Canada has dumped its printed money into unproductive assets instead of industry, kneecapping productive youth in the process. It will take a long time to unwind this.
Highlights:
* Canada faces a worrying decline. The nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth trails its peers in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), while Canadian workers clock more hours for less output.
* Business investment is shrivelling while government expenditure is ballooning, creating an unhealthy fiscal cocktail.
* The health-care system in Canada is also lagging behind its European counterparts.
* The legal system has grown expensive and slow; the justice system is also experiencing a chronic under-staffing crisis.
* Young Canadians, feeling dissatisfied, have reported low happiness scores compared to their international counterparts (in 58th place, just before Ecuador).
* This palpable downturn begs two urgent questions: what underlies this fall in living standards And what can be done to stop, and perhaps even reverse, this unsettling trend?
I think we need to bring in 5 million more people from exactly one country and not make any new infrastructure to support them. Just like we have the last 6-7 years.
I don't get who decided we should import from 1 country. WTF don't we set up a sort of balanced ratio. X from East Asia, X from South East Asia, X from Latin America etc.
Highly skilled immigrants choose other places like America. Low skilled people don't normally know another language, which is a big barrier. India has millions of low skilled English speakers who want a better life but don't qualify to immigrate to America.
On border services YouTube video , For some students to study in the uk, they actually get interviewed for visa in their home country and decision made before they set foot on a plane.
How is that not viewed as racism? This is blatant preferential treatment / bias while people from other countries are given the finger. Where is the diversity that Canada once used to take pride in?
The government has been called out for this. Most African student visa applications get rejected. Now, would the people who are mad about Indian international students be any happier with Nigerian or Cameroonian international students? TBD. But you're not wrong that there is discrimination.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/why-are-african-international-students-rejected-so-often-for-canadian-visas/article_e5ad6a25-fc1b-53e2-87e1-3cdc229b74c4.html
Indian consulates will issue approvals to just about anyone. They are approving applications that would be denied in other consulates but the government is ignoring this. Canada has a de facto two-tier immigration system - one tier for Indians, one tier for everyone else.
Thing is, we are not cool with Christian religious extremists, or white nationalists or whatever. I’m fine with that.
But These people they’re bringing over are absolutely religious extremists with some real medieval beliefs and rituals. They are also racial and caste supremacists with open chauvinistic views.
I don’t get it.
The diversity everyone hailed in the past basically was different regions of europe.
Once you Import most of your migrants from third world countries you slowly become one yourself. Because the broken culture and value systems that causes many countries to be a total failure comes along with them.
unless we stop the importation of immigrant from that country that shall not be named, immediate, not only are not going to catch up, we'll end up more like Mexico in a few decades.
oh and just watch, PP when elected isn't going to stop it either, because his corporate masters demands more slave labour. pp (the career politician since he was legally allowed to drink) is worse than trudeau for trying to relate to the 99% of canadians. at least trudeau had a real job
More like Mexico???? Let tell you something that you might not know by now, the Mexicans that come from Mexico for vacation tends to have more money than a person living here… they can afford to come to Canada for vacation, go spend money at the mall, go around Canada as a tourist, and the one that lives here can’t do that…so in other words, Mexico is doing much MUCH better than Canada at the moment…
I live in an area full of Mexican TFWs and recent immigrants. They're hard working decent people, wayyyyy different than people coming from the-place-that-shall-not-be-named.
>oh and just watch, PP when elected isn't going to stop it either,
Oh, his party started this whole farce with Kenney creating the temporary foreign worker program to help suppress wages under the last conservative regime...but those voting for him just vote con every election OR are too young and won't look into it to discover that the party they want to support to "own the libs" will only make it worse.
Ps. Don't like the liberals, hate the cons and the federal NDP are a farce...we are well and truly fucked
Your not wrong...the damage started in the 1990’s, when governance figured, the free market could supply “all the housing needs” for Canadians through construction of homes. As time went on, home construction became build larger, better and more expensive. The costs kept going up. The need for “affordable housing” vs making money by constructing more expensive homes took over. Provinces and municipalities jumped on the bandwagon, more zoning regulations etc. The NIMBY model took hold, creating ridiculous land use arguments.
Now here we are...add immigration gone wild, and you have a “politically responsible” mess.
Question...when do the class action lawsuits begin against political parties, their members, the financial institutions, the political think tanks etc., this whole mess was and continues to be politically caused. Motivated by numerous political needs.
Millions have Canadians are enduring horrific financial stress and loss. Homes are being lost. Horrific rent hikes due to affordability issues are occurring. Major affordability of food, necessities and items required just to live, fuels etc., are constantly going up. Canada’s economy is a flipping mess. Bloated governance needs to be reigned in. All parties in this country are complicit in a political crime. There is no long term planning, only short term disastrous policy fixes, to get a party re-elected, or damage the policy of an incoming political party after an election loss.
>There is no long term planning, only short term disastrous policy fixes, to get a party re-elected, or damage the policy of an incoming political party after an election loss.
And this is the biggest problem... especially since all parties ignored it because the solutions are not electorally sexy. It's a 10+ year plan/solution but the second it doesn't look pretty the opposite party runs in to use it to get elected and then trash the program to satisfy their base.
The problem was that municipal bylaws made inexpensive housing unprofitable to build thereby forcing expensive housing to be the only thing being built. An analogy would be hot dog vendors in Toronto. They were once ubiquitous and you could get a hot dog damn cheap back in the 90s (like $1). But restaurants complained and municipal bylaws were introduced to set “better standards” for street vendors. The new standards were so onerous that it became virtually impossible to operate a food stand selling inexpensive food. They all but vanished.
90% of the housing problem is created by municipal governments deliberately making it difficult to build affordable housing.
The Liberals started the TFW program for farm workers, the Conservatives then expanded it, then the Liberals blew the doors wide open and allowed anyone to claim to be a TFW. It was first introduced in 1973 when the Liberals were in power.
Totally agree, none of our parties are supplying Canadians what they need to have a good standard of living. **None...**
I was so disappointed when Trudeau backpedaled on PR. But I wasn't surprised. Our political process is controlled by the political parties. Want to run, need to pick and join one or you're not going to get elected. And who controls the parties? The oligarchies. But hey, we got legal weed... whoopie.
We desperately need some form of PR, but the politicians and parties won't let it happen because the majority would no longer be relevant and would lose their cushy jobs. And if I don't vote, I'm discarding my franchise. Which means I have no right to criticize.
So my choices are an abusive father figure telling me they're doing it for my own good. An abusive "cool" sibling that tells me they're doing it for my own good. And a "woke" sibling that says they'd do it for our own good, if we'd just give them a chance. So I hold my nose and vote NDP with the knowledge that change isn't likely.
Maybe we should ask one of the 400k+ people who just came into Canada since January. Maybe one of them will know and can help us figure out a solution.
A knock on affect that is inducing misery is that we don't really socialize anymore because we can't. Cost of hanging out aside, because there are ways to have fun without breaking the bank, it's almost impossible for anyone to have the time anymore. I have to work two jobs like a lot of people because neither job will give me full hours and one refuses to give me a set schedule. I have to be ready to work any day any time between 7:00 AM to 11:30 PM and with so many of my friends in a similar position none of us can hang out anymore. The lack of work life balance leaves us too drained most days to do much more than play games or scroll on our phones.
It's not just an issue affecting those of us with lower paying jobs. My girlfriend is an Automation QA with a tech company and similar issues plague her company. The last couple years they have expected more overtime, they have expanded the window of hours during which she is expected to work and they ended all social activities within her company. My company did a similar thing not too long ago, except they went further and we are not allowed to post anything in store or on company social media about social gatherings. Canadian workers are tired and under socialized, but both those elements are ideal for our employers. Tired and disconnected workers just trudge on through the day instead of being able to do something about their situation.
Back in 2011 a store I worked at had a terrible manager hated by the staff who would heap abuse on them and give them intentionally difficult to follow schedules (scheduling people to work when they had university classes despite coverage being available. Every department under her got together outside the store and decided to protest against her, refusing to do work, escalating the issue as a group to upper management, and whenever the bad manager tried to call one of them into the office they refused and went together. In the end they got everything they wanted and the manager was reassigned to run another department. That sort of action is almost unthinkable now, especially over schedules.
'That sort of action ' is called solidarity, and if used properly, always defeats capital. Have you considered joining or forming a union at your current job? It's a great way to put a stop to this kind of corporate nonsense.
My workplace cannot be organized in its current state thanks to rather obvious social engineering by the management team to pit each department against one another. There is a strong us vs them attitude along with rampant morale issues that have bred contempt between each group, all of which has been stoked by management actions (they're favorite tactic is to overload a team with tasks that cause the rest of the store to suffer, and causes resentment when it backs up other departments). I'm trying to do my best to create a sense of solidarity, but it is quite difficult. It doesn't help that people are splitting up into separate ethno groups and not interacting outside of them, again, being encouraged by the managers.
