Growing up in a prairie city I heard this sentiment from people who simply don't like other people constantly, and I'm like "When did you try growing, you stagnant deteriorated shithole!?", and sprawl doesn't count. They hate ambition, they hate people, they hate taxes, and have no interesting ideas. They hate traffic, but refuse to do anything but drive. Their healthcare system and infrastructure is failing, there is no new economic activity happening; get busy growing or get busy dying. It doesn't work though if you stop for 70 years and then try to catch up.
Where I am we are trashing the waterways and the land in pursuit of money. You can't swim in most our rivers anymore - the recent numbers look good though, as the government redefined 'swimmable' and now it's 'safe', despite the contaminants. https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/explainer-new-swimmable-water-...
Housing the people is great, but encouraging immigration while being unable to house the current population is not.
For immigrants themselves, it is usually an issue of self-determination and freedom.
I can't say I'm fully privy to the immigration debate in Canada, but framing it as an issue of "growth" could not be a complete view of the advocates of immigration. Especially with the level of acceptance of refugees in Canada.
The not enough housing aspect is completely incidental to immigration. In my city, the overriding reason that we have not built enough housing for even our own children is that people show up to block any environmentally friendly housing proposal, largely arguing against growth. In other words, using the framework you are right now! And it's a rather twisted version of the "we can't have growth" framework because it ignores the underlying reason for not allowing growth: environmental sustainability. So instead, the only housing that gets built is the most environmentally disastrous type of housing: sprawl far away from the locations where people need to be for their jobs and everyday life, causing massive environmental destruction.
I would argue that there are few more counterproductive ways to talk about the environment than to bring up a "need for growth." First of all almost nobody actually cares that much about growth in 2025 and secondly it has disastrous consequences when the rubber meets the road.
Yes we are.
1) standard sigmoids, which never stop growing yet are also finite
2) standard ecological growth, where growth is never ending but so is death. This is much more typical of systems like capitalism than sigmoids growth. New upstarts experience exponential growth for a whole, then peak, and then die.
Of course be careful of mentioning these standard scientific observations around those in the degrowth cult, as the cognitive dissonance may cause an unpleasant explosion.
I guess it depends on your precise definition of "growth" but I am having trouble finding one that can fit with your assertions.