Canadian Politics Today

Good question. First off I personally don't subscribe to the growth model, but yes I agree it seems to be the public policy foisted upon us by the power brokers. Second, we can have growth as a country by building new communities and not diluting existing communities.

For the most part, communities don't appear because somebody said "there should be a community here".  (There are exceptions, like Washington DC or Brasilia, which were established to be capitals.)

Historically, communities occur where they occur for a reason.  Access to key transportation routes or proximity to natural resources, or strategic locations, for example.  It was inevitable that a community occur where Vancouver is, because the location makes it so. Other cases aren't as cut and dried. Edmonton didn't need to be exactly where it is. It moved several times, in fact.  But commercial factors related to the fur trade meant there was going to be some sort of trading post in northern Alberta,  the North Saskatchewan River was a transportation route, and the river flats in what is now Edmonton made it a good location.  Other similar forts came and went over the years, but Fort Edmonton survived the decline of the fur trade because it became a useful location for other economic purposes as well. A stop on the way to the Klondike gold rush, a center point for the growing agricultural industry in the region, and the transportation and services required to serve these industries, and eventually the oil industry as well.  The evolution from fur trading post to regional center illustrates a point about how communities are created and evolve.  They were settling the prairies... bringing immigrants to northern Alberta to build farms... why did they bring the railway line to Edmonton?  Because Edmonton was already there... it was the most practical place to bring the railway line because there were already people and services there.  Ultimately it became the regional center for all this immigrant settlement and farming activity because the Hudson Bay fur traders had set up shop there a hundred years earlier.  Population centers are like gravity.  They attract more people and more economic activity, which in turn attracts even more people and even more economic activity.

And this is why people are drawn to existing population centers instead of starting new communities in the middle of nowhere.  We are extending existing communities, because people are drawn to the economic opportunities and infrastructure and services that already exist in these places.

The cost of living might be much lower in Flatbush Saskatchewan than in the BC Lower Mainland, but if you're an immigrant arriving in Canada you might have trouble finding work in Flatbush.  You might also have a hard time finding a mosque or halal groceries in Flatbush.  If you go to a larger center, you're more able to find work and find services you require as well.

When we want to extend existing communities, that extension has to pay its own way. This is not the same as an existing community deciding they want to have more local services, say a theatre or arena, then the exiting members should pay for that. The community has built the infrastructure, and should benefit from it. That has nothing to do with personal mobility, you are welcome to join the community by buying a house from an existing family that has supported it and the house price will reflect that level of service.

Now we come to developers. They see two communities (different sides of the track so to speak). They decide to build in the one that has the better services, because they know they will be able to sell the house for a higher price. They are the ones that should be paying extend the community, not those who built it in the first place.

But much of the need for the new laborers coming to Canada is in existing large communities.  These Tim Hortons' crying out for more workers, the construction laborers, and all the rest, these are happening for the most part in big cities, not in Flatbush.  To the extent that "we" "need" more workers to fuel our economic growth and pay taxes and all the rest, we need these new workers to be in existing communities.  So if "we" "need" growth, then "we" have to help make it possible for our communities to expand.

 -k