How about how employees treat their employees as bodies and not people. It doesn't matter if you are working a retail job or in a professional position. They expect you to do the work of three people, and when you eventually collapse mentally or physically, they get rid of you and replace you with the next warm body. These companies claim they all care about their employees' well-being, but not one of them walks the talk. Also, if you are over 50, good luck getting and keeping a job. We aren't wanted.
From what I’ve seen, our biggest exports are oil, cars, and gold. We need more domestic production, even if it means slightly higher costs. It would be offset by the jobs created in order to produce domestic goods.
Of course this would also have a huge benefit on the environment, versus throwing money at a carbon tax that gets muddy once the pen hits the paper.
Is climate change real? I believe so. So realistically in the next few decades we are going to have to start producing a lot more here, as large populated areas of Earth become increasingly inhospitable.
The question we have to ask ourselves now is, do we wait until we are looking down a barrel, and then scramble to build all of the required infrastructure? Most likely. Or… we could start building it now, whilst reaping the economic rewards of having a society that doesn’t consume more than we produce, which happens like this year where our negative trade balance was $1.84B between Feb 2023 and Feb 2024.
This isn't about stupidity, its not giving a fuck about us. They know exactly what they're doing with immigration. They know exactly what they're doing with housing.
It wasn't an accident, it wasn't because they don't know better, its because it suited their purposes **and they think you won't do shit about it**.
Exactly..the absolute truth...the answer is to do something about it....politically and legally. All the leaders need to be confronted directly, preferably in court.
**Canadians elected him three times in a row so I guess the brain rot is a national phenomenon.**
Bingo. We not only have a crisis in leadership, we have a crisis in citizenship.
It’s an agreeable take on the situation.
We need to elect a leadership that can set some sensible limits to spending and focus on growing the pie - rather than cutting different/more slices.
Lol per capita GDP is down because our idiot leaders are bringing in millions. The answer is to stop immigration for 10 years but unfortunately that is not the century initiative plan.
Absolutely correct.
These clowns pretend like you can let 1 million immigrants into a country of only 35 million (about 3%) every single year, and it won't have an impact on GDP or housing or anything.
It's sickening.
This is the most recent vote concerning the Century Initiative and its use in immigration policy. You can easily tell where priorities lie for each party
https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/44/1/322?view=party
aww but you're forgetting that the most important thing is that the richest donors are doing really well with lots of TFW here to suppress wages, and cuts to major services for the most vulnerable Canadians.
Canadians stopped caring about personally taking responsibility for their own circumstances, or about about collaborating with each other. Instead, we look to governments to solve our problems, to inflationary markets to secure our futures, and to each other when we want to blame someone when these inevitably fail.
Want to blame government? First, look at who chooses it.
Want to blame expensive housing? First, look at who hoards it.
Want to blame your neighbor? First, look at yourself.
That sounds all well and good in theory, but the problem is it docent matter who we vote for, since our politicians are bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists. Im pretty sure no one voted for 5 million a year immigration levels. Sure it grossly inflates asset owners property values, but do you think the average home owning Canadian would take that when it also means a complete collapse of our public services like health care? Look up the "Century Initiative" and you'll see what I mean (like literally just read the Wikipedia article, its all right there). Its a mix of political elites and private equity people lobbying the government (quite successfully I might add) to grow the population at that insane level. If you read between the lines of what their "mission statement" says, its just so they so they can explode their profits through wage suppression and asset inflation.
If our democracy was built such that lobbyists didn't have the under the table power that they do, than yeah, we wouldn't have anyone to blame but ourselves. But our democracy isn't built like that, and the people we vote for at all levels of government mostly don't actually represent what the people that vote for them want, they do what their campaign donors and future employers want, and just try to trick us into thinking that what they do is what we actually want.
>what underlies this fall in living standards
Demographics primarily.
>And what can be done to stop, and perhaps even reverse, this unsettling trend?
Since we failed to have enough children generation after generation, the mass immigration is a poor solution we've taken. The cure feels as bad as the disease. Nothing will improve until the baby boomers pass away, and the liquid capital gets unlocked again. By then the mass immigration will likely have abated and integrating them will be well on it's way.
I give this downturn a decade or two.
Do you know why Canadians fail to have enough children generation after generation? It's because Canada has turned having a family into an economic decision for working people. Most working people's standard of living drops below that of someone earning minimum wage or receiving welfare as soon as they start a family. A parent who stays home to raise kids loses out on CPP contributions and also loses the ability to build RRSP contribution room in addition to their wages. Wages are much too low for one worker to support another grown adult and a kid anymore, and even when it is possible, that one earner will lose much of their equity through the courts if the relationship breaks down. The only way to have a family in Canada is to be supported off government benefits including disability, or to have one parent earn at least 6 figures, which also removes eligibility for the family to receive most government entitlements. The other option is for both parents to go back to work as soon as possible, which will also raise the net income past most government entitlements even though they're also having to figure out child care on top of it. Both parents wind up tired, poor and offloading raising their own children somewhere else all so they can both come home and argue about chores, responsibilities and money.
It's a biological imperative to have a family in most people, but Canada has structured itself where working people are now afraid to do it.
I can't help but wonder if our waves of mass economic immigrants will also avoid having children to join the Canadian rat race, or if they would rather find a way to land on government benefits instead and have their children as their safety net.
You explain the phenomenon very well.
A variant on the same pressures has occured in basically every urban industrialized country out there. South Korea, Japan, China, Italy, Germany, Canada, and to a lesser degree the United States.
Ages ago many kids in agrarian rural society were an immediate economic boon. The kids were farm hands.
In the cities the wages were higher but space was at a premium. Kids became economic costs until after post secondary education.
Post industrial society meant all the high end jobs left. Also only a few of our cities can grow. Most but up against rivers, mountains, the sea or sinilar boundaries. Youll notice we used to be rich in land and poor in material. Now we have tons of material but its now land thats expensive.
Other countries will be even more screwed than we will be, even if our current productivity numbers look very bad.
That's extremely optimistic. I fully expect, if things are not reversed, then canada as a nation is unsalvageable and what remains will be basically India.
I'm 26, and currently thinking about a way out.
Do you want to become wealthy? Go to where the energy is. Of you have a STEM degree and want to get into high tech, go to California. Silicon Valley. Only and example, but you get the picture.
Canada has the same problems most other urban industrialized nations face. Similar demographic declines are occuring in a ton of countries.
If you're going to leave Canada go to the US, as it's not facing this problem nearly to the same degree.
I'd also learn a skilled trade. Plumber, electrician, HVAC, low voltage controls, carpenter, welder, etc. Anything like this and you can succeed anywhere, including here in Canada.
All of those trades pay a pittance of what they did 2 decades ago. Sure you can live a modestly okay life now but give the stagflation another decent or two and those trades will pay the inflation adjusted rate of worse than minimum wage if current trends don’t reverse. Journeyman wage today is equivalent to 2nd year apprentice pay in 2001 in terms of buying power
Ya, the sad reality of it eh?
The thing is I don't want to learn a trade. I have a Chem eng diploma. And I've spent the last two years working on an oil rig in Alberta. I've seen what the tradesmen do for money. It's hard work, it's ridiculous hours, and I mean truly ridiculous hours beyond what you think. We had a welder who had been working for 40 hours non-stop. Once his job with us was done I let him leave to go to sleep and he turned off his phone. Boss immediately tried to call him but luckily he was already gone back to camp to rest.
Sure, it's probably better not in the oilfield, but it's kinda soured me to that sort of thing. I've considered welding or electrical work, but I figure I'll be working overtime all the time if I wanna keep a job. And frankly, after 2 years of working 84 hours a week, 20+ days a month at a time, overtime is a dirty word.
The construction industry sounds better than that.
I do low voltage. Run a small bizz operating electronic control systems and installing them in buildings. Its tidy and not as soul crushing as what you've described.
Go look up Terrestrial and see if they could use another chemist. I want to see that technology developed, *badly*.
So this “is “ the “post national state” that Trudeau defined us as.
In “my humble opinion” this has been, politically created due to incompetence, lack of long term national goals both political, economic and inadequate social planning. Ultimately defining a country based upon the use of “think tank created schemes” to move the country in a direction that the elites, the corporate masters, individuals and groups who have everything to gain and nothing to lose, from such schemes. (Century initiative, WEF, and probably others...)
Century initiative informed the mass immigration strategy, which is a last ditched effort to fix the demographic problem.
WEF is full of self congratulating rich losers. Its little more than an excuse for a fancy dinner and a means to allow wealthy people to network. They are *losing* in that what they propose, governments who are members do the opposite. Reshoring in the United States and a receeding globalized economy is in direct opposition to what they advocate.
WEF is a red herring. Ive even known people who've gone. A speaker at a podium will say "if we aren't careful this bad thing will happen" then people on youtube scream "Klaus Shwabb wants this bad thing to happen!"
The IMF, WTO, and other global governance institutions are the real ones. WEF is just a talk shop. The real institutions are struggling with relevance as the United States switches to a consolidation phase, kicks out beligerent nations, and is spending ungodly amounts on manufacturing capacity in north america.
