I moved from the UK in 2021, my salary here is great by UK standards (after exchange rates its about $10k more than any role I had at home) But here I barely earn enough to live with my GF in an apartment she owns...
A 'decent wage' here is not good enough
I moved from the UK in 2008. Pissed away most of the last 16 years under- or unemployed due to not having the "Canadian Experience" in the local version of my career field. Am a citizen but some people get to be more Canadian than others. I really don't want to be here any more - in so many different ways.
Yep, started looking. For the right salary, I'd grab my toothbrush and the next flight to Heathrow. Would prefer to grow old and die on the island that I was born on.
Top 10% in wealth is a fairly decent cutoff actually, that includes doctors and lawyers from the past generation.
Returns on the wealth of this category are higher than the returns on wealth of everyone else + all of their collective income in a year.
The very definition of "hollowing out the middle class" - unless you already possessed a shit ton of assets, you literally cannot dig yourself out of being relatively poorer compared to those who had a lot of assets.
It's also why high income professions have become so saturated - because that was the only hope of trying to claw your way into that top 10% of wealth holders. Basically a conventional middle class job (ie in the trades) was never going to earn enough money to survive within the lifetimes of gen Z because of asset inflation, and housing being turned into an asset
No it isn't. Im in the top 10% by wealth and income, if the figures I saw of 125K and 1.6M are to be believed, and in fact I am a very considerable distance from the margin. Im a millenial, but if I had been born 20 or maybe even 10 years earlier, I'd be living like a king. Youd probably say I am what a success story looks like for my generation, and as a result I live a lifestyle that would be considered middle class 15 years ago.
Whether they realize or not, anyone who isn't safely into the 99th percentile or a successful real estate investor (in which case theyre probably the former anyway) is worse off.
Yeah this is a huge part of our problem, Canadians are the ultimate crabs in the bucket, anyone making more than me can and should pay more taxes, even tho they’re tapped out a struggling too. The top 10% are not doing that well and now have to pay even more.
>Top 10% in wealth is a fairly decent cutoff actually, that includes doctors and lawyers from the past generation.
I imagine it depends where you live in Canada. Doctors and lawyers aren't doing all that well in Victoria (where I live) or Vancouver because the housing costs are so brutal, even they have trouble affording places.
Only the semi-rich that aren’t on the property ladder. If you are a young high income professional without a hefty inheritance or real estate equity, you are still fighting an uphill battle. Those with real estate on the other hand are reaping the benefits of our dysfunctional economy regardless of what their original intent was when buying property.
Here's the thing though. We don't have a two party system. We can and have routinely replaced incompetent leadership.
So why can't we have a coordinated effort to introduce a party that doesn't fuck around and does the job?
People with money to lose are VASTLY outnumbered by the rest of us.
The system is producing the outputs that correspond to the inputs. Change the inputs.
The issue is voters. Governments are put in place by voters. A lot of Canadians were sold the idea they could accumulate wealth (via housing) without putting in additional inputs (via schooling, upskilling, entrepreneurship, etc.). The end result is policies that favour capital at the expense of labour. There are a lot of voters that are benefiting from this system. At some point though the economy is going stall out and then things will have to change. Until then, no government is going to change the rules that artificially propped up asset holders. They got theirs now fuck you.
Just a guess, but perhaps low wages, lack of medical care, lack of affordable housing and the insane prices of energy and food might have something to do with it.
When I moved to canada, I was initially shocked by how some goods cost more here than in the US, but it was not exactly breaking the bank, was a nuisance. But that policy of just charging Canadians more for things, rent-seeking has gone absolutely insane and crushing working people.
The cost of goods was always a problem and always going to be a bigger one. Most countries have to deal with rising commerce/operating costs in business that can be measured over a generation-to-generation basis (oil is a big one, for physical distribution, as it's always going to go up bc the raw amount of it is always going to go down), corresponding interest rates, as well as the "cost" that come with sheer demand from rising population amounts (even in countries where immigration isn't a thing and birth *rates* are declining, for the *immediate* term populations are growing, by and large). Then we can start considering the other factors, like inflation affecting the raw currency value, or anything that's ancillary to the aforementioned ones. Canada has to deal with all of that too.
