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Pinoys constantly in search of good-paying jobs abroad must be excited when they heard the news that the Canadian province of Alberta has opened its doors to 30,000 Filipino skilled workers.
The Department of Labor and Employment recently signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the western Canadian City, where a good number of Filipinos reside. Alberta's positive economic outlook is being supported by a rapidly increasing petroleum industry and thriving agriculture and technology sectors. The prospect of working in Canada will no doubt attract Filipino engineers, doctors and nurses. The province is open to the Arctic area though and the harsh winter there could be a challenge for Asian immigrants.
Alberta covers an area of 661,848 square kilometers and has a population of more than 3.2 million. Canada is the second largest country in the world, but the demographic data is still startling if one compares Alberta with Cebu, which has a population of more than 4.9 million and a total land area of 5,088 square kilometers.
Three other Canadian provinces had earlier signed MOUs with the labor department in order to provide access to Filipino skilled workers. In January this year, British Columbia paved the way for Filipino workers in the fields of tourism and hospitality, retail, construction industries, and health care. Manitoba and Saskatchewan followed suit.
Canadian officials cite different reasons for the obtaining labor gap, like the rise in the number of construction projects (Canada will host the winter Olympics in 2010), and the discovery of new oil fields. It's quite a pleasure listening to job prospects but the real reason for Canada's mad scramble for immigrant workers is none other than its aging population.
A newly published Statistics Canada report released last year reveals that Canada's population is growing older at a steadily increasing pace and in less than 10 years, more Canadians will enter retirement, which means that fewer Canadian citizens will enter the workforce. According to the report, there are 4.3 million citizens or one in seven Canadians, aged 65 or older. The proportion of the under-15 population is at its lowest level ever at 17.7 percent. The number of people aged 55 to 64, many of whom are workers approaching retirement, has never been so high in Canada, at 3.7 million in 2006. It is predicted that by 2016, there will be no more new workers from the Canadian population to replace retirees.
Government experts acknowledge that the country's aging population could spell lower productivity, which in turn could trigger inflation. The growing number of elderly Canadians is expected to weaken the nation's publicly funded universal health care system. But more than economic stress, the prospect of having few young people to support a large elderly population will be taking its toll on society.
Canada's shocking demographic report is careful not to mention that contraception and publicly funded abortion in hospitals and clinics have pushed the country to this appalling situation. Recent Canadian statistics show that Canada's birth rate has fallen to its lowest level ever recorded. This year, population growth rate is estimated at less than 1 percent (0.83 percent). The country's fertility rate is pegged at 1.58 percent. According to published reports, about 80 percent of Canadian women use some form of contraception.
Moreover, there are no laws restricting abortion. Considering that no gestational limits, no waiting periods, no parental and spousal consent are needed for doctors and hospitals to perform abortion, statistics point to over 110,000 abortions performed in Canada every year. That's a ratio of 30 abortions to every 100 live births.
Efforts are currently being made to have companies redefine their retirement policies by making retirees work in order to sustain productivity and insure the welfare system. It's very problematic because as people age, they get afflicted with all sorts of physical ailment. One Canadian province granted increases in state subsidies for children, while malls and stores offered huge discounts for baby products. Such unplanned solutions cannot reverse the effects of the so-called demographic winter, so Canada is finding recourse in the human resource of other countries like Mexico and, now, the Philippines.
The tragic lessons of state policies that support contraception and abortion are yet to fully unfold, but what is happening in Canada and many countries in Europe validates the demise of the demographic myth: that overcrowded countries will not be able to sustain its population. In this connection, House Bill 5043 or the Reproductive Health Bill is an outdated policy.
As the late Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, former president of Vatican's Pontifical Council for the Family, succinctly put it, “Nations cannot have a future this way and will suffer a tragic loss of population that, as has been said, constitutes suicide.”