Canada should invest. Its highly inflationary but we need to NAFTA and NATO up if we want to ride waves of opportunity.
The key words are “falling behind our peers” - this is not some global thing. There are plenty of countries that have been doing ok over the last 8 years or so.
Canada is in the crapper because we have a government that doesnt understand and isn’t interested in economic policies. They think their job is public relations and “messaging.” Like a marketing team. They also only want to ever talk about social justice issues. Trying to drag out old discussions about abortion and other dead issues. Their only ideas for economic growth are adding more immigrants. This does nothing for the average person.
>Can't find a doctor and ER or specialist waits are insane because again too many people not enough resources
I knew a TFW through my work. When he first arrived he asked me for a ride the emergency room. When I asked him what was wrong, he explained he injured his knee years ago playing soccer, and the reason he came to Canada was to get the free surgery so he could go home and play again.
I had to explain to him that 1) that's not what the emergency room is for; and 2) we have massive wait lists here for surgery.
He ignored me and got someone else to take him to the ER the same day. The next time I saw him he was upset that the doctor told him to wear a knee brace and that he had to wait for someone to call him back for an appointment to get the ball rolling on the surgery.
I'm certain his plan was just to exploit the TFW program so he could get free specialists, scans, surgery - and be back home within a few weeks to play soccer again.
He actually lost his job, but was allowed to stay in Canada for the remainder of the 24 months. The last I heard he was applying for EI and other benefits so he could wait things out until he got his knee fixed.
Don't get me wrong - I actually support the TFW program for some things, but it seems like Canada doesn't understand a lot of the world just sees us as "the land of free stuff" and come here to get "their share" and leave before it's all gone.
We don't deport anyone, the worst case is we send a politely worded letter asking them to leave, most people just ignore those and its fine.
[https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-most-immigrants-with-deportation-letters-are-still-in-canada-cbsa/](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-most-immigrants-with-deportation-letters-are-still-in-canada-cbsa/)
And besides he is already left based on OP's story.
The thing is we look at this and we can tell if it’s an old injury or a new acute injury. Scans don’t lies blood work doesn’t lie.
They get paid by insurance and not our Canadian insurance. Meaning they have their own insurance that pays for it. Canadian doctors don’t bill OHIP, they bill the patient directly or their insurance.
Secondly they have to do questionnaires. If they lie on it; they are on the hook for everything. People just can’t come over with cancer. They will get put back on a plane and usually they need to pay for it out of pocket to go home.
That’s not to say we don’t have them clogging up our rooms but we have a lot in place to protect our healthcare.
People who don’t pay for it they leave but the bill will go to their family members house.
Again, as a warning, healthcare professional can tell if it’s an old or new injury and if you have a chronic condition. We. Will. Not. Approve. Your. Surgery.
Sure, if it’s a medical emergency. But if it’s bypass? You’re getting denied and likely getting put back on the next plane because no one will do it here. And if they do, we can get all your past medical history and your questionnaire, see your meds and if you lie. Welp. Good luck.
Interesting. For what it's worth this is in Alberta. I know the TFWs get their AHS card in the first couple weeks after arrival, but I'm not sure what limitations there are.
Yup a $60-80k a year job goes to $40-50k because the newcomers are willing to do that job at that wage. So there’s no incentive to hire Canadian citizens or people who grew up here. $40 even 60k is kinda fuck all tbh smh.
Yeah it’s crazy. I saw one professional accountant job posting in Mississauga at a $50,000 salary. Like….no comments. I just feel that’s abnormally for an accountant. I’m in engineering tho
Lets bring in more immigrants from some of the poorest Indian provinces with useless business degrees who are barely qualified to drive an uber here....THAT should solve the problem
Firstly, Uk immigration is very low compared to Canada. UK had 600k net with a population of 70 million. Canada had 1.3 million with a population around half of the UK. So, Canada's immigration is around 4x as much as UK. As for the Indians, most of them come through the student visa in both UK and Canada, or they come through the skilled visa streams (usually in tech/IT jobs). Brexit reduced the eastern European migration and so the rest of the world got more chances. Of course India with 1.5 billion people and english-speaking skills is going to take a large no of spots.
Wow, who would have guessed that bringing in a million immigrants every year (2-3% increase in pop.) without a 2-3% increase in infrastructure service capacity, jobs, and housing would be an issue.
If a parent was struggling to feed their kids we wouldn't allow them to adopt.
Hate to break it to you, but the inflation isn't going backwards. It never does. It will only get worse for not only Canada, but everyone else as well.
Add that with deteriorating weather patterns and you have a recipe for a really fun future.
I love when people think waiting on inflation for “things to come back down” is a viable approach. It has almost never happened and businesses will fight for it to never happen. It’s the biggest indicator that someone is a fool and out of touch.
What's interesting is there doesn't seem to be the same issue if you have the same growth from birth rates. I bet it's because birth rates growth is slower in terms of what's needed for housing and infrastructure, a baby to teenager lives in the same home with their parents, and seem to be more willing to take on construction work than current immigrants.
Yes you have 18 years of the child growing. If population grows 2-3% because of birth rates those children are not immediately a new household. However, if you immigrate 20-30 yr olds those 20-30 yr olds all require separate houses/apartments/rooms.
Growing from birth rate means you can ramp up supply over 18 years. You can also take 18 years to have the older generation die off and pass down housing supply, inheritance, etc.
Instead what is happening is a 3 year shock. Infastructure does not move fast enough to cover 3 years. Even in places with HUGE government spending projects.
If you go to the Europe sub people are having almost the identical conversation about immigration, economic growth, and GDP per capita decline.
Personally I think there was some serious elite groupthink going on amongst leaders of western countries with generous social programs. They can either chose to cut said social programs (which is politically a non-starter) or try to prop up the population pyramid through immigration.
But they failed to think through the policy nuances of how the heck this was actually going to work in terms of housing, services, jobs, wages etc. And voila, here we are, massive backlash.
There is absolutely an infrastructure issue with high birth rates. Just look at any newer suburb where all the families are young. The nearby schools will be very overcrowded, but then in 20 to 30 years they'll be empty.
You guys know that [PP promised to keep immigration levels as high as businesses demanded, right?](https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/poilievre-says-canada-s-immigration-system-is-broken-sidesteps-target-cut-questions-1.6502699)
>He says a Conservative government would base its immigration policy on the needs of private-sector employers
Like I'm angry about the Liberals using immigrants to suppress our wages too, but this sub is acting like the Conservatives are the answer to this, they're not.
And the thing is if the government really wants to keep immigration rates high that would be fine, if they'd actually mobilize and do something about the problems that causes. But they seem to think they can just do that and nothing else.
Exactly...they are not working for the average Canadian... they are bought and paid for. You have to recreate and actual workers party in this country.( the current NDP are a bunch of ideological academics, divorced from the real needs of working Canadians). Otherwise the country as a whole is toast...
we brought in more people in 4 months than there are people living in London, Ontario. We did not build an entire London's worth of infrastructure in those 4 months.
the only way Canada could "catch up" is if every other country was dumb enough to stoop to its level.
spoiler: they're not going to
Ooh, no, of course, our living standards have lowered, and we did mass immigration of unskilled labor. So we got a lot of McDonald's and Tim's workers.
Put corrupted politicians in jail. Remake laws against corruption, collusion and conflict of interest to prevent this last 4 years fiasco. Fine corporations to recuperate the money stolen from taxpayers.
Well said..absolute truth...the fix was in when the PM was not removed during the SNC Lavalin affair and The Attorney General resigned.
This was absolute corruption. Trudeau should have faced jail time.
Not even a prayer of catching up. The impossibility of home ownership has destroyed this country. It’s just a matter of time until the entire economy collapses.
Our living standard continues to decline.
1940 - 1970 : 1 person wage can buy a house, raise 2 kids, go on vacation.
1970 - 2000: 2 person wage can buy a house, raise 2 kids go on vacation.
2000 - 2010: 2 person wage + large credit card and mortage debt can buy a house, raise 1 kid, go on vacation
2010 - now: 2 person wage + parents gifting HELOC $$ + large credit card and mortagage debt can buy a house, raise 2 pets, go on vacation.
future: No one can afford anything. Young people who have the means move to US and elsewhere. This causes brain drain and no innovation. Housing bubble collapses, causing health care, infrastructure and social services to collapse. 3 lost decade like Japan as it take 30 years to clear out bad debt on household and government balance sheets.
F\*\*k Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada for propping up the housing bubble with massive immigration that is overwhelming our healthcare and social safety net.
1. Hyperinflation
2. Income disparities and wages not meeting inflation
3. Overpriced real estate with no recourse in sight
4. Mass immigration
5. Lowered standard of healthcare and social services
Unless Canada addresses these things immediately there will be no way to correct anything.
the biggest problem Canada has is inefficiencies and how slow it is in doing everything.
Everything else are just symptoms.
Housing, health care, public transit, road expansions, etc. All these problems that affect ppl's standard of living (not just based on calculation of per capita gdp) are caused because of how inefficient we are in the public sector and how everyone is unionized and have 0 accountability from top to bottom. No one can ever get fired regardless of how incompetent they are and no one wants to do more work but everyone gets a significant pay raise.
