Population Institute of Canada

PIC is an educational, non-profit, non-governmental voluntary organization open to all. It favours reduction of excessive population growth through non-coercive, universal access to family planning, with particular focus on the developing world, and with the aim of alleviating poverity and promoting environmental sustainability. Established in 1992, the Institute's headquarters is in Ottawa.

Our Mission

PIC challenges population-related taboos by working to increase awareness of the social, economic and environmental consequences of population growth. It fosters education and activism consistent with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, preserve resources, protect wild lands and biodiversity, and to provide a reasonable standard of living for all peoples. It believes these goals will remain unachievable in the face of ever-increasing human numbers. PIC endorses the admonition that there are Limits to Growth, as articulated in the Club of Rome report of that name in 1972, and reiterated in 2004.

PIC urges governments to abandon the mindless pursuit of growth, currently exacting a heavy price worldwide on the environment. It believes governments must implement sustainable population policies based on carrying capacity and achieved through wise social and economic policies. Countries should aim to remain within that carrying capacity: defined as the total number of humans that can be supported within a territory, living at a reasonable standard without creating unacceptable levels of environmental degradation.

PIC is concerned that Canada's population continues to increase rapidly, the growth rate being one of the highest in the industrialized world. The negative impact on its cities, agricultural land, and biodiversity is ever more evident. Significantly, Canadians are amongst the highest per capita energy consumers in the world, and have failed to reduce or as yet even to stabilize their greenhouse emissions, solemn commitments to do so notwithstanding.

History of the Population Institute of Canada

Founded in 1992 by Dr. Whitman Wright as the Ottawa Family Planning Project and later renamed Global Population Concerns, the Population Institute of Canada is an incorporated, non-profit organization supported solely by membership fees and donations. It neither seeks nor receives any financial support from the Canadian government or from any private corporations or religious bodies. Members of its Executive are volunteers as are those helping with its administration.