In over 30 years of practice, Dr. Errol Billinkoff rarely saw a man without kids come into his Winnipeg clinic to get a vasectomy. But since the pandemic began, he says it’s become an almost daily occurrence.

And he’s not alone.

“At first, I thought I was the only one who was noticing this,” Billinkoff, who brought a no-scalpel vasectomy procedure to Winnipeg in the early 1990s, told CBC News in a November interview.

“But I am part of an international chat group where doctors who do vasectomies participate and the topic came up, and it’s like everybody notices it.”

  • 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.caEnglish
    39·
    6 days ago

    This is what happens when you can’t afford raising kids and also more and more people decide that they would rather just enjoy their life without the responsibility or or financial burden of raising kids. I don’t know how i feel about this due to the our birth rate not doing so well, and instead of people having children, we have to import people into the country (which i have no problem with but that really isn’t a solution).

    • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
      299·
      6 days ago

      that really isn’t a solution

      why not? are you afraid of johnny whitebread “real” murican canadian getting…replaced?

      the fact that the 1% is shitting their pants over the declining birthrate makes me think it’s fan fucking tastic. every industry’s profit margin suffers from fewer babies. less money is spent on food, gas, clothes, giant SUVs, toys, medicine–literally everything you buy for yourself, you’re also buying for your kids for 18 years. unless you don’t have kids.

      those poor, poor shareholders.

      fuck them. low birthrate = GOOD.

      also, please–who wants to have a kid just so they can explain to them why they’re growing up in a toxic wasteland?

      • NoneOfUrBusiness@fedia.io
        142·
        6 days ago

        why not? are you afraid of johnny whitebread “real” murican canadian getting…replaced?

        It’s not a solution because, with a few exceptions, standards of living (and therefore reasons to not immigrate) are rising in most of the world, so in a few decades there likely won’t be enough migrants to go around.

        those poor, poor shareholders.

        If it looks like only shareholders are having problems because of low birthrates in Japan and South Korea, then you should learn more about those places.

        • Coreidan@lemmy.worldEnglish
          84·
          6 days ago

          Bruh there’s 8 billion people on the planet. We don’t need more. We won’t be running out of migrants any time soon.

          • Canonical_Warlock@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
            2·
            6 days ago

            But you’re forgetting the key rule of capitalism. Line must always go up forever. That means population must always go up to make more workers and consumers. Birthrates are dropping pretty much across the board. The earth is currently projected to hit it’s peak population around 2086. Developing countries eventually become industrialized nations. Eventually there will be fewer reasons to emigrate from those countries. Both of those things combined will lead to fewer available migrant workers in “first world” countries.

            Sure, this isn’t likely to be an issue any time soon but within a generation or two it will start to become an issue. When you’re running a country then you really should be planning for the future like that.

            Of course the correct fix for that issue isn’t to force people to have more children; it’s to fix capitalism so that infinite growth isn’t a central element. But fixing capitalism would mean billionares wouldn’t be able to afford to buy every politician so the politicians won’t let that happen.

          • djsoren19@yiffit.net
            1·
            5 days ago

            There’s 8 billion sure, but migrants only exist because of the power imbalance between the Western hegemony and everyone else. As standards of living improve globally, people become less willing to migrate as they’re able to pursue a sustainable future in their home country.

            Thankfully, climate change will cause widespread disaster and ruin areas once habitable, which should allow for a healthy baseline of migration, and the West can always destabilize a few more countries if they really need more cheap labor.

      • 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.caEnglish
        81·
        6 days ago

        i’m not sure why you brought race into this, when there is multiple multigenerional multicultural people in this country. I don’t think its a requirement that everyone has to have a child, but the way you are talking makes it sound like its a good thing our species wipes itself out. I get how you feel about CEOs and stuff, but i was just stating that why our birthrate was low, and what the goverment has done to fix that.

        • solsangraal@lemmy.zipEnglish
          51·
          6 days ago

          makes it sound like its a good thing our species wipes itself out

          not necessarily a good thing, but we are indeed wiping ourselves out, for better or worse. sure, future generations might fix all the multitudes of problems we’ve caused (doubt), but how many will have to die in the process?

          evangelists love to call people who don’t want kids “selfish.” on the contrary, it’s the polar opposite of selfish to deny our own reptilian brain instincts to pass on our genes because we don’t think it’s a moral decision to bring innocent children to life in this soon-to-be-uninhabitable broken hellscape