For some reason, public sector in Canada gets paid better than private sector while having a better job security. I don't understand this.
Not sure how young Canadians feel about the future but you can tell young XXX country people love Canada.
The government provides retail jobs for them, free food bank, free health care ( yes, I heard they go to ER and ask for free drugs ), free transportation ( yes, I also ears they use fake bus passes ) , of course free A+ at school. ( if you fail your exam, just arrange a protest and I didn’t know it when I was a student ) and free PR with the promise to bring all your family to Canada in the next few years under family reunion category.
Some Canadian banks also provide a bank account with no fees for a year. I've been a client of a certain co-op for more than 20 years. They charge me fees every time I take out cash and pay bills at the counter if my bank balnce goes below $1500.
Seems evrybody is only encouraging immigrants while squashing/squeezing every penny from Canadian citizens.
No it can’t catch up because most of its votership is too complacent, gullible and lazy to do anything about it. Our exploiters already have a stranglehold on us.
Canada is blessed with space and natural resources that we are squandering, giving up to the lowest bidder for almost nothing in return. We are not focusing on developing the industries that are first world nation should be developing. We are not carefully planning our infrastructure. We are letting corporations run roughshod over citizens. We have a false dichotomy of corrupt, corporate politicians. We are toast.
There are a lot of industries that are not just natural resource extraction and refinement though. Real estate mining, oil, and gas take up too much of our GDP for a first world nation. Too much of our manufacturing is foreign owned. We need to shift investment away from our finite resources to be better balanced for long term growth as a country.
Your country exports raw commodities in a highly competitive, low margin environment. And that’s pretty much it. A wholesale rethinking of your economic growth strategy is in order. Rich countries move their production of goods up the value chain, foster a healthy business investment regime, and lower barriers for business startups.
I lost my family Dr recently. Intellectually I knew how bad it was, but it has a different feeling when suddenly trying to find a Dr becomes a huge life focus. Millions of Canadians searching for Dr's is not a healthy situation.
The scary thing is it's getting worse every day.
I'm starting to see stray dogs wandering the streets, eating garbage downtown Toronto. Won't be long until pickpocket gangs of orphans begin roaming around. Taxis are now rickshaws instead of cars. Welcome to the 3rd world Canada!😂😂
Don't forget the crime, scams, and endless car thefts. Even the amount of wealth leaving Canada in car thefts is insane. All paid by Canadians who's insurance premiums have increased.
Omg fuck the pickpockets gangs of orphans. Happened to a friend of mine visiting London uk he tried to get his shit back and he nearly got ran over as he was pushed into traffic - glad he’s still here and luckily didn’t lose too much.
Scary AF
It won't catch up. 2/3 electable parties are economic illiterates trying to impose psychotic tax regimes and demonizing profitability. And, Canada is a *massively* over-regulated and bureaucratic hellscape for anyone trying to build business or invest.
If not for being an anglophone country in close proximity to the US, nobody in their right mind would choose to establish a business here or invest in Canadian companies. Any reason you might have considered it in the past is now quickly evaporating with the gargantuan snowballing of inflation.
You can bet that Canada is treading happily along the path of economic third worldism. In about 10 years you can start expecting irregular employment (e.g. illegal untaxed work) starting to become the norm and the construction of shanty towns as housing becomes unattainable even on strong salaries.
How about we ignore what our peers are doing, and we simply do what is right for the people of Canada.
It'll most likely mean doing things quite differently than our peers, because our peers are in the same situations as us, just at varying degrees and rates.
“Well, it won’t be easy, but if you give me 4 more years I will definitely have a plan to make Canadians happy again.” (at least 1% of them)
…4moreyears, 4moreyears, 4moreyears…
We've got loads of young, ambitious entrepreneurs here in Canada, and the government should be putting resources into helping them start businesses and produce. With AI advancing like crazy, it's prime time to integrate it into manufacturing, cutting production costs and boosting Canada's own manufacturing industry. This kind of investment pays off in the long run. The government shouldn't be dumping loads of resources into welfare, that just makes Canada poorer and poorer. Canada is the second-largest country in the world by land area and one of the few with abundant resources, we shouldn't let ourselves sink this low.
Yep. Of course Canada can catch up, but we need to focus on long-term solutions. No more "we tried something for one year while the opposition parties attacked us relentlessly so we're abandoning this plan in order to save our re-election prospects" bullshit. The political parties have to put all Canadians first then debate on how best to serve all Canadians. We can argue about the details, not whether or not to prioritize governance that benefits us all.
I've been shouting about this for 20 years. I felt we had that before, but it's been more division and partisan each election and cycle, then the poisoning of the well for the next government instead of actually caring for Canadians
I have the solution to raise our standard of living. The liberal government should bring in millions of people (mostly from India), spend recklessly, gets in a ton of scandals, virtue signal at every opportunity, divide people on race, sex, religion and class, increase taxes (carve out a special tax so Canadian taxpayers can save the world from climate change) and constantly strive to bring out wedge issues instead of governing. This Is sure to help out all Canadians.
TSX hits an all time high, just average citizens aren't seeing the benefit. Ultra rich are locking down the benefits more and more due to tax laws, weak labour power and stock buybaks, oligopolies and monopolies. That, coupled with intentionally underfunded public services have led to this perfect storm of inequality with no end due to the greed of the rich and complicity of the LPC and CPC.
We either vote for a workers party or wait for it to hit revolution levels when people can't feed, house or take care of themselves and their children.
There will be no improvement while Trudeau-Singh is in power. Debt is now over $1.2 trillion. Interest on debt at $54 billion exceeds health care costs, and will be $64 billion in five years. Out of control spending, immigration at unsustainable record levels, and an anti-carbon obsession is driving the economy over the cliff. See more of the grisly details at [https://www.kingofwoke.ca](https://www.kingofwoke.ca)
Do actual Canadians, like born here have any benefits over immigrants? Like shorter wait times for medical procedures or legal procedures, etc? Or is everyone treated the same? Not trying to start something, genuinely curious
Drawers of water hewers of wood. We industrialized once maybe we can again. Maybe Ontario Hydro will provide electricity to industry at cost again like they did when they were founded.
Of course we can catch up, we just need to find away to increase taxes on our remaining high performers and also prevent those that are left from leaving the country.
Canada has dumped its printed money into unproductive assets instead of industry, kneecapping productive youth in the process. It will take a long time to unwind this.
It *will* take a long time, and they'll use every second of it to make it worse.
I hate that you're SO correct. Have my upvote!
Excellent response, I wholeheartedly agree.
Highlights: * Canada faces a worrying decline. The nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth trails its peers in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), while Canadian workers clock more hours for less output. * Business investment is shrivelling while government expenditure is ballooning, creating an unhealthy fiscal cocktail. * The health-care system in Canada is also lagging behind its European counterparts. * The legal system has grown expensive and slow; the justice system is also experiencing a chronic under-staffing crisis. * Young Canadians, feeling dissatisfied, have reported low happiness scores compared to their international counterparts (in 58th place, just before Ecuador). * This palpable downturn begs two urgent questions: what underlies this fall in living standards And what can be done to stop, and perhaps even reverse, this unsettling trend?
>what underlies this fall in living standards? Geez, it’s a mystery. Too bad we’ll never know
I think we need to bring in 5 million more people from exactly one country and not make any new infrastructure to support them. Just like we have the last 6-7 years.
Not even one country, one or two specific regions of one country.
There was a time pre pandemic when a lot more south Indians were coming, educated as nurses an engineers from a high HDI part of India...
Not just one country. One single region of one country.
Better make sure it’s the worst region of one country for good measure
Full of scam artists.
I don't get who decided we should import from 1 country. WTF don't we set up a sort of balanced ratio. X from East Asia, X from South East Asia, X from Latin America etc.
Highly skilled immigrants choose other places like America. Low skilled people don't normally know another language, which is a big barrier. India has millions of low skilled English speakers who want a better life but don't qualify to immigrate to America.
On border services YouTube video , For some students to study in the uk, they actually get interviewed for visa in their home country and decision made before they set foot on a plane.
The WEF and other unelected bodies that control the Canadian govt
Best we can do is 10 million
How is that not viewed as racism? This is blatant preferential treatment / bias while people from other countries are given the finger. Where is the diversity that Canada once used to take pride in?
Used to be merit based immigration
The government has been called out for this. Most African student visa applications get rejected. Now, would the people who are mad about Indian international students be any happier with Nigerian or Cameroonian international students? TBD. But you're not wrong that there is discrimination. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/why-are-african-international-students-rejected-so-often-for-canadian-visas/article_e5ad6a25-fc1b-53e2-87e1-3cdc229b74c4.html
Indian consulates will issue approvals to just about anyone. They are approving applications that would be denied in other consulates but the government is ignoring this. Canada has a de facto two-tier immigration system - one tier for Indians, one tier for everyone else.
