Urban Renaissance Institute

Just don’t do it

Posted on May 31, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
May 31, 2006

Prime Minister Harper needs an alternative to Kyoto. Just about everyone seems to agree that our government can’t just do nothing about greenhouse gas emissions.

But what if doing nothing is the best way governments can reduce emissions?

Just about everything our governments do, have done and plan to do in the economy increases emissions. This is the unintended but inevitable consequence of government activities which, by their nature, decrease the efficiency of our economy and cause us to do less with more – including more carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions.

This maxim applies to energy policy and to environmental policy, to tax policy and to economic policy. It applies to the federal and the provincial and the territorial and the municipal levels of governments. Just about everything in the economy that they do, just about everywhere. This is why our greenhouse gas emissions have been rising, and why they have been rising more in Canada than in (relatively) do-nothing governments such as those in the United States. If the U.S. government did more, U.S. emissions would be higher.

Look at energy policy. We subsidize the development of Arctic pipelines and offshore oil. We subsidize long-distance transmission of power. We subsidize the expansion of the natural gas grid. The government-created energy glut that then results is soon soaked up as industry discovers new ways to consume it, all of which lowers the cost of fuels to the consumer and discourages investment in energy-efficient technologies. Meanwhile, governments do their best to increase consumption by keeping energy prices down. Some provinces have price controls on gasoline, others subsidize natural gas, most sell power at cost through subsidized Crown agencies.

Governments increase carbon dioxide emissions even when they say they’re doing the opposite. Our governments are embarking on a crash program to run cars on ethanol, billing this as a way to reduce our dependence on oil. In fact, the greater our ethanol use, the greater our oil dependency. It takes 75% more energy to grow, crush, ferment and distill corn into ethanol than the ethanol itself contains. The more ethanol we burn, the more tar sands, Arctic gas and coal mines we’ll need.

We don’t just subsidize the energy industry, we also subsidize everything with a gas tank. Our auto manufacturers are big recipients of tax dollars, as are railroads and shipyards and, of course, Bombardier jets. We subsidize our ports and our airports.

We especially subsidize the rural resource industries – pulp and paper, mining and agriculture – Canada’s leaders in greenhouse gas production. Agriculture alone accounts for almost one-seventh of Canada’s emissions, according to the federal government’s Greenhouse Gas Emission Summary. We so love these resource emitters that they merit direct subsidies as well as layer upon layer of indirect subsidies through the tax and regulatory systems. The Employment Insurance system has special provisions for resource regions, to keep as many resource workers at maximum exploitation levels. The equalization system among provinces likewise maximizes resource depletion. These payments chiefly transfer wealth from Canada’s most industrialized and least resource-dependent province, Ontario, to the more rural resource-reliant provinces. Within Ontario, the wealth is likewise transferred from the energy-efficient urban economy to the energy inefficient rural regions.

Within cities, the government bias toward consuming fuel continues. The city of Toronto, for example, directly and indirectly promotes the private automobile through hundreds of bylaws and regulations. With few exceptions, the city strives for a car-friendly city at the expense of tenants, businesses, pedestrians, cyclists and transit users. Apartment buildings, for example, must provide surplus parking for cars, even when they are located at subway stops and even when their tenants take transit. The expense of the unneeded parking facilities drives up rents for tenants and drives down costs for car use. Likewise, neighbourhood coffee shops must provide car parking, even when the coffee shops cater to locals.

Cities ban private transit operators, who would provide faster service and more direct routes at lower cost, and they ban the use of shared taxis, which would accomplish much the same thing. They simultaneously limit the number of taxicabs on the roads, all of which tells the public that the only way to get good service is to obtain a private automobile.

