Does Canada Need More People?

Writing for the Globe and Mail, Doug Saunders provocatively argues that Canada needs to dramatically increase its population to 100 million to become a fully formed nation.

The two arguments I found most interesting were that Canada would better safeguard environmental protections through immigration, and that a larger population was necessary in order to foster a national culture.

He notes that "Canada’s environment would probably be far better protected: Densely populated places like California and France tend to do better at conservation than empty zones like the Asian steppe, which produced such ecological catastrophes as the Aral Sea disaster unobserved. The threats of global warming – notably ocean-level rises – will require large-scale infrastructure projects that must rely on a large tax base. And it’s no coincidence that the most progressive climate-change policies are found in the countries with the most dense populations"

My family friend Julie Campoli does research in praise of urban residential density, which seems somewhat consistent with this, and Canadian cities seem like some of the least dense urban environments on earth, almost like the Chinese ghost cities. Calgary felt like some futuristic planner demanded skyscrapers without the people to fill them. Beautiful Vancouver was also full of empty skyscrapers (but high rents) due to investment from Hong Kong and Mainland China.

However, Canada has a long history as a commodity driven economy, and has successfully walked the delicate balance between using commodities to fuel growth and protecting the environment in part due to low population density. Although I imagine that the goal of increased immigration would be to diversify away from commodities into a more domestic consumption driven economy, recent immigrants are flocking to Alberta. Immigrants who come to work in the oil and gas sector may not become a force for environmental preservation.

Saunders also writes that "The challenge is not simply economic. The greatest price of underpopulation is loneliness: We are often unable to talk intelligently to each other, not to mention the world, because we just don’t have enough people to support the institutions of dialogue and culture – whether they’re universities, magazines, movie industries, think tanks or publishing houses. Unlike the tightly packed countries of Europe, Canada has multiple, dispersed audiences with different regional cultures – and therefore needs a larger base population, especially in its cities."

I would love to hear Benedict Anderson's take on that.  It's also a much fresher take than the idea that proximity and similarity to the USA depress the development of pan-Canadian culture. I am looking forward to seeing how my Canadian friends react to it.

Not the Ladies

In the onslaught of articles about  HBO's "Girls," this take by Elaine Blair is my favorite. Although I don't find Adam or Hannah as likeable as she does (I keep thinking it is a show about folks I would have avoided in college), I like her take on the awkward, painful sex scenes the best.

Some of my friends-- and some articles-- have described the sex scenes in "Girls" as push-back against the sexual revolution. They argue that the premise of the sexual revolution failed, and women (girls?) have been let down since through their efforts to 'have sex like men' or find empowerment through sex.

This claim-- and any claim people make women's universal sexual experience-- makes me feel like I am breaking out in hives. I can relate to Jessa when she says "I'm not the ladies." I don't think I have the alleged sexual experiences of "women," I have the experiences of me. 

Blair believes the take away from "Girls" is a more complicated comment on the impact of the sexual revolution: it's not just about sex:

"Girls, too, raises questions in its opening episodes about how young women are to understand and make use of their sexual freedom. Should they multiply sexual encounters and partners in a spirit of adventure, brushing off embarrassing or uncomfortable episodes as all part of the alleged fun? Or should they, as Shoshanna’s self-help book would advise, demand tacit declarations of serious intent from a man before even having sex?

Both strategies are ways of containing one’s messy, inconvenient, and embarrassing emotional vulnerability, which has always seemed an obstacle to reaping the rewards of the sexual revolution. But sexual freedom is, in a way, least about sex itself. The sexual revolution is a social revolution. Men and women are free to talk to each other without prior vetting or pretext, to see each other in any setting. We can form acquaintances and friendships that are laced through with attraction and desire (or not), and of course we can form romantic attachments as well. All of us can know more people in more ways than was ever previously allowed.

In the face of such vast possibility, to think of one’s romantic life as a game of numbers and animal pleasures, on the one hand, or as one long search for a spouse, on the other, is to miss the point. We can only justify our freedom by giving full attention to the human relationships formed by sex, even if those relationships are brief or strange. We would like our movies and television shows, the ones that devote themselves to matters of love and sex, to give their full attention to these relationships too. Girls seems poised to do exactly that."

Upon witnessing the awkward sex in "Girls," Bruni asks "Gloria Steinem went to the barricades for this?" Despite this rejoinder, I feel grateful to those women and men before me who enabled me to have the freedom to have very close male friends, and to be known by the men in my life as me instead of as a woman, behind the veil of carefully prescribed patterns of interaction and prejudice, and to try to know them as them. Perhaps the sex in "Girls" seems so dismal because there are no male-female friendships alongside it.