Population growth should be planned by many experts

Climate change and global conflict are bringing people to Canada.

This country plans to welcome 500,000 immigrants a year by 2025.

Canada has an important role in accommodating the ongoing growth of humanity, since global long-term stability is unlikely.

But large-scale, long-term planning for population growth on a finite planet calls on the physical and environmental sciences, not economic boosterism.

Because we share this planet with millions of other species, all of whom have the same rights to live here as we do, we need biologists and ecologists to speak for the nonhuman stakeholders.

Other experts would also be helpful to the conversation, with knowledge in fields such as water resources, habitat protection, ecotoxicology, infrastructure, renewable energy, climate-change adaptation, inequality, circular economy and sustainable agriculture.

Experts in these fields should be drawn from universities, not tied to business.

Michael Frind

Waterloo