John Ibbitson: Poilievre’s critics are dead wrong. We do, in fact, need to talk about family fertility

Pierre Poilievre took flak this week for speaking out about couples who want to have children but who are running out of time. His critics are dead wrong.

Economic challenges and government policies are making it harder than in the past for couples who want children to have them. Political leaders should be trying to overcome those challenges, rather than waving them away or fussing over the words we use to talk about them. Canada’s fertility crisis should also not exclusively be a concern of the Right. It should be mainstream.

Every couple who wants a child should be able to have one, or two, or three. If they can’t afford to because of housing costs or income insecurity, that’s a tragedy and an indictment.

At a press conference in St. John, New Brunswick, Monday, Poilievre declared: “We will not forget the single mom who cannot afford food. We will not forget the seniors who are choosing between eating and heating. We will not forget that young, 36-year-old couple whose biological clock is running out faster than they can afford to buy a home and have kids.”

Critics jumped on the line. “It’s appalling to hear the Conservative leader use such outdated and harmful rhetoric,” tweeted Liberal MP Yvan Baker. “Using a woman’s fertility as a punchline in a political attack is not only disrespectful—it’s downright misogynistic.”

“I don’t think any woman wants to hear Pierre Poilievre talk about their body, period,” said NDP leader Jagmeet Singh.

But Poilievre was right. The housing crisis is also a fertility crisis.

Canada belongs to the category of “lowest-low” fertility countries, with a total fertility rate—the number of children women will have, on average, in their lifetime—of only 1.26.

In the past, fertility rates came down for all sorts of good reasons. In the last century, women won the right to education, to work, and to own their bodies. Once they had those rights, women chose to have fewer babies.

As well, access to sexual education, contraception, and abortion reduced the number of unwanted pregnancies, especially among young women. Pregnancies in Canada among women aged 15 to 19 plunged from 26 per thousand in 1991 to 4 in 2023.

But this empowerment has consequences. By the time a woman has completed her education, established her career, found her life partner, and is ready to have a child, time has started to run out. The median age at which a woman has her first child in Canada is now 30, compared to 27 in the United States.

The older a woman is when she has her first child, the fewer children she is likely to have in total. There’s a reason Poilievre referred to a couple in their mid-thirties. Pregnancies come with higher risks for women over 35.

The fertility crisis and the housing crisis can’t be disentangled 

Housing is also an issue. People who want to start a family need an affordable home in which to raise children. A recent study from Brazil found that being able to obtain housing increased both the likelihood that young people would have children and the number of children they would have.

That home may be a condo with a nearby park for playtime. But more likely, it is the sort of home that many of us were raised in: a single-family dwelling with more than one bedroom and a backyard.

For decades after the Second World War, suburban developments surrounded city centres in ever-widening rings. Critics lamented the lost farmland, the freeways, the cost of running sewers and water and public transit out to low-density communities. But those suburban communities produced generation after generation of Canadians: Boomers, Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z.

In recent years, some governments have moved to limit suburban sprawl. The Ontario government drew the world’s largest greenbelt around the greater Toronto and Hamilton areas. The Greater Vancouver region has its Green Zone and Agricultural Land Reserve.

Densification is the new mantra, whether that means a fourplex where a single house once stood, or condo and apartment towers replacing parking lots.

But while densification may make sense as a way to put more people into existing neighbourhoods, it doesn’t necessarily help a young couple start a family.

Though urbanists insist condos are fine for families, most couples would rather raise their children in a house. A July 2024 study of aspiring Canadian homeowners revealed that almost eight in 10 Canadian renters aged 54 and under would prefer to own a single-family home rather than a condominium.

Unfortunately, young people have never had a harder time affording a home. A 2024 study by the National Association of Realtors in the United States revealed that only 24 percent of buyers were purchasing their first home, the lowest share since the association began collecting data in 1981.

