for every 400 people or so, I'd like to hear from these dumb-ass disjointed pseudo-thinkers what their plans are to increase the number of doctors in Canada by 500-1000 every year. There is a big picture, too bad that very few people can manage to get a glimpse of it...

Anonymous said...

Liberals plotting the destruction of Canada as we used to know it have done far too much damage already. He can take a hike instead of purchasing voters with our money.

Anonymous said...

Anonymous said: "Bevilacqua must be drinking more of that Liberal koolaid."

The name "Bevilacqua" translates as "Drinkwater." Methinks he's been into something much stronger than koolaid ...

Immigrants, yes. But only a number that can be reasonably absorbed & that will not be a drain on the country.

Anonymous said...

When Maurizio was growing up he was ashamed enough of his Italian heritage to insist on being called Morris. Word has it out of T.O. that Morris has been bought and paid for by Elvio Del Zotto, yes that Del Zotto of Patti Starr fame, the one named in the "neil proverbs" case for being the Canadian smack king...Del Zotto once bragged that he had bought the nominations of 15 grits, (though that was some time ago, number would be higher than whem that quote was made). Read Morty Shulmans'testimony on organized crime in the construction industry in Ontario in the Royal Commission of that name in the early 70's about the Del Zotto brothers.... Morris is dangerous.... If you thought Chretien giving an untendered contract worth billions to the Gagliano family was bad (Queen's Printer, St Joesph's) imagine morris or a joe volpe in the big chair....