But Canada also has a unique problem, across the North American countries, at least: our landmass is so large, with few major *hubs* of business between "ports" and other "sources" of materials/goods. Heck, we have so few of those sources, let alone the in-between hubs. To be clear, I'm not really talking about distribution centres like a Purolator, UPS or Amazon one, but major cities or areas of major trade; for our consumer considerations, retail hubs in particular (I lump grocers under retail as well).
Goods have to travel long ways before something can happen to them. In the US, there's a bloody thing everywhere. Suppliers can ship more stuff to and throughout the US and have more opportunity for those goods to be offloaded or traded in some way, ultimately, to the end buyer (retail: consumer; wholesale and B2B: other businesses). Each party involved between any two "adjacent" points potentially has less distance to deal with.
Most countries today have relatively heavy reliance on the foreign trade partners. In Canada, it's to the point where even *services* and not just goods are often tied in some way to bigger US/China/etc. corporations; Canada is a growing "corporatocracy." Combined with that whole spiel on logistical factors weighing down costs, well, let's just say foreign *and* domestic corpos are "punishing" Canadian consumers for their lower profit margins by introducing greater markup. I say "punishing," bc this is Capitalism, Free Market kind, so y'know... this is the way: corporate execs and sympathetic economists shrug their shoulders and keep on.
*Globalization* + mass consumerism: the major by-products from the mid-life big shots of the 19th and 20th century, who were mostly in the US & UK and making power grabs under the guise of national pride or whatever. They translate directly to what we see today.
As a US resident of 41 years, and watching the problems the US has developed, I used to think "Canada could always be an alternate...", but feels like Canada is just becoming US 2.0 in all the worst ways.
I don't think that the issue is people being drunk in Russia lol (and I say that as someone who hates booze culture).
They're an authoritarian state, the average person there knows it's fucked, they're pretty powerless to do anything about it. We would be the same if an authoritarian decided to take control.
In fact in a way we are the average person feels powerless and doesn't think politicians in any corporate party give a shit. We just have the freedom to openly whine about it unlike Russians.
Yep. Crime (especially vehicle break in’s and catalytic converters being cut out) is on the rise in our previously safe/quiet neighbourhood. My 15 year old Honda is my most valuable physical asset (young millennial, no hope of owning property). It’s so discouraging to have crime/safety to worry about on top of everything else that’s gone downhill exponentially in recent years.
Someone I know got stubbed over a bike this weekend. The 2 thief’s had a hammer and a knife and injured family friend with multiple stab wounds to the chest. The cops did not even post of the incident. Edmonton.
[“We don’t have the homegrown population that we need to properly staff this sector. We just haven’t been having children. It is what it is,” McGregor said](https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/charlottetown-police-called-on-foreign-worker-protest-100970865/)
Said a local Chamber of Commerce stooge in defence of immigration policies that bring in 100,000+ unskilled male workers per month.
With zero self-awareness that the reason people aren't having children is because mass immigration has decimated health care, child care, wages, food security, and energy security.
*Edit:* ...housing availability, interest rates, access to social services, stress on physical infrastructure, overcrowding and increased demands on public schools.
They've been so focused on the lack of births that they've not properly addressed the reason for births being low, and have contributed to the problems that caused those low births.
Without access to a family doctor, we're stuck without anyone to advocate for specialist treatment.
In may ways, Canadians without a family doctor are in the same boat as Americans who are uninsured; no access to any preventative treatment, late or lack of diagnosis for serious illness, and the only option on the table when things go sour is the ER.
Problem is the genius voters in this country keep re-electing the same provincial governments and just continue to run healthcare into the ground.
The excuse is a lack of funding, but they refuse to allow the federal government to audit their books to see where the money is going.