A study by Statistics Canada showed a steady decline in home ownership in Canada, from 69 percent in 2011 to 66.5 percent in 2021, while the number of renters increased.

Red tape and record levels of immigration have squeezed young couples, making home ownership impossible for many. One study reported that almost half of Gen Z and young Millennials who wanted to own a home were either unsure of whether they would be able to afford one or convinced they never would. A 2023 survey for Royal LePage revealed that 35 percent of first-time home buyers received assistance for the down payment from parents or other relatives.

The inability to afford a home of their own is suppressing the birth rate. Statistics Canada reports that four in 10 young adults aged 20 to 30 said they couldn’t afford to have a child within the next three years, and one third said they would not have access to suitable housing in that time frame.

Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government took several steps to support parents with children. The first, simplest, and probably most effective was the decision to enhance child care funding through the Canada Child Benefit.

More controversial was the decision to enact a $10-a-day daycare program, which certainly lowered child-care costs for those able to access the program, but which also created shortages and lengthy waiting lists.

And the government worsened a housing shortage by letting in record levels of permanent residents, temporary foreign workers, international students, and asylum seekers.

Getting back to replacement rate

Canada is an aging society. The mean age today is 42, compared to 38 in 2001. In aging societies, there are fewer young workers available to meet the pension, health care, and other needs of a large cohort of seniors.

To counteract the impact of societal aging, Canada should have a fertility rate closer to replacement rate (needed for the generation to replace itself), to lessen the need for immigration to replace missing babies.

But the hard fact is that no society anywhere has found a way to increase fertility levels back up to replacement rate once they have dropped below that level, though some have tried hard.

Sweden offers 16 months of paid parental leave, plus other benefits. But in 2023, its fertility rate fell to 1.45, an all-time low.

In Hungary, women are given tax incentives to have babies. Women who have two or more babies enjoy a lifetime exemption from income tax. But so far, it hasn’t worked. Hungary’s fertility rate plummeted to 1.38 in 2024, down from 1.52 the previous year.

A new study by the Macdonald-Laurier Institute concludes that the best way to increase Canada’s fertility rate is to “reduce the overall cost of living, increase real incomes, and increase the availability of housing, especially low-cost entry-level housing.”

Income precarity among young workers combines with unaffordable housing costs to discourage couples who want children from having them. But increasing economic security while lowering costs is easier said than done.

Solving the problem 

Declining fertility and the risk of declining population appear to concern conservatives more than progressives. Elon Musk has tweeted that “population collapse due to low birth rates is a much bigger risk to civilization than global warming.”

The so-called trad wife movement embraces a culture of women staying at home and raising children while supporting their working husbands.

Some on the Left even celebrate low fertility and population decline, saying it will benefit the environment and constrain unfettered capitalism.

The degrowth movement, which is increasingly popular in Europe, “advocates for societies that prioritize social and ecological well-being instead of corporate profits, over-production and excess consumption,” as the degrowth.info website explains.

But degrowth is no realistic solution for any society that wants to preserve its quality of health care, education, and other services.

Over at The Line, Conservative organizer Melanie Paradis offers concrete suggestions that governments should embrace to counter the biological clock. She recommends financial support for fertility treatment and adoption, diverse supports for child care, and exempting income tax on one parent per household with children under five.

“If we really care about our future, we need to create a country where having a child is possible, supported, and even joyful,” she writes. “We need to treat families like the national asset they are.”

Agreed. Creating a better Canada requires actual Canadians to populate it.

We also need to look at the issue of housing through a family-friendly lens. We need to build more houses. Not condo towers, real honest-to-God houses. That must certainly include increasing housing density in existing neighbourhoods. It may also include permitting increased suburban housing construction on the edge of cities, however much it alarms urbanists and environmentalists.

And in places where condo or apartment towers make more sense, we need to encourage units with three bedrooms, and ensure there are plenty of parks and other child-friendly amenities.

No one in Canada should be forced to not have a child because they can’t afford it.