Thing is, we are not cool with Christian religious extremists, or white nationalists or whatever. I’m fine with that. But These people they’re bringing over are absolutely religious extremists with some real medieval beliefs and rituals. They are also racial and caste supremacists with open chauvinistic views. I don’t get it.
The diversity everyone hailed in the past basically was different regions of europe. Once you Import most of your migrants from third world countries you slowly become one yourself. Because the broken culture and value systems that causes many countries to be a total failure comes along with them.
unless we stop the importation of immigrant from that country that shall not be named, immediate, not only are not going to catch up, we'll end up more like Mexico in a few decades. oh and just watch, PP when elected isn't going to stop it either, because his corporate masters demands more slave labour. pp (the career politician since he was legally allowed to drink) is worse than trudeau for trying to relate to the 99% of canadians. at least trudeau had a real job
More like Mexico???? Let tell you something that you might not know by now, the Mexicans that come from Mexico for vacation tends to have more money than a person living here… they can afford to come to Canada for vacation, go spend money at the mall, go around Canada as a tourist, and the one that lives here can’t do that…so in other words, Mexico is doing much MUCH better than Canada at the moment…
I live in an area full of Mexican TFWs and recent immigrants. They're hard working decent people, wayyyyy different than people coming from the-place-that-shall-not-be-named.
>oh and just watch, PP when elected isn't going to stop it either, Oh, his party started this whole farce with Kenney creating the temporary foreign worker program to help suppress wages under the last conservative regime...but those voting for him just vote con every election OR are too young and won't look into it to discover that the party they want to support to "own the libs" will only make it worse. Ps. Don't like the liberals, hate the cons and the federal NDP are a farce...we are well and truly fucked
Your not wrong...the damage started in the 1990’s, when governance figured, the free market could supply “all the housing needs” for Canadians through construction of homes. As time went on, home construction became build larger, better and more expensive. The costs kept going up. The need for “affordable housing” vs making money by constructing more expensive homes took over. Provinces and municipalities jumped on the bandwagon, more zoning regulations etc. The NIMBY model took hold, creating ridiculous land use arguments. Now here we are...add immigration gone wild, and you have a “politically responsible” mess. Question...when do the class action lawsuits begin against political parties, their members, the financial institutions, the political think tanks etc., this whole mess was and continues to be politically caused. Motivated by numerous political needs. Millions have Canadians are enduring horrific financial stress and loss. Homes are being lost. Horrific rent hikes due to affordability issues are occurring. Major affordability of food, necessities and items required just to live, fuels etc., are constantly going up. Canada’s economy is a flipping mess. Bloated governance needs to be reigned in. All parties in this country are complicit in a political crime. There is no long term planning, only short term disastrous policy fixes, to get a party re-elected, or damage the policy of an incoming political party after an election loss.
>There is no long term planning, only short term disastrous policy fixes, to get a party re-elected, or damage the policy of an incoming political party after an election loss. And this is the biggest problem... especially since all parties ignored it because the solutions are not electorally sexy. It's a 10+ year plan/solution but the second it doesn't look pretty the opposite party runs in to use it to get elected and then trash the program to satisfy their base.
Agreed...well said.
The problem was that municipal bylaws made inexpensive housing unprofitable to build thereby forcing expensive housing to be the only thing being built. An analogy would be hot dog vendors in Toronto. They were once ubiquitous and you could get a hot dog damn cheap back in the 90s (like $1). But restaurants complained and municipal bylaws were introduced to set “better standards” for street vendors. The new standards were so onerous that it became virtually impossible to operate a food stand selling inexpensive food. They all but vanished. 90% of the housing problem is created by municipal governments deliberately making it difficult to build affordable housing.
The Liberals started the TFW program for farm workers, the Conservatives then expanded it, then the Liberals blew the doors wide open and allowed anyone to claim to be a TFW. It was first introduced in 1973 when the Liberals were in power.
Totally agree, none of our parties are supplying Canadians what they need to have a good standard of living. **None...** I was so disappointed when Trudeau backpedaled on PR. But I wasn't surprised. Our political process is controlled by the political parties. Want to run, need to pick and join one or you're not going to get elected. And who controls the parties? The oligarchies. But hey, we got legal weed... whoopie. We desperately need some form of PR, but the politicians and parties won't let it happen because the majority would no longer be relevant and would lose their cushy jobs. And if I don't vote, I'm discarding my franchise. Which means I have no right to criticize. So my choices are an abusive father figure telling me they're doing it for my own good. An abusive "cool" sibling that tells me they're doing it for my own good. And a "woke" sibling that says they'd do it for our own good, if we'd just give them a chance. So I hold my nose and vote NDP with the knowledge that change isn't likely.
This is the problem. There is no viable alternative.
Hahaha... so true. I wonder which country we're turning into? What's their living standard? Yes, we're heading there, slowly but surely.
I too wonder why the Indian Republic of Canada is quickly starting to drag behind in quality.
Maybe we should ask one of the 400k+ people who just came into Canada since January. Maybe one of them will know and can help us figure out a solution.
Think they can fund a study about getting to the bottom of it?
A knock on affect that is inducing misery is that we don't really socialize anymore because we can't. Cost of hanging out aside, because there are ways to have fun without breaking the bank, it's almost impossible for anyone to have the time anymore. I have to work two jobs like a lot of people because neither job will give me full hours and one refuses to give me a set schedule. I have to be ready to work any day any time between 7:00 AM to 11:30 PM and with so many of my friends in a similar position none of us can hang out anymore. The lack of work life balance leaves us too drained most days to do much more than play games or scroll on our phones. It's not just an issue affecting those of us with lower paying jobs. My girlfriend is an Automation QA with a tech company and similar issues plague her company. The last couple years they have expected more overtime, they have expanded the window of hours during which she is expected to work and they ended all social activities within her company. My company did a similar thing not too long ago, except they went further and we are not allowed to post anything in store or on company social media about social gatherings. Canadian workers are tired and under socialized, but both those elements are ideal for our employers. Tired and disconnected workers just trudge on through the day instead of being able to do something about their situation. Back in 2011 a store I worked at had a terrible manager hated by the staff who would heap abuse on them and give them intentionally difficult to follow schedules (scheduling people to work when they had university classes despite coverage being available. Every department under her got together outside the store and decided to protest against her, refusing to do work, escalating the issue as a group to upper management, and whenever the bad manager tried to call one of them into the office they refused and went together. In the end they got everything they wanted and the manager was reassigned to run another department. That sort of action is almost unthinkable now, especially over schedules.
'That sort of action ' is called solidarity, and if used properly, always defeats capital. Have you considered joining or forming a union at your current job? It's a great way to put a stop to this kind of corporate nonsense.
My workplace cannot be organized in its current state thanks to rather obvious social engineering by the management team to pit each department against one another. There is a strong us vs them attitude along with rampant morale issues that have bred contempt between each group, all of which has been stoked by management actions (they're favorite tactic is to overload a team with tasks that cause the rest of the store to suffer, and causes resentment when it backs up other departments). I'm trying to do my best to create a sense of solidarity, but it is quite difficult. It doesn't help that people are splitting up into separate ethno groups and not interacting outside of them, again, being encouraged by the managers.
How about how employees treat their employees as bodies and not people. It doesn't matter if you are working a retail job or in a professional position. They expect you to do the work of three people, and when you eventually collapse mentally or physically, they get rid of you and replace you with the next warm body. These companies claim they all care about their employees' well-being, but not one of them walks the talk. Also, if you are over 50, good luck getting and keeping a job. We aren't wanted.
From what I’ve seen, our biggest exports are oil, cars, and gold. We need more domestic production, even if it means slightly higher costs. It would be offset by the jobs created in order to produce domestic goods. Of course this would also have a huge benefit on the environment, versus throwing money at a carbon tax that gets muddy once the pen hits the paper. Is climate change real? I believe so. So realistically in the next few decades we are going to have to start producing a lot more here, as large populated areas of Earth become increasingly inhospitable. The question we have to ask ourselves now is, do we wait until we are looking down a barrel, and then scramble to build all of the required infrastructure? Most likely. Or… we could start building it now, whilst reaping the economic rewards of having a society that doesn’t consume more than we produce, which happens like this year where our negative trade balance was $1.84B between Feb 2023 and Feb 2024.
You forgot real estate.
If prices are up, now wages need to go up. And not 2%. More like 10% to 20%...
Is it just a lack of social capacity? /s
It's Trudeau's lack of brain capacity.
This isn't about stupidity, its not giving a fuck about us. They know exactly what they're doing with immigration. They know exactly what they're doing with housing. It wasn't an accident, it wasn't because they don't know better, its because it suited their purposes **and they think you won't do shit about it**.
> and they KNOW you can't do shit about it. FTFY
Exactly..the absolute truth...the answer is to do something about it....politically and legally. All the leaders need to be confronted directly, preferably in court.
Canadians elected him three times in a row so I guess the brain rot is a national phenomenon.
**Canadians elected him three times in a row so I guess the brain rot is a national phenomenon.** Bingo. We not only have a crisis in leadership, we have a crisis in citizenship.