Although some government programs reduce carbon dioxide emissions – investments in sidewalks, for instance – these are few and far between, and low-ticket items. The great mission of government is to boost the ratio of machine exhaust per unit of economic output. Numerous recycling programs, though billed as energy savers, in fact lead to extra energy consumption. Even energy conservation programs turn into energy consumption programs, thanks to a well-documented “rebound effect” – programs to subsidize energy-efficient fridges not only spur new purchases for the kitchen, they simultaneously lead to beer-fridges in the basement. The expectation of government conservation programs also lead people and businesses to postpone money-saving investments in insulation and other energy-efficient technologies. Without such government programs, the energy- and money-saving technologies would be installed earlier, and less energy would be consumed overall.

Trim government programs, almost any government program, and you’ll trim greenhouse gas emissions. Stephen Harper: A do-nothing agenda is the only viable Kyoto alternative. Your three Rs shouldn’t be to reduce, reuse and recycle products. They should be to reduce, repeal and rescind government programs.

Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book Toronto Sprawls, is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.; www.urban.probeinternational.org

Response from Mark Jaccard

Just do nothing?: Climate change debate

by Mark Jaccard, National Post, June 10, 2006

Two recent FP Comment columns make the case that Canada should have no policies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Lawrence Solomon argues that eliminating government subsidies throughout our economy would reduce energy use enough to reduce our GHG emissions. Terrence Corcoran argues (as I do) that the Canadian policy reliance on subsidies and information to reduce GHG emissions has been ineffective, but he disagrees with my policy alternative – a gradually rising emissions tax or a gradually tightening emissions regulation over the next few decades. He argues that the best government strategy for the time being is to follow Mr. Solomon’s advice and do nothing but cut government subsidies throughout the economy, while waiting to see if a future Isaac Newton will prove definitively that human activity is changing the climate.

These entertaining columns provide useful challenges to conventional thinking. But they also have some critical challenges themselves.

Mr. Solomon provides no numerical estimates for the GHG emissions reductions that would result from an end to government subsidies, but this can be roughly calculated. The economy in Canada and globally is driven by the use of fossil fuels. The easiest way to get energy from fossil fuels is to burn them, which produces carbon dioxide, the most important GHG emission. If we removed subsidies in our economy, would people combust fewer fossil fuels and emit less carbon dioxide?

The likely answer is that there would be little change. First, it is unlikely we would replace fossil fuels with alternative sources of energy because we also subsidize nuclear power, hydro power, and other renewables such as wind and biomass. Production cost data (with subsidies removed) indicate that fossil fuels would remain the fuel of choice for Canada and the planet.

Second, it is also unlikely we would use much less energy. If we remove the subsidies, we would presumably also remove the taxes we collect from fossil fuels. Refined products such as gasoline are the most heavily taxed commodities in our economy. Even if we kept high taxes on fossil fuel consumption, research shows that people place a high value on the services they get from energy and would continue to consume large amounts.

Mr. Corcoran inadvertently supports this point when he argues that raising energy taxes will not significantly curb consumption, citing recent oil price increases in support. But if energy price increases because of tight market conditions will have little downward effect on demand, why would comparable energy price increases because of subsidy removal have a downward effect?

Both Mr. Solomon and Mr. Corcoran focus on our use of energy as the issue when it comes to the risk of climate change. Herein lies the problem. The risk of climate change is an environmental concern related in large part to how we use energy, not to how much we use. If carbon dioxide emissions are causing detrimental climate change, this is a market failure that requires some action by government – provided the benefits of such action are likely to exceed the costs.

Mr. Corcoran critiques my policies for reducing GHG emissions by saying they will lead to higher energy prices with little affect on energy use. I agree that there will be little effect on energy use. Again, the important issue is the effect on emissions.

Industry leaders, governments and increasingly the environmental community are beginning to recognize that we can use fossil fuels without emitting GHGs and without significantly higher energy prices. In my book, Sustainable Fossil Fuels, I summarize the evidence from industry and independent researchers showing that policies that constrain GHG emissions by financial penalty or regulation would motivate the electricity industry (to take one sector as an example) to shift over the next few decades toward zero-emission generation of electricity using coal, natural gas and perhaps other fossil fuels (in addition to more nuclear and renewables). The price of electricity over this period would rise by less than 1% per year with prices in 50 years no more than 25% to 50% higher than today. Electricity use won’t fall appreciably. But emissions will.