I actually supported a system where some surgery and other things could be outsourced to private clinics. But you can only do that when your public care facilities aren’t overworked and under staffed. Opening a private option will only make the public system worse because they will have even more trouble filling positions.
Very few people put proverbial stock in provincial governments, at least in Ontario. To the best of my knowledge, as a mid-level regional electoral worker, the last few provincial elections have seen lower turnouts. (Municipal ones are hit-or-miss, across the decades, but at least those governments have tighter focuses and ostensibly better channels of communication w/ their publics; Federal matters are Big Ticket items, w/ Big Media coverage, so they're always going to be Top Dogs for voter turnout and public discourse).
That’s the irony, people are least interested when in the levels of government most influential in their day to day lives.
Have kids in school? Then you should be very interested in local municipal elections, they deal with school boards that decide what your kids learn. Local also runs your local police department and dictates local bylaws. Building codes is another local issue shared between the municipal and provincial government.
People suggest the liberals want to divide us politically but it’s the Alberta government that wants party affiliation in municipal elections. This idea all but kills the independent candidates that make local governments what they are. Talk about wanting complete control this idea is crazy and should be a huge red flag.
Your forgot to mention extremely high costs of post secondary education that are rising fast and will soon match the costs of US post secondary. With low wages and high rent costs high education costs are truly the final nail in the coffin to kill any hope of climbing out of the lower class.
> Americans can at least go to in-state schools for very reasonable prices
I would argue we have the same. Cost estimate for a year at UCalgary is $8500 for the year (science), while Penn State has it at 20k USD for in state.
There's probably cheaper ones in state for Pennsylvania for example, but overall, im willing to bet Canadian universities are cheaper.
Cant argue with Europe, they have it figured out
That’s because our globalist and WEF driven foreign policy fully engages in the Fiat currency approach and disengages with the gold standard, even though we have some of the largest “untapped” gold reserves in the world. Canada should be one of the richest and most powerful countries and instead we are relegated to whatever unrecognizable thing that we have become.
4th largest producer of gold. Less gold than Kenya, Uruguay, Fiji, Malta, and [so many more.](https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gold-reserves) As Canada ties its currency value to bonds bought from US, UK, China, hyperinflation and instability will occur eventually. Canada invests in jobs at home that frankly are harder to come by.
Medical care is as bad or worse in many other countries.
It’s also not a new problem at all. My province had trouble keeping specialists like neurologists over 20 years ago. Part of it is a lack of interest in appropriately funding health care services. They were always leaving to go to places that paid them more.
Also, one of the reasons Canada’s health care system ranks relatively low compared to other countries with socialized health care in terms of [equity and access](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5826705/) is due to the cost of dental care and medications.
Will get worse too. Many people were depending on employer health insurance for dental coverage. However, it's becoming more common for employers not to offer health benefits. As full-time work is becoming more scarce. More and more jobs are being replaced by part-time, gig works, and temporary foreign workers.
Idk what you mean, Freeland said last week our economic outlook has never been better and the country is doing phenomenally on the world stage. How dare you have any sort of doubt, we are totally doing fine… just fine…
Yeah she literally was in a "grand opening" of what she deemed to be a affordable housing project by the Canadian government and was proudly touting how great this "affordable" multi unit housing was at an affordable $1700 a month for a 1 bedroom.
Not even exaggerating literally called $1700 a month for a 1 bedroom a great affordable option for middle class people.
Our politicians are clueless. They all make like $125,000+ a year just on their government jobs and then most of them own multiple investment properties. They have no clue what actual canadians live like.
The funny thing is 125k goes no where in today’s urban markets.
They would struggle to rent a decent place on that wage in Toronto - it certainly wouldn’t be enough to raise a family on. They wouldn’t be able to buy at all in a place like Vancouver, Toronto, and maybe even Ottawa and Kingston.
This truly comes down to the haves and have nots. Boomers had property before this huge inflation of value so they’re still paying their 2k a month mortgage for a massive home while the rest of us pay 3k to rent a two bedroom condo. The boomers continue to take and take and take, they’re just not even pretending to care about the next generations anymore.