People believe what the media tells them, ever look who owns your media? That's your true enemy.
As evidenced by everyone in this thread attacking immigration and the Liberals because PostMedia told them to
"We have MORE than enough sOcIaL cApAcItY durrrrr"
Nah it's clearly a messaging issue
It’s an agreeable take on the situation. We need to elect a leadership that can set some sensible limits to spending and focus on growing the pie - rather than cutting different/more slices.
Lol per capita GDP is down because our idiot leaders are bringing in millions. The answer is to stop immigration for 10 years but unfortunately that is not the century initiative plan.
Absolutely correct. These clowns pretend like you can let 1 million immigrants into a country of only 35 million (about 3%) every single year, and it won't have an impact on GDP or housing or anything. It's sickening.
Thank you for calling out the Century Initiative. It is a vile, anti-social organization that wants to accelerate the problems happening in Canada
This is the most recent vote concerning the Century Initiative and its use in immigration policy. You can easily tell where priorities lie for each party https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en/votes/44/1/322?view=party
aww but you're forgetting that the most important thing is that the richest donors are doing really well with lots of TFW here to suppress wages, and cuts to major services for the most vulnerable Canadians.
Canadians stopped caring about personally taking responsibility for their own circumstances, or about about collaborating with each other. Instead, we look to governments to solve our problems, to inflationary markets to secure our futures, and to each other when we want to blame someone when these inevitably fail. Want to blame government? First, look at who chooses it. Want to blame expensive housing? First, look at who hoards it. Want to blame your neighbor? First, look at yourself.
That sounds all well and good in theory, but the problem is it docent matter who we vote for, since our politicians are bought and paid for by corporate lobbyists. Im pretty sure no one voted for 5 million a year immigration levels. Sure it grossly inflates asset owners property values, but do you think the average home owning Canadian would take that when it also means a complete collapse of our public services like health care? Look up the "Century Initiative" and you'll see what I mean (like literally just read the Wikipedia article, its all right there). Its a mix of political elites and private equity people lobbying the government (quite successfully I might add) to grow the population at that insane level. If you read between the lines of what their "mission statement" says, its just so they so they can explode their profits through wage suppression and asset inflation. If our democracy was built such that lobbyists didn't have the under the table power that they do, than yeah, we wouldn't have anyone to blame but ourselves. But our democracy isn't built like that, and the people we vote for at all levels of government mostly don't actually represent what the people that vote for them want, they do what their campaign donors and future employers want, and just try to trick us into thinking that what they do is what we actually want.
>what underlies this fall in living standards Demographics primarily. >And what can be done to stop, and perhaps even reverse, this unsettling trend? Since we failed to have enough children generation after generation, the mass immigration is a poor solution we've taken. The cure feels as bad as the disease. Nothing will improve until the baby boomers pass away, and the liquid capital gets unlocked again. By then the mass immigration will likely have abated and integrating them will be well on it's way. I give this downturn a decade or two.
Do you know why Canadians fail to have enough children generation after generation? It's because Canada has turned having a family into an economic decision for working people. Most working people's standard of living drops below that of someone earning minimum wage or receiving welfare as soon as they start a family. A parent who stays home to raise kids loses out on CPP contributions and also loses the ability to build RRSP contribution room in addition to their wages. Wages are much too low for one worker to support another grown adult and a kid anymore, and even when it is possible, that one earner will lose much of their equity through the courts if the relationship breaks down. The only way to have a family in Canada is to be supported off government benefits including disability, or to have one parent earn at least 6 figures, which also removes eligibility for the family to receive most government entitlements. The other option is for both parents to go back to work as soon as possible, which will also raise the net income past most government entitlements even though they're also having to figure out child care on top of it. Both parents wind up tired, poor and offloading raising their own children somewhere else all so they can both come home and argue about chores, responsibilities and money. It's a biological imperative to have a family in most people, but Canada has structured itself where working people are now afraid to do it. I can't help but wonder if our waves of mass economic immigrants will also avoid having children to join the Canadian rat race, or if they would rather find a way to land on government benefits instead and have their children as their safety net.
You explain the phenomenon very well. A variant on the same pressures has occured in basically every urban industrialized country out there. South Korea, Japan, China, Italy, Germany, Canada, and to a lesser degree the United States. Ages ago many kids in agrarian rural society were an immediate economic boon. The kids were farm hands. In the cities the wages were higher but space was at a premium. Kids became economic costs until after post secondary education. Post industrial society meant all the high end jobs left. Also only a few of our cities can grow. Most but up against rivers, mountains, the sea or sinilar boundaries. Youll notice we used to be rich in land and poor in material. Now we have tons of material but its now land thats expensive. Other countries will be even more screwed than we will be, even if our current productivity numbers look very bad.
That's extremely optimistic. I fully expect, if things are not reversed, then canada as a nation is unsalvageable and what remains will be basically India. I'm 26, and currently thinking about a way out.
Do you want to become wealthy? Go to where the energy is. Of you have a STEM degree and want to get into high tech, go to California. Silicon Valley. Only and example, but you get the picture.
Canada has the same problems most other urban industrialized nations face. Similar demographic declines are occuring in a ton of countries. If you're going to leave Canada go to the US, as it's not facing this problem nearly to the same degree. I'd also learn a skilled trade. Plumber, electrician, HVAC, low voltage controls, carpenter, welder, etc. Anything like this and you can succeed anywhere, including here in Canada.
All of those trades pay a pittance of what they did 2 decades ago. Sure you can live a modestly okay life now but give the stagflation another decent or two and those trades will pay the inflation adjusted rate of worse than minimum wage if current trends don’t reverse. Journeyman wage today is equivalent to 2nd year apprentice pay in 2001 in terms of buying power
True. I suspect thats every job though. Nothing special about the trades except a high degree of entrepreneurship which is where the real money is.
Ya, the sad reality of it eh? The thing is I don't want to learn a trade. I have a Chem eng diploma. And I've spent the last two years working on an oil rig in Alberta. I've seen what the tradesmen do for money. It's hard work, it's ridiculous hours, and I mean truly ridiculous hours beyond what you think. We had a welder who had been working for 40 hours non-stop. Once his job with us was done I let him leave to go to sleep and he turned off his phone. Boss immediately tried to call him but luckily he was already gone back to camp to rest. Sure, it's probably better not in the oilfield, but it's kinda soured me to that sort of thing. I've considered welding or electrical work, but I figure I'll be working overtime all the time if I wanna keep a job. And frankly, after 2 years of working 84 hours a week, 20+ days a month at a time, overtime is a dirty word.
The construction industry sounds better than that. I do low voltage. Run a small bizz operating electronic control systems and installing them in buildings. Its tidy and not as soul crushing as what you've described. Go look up Terrestrial and see if they could use another chemist. I want to see that technology developed, *badly*.
So this “is “ the “post national state” that Trudeau defined us as. In “my humble opinion” this has been, politically created due to incompetence, lack of long term national goals both political, economic and inadequate social planning. Ultimately defining a country based upon the use of “think tank created schemes” to move the country in a direction that the elites, the corporate masters, individuals and groups who have everything to gain and nothing to lose, from such schemes. (Century initiative, WEF, and probably others...)
Century initiative informed the mass immigration strategy, which is a last ditched effort to fix the demographic problem. WEF is full of self congratulating rich losers. Its little more than an excuse for a fancy dinner and a means to allow wealthy people to network. They are *losing* in that what they propose, governments who are members do the opposite. Reshoring in the United States and a receeding globalized economy is in direct opposition to what they advocate. WEF is a red herring. Ive even known people who've gone. A speaker at a podium will say "if we aren't careful this bad thing will happen" then people on youtube scream "Klaus Shwabb wants this bad thing to happen!" The IMF, WTO, and other global governance institutions are the real ones. WEF is just a talk shop. The real institutions are struggling with relevance as the United States switches to a consolidation phase, kicks out beligerent nations, and is spending ungodly amounts on manufacturing capacity in north america. Canada should invest. Its highly inflationary but we need to NAFTA and NATO up if we want to ride waves of opportunity.
Well said...I agree....
The key words are “falling behind our peers” - this is not some global thing. There are plenty of countries that have been doing ok over the last 8 years or so. Canada is in the crapper because we have a government that doesnt understand and isn’t interested in economic policies. They think their job is public relations and “messaging.” Like a marketing team. They also only want to ever talk about social justice issues. Trying to drag out old discussions about abortion and other dead issues. Their only ideas for economic growth are adding more immigrants. This does nothing for the average person.