Mr. Corcoran refers to these as “get -tough policies.” But how tough are electricity price increases of about 10% over the next 10 years as we learn more about the climate change risk? Taking the case of automobiles, industry data suggest that the California vehicle emission standard of 1990, which resulted in today’s hybrid car and advanced the development of fuel cell vehicles, raised the selling price of vehicles everywhere by perhaps $20 to $50 (to pay for research, development and marketing of low emissions cars). Compare this to an average selling price of over $20,000.

Allowing ourselves to continue installing new long-lived equipment, factories and infrastructure that uses fossil fuels and emits GHGs, even though we know that for a reasonable cost we could begin to shift these investments toward zero emission technologies, is tantamount to saying that we are absolutely certain we are not changing the climate. But since we are uncertain, as Mr. Corcoran admits, we should approach the issue in the same way that businesses approach risks in their daily decisions.

A business leader cannot afford to say, “I will only make this risk reduction expenditure if every one of my safety engineers is absolutely certain that a hideous accident will otherwise occur.” Likewise, humanity cannot say, “We will only incur costs to reduce climate change effects or their probability when we are certain the effects will be devastating and that their probability is 100%.” This is no way to run a business – or a planet.

Mark Jaccard is professor of resource and environmental management at Simon Fraser University and author of Sustainable Fossil Fuels: The Unusual Suspect in the Quest for Clean and Enduring Energy.

Larry Solomon responds

A true believer in government

by Lawrence Solomon, National Post, June 10, 2006 Academics, policymakers and regulators can succumb to fads as easily as anyone. Honourable people admit their mistakes and move on, and hopefully learn from their experiences.

Marc Jaccard is such an honourable person, but he hasn’t learned from his mistakes. He still strives to correct “market failures,” not recognizing that they seem always to occur in government-dominated sectors and because of government intervention. He still tries to use government to influence energy consumption, although he realizes government has often done more harm than good. He still ignores data from those whose viewpoints don’t correspond to his, all the while deploring their absence of data.

In the 1990s, Mr. Jaccard was in thrall to one of the biggest and wonkiest fads going in the energy game, demand side management. If you don’t know what this jargon means, you have nevertheless seen it in action and probably participated in it, to doubtful outcome. A DSM program gave you those energy-efficient lightbulbs or water-saving showerheads that now clutter your basement storeroom.

A DSM program provided the subsidy that convinced you to buy a new energy efficient fridge, expecting you to throw out your old fridge and save society some energy. Only your old fridge ended up in your garage as a beer fridge, and you now have two fridges, consuming more electricity than before.

If you lived in British Columbia, DSM came to you courtesy of Mr. Jaccard. As chair of the British Columbia Utilities Commission, he became one of the country’s leading exponents of DSM programs, and, because he could also impose his policies on society, waste was the outcome. In this he was not alone – the great majority of energy experts were then caught up in the DSM mania, disregarding the relatively few dispassionate voices that argued otherwise (I am proud that Tom Adams, my colleague at Energy Probe, was among the very first, in 1990, to expose the sham of DSM programs).

To his credit, Mr. Jaccard has seen the light. Now, along with most of the best brains in the energy business, he realizes just how dim DSM can be, and himself exposes it. He doubtless wonders how he could have been taken in by programs that proved so spectacularly wrong, and how he could have ignored so much evidence from the Tom Adamses of the world that proved so spectacularly right, particularly when the evidence was submitted directly to him in his capacity as BC’s electricity regulator.

Yet although Mr. Jaccard has seen what grief comes of following the herd, he is again ignoring incontrovertible evidence from impeccable sources, this time over greenhouse gas reduction, the gargantuan new rage among energy analysts.