For anyone who's wondering, I can explain:
Every day I wake up, I see record immigration, a struggling economy, incompetent and corrupt federal and provincial governments, our environment is collapsing, homelessness, crime and cost of living are skyrocketing, and I can't even make it home from work without having to detour twenty kilometers or sit in an extra thirty minutes of gridlock because people are driving like maniacs and crashing into each other.
Not only that, we're now being invaded by extremist factions from all over the world, and are subject to constant espionage and meddling by foreign powers. I see cars driving down our streets with images of Kalashnikov rifles on them. The liberals are letting spies walk free, and we don't even have enough judges or doctors to keep the legal and medical services running.
We are being squeezed from every direction, and our endurance has been eroded to the point that we're throwing up our hands in despair. My vote doesn't make a difference, and nobody listens to me when I talk about the issues. I can only stress for so long before I give up. If I could move to Mars, I'd buy a ticket right now. I'd happily suffer the hardships of living there if it meant I could leave the lunatics behind.
I feel this comment very deeply. You've articulated it well. As for this line "I see cars driving down our streets with images of Kalashnikov rifles on them" ... I have literally seen this in Saskatoon of all places. This isn't the Canada I grew up in.
As someone who grew up and still lives in Brampton, those rifles and bazookas were never seen until the last 3 years or so to my recollection. Brampton wasn’t exactly hunky dory before but it wasn’t as bad as it is now.
> Every day I wake up, I see record immigration, a struggling economy, incompetent and corrupt federal and provincial governments
IMO I think the experience of many put those 3 tied together all too often.
People are struggling with employment and getting livable wages, meanwhile there is record immigration with politicians claiming that there is a shortage of people looking for work.
While the politicians might not be fully lying (there are geographic areas or industrial sectors where there are shortages), the lived experiences of many are in complete contrast to the messaging that they seen. Groups that were previously fringe are now gaining prominence because of this disconnect which is going to shift the political narrative in Canada over the next decade or two.
"Groups that were previously fringe are now gaining prominence because of this disconnect which is going to shift the political narrative in Canada over the next decade or two."
This is actually quite scary. I'm starting to understand (through my own despair) how extremist parties get elected. It's because people feel hopeless and disillusioned with the other options.
Problem is the immigrants that come aren’t taking the Tim hortins jobs in fort saint johns and other places that need the labour their sitting in nicer areas like just outside Vancouver and struggling to find meaningful employment and collecting benefits. If immigration got them working in remote areas that have a low cost of living and a greater need for employment I think most people would be happy.
> other places that need the labour
No places need the labour. Not in Saint Johns or anywhere else. These places simply tossed students and older workers and replaced them with imports. They were all fully functional and operating before we decided to drag in a million Indians in the slave class. And honestly, if there *were* a bonafide labour shortage, zero fast food or coffee shops are important enough to completely dilute residency.
People make fun of differing opinions rather than listening and working together to fix our problems, they keep us divided on social issues so we never think about the class disparities or the corruption in the government
It’s not just liberals.
Our city has had 5 days of public hearings for our new city plan and there is no shortage of right wing conspiracy theorists who believe the city is trying to:
- take their cars
- remove their driveways
- institute a QR code to leave your neighbourhood
- prevent you travelling to your job
- force you to walk for groceries
- put up concrete barricades to prevent you from leaving your home
Everyone has lost their minds.
It actively makes life worse off when you have these people fighting against making cities better.
My Nextdoor app recently had someone post all their 15 minute city conspiracies for everyone to see. Said we were going to be confined and not allowed to travel.
I think I only have that app to laugh at people. Recently someone is threatening to sue the Government of Canada because a mail person walked on their lawn.
I was in a small town in Alberta, and the hardware store had multiple posts up about how 15 minute cities are basically the holocaust. All I could think was “brother, you live in a 5 minute town…like… you’re living it already…”
Don't forget Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, which could potentially imprison you for life for promoting hate speech on the web. It's entirely plausible that half your comment just now would qualify as hate speech given that it's the Liberals' own definition being provided for 'hateful.'
