The reasoning for writing this petition is embedded in the petition itself. Make no mistake! It is not about simply bringing more immigrants to Canada. This petition is about a much broader national futuristic vision for addressing many emerging multi-sectoral issues of Canada holistically, for which a Detailed Project Report (DPR) must be written after a series of feasibility studies. The project idea was conceptualized by someone (myself) who immigrated to Canada, by choice of Canadian values more than anything else, from a small country, Nepal-with a population size pretty close to Canada’s, sandwiched between the world’s two largest populations, and who, over a period of 45 years, had studied at post-graduate level in four major English-speaking high-income countries (Australia, UK, Canada and US), studied in the country of the world’s largest population (India) today, and also studied and worked in the area of Integrated Development for the first two-decades of his professional career. However, Catherine Brooks has raised a few genuine questions that deserve responses for everyone to know for clarification. All her questions are related to the assumptions I have made in putting this project out, which were missing intentionally to keep the petition document brief. I endeavor to list below at least some of those assumptions that will clarify many potential questions that may be raised around this petition:
1. Indigenous peoples, whose land is occupied by Canada must be on the top of any considerations before conceptualizing for such as national project that has far reaching implications. My assumption is that Canada cannot possibly become “Stronger North” without the full engagement and participation of Indigenous peoples. The Feasibility studies and DPR must be done with extensive consultations and consensus received from the Indigenous peoples including First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples.
2. Increased employment of Canadians is another assumption in which the Indigenous peoples must be prioritized, followed by the rest of the Canadians. All the leadership positions will be filled by them on priority basis. The immigrant contractual workers will be coming as temporary foreign workers, who with their skills will help Canadians to build the new envisioned cities in infrastructure building, production and manufacturing.
3. One assumption made in this project is that this is not to make a mistake again to overpopulate the already saturated cities like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver without appropriate advanced planning. Many of the jobs that require foreign skilled workers will have to be moved to, or created in, envisioned new cities based on their feasibilities so that the larger cities do not have to deal with housing crises beyond their capacities. For this to happen, there are models from the experiences of other countries like Australia.
4. Due to looming tariffs and trade disruptions, it is also assumed that sometime soon Canada may enter economic downturn leading to depression. We are to learn from the Great Depression in the 1930s in the south of our border, when Hoover dam was built to utilize cheap energy and keep the economy rolling forward.
5. It is also assumed that exporting resource based primary raw materials like food grains, oil, gas, minerals and so on is robbing Canadians, especially Indigenous peoples, depriving them of benefits of their full values. In the envisioned cities, processing of primary production outputs and manufacturing will occur for large scale import substitution and global exports so that Canadians benefit from full value-adds of their resources.
6. It is assumed as a condition of immigration that most foreign workers after 5-year contract are expected to become permanent residents and live in the regional cities, being proud of the cities they would have contributed to build to live. We can learn from Australia how a system of regional immigration works.
I am happy to answer further queries so that everyone has a good understanding of the envisioned project floated in this petition, before signing.