In his response to columns by Terence Corcoran and me on the best way to deal with the greenhouse gas issue, Mr. Jaccard once more sees evidence of “market failure” in a market dominated by government intervention, once more selectively sees the data he’d like to see and blinds himself to the rest, including facts and the data from impeccable sources.

Take David Pimentel, whose data I cited in my column. Mr. Pimentel is the leading critic of ethanol production, the chief government program that promotes an alternative to gasoline. Mr. Pimentel could not have better credentials. This Oxford, MIT, and Cornell-educated agricultural scientist helped establish the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he has been chairman of the Environmental Studies Board in the National Academy of Sciences, he has served on 12 of their distinguished panels, and he is the former chair of a U.S. Department of Energy panel that investigated the efficiency of ethanol production. His more recent ethanol findings have been published in the authoritative Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology.

Yet Mr. Jaccard, in criticizing my column, shows no interest in Pimentel’s data, acting as if I hadn’t even presented data.

“Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs,” Mr. Pimentel calculates for the U.S. market (in Canada, where ethanol crops have a lower energy yield, the loss would be greater). In the real world, this energy loss leads to more tar sands, Arctic pipelines, and coal plants, and thus to more carbon dioxide.

In the world Mr. Jaccard inhabits, wasteful government policies that inefficiently increase fossil fuel use are of little account because, in the next 50 years, his pet technology will become economically viable and rampant energy use will fade in importance.

Mr. Jaccard asserts that government penalties, properly applied, will motivate industry over the coming decades to invent zero-emission coal-burning technology at a cost that is a mere 25% to 50% more than today.

While he peers into his crystal ball, he criticizes Mr. Corcoran as fanciful for thinking that inventions will continue to occur without government prodding. Mr. Jaccard also believes energy costs should rise, although the history of the world shows the costs of energy (as well as every other major resource) to consistently decrease while becoming ever cleaner.

Only a true believer could share Mr. Jaccard’s faith that the future should depart so dramatically from the past, and that government will in future do so much right where before it has done so much wrong.

If the world were run on a businesslike basis, Mr. Jaccard claims, it would protect itself against a possible calamity such as global warming. This analogy, though often recited, is always wrong. No CEOs would sign blank cheques to avoid undefined risks for undefinable benefits centuries into the future, especially when the governments that would be charged with mitigating the risks had a proven track record of making matters worse.

Posted in Energy | Leave a comment

Without regard to race, colour, creed or breed

Posted on May 20, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
May 20, 2006

Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice will soon decide whether the province’s ban on pit bulls is constitutional. This high profile case unites legendary libertarians and lefties – specifically, National Post columnist George Jonas and jurist Clayton Ruby – in their attack on the provincial legislation.

To both, this is a matter of rights, a case involving discrimination against dogs. I fear that others may find them persuasive, and that our Bill of Rights may some day be amended to prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, colour, creed or breed.

“Should any specific breed of dog be banned?” Jonas asked eminent veterinarian Mark Spiegle, past president of the Veterinarian College of Ontario. Dr. Spiegle replied no. “It was the kind of ‘no’ you’d expect in reply to the question: ‘Should any specific human race be banned?’ from a person who knows anything about human beings.”

Jonas concluded that “Banning ‘pit bulls’ to eliminate dog attacks makes about as much sense as banning Irishmen to eliminate bar-room fights. … There are bad breeders. There are bad masters. There are even bad dogs. There are no bad breeds.”

Ruby argues a similar line. Like Jonas, he doesn’t object to punishing bad dogs or their masters; he objects to punishing either a specific breed or cross-breeds such as pit bulls (mixes that might include the American pit bull terrier, Staffordshire bull terrier and the American Staffordshire terrier). Breed-specific legislation (BSL) does not focus on “dangerousness, but rather on breed and breed is not a sufficient enough marker of dangerousness to pass constitutional muster,” he stated.