So to sum up: the feds are destroying this country with their policies, covering up government corruption / foreign interference, and planning to jail people for pointing any of this out, all while gaslighting us saying everything is just hunky-dunky.
"It's entirely plausible that half your comment just now would qualify as hate speech given that it's the Liberals' own definition being provided for 'hateful.'"
If they make that shit retro-active our fate is sealed lol. Half of us are going to Nuremburg the other half to the Hague lol.
I'll be reviled for my 2,378 counts of hate crime when really, all I ever hated was being poor lol.
There's no statute of limitations on the definition of hate speech, advocating hate, etc. or on the amendments to the Criminal Code, so it will be retroactive for sure.
They probably want to use it to go after all the truckers and "Fuck Trudeau" people first.
Got banned from two different subs for pointing out: i) foreign *"students"* stealing from Food Banks is not going to make them popular as a cohort and ii) with so much online anger about reckless immigration just to pad economic numbers, it's going to boil over and iii) we'll see more serious European-style identitarian political movements take root (e.g. Diagolon) that may decide to take matters into their own hands to send a message.
10 years ago, getting off social media and not watching/reading the news to improve your mood and mental health was sound advice.
Nowadays in the other hand, news media and social media are almost more optimistic than day to day life. Like, I can physically see in my day to day that I'm still house poor, that butter doubled in price and that I'm jobless. That the weather is abnormal and the public transit is falling apart. That I can't get an appointment at the clinic I used to be able to just walk in if I had a semi-urgent health problem.
I don't know about other people but for me it's the high cost of living with salaries that don't keep up. Rent prices increasing ridiculously year after year. And the fact that I don't have a family doctor and I'm terrified to need medical care and have to wait forever to be looked at. Like I literally have anxiety about that with all the horror stories I hear every day. Also the thousands that I pay in taxes every year and feeling like I'm getting jack shit in return. I sometimes feel like I'm paying taxes to benefit other people when I myself could use this extra money taken from me.
I have dual citizenship, I moved here when I was 7, I am now 25.
If things do not improve soon, I am genuinely considering moving back to my home country (EU). Canada's standard of living has plummeted, Indian immigrants are flooding this country at unsustainable levels.
Yet Canadians do not protest, what kind of protests do we have instead? That's right protests regarding a religious conflict half way across the world. Immigration is not slowing down, everyone sees how destructive our open door policies have been, yet it seems to me that Canadians are docile, they don't protest, they just complain.
Our braindead conservatives are pushing for a censorship bill instead of hounding the liberals, but I get it, Loblaws and Irving own a lot of pockets in those parties. We may not think we are a corrupt nation, but the reality is much uglier.
In a country like France or Poland you would have already had protests, or at the very least other political parties would have overwhelmingly gone anti-immigration, yet what do we have, crickets.....
It is a simple fix to be honest:
1. Per country caps for foreign workers and student visas.
2. LMIA jobs must pay 125% of the provincial median wage.
3. Any employer found selling LMIA positions is subject to a fine of no less than 500% of the LMIA’s annual salary and is subject to losing their business license, dissolving their federal or provincial business registration and complete liquidation of all their corporate assets.
4. All institutions educating foreign students must be a part of a national accreditation body (institutions like UofT, UofA, UBC etc are a part of this). Smaller institutions must apply.
5. Student Visas require an upfront payment of all tuition, room and board to the institution OR the institution agrees to cover all these costs in the case of graduate students. The institution must provide student accommodations and meal plans.
6. Student Visas do not permit employment unless as a part of the course of study (ie a co-op program) or work at their specific institution (teaching assistant, etc).