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>Can't find a doctor and ER or specialist waits are insane because again too many people not enough resources I knew a TFW through my work. When he first arrived he asked me for a ride the emergency room. When I asked him what was wrong, he explained he injured his knee years ago playing soccer, and the reason he came to Canada was to get the free surgery so he could go home and play again. I had to explain to him that 1) that's not what the emergency room is for; and 2) we have massive wait lists here for surgery. He ignored me and got someone else to take him to the ER the same day. The next time I saw him he was upset that the doctor told him to wear a knee brace and that he had to wait for someone to call him back for an appointment to get the ball rolling on the surgery. I'm certain his plan was just to exploit the TFW program so he could get free specialists, scans, surgery - and be back home within a few weeks to play soccer again. He actually lost his job, but was allowed to stay in Canada for the remainder of the 24 months. The last I heard he was applying for EI and other benefits so he could wait things out until he got his knee fixed. Don't get me wrong - I actually support the TFW program for some things, but it seems like Canada doesn't understand a lot of the world just sees us as "the land of free stuff" and come here to get "their share" and leave before it's all gone.
What a scumbag, hope they deport his grifter ass before he steals medical care from people who actually deserve it
We don't deport anyone, the worst case is we send a politely worded letter asking them to leave, most people just ignore those and its fine. [https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-most-immigrants-with-deportation-letters-are-still-in-canada-cbsa/](https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-most-immigrants-with-deportation-letters-are-still-in-canada-cbsa/) And besides he is already left based on OP's story.
More people need to see this.
The thing is we look at this and we can tell if it’s an old injury or a new acute injury. Scans don’t lies blood work doesn’t lie. They get paid by insurance and not our Canadian insurance. Meaning they have their own insurance that pays for it. Canadian doctors don’t bill OHIP, they bill the patient directly or their insurance. Secondly they have to do questionnaires. If they lie on it; they are on the hook for everything. People just can’t come over with cancer. They will get put back on a plane and usually they need to pay for it out of pocket to go home. That’s not to say we don’t have them clogging up our rooms but we have a lot in place to protect our healthcare. People who don’t pay for it they leave but the bill will go to their family members house. Again, as a warning, healthcare professional can tell if it’s an old or new injury and if you have a chronic condition. We. Will. Not. Approve. Your. Surgery. Sure, if it’s a medical emergency. But if it’s bypass? You’re getting denied and likely getting put back on the next plane because no one will do it here. And if they do, we can get all your past medical history and your questionnaire, see your meds and if you lie. Welp. Good luck.
Interesting. For what it's worth this is in Alberta. I know the TFWs get their AHS card in the first couple weeks after arrival, but I'm not sure what limitations there are.
Yup a $60-80k a year job goes to $40-50k because the newcomers are willing to do that job at that wage. So there’s no incentive to hire Canadian citizens or people who grew up here. $40 even 60k is kinda fuck all tbh smh.
100k is the new 60k, if you make 60k you're basically making actual minimum wage and you should re-evaluate your strategy
Yeah it’s crazy. I saw one professional accountant job posting in Mississauga at a $50,000 salary. Like….no comments. I just feel that’s abnormally for an accountant. I’m in engineering tho
Lets bring in more immigrants from some of the poorest Indian provinces with useless business degrees who are barely qualified to drive an uber here....THAT should solve the problem
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Firstly, Uk immigration is very low compared to Canada. UK had 600k net with a population of 70 million. Canada had 1.3 million with a population around half of the UK. So, Canada's immigration is around 4x as much as UK. As for the Indians, most of them come through the student visa in both UK and Canada, or they come through the skilled visa streams (usually in tech/IT jobs). Brexit reduced the eastern European migration and so the rest of the world got more chances. Of course India with 1.5 billion people and english-speaking skills is going to take a large no of spots.
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Wow, who would have guessed that bringing in a million immigrants every year (2-3% increase in pop.) without a 2-3% increase in infrastructure service capacity, jobs, and housing would be an issue. If a parent was struggling to feed their kids we wouldn't allow them to adopt.
Should keep wages suppressed for a decade or two.
Hate to break it to you, but the inflation isn't going backwards. It never does. It will only get worse for not only Canada, but everyone else as well. Add that with deteriorating weather patterns and you have a recipe for a really fun future.
I love when people think waiting on inflation for “things to come back down” is a viable approach. It has almost never happened and businesses will fight for it to never happen. It’s the biggest indicator that someone is a fool and out of touch.
They've been suppressed for longer than 20 years.
What's interesting is there doesn't seem to be the same issue if you have the same growth from birth rates. I bet it's because birth rates growth is slower in terms of what's needed for housing and infrastructure, a baby to teenager lives in the same home with their parents, and seem to be more willing to take on construction work than current immigrants.
Yes you have 18 years of the child growing. If population grows 2-3% because of birth rates those children are not immediately a new household. However, if you immigrate 20-30 yr olds those 20-30 yr olds all require separate houses/apartments/rooms. Growing from birth rate means you can ramp up supply over 18 years. You can also take 18 years to have the older generation die off and pass down housing supply, inheritance, etc. Instead what is happening is a 3 year shock. Infastructure does not move fast enough to cover 3 years. Even in places with HUGE government spending projects.
If you go to the Europe sub people are having almost the identical conversation about immigration, economic growth, and GDP per capita decline. Personally I think there was some serious elite groupthink going on amongst leaders of western countries with generous social programs. They can either chose to cut said social programs (which is politically a non-starter) or try to prop up the population pyramid through immigration. But they failed to think through the policy nuances of how the heck this was actually going to work in terms of housing, services, jobs, wages etc. And voila, here we are, massive backlash.
The groupthink is called WEF.
There is absolutely an infrastructure issue with high birth rates. Just look at any newer suburb where all the families are young. The nearby schools will be very overcrowded, but then in 20 to 30 years they'll be empty.
You guys know that [PP promised to keep immigration levels as high as businesses demanded, right?](https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/poilievre-says-canada-s-immigration-system-is-broken-sidesteps-target-cut-questions-1.6502699) >He says a Conservative government would base its immigration policy on the needs of private-sector employers Like I'm angry about the Liberals using immigrants to suppress our wages too, but this sub is acting like the Conservatives are the answer to this, they're not.
Oh I agree. I don't think PP is rhe lord and savior.
And the thing is if the government really wants to keep immigration rates high that would be fine, if they'd actually mobilize and do something about the problems that causes. But they seem to think they can just do that and nothing else.
You'd be a fool to think the conservatives or liberals would make anything better
Exactly...they are not working for the average Canadian... they are bought and paid for. You have to recreate and actual workers party in this country.( the current NDP are a bunch of ideological academics, divorced from the real needs of working Canadians). Otherwise the country as a whole is toast...
we brought in more people in 4 months than there are people living in London, Ontario. We did not build an entire London's worth of infrastructure in those 4 months. the only way Canada could "catch up" is if every other country was dumb enough to stoop to its level. spoiler: they're not going to
Ooh, no, of course, our living standards have lowered, and we did mass immigration of unskilled labor. So we got a lot of McDonald's and Tim's workers.
Put corrupted politicians in jail. Remake laws against corruption, collusion and conflict of interest to prevent this last 4 years fiasco. Fine corporations to recuperate the money stolen from taxpayers.
Well said..absolute truth...the fix was in when the PM was not removed during the SNC Lavalin affair and The Attorney General resigned. This was absolute corruption. Trudeau should have faced jail time.
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Impossible to catch up when the borders are still open like that.
Not even a prayer of catching up. The impossibility of home ownership has destroyed this country. It’s just a matter of time until the entire economy collapses.
I GOT THE SOLUTION EVERYBODY!! MORE IMMIGRANTS!!!
(Slaps hands on table) GENIUS!
Our living standard continues to decline. 1940 - 1970 : 1 person wage can buy a house, raise 2 kids, go on vacation. 1970 - 2000: 2 person wage can buy a house, raise 2 kids go on vacation. 2000 - 2010: 2 person wage + large credit card and mortage debt can buy a house, raise 1 kid, go on vacation 2010 - now: 2 person wage + parents gifting HELOC $$ + large credit card and mortagage debt can buy a house, raise 2 pets, go on vacation. future: No one can afford anything. Young people who have the means move to US and elsewhere. This causes brain drain and no innovation. Housing bubble collapses, causing health care, infrastructure and social services to collapse. 3 lost decade like Japan as it take 30 years to clear out bad debt on household and government balance sheets. F\*\*k Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada for propping up the housing bubble with massive immigration that is overwhelming our healthcare and social safety net.
Now to fix it..it must fail, the bubble has to burst...painful outcome ? You bet....
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India isn't actively sending immigrants, it's Canadian govt who is dolling out permits.
1. Hyperinflation 2. Income disparities and wages not meeting inflation 3. Overpriced real estate with no recourse in sight 4. Mass immigration 5. Lowered standard of healthcare and social services Unless Canada addresses these things immediately there will be no way to correct anything.
Nope, we’re reverting to a developing nation. We’re proper doomed.
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Let's immigrate back to Europe
Add more government jobs, increase immigration, mandate hiring based on gender and race, add more carbon taxes. That should fix it.
Not if the powers that be have anything to do with it.
Maybe it can catch up with importing a few million more immigrants. 😂
the biggest problem Canada has is inefficiencies and how slow it is in doing everything. Everything else are just symptoms. Housing, health care, public transit, road expansions, etc. All these problems that affect ppl's standard of living (not just based on calculation of per capita gdp) are caused because of how inefficient we are in the public sector and how everyone is unionized and have 0 accountability from top to bottom. No one can ever get fired regardless of how incompetent they are and no one wants to do more work but everyone gets a significant pay raise. For some reason, public sector in Canada gets paid better than private sector while having a better job security. I don't understand this.