Opposition to BSL is a growing movement. A large literature has by now developed around the evils of BSL, some of it reasoned, some of it not (in dog circles, many equate the extinguishing of a breed with ethnic cleansing or genocide). Courts in various U.S. states have ruled breed-specific laws to be unconstitutional (some make exceptions for pit bulls) for denying pet owners equal protection and due process. Legislators are proposing bans on breed-specific laws, just as they have objected to demeaning animals in circus use.

Pet owners once rated no such rights, and pets no such status. Pets and other animals were property, even if protected against cruelty. Now they are a new frontier in a relativist movement that has extended rights from humans to animals, and disturbingly equates wrongs perpetrated against one with the other. In 1993, only one law school in North America taught animal law. Today, more than 40 do so, including the University of Victoria, University of Alberta and McGill University.

The pit bull controversy, and especially breed specific legislation, has become the chief battleground in the movement to endow animals with inalienable rights. These advocates are barking up the wrong tree.

Laws should be breed specific because breeds, being man-made, vary wildly. We have bred dogs for size, for strength, for speed, for colour, for stature. We have bred them to chase animals into fox holes and up trees, to pull sleds and herd sheep. We have bred them to guard houses and to track criminals. And we have bred them to fight other dogs and to kill.

Pit bulls trace their ancestry to bulldogs and terriers bred by English butchers to fasten their jaws upon the noses of cattle destined for slaughter, and not let go. With the cattle thus immobilized, the butcher would smash its head with a mallet. The breed’s ferocity and exceptional jaws – rated at 1,800 pounds of pressure per square inch – led to its development as a fighting dog. Pit bulls fought each other in a pit, surrounded by frenzied spectators. After England outlawed the sport in 1835, it went underground, where it continues to this day. Underground garages now clandestinely host pit bull fights weekend nights in our suburbs; in rural settings, they might occur in a barn or the open air.

There are bad breeds, and bad breed combinations, such as the ones that produce pit bulls. The pit bull and other fighting dogs have been bred, and continue to be bred, as bloodthirsty animals. The wonderful disposition that the pit bull exhibits is also a matter a breeding: Because the risk of damage by a pit bull is so great, they have been bred to respond well to those they trust. “Never hit your dog,” warned a column in American Game Dog Times, one of many publications that promote dog fighting. ” You are going to be handling this dog in the pit someday. He must trust your hands, not fear them.”

Because of the pit bull’s threat to the public, and especially because of the disfigurement or death that can accompany an attack, some 30 jurisdictions in Canada, and hundreds around the world, have passed BSL legislation. Where the legislation requires dangerous dog owners to acquire breed-specific liability insurance, the insurance premium for a pit bull often exceeds $1,000 a year – the judgment of the marketplace of the risk that a pit bull poses.

Critics of BSL claim a pit-bull ban will be futile – the taste for dangerous dogs will merely shift to Rottweilers or Akitas. Perhaps, but why would that matter? Other inherently dangerous breeds can likewise be regulated. More importantly, we would be distinguishing between good and bad, and rights and wrongs..

Posted in Regulation | Leave a comment

Get Ontario off the property-tax roller coaster

Posted on May 6, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
May 6, 2006

Mike Harris was one of the greatest redistributionists in Ontario history. He left behind a self-perpetuating property-tax mess, and also the highest property-tax regime in the Western world. Now property owners have had enough and Harris’s Liberal successor, Dalton McGuinty, vows to clean it up.

Harris’s perpetual redistribution came via his Current Value Assessment, a property-tax system whose levies bounce around with the booms and busts in real estate markets, but with one big difference. Taxes don’t just depend on the change in your property’s value; they also depend on the relative change in your property’s value relative to those in neighbouring districts. When property values boom, such quirks in the Current Value Assessment system will cause property taxes to actually drop in neighbourhoods that experienced below-average increases, while property taxes in areas that see above-average increases can go through the roof. Likewise, when property values collapse, wiping away much of the net worth of people and businesses, Current Value Assessments have a piling-on effect: They can mercilessly jack up property taxes when people can least afford it.

