British Columbia has the lowest fertility rate in Canada at just one child per woman, and for the first time experienced negative natural population growth.
Canadian fertility rates have been on a downward spiral for years, and in 2023 were at the lowest level in recorded history at 1.26 children per woman. Canada is not alone. Like many G7 countries, U.S. fertility rates have generally been dropping since 2007, and have reached a low of 1.6 children per woman. Rates have been declining so fast that the U.S. Congressional Budget Office is cutting its 30-year population growth projections by 11 million, according to a Jan. 15 release.
You probably already knew people were having fewer kids, after all not many of us are farming in the countryside anymore, but the choice of more and more Canadians to have only one or none is about to become your problem.
The economic dilemma
Why would a Congressional Budget Office wade into fertility? In the report, they make a clear connection to the economy and the federal budget explaining that “the number of people ages 25 to 54 affects the number of people who are employed, and the number of people age 65 or older affects the number of Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries.” Slowing fertility rates impact economic output and increase the draw on government services as the population ages, creating an uneven economic recipe that threatens our way of life.
To maintain what we have today, we need to have more children, and what we have today could use a little help when we think about challenges like our chronic lack of doctors and nurses and a collapsing trades workforce at the time of a housing crisis. We’ve been supplementing our low birth rates with immigration, but read up on why the Liberal government has recently made drastic cuts and you’ll know it’s not a magic bullet.
The bottom line is if you plan to collect any kind of government income supplement such as Old Age Security, visit a hospital, go to a grocery store, live in a condo, hire workers, or do anything but live alone on an island, you need to care about Canadians having children.
Why women are having one or none
The rising cost of living and the lack of affordable housing are two obvious reasons why Canadians are having fewer children, but there is also the fact that its just so difficult to be a parent today. In 2024, the U.S. Surgeon General released a public health advisory highlighting the effects of parenting stress on parents’ mental health and well-being. Much of the challenges working women face are captured in terms like the motherhood penalty and mental load. Seeing the extreme challenges mothers face, many women are rethinking children altogether.
Creating the conditions to help women thrive in the workplace
While the parents who chose to have children have the main responsibility to care for them, the U.S. Surgeon General notes that, “society as a whole must see itself as sharing in this responsibility — and shaping policy, programs….” In other words, it takes a village. It is time to think about structural barriers that prevent women from reaching higher in their careers or working around the problem by not having children at all or only one. Supporting our economy through increased fertility rates needs to start with equitable and modern policies.
Here are some ideas that could create a better environment for parents on the North Shore and beyond:
-Separate EI from maternity leave and value parental work by increasing the maximum payout (the government doesn’t put a cap on your taxes) and tie it to inflation.
-Increase the B.C. child-care fee reduction subsidy and mandate that new major building developments include child-care centres that have daycare, kindergarten, elementary school and before and aftercare on site to support parents with more than one child.
-Include maternal and child health supports in provincial health-care coverage including private lactation consultants, pelvic floor physio and clinical counsellors.
While politicians and businesses are rightly focused on the immediate Trump tariff threats coming from south of the border, they would do well to look ahead at Canada’s population growth trajectory and implement some policies and programs to help ease the burden of parenthood.
Alicia Peters is an award-winning senior corporate affairs and government relations leader living on the North Shore. After becoming a mother, she realized that the policy landscape for parents was outdated. She brought together a non-partisan coalition of parents, health-care providers, and politicians to advocate for modernized and equitable policies in maternal health care, maternity and parental leave, childcare, and more. Through a series of roundtables held on the North Shore, the group created 16 policy recommendations for federal, provincial and local governments. [email protected]