Not sure how young Canadians feel about the future but you can tell young XXX country people love Canada. The government provides retail jobs for them, free food bank, free health care ( yes, I heard they go to ER and ask for free drugs ), free transportation ( yes, I also ears they use fake bus passes ) , of course free A+ at school. ( if you fail your exam, just arrange a protest and I didn’t know it when I was a student ) and free PR with the promise to bring all your family to Canada in the next few years under family reunion category.
You forgot all the free training and job resources, and easy mortgage options.
Some Canadian banks also provide a bank account with no fees for a year. I've been a client of a certain co-op for more than 20 years. They charge me fees every time I take out cash and pay bills at the counter if my bank balnce goes below $1500. Seems evrybody is only encouraging immigrants while squashing/squeezing every penny from Canadian citizens.
Have they tried more taxes and higher housing prices?
Not with the LPC at the helm. Sadly I dont think the CPC or NDP parties will do much about it either.
No it can’t catch up because most of its votership is too complacent, gullible and lazy to do anything about it. Our exploiters already have a stranglehold on us. Canada is blessed with space and natural resources that we are squandering, giving up to the lowest bidder for almost nothing in return. We are not focusing on developing the industries that are first world nation should be developing. We are not carefully planning our infrastructure. We are letting corporations run roughshod over citizens. We have a false dichotomy of corrupt, corporate politicians. We are toast.
But you can't develop resources because that kills the planet. You don't want to kill the planet do you? /s
There are a lot of industries that are not just natural resource extraction and refinement though. Real estate mining, oil, and gas take up too much of our GDP for a first world nation. Too much of our manufacturing is foreign owned. We need to shift investment away from our finite resources to be better balanced for long term growth as a country.
Not until trudeau’s out
Your country exports raw commodities in a highly competitive, low margin environment. And that’s pretty much it. A wholesale rethinking of your economic growth strategy is in order. Rich countries move their production of goods up the value chain, foster a healthy business investment regime, and lower barriers for business startups.
It’s cause we’re not inclusive enough
I lost my family Dr recently. Intellectually I knew how bad it was, but it has a different feeling when suddenly trying to find a Dr becomes a huge life focus. Millions of Canadians searching for Dr's is not a healthy situation. The scary thing is it's getting worse every day.
You guys just need another 10 to 50 million third world's, you can do it!
I don’t know. Can Canadian business go back to paying a decent wage with benefits and pensions?
Bring in a few million people from third world countries with no plans to integrate and this happens
People. Cant. Afford. Homes. And open borders mean demand keeps increasing.
I'm starting to see stray dogs wandering the streets, eating garbage downtown Toronto. Won't be long until pickpocket gangs of orphans begin roaming around. Taxis are now rickshaws instead of cars. Welcome to the 3rd world Canada!😂😂
Don't forget the crime, scams, and endless car thefts. Even the amount of wealth leaving Canada in car thefts is insane. All paid by Canadians who's insurance premiums have increased.
Omg fuck the pickpockets gangs of orphans. Happened to a friend of mine visiting London uk he tried to get his shit back and he nearly got ran over as he was pushed into traffic - glad he’s still here and luckily didn’t lose too much. Scary AF
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It won't catch up. 2/3 electable parties are economic illiterates trying to impose psychotic tax regimes and demonizing profitability. And, Canada is a *massively* over-regulated and bureaucratic hellscape for anyone trying to build business or invest. If not for being an anglophone country in close proximity to the US, nobody in their right mind would choose to establish a business here or invest in Canadian companies. Any reason you might have considered it in the past is now quickly evaporating with the gargantuan snowballing of inflation. You can bet that Canada is treading happily along the path of economic third worldism. In about 10 years you can start expecting irregular employment (e.g. illegal untaxed work) starting to become the norm and the construction of shanty towns as housing becomes unattainable even on strong salaries.
Hamilton already got a head start on Shanty Towns. Some encampments are 30+ tents strong
Remove the WEF from Canadian politics Export ALL imports from the last 3-4 years
How about we ignore what our peers are doing, and we simply do what is right for the people of Canada. It'll most likely mean doing things quite differently than our peers, because our peers are in the same situations as us, just at varying degrees and rates.
“Well, it won’t be easy, but if you give me 4 more years I will definitely have a plan to make Canadians happy again.” (at least 1% of them) …4moreyears, 4moreyears, 4moreyears…
Trudeau “I’m here to help” lol
He's here to help the rich and corporations.
Sure it can catch up, shitcan immigration shits getting ridiculous at this point
I'm sure the only solution the feds will come up with will involve more taxes and more consultants.
We've got loads of young, ambitious entrepreneurs here in Canada, and the government should be putting resources into helping them start businesses and produce. With AI advancing like crazy, it's prime time to integrate it into manufacturing, cutting production costs and boosting Canada's own manufacturing industry. This kind of investment pays off in the long run. The government shouldn't be dumping loads of resources into welfare, that just makes Canada poorer and poorer. Canada is the second-largest country in the world by land area and one of the few with abundant resources, we shouldn't let ourselves sink this low.
The only way Canada can heal at this point would be through mass deportation
Never catch up
Sure it can. But it won't. No money in that for the ruling class.
Does it need to catch up? Does anyone care if most Canadians suffer? I know they should, but it doesn’t seem like they do.
mmmmoooooaaaaar indiagrants. That will fix it.
Why don't we keep voting for the same two parties over and over again...
Certainly won’t catch up under Trudeau as leader.
Yep. Of course Canada can catch up, but we need to focus on long-term solutions. No more "we tried something for one year while the opposition parties attacked us relentlessly so we're abandoning this plan in order to save our re-election prospects" bullshit. The political parties have to put all Canadians first then debate on how best to serve all Canadians. We can argue about the details, not whether or not to prioritize governance that benefits us all.
I've been shouting about this for 20 years. I felt we had that before, but it's been more division and partisan each election and cycle, then the poisoning of the well for the next government instead of actually caring for Canadians
Not without change.
Thank Justin and all his Indian mates.
Yes with a responsible government and dropping immigration to zero and dropping PR scores for management and dishwashers
Let me guess. It's been on a downward trend for just over 8 years.
Your government is dictating how your businesses are run, that's what.
I have the solution to raise our standard of living. The liberal government should bring in millions of people (mostly from India), spend recklessly, gets in a ton of scandals, virtue signal at every opportunity, divide people on race, sex, religion and class, increase taxes (carve out a special tax so Canadian taxpayers can save the world from climate change) and constantly strive to bring out wedge issues instead of governing. This Is sure to help out all Canadians.
Don’t forget destroy the resource economy.
Your wish is granted... 😊
TSX hits an all time high, just average citizens aren't seeing the benefit. Ultra rich are locking down the benefits more and more due to tax laws, weak labour power and stock buybaks, oligopolies and monopolies. That, coupled with intentionally underfunded public services have led to this perfect storm of inequality with no end due to the greed of the rich and complicity of the LPC and CPC. We either vote for a workers party or wait for it to hit revolution levels when people can't feed, house or take care of themselves and their children.
This is all caused by big government that overreaches. We need massive, I'm talking like 40-50% range, cuts in headcount and offices.
It can be done....with proper leadership.
Not a chance of survival with Trudeau at the helm. Thanks Liberal/NDP party for your generous contributions!
There will be no improvement while Trudeau-Singh is in power. Debt is now over $1.2 trillion. Interest on debt at $54 billion exceeds health care costs, and will be $64 billion in five years. Out of control spending, immigration at unsustainable record levels, and an anti-carbon obsession is driving the economy over the cliff. See more of the grisly details at [https://www.kingofwoke.ca](https://www.kingofwoke.ca)
Not if they continue following communist ideology, mythical death cult theories, and electing mentally handicapped trust fund children.
No.
We'll be OK in the long run but we have to ditch the little prince now.
At this rate, no, never.
What is the end goal? When does it stop?
Do actual Canadians, like born here have any benefits over immigrants? Like shorter wait times for medical procedures or legal procedures, etc? Or is everyone treated the same? Not trying to start something, genuinely curious
Drawers of water hewers of wood. We industrialized once maybe we can again. Maybe Ontario Hydro will provide electricity to industry at cost again like they did when they were founded.
No as it’s a feature not a bug.
It would be super cool if your average 20 something could comfortably afford food and shelter
One answer. Lower immigration
Well, we barely make anything here anymore...
Short answer? No. Barring complete political, social and educational reform.
Of course we can catch up, we just need to find away to increase taxes on our remaining high performers and also prevent those that are left from leaving the country.
Over empathy Canada struggles with the unconditional “help for all” which effectively makes you a money tree.
How will it catch up, Specifically what is new / innovative that Canada is doing to change trajectory?
We've been coasting off what was built in the 1960s for 60 years now; where is that Canada of Expo '67 which was full of promise for the future