Current Value Assessment is perpetually redistributing, and in unpredictable ways. This is random tax redistribution, dumber than a doorknob, and far, far worse than the darling of most redistributionists, the progressive income tax.

The progressive income tax, for all its faults, has a compelling logic in taxing people in proportion to their ability to pay: In lean years, when incomes shrink, the taxman takes less than in abundant times, when higher taxes can be drawn from higher earnings. But where’s the logic in varying taxes on illiquid real estate assets, whose appreciation or depreciation from one year to the next says nothing about the owner’s ability to pay?

Those especially gouged by this system include pensioners whose modest inner-city homes happen to be situated in an area that’s suddenly gone trendy. Or small businessmen, who happen to have a down year in an up neighbourhood, and see the property tax finish them off. As the Canadian Federation of Independent Business put it to the McGuinty government earlier this year: “These profit-insensitive taxes accelerate business failures in rough times. Every year, thousands of money-losing small businesses draw down capital to pay these taxes. A disincentive to business formation, property taxes also prevent home-based businesses from growing into commercial or industrial properties.”

Even aside from the many horror stories, Current Value Assessment destabilizes businesses by creating uncertainty. Companies will naturally hedge against the possibility of outsized tax increases, making these taxes an unseen sink on the economy.

Because the Mike Harris property-tax system is so senseless, the movement against it is growing. The Coalition After Property Tax Reform, a province-wide alliance of 700 ratepayers’ groups representing 500,000 voters, demands that the Ontario government cap property-tax assessment increases. Its approach is understandable: In this taxation year, more than half of Ontario property owners received assessments that increased by 10% or more, one-fifth saw assessments increase more than 20%, and some saw their assessments increase by 50%.

Their demands for change received a boost from Ontario’s ombudsman, who, acting on numerous complaints from homeowners bitter about the provincial assessment system, decided in 2005 to investigate. In a report released a month ago, ombudsman Andre Marin confirmed that the system is broken, highlighting the arbitrariness and illogicality of the bureaucracy that annually assesses 4.4 million Ontario properties valued at $1.1-trillion. He proposed almost two dozen reforms. Numerous politicians, from MPPs to mayors to rural reeves, also clamour for change.

Most want a cap of some kind on assessments, a repeat of the “hard cap” solution that Mike Harris was forced into after the enormity of his error became apparent. Ottawa Mayor Bob Chiarelli now argues for an absolute freeze; the ratepayers’ coalition would settle for annual increases limited to 5%. McGuinty, who came to office promising that “Ontario Liberals will uphold the ‘hard cap’ and will work with small business to fix the property-tax mess,” now opposes a cap, possibly because he, himself, had removed the cap in one of his many broken promises.

Instead, McGuinty proposes improving on the cap, and going further than the ombudsman’s recommendations. “What we intend to do is to take our time, to approach this in a way that is both thoughtful and responsible and to ensure that we get this right,” he said.

What he should do, if he truly wants to get this right, is abolish or, at a minimum, vastly scale back this regressive tax that gets nothing right. It is neither progressive nor does it relate to the actual cost of delivering services. Thanks to Harris’s reforms, Ontario jurisdictions – both the province and municipalities – now milk the property tax much more than any other jurisdictions in the Western world. Property taxes account for 3.7% of Ontario’s GDP, 25% higher than the rest of Canada or the United States, about twice as much as Japan or New Zealand, four times as much as Scandinavian countries and 10 times as much as Germany or Switzerland. Rather than depending on this outdated tax, the rest of the developed world prefers income taxes, sales taxes and user fees, alone or in some combination. Any are preferable to a system based on property tax.

Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book Toronto Sprawls, is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.;

Posted in Other, Taxation | Leave a comment

1 billion Americans

Posted on April 21, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
April 21, 2006

“Living next to you,” Pierre Elliot Trudeau famously said in a speech to the National Press Club in the United States, “is like sleeping with an elephant; no matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every twitch and grunt.”

The elephant is getting a lot bigger. And we can’t help but be affected.

The official population of the United States – 275 million as of the last census in 2000 and 299 million according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s population clock today – is increasing faster than that of any other Western country – by about 1.2% per year, or 3.5 million people. U.S. immigration is at its highest level since 1900 and foreign-born Americans, at 10% of the population, are at their highest level since 1930.

With each new census, the rate of growth edges up. In 1989, the census projected 300 million Americans by mid-century, with its population dropping. In 1992, the census bureau revised its projection to 393 million, in 1996 to 394 million, in 2000 census to 404 million Americans and in the interim 2004 census to 420 million Americans. That’s a 40% increase in a mere 15 years.

The U.S. census doesn’t ordinarily project to the end of the century, but in its 2000 census it projected a U.S. population approaching 600 million in a middle-growth scenario and, in its high-growth scenario, a U.S. population of 1.2 billion – as populous as China today.

That middle-growth scenario, which assumes that immigrants will come to the U.S. in much smaller numbers than they have in the past, is wildly implausible. The U.S. is, has been, and will continue to be the destination of choice for the world’s migrants. A 2005 Pew survey of Mexicans found that 46% of the country’s adults – about 32 million people – would move to the U.S. if they had the means and the opportunity, half of them illegally if necessary. The same survey found that 35% of Mexican college graduates would move, even for work at a job below their qualifications; many of them also said they’d be willing to come illegally. That makes the high-growth scenario, which has the number of annual immigrants rising as the U.S. population rises, not only look more realistic but maybe even on the low side.

Despite intense U.S. concern over border security following 9/11, under a new bipartisan immigration bill that is now before the U.S. Congress, immigration would become easier still. Some estimate that the new law would result in some 30 million additional immigrants in the next decade. The numbers grow further if the U.S. also grants an amnesty to its current illegal immigrants, generally estimated by most at 11 million to 12 million. Others claim the country’s current illegals could number 30 million or more. When president Reagan granted amnesty to illegal immigrants in 1986, three times the expected number came forward.

The U.S. is on a roll, following its historical tried-and-true formula for economic prosperity through rapid immigration growth. Abraham Lincoln’s unassailable logic: “time alone relieves a debtor nation, so long as its population increases faster than unpaid interest accumulates on its debt.” In 1862, Lincoln assured the country in his annual message to Congress that the Civil War and the emancipation of the slaves could easily be financed through immigration: “At [the turn of the century] we shall probably have a hundred millions of people to share the burden, rather than 31 millions, as now. And not only so, but the increase of our population may be expected to continue for a long time after that period, as rapidly as before; because our territory will not have become full. . . . Our abundant room – our broad national homestead – is our ample resource. Were our territory as limited as are the British Isles, very certainly our population could not expand as stated. Instead of receiving the foreign born, as now, we should be compelled to send part of the native-born away. But such is not our condition.”

Neither is that the condition today. As put by the Census Bureau’s principal author, Frederick Hollmann, “Our projections in 2100 will give us a population density one-quarter that of the United Kingdom. We’ll still be a sparsely populated country among the industrialized countries of the world.”

Canada should take heed. We, too, are sparsely populated and underperforming as a result. Our native-born population has a low fertility rate and we are consistently failing to reach our immigration targets. If we don’t open our borders, and make of our country a land of opportunity, with each passing year we will command a diminishing share of the North American population, enjoy an ever-diminishing importance and be ever more susceptible when the elephant rolls over.

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New policies bring more Toronto sprawl

Posted on March 26, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
March 26, 2006

A Toronto megalopolis, 150 kilometres in girth, will be born of the Ontario provincial budget announced this week. The budget’s big-ticket transportation projects will drive this outcome through measures that will undermine public transit in the city while accelerating suburban sprawl in the Greater Toronto Area and beyond.

The Toronto subway system, rather than being expanded in the city’s highly populated and underserved downtown areas, will instead be revamped to serve as a commuter rail line, extending to a rural highway in a regional municipality north of Toronto. The province expects as many as 100,000 extra suburban trips will be made daily on the new subsidized service, giving a big boost to suburban development.

In the sprawling suburban city of Mississauga, the province will subsidize the new Mississauga Transitway, a $259-million commuter project projected to carry up to 10,000 people per hour during peak periods.

In neighbouring Brampton, the province will subsidize the $280-million Brampton Acceleride commuter project, while in York Region, whose fast-growing population is up 50% in the last decade, the province will subsidize VIVA, the new express bus service connecting communities in York Region with each other and with the city of Toronto.

All told, the province estimates it will subsidize an additional 42 million transit trips, mostly involving suburban traffic, mostly enabling the suburbs to spread more quickly.

The province claims that many suburbanites will abandon their cars for transit – and undoubtedly some will. But there’s no fear that suburban highways will become underutilized. Suburban vehicles will soon materialize to clog any temporarily freed-up road space that becomes available and, to make doubly sure that automobiles don’t lose ground in the suburbs, the province has been aggressively expanding the highway system outside Toronto. This is the best suburb-boosting budget since 1953, when the province created Metropolitan Toronto to develop the city’s rural reaches, also by subsidizing roads and transit services that weren’t viable in low-density communities.

The budget’s biggest boost to the suburbs, although it isn’t a big-ticket budgetary item, is the announcement of the new Greater Toronto Transportation Authority, a monopoly body that will control buses, commuter trains, streetcars, RT, subways and regional roads throughout the Greater Toronto Area and beyond. The goal seems laudable: to reduce gridlock and encourage public transit use from Oshawa in the east to Burlington in the west. As a convenience to customers who now must transfer from one public transit company to another, and deal with a different fare system whenever they do, the new GTTA plans to use “smart card” technology that would seamlessly service commuters from Oshawa in the east to Burlington in the west.

Smart-card technology is long overdue and a sensible move. In the United Kingdom, where it became most advanced after public transit was deregulated and then privatized two decades ago, smart-card technology has proved a convenience that helps London’s many transit companies compete effectively with the car. The GTTA, which will rely upon U.K. smart-card technology, will inevitably use it to overcharge urbanites to subsidize suburbanites. We’ve gone this route before.

Before the province created Metropolitan Toronto, the Toronto Transportation Commission was the most successful public transit company on the continent, providing excellent service and running its bus, streetcar and trolley routes on a money-making basis. With the creation of Metro and the conversion of an independent TTC into a politician-run agency, business discipline gave way to political manipulation. Politicians began to redraw TTC routes based on where their voting constituents resided, rather than where paying customers could be found. The result was ruin.

To please politicians intent on pleasing their constituents, the TTC compromised in maintenance and cut back service on profitable city routes in order to service unprofitable suburban ones. Urban customers balked at the rough ride they were now subjected to and deserted the system. In the end, virtually all TTC routes became money losers and the TTC became the welfare case that we see today.

As bad as the TTC has become, it is still the giant in the region. The TTC’s ridership of 430 million passengers a year is several times all other GTA transit systems combined and its 2,500-vehicle fleet and other resources are prime prospects for plunder by regional politicians. With the TTC under the sway of a regional authority, rather than Toronto politicians, it will necessarily be made to serve regional interests. TTC resources will increasingly be put at the service of suburbanites, degrading its performance in the city and causing city dwellers to abandon it. To make up for lost revenue, the city will raise taxes, forcing businesses to flee. To get those taxes back into city coffers, politicians will then turn to amalgamations.

This is how the city of Toronto came to absorb the suburbs that were once part of Metropolitan Toronto. This us how a Toronto of the future will come to absorb the suburbs of the GTTA.

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