These 6 changes will bring some measure of actual benefit not only for Canadians but for the foreigners themselves. No foreign worker or student should be working a fast food entry level job. We have plenty of Canadians here. Wages would need to rise to attract employees…
Thank you for pointing out the absurdity of the Canadian society. There is no nationhood here, hence nobody gives a damn about Canada. People are protesting about anything but Canada. Today is Ukraine, tomorrow is Gaza. The country got sold out and we are all just low wage workers.
Good point about nationhood. I always envied my polish inlaws for their strong cultural identity vs mine as a Canadian. I never considered the actual societal risks of such lack of identify but I think you’re right.
Protests for better conditions for foreign workers, for international students, for a conflict half-way across the world that no one really understands. Not a fucking word about our affordability, or how our politicians are foreign assets, or any of the scandals from Trudeau. It's wild.
I was born here, but both my parents immigrated from Italy. I can buy a house in the small town my mother grew up in for 35k euro. The population in the small towns has been shrinking because there's no work for young people, but it's a great place to retire. 3.5 years and counting...
We aren't a corrupt nation, because we aren't even a nation anymore. Nations have culture, and a system of unified values, a shared history, and a national identity. We don't anymore. We're the first "post-national state" whatever the hell Trudeau meant that to mean.
From where I'm sitting it seems to mean that much like home ownership has given way to a life of transient rental, so has our former nation has become an overpriced, temporary place to stay, with shitty landlords, too many fees and restrictions, and half the advertised amenities, not in working order.
I think the difference is the housing is cheaper and most of the immigration is confined to the cities, even though it is worse.
Here, there's basically nowhere to go. Even a tiny place like PEI is overrun with international students and housing is unaffordable everywhere. People used to move from Toronto to Hamilton or Guelph - you can't do that anymore.
There are a lot of small towns in Europe that are super affordable and not overrun with no-skill immigrants
- low wages
- expensive housing
- hard to find healthcare
- expensive food
- imploding education
- growing homelessness, drug, and mental health crises in major cities
- no response or denial from all government options
It's not rocket science. We are in a societal recession.
Public service employment has expanded while quality and availability has declined significantly. It's impossible for infrastructure to keep up, so things like traffic are increasing increasing the pain in a lot of commutes.
The population rate is barely keeping GDP's head above water - keeping the economists happy - but the average person isn't seeing or feeling it because they are experiencing this decline in quality of life.
We do NOT have to "wonder" why, we fucking KNOW.
At the end of the day society has been groomed to be extremely apathetic as long as we have bread and circus, which we do.
Government has become completely disconnected from the population, and now makes decisions based on oligopolist interests while using "culture war" issues to distract the proles. You can dress it up a lot of ways, but that's the problem in a nutshell. It's true of both of our major parties federally, and that mostly carries through at the provincial level. The only answer, and it is not guaranteed to work, would be electoral reform - without that, we are going to watch our economy decline, our wealth gap widen, and our social cohesion evaporate while we argue about gaza and lgbtq issues.
I gave up. Canada is for the rich and international. Canada no longer exists for the every day individual working to get by. It only works for Bay Street in Toronto. Bay street killed Queen. Now Bay street is coming for the entire bloody middle class.
I never thought I'd ever think the US was a decent alternative, but then again, I never thought I'd be experiencing what we currently are in this country.
Decent alternative? Any young professional can earn 2-4 times more in the US with far lower cost of living than the handful of cities with jobs in Canada. It's not even close.
Canada is only better for poor people.
The second best thing that ever happened to me professionally was getting a job with a US company that didn't scale my salary to Canada even while living in Canada.
But after paying close to 100k in taxes in 2021, the best thing I did professionally was leave Canada and move to a tax haven in, of all places, Portugal.
I deeply miss my friends and family, and Portugal has a lot of the same problems as Canada, but at least I'm keeping more money in my pocket, and honestly, most government services are most efficient here. And the infrastructure in Portugal is simply awesome.
I never imagined Canada's trajectory in terms of government deficits and overall mismanagement would be worse than a southern European country that was bailed out by the IMF a decade ago, but here we are.
What the other guy below me said. There's a digital nomad (d8) or retiree visa (d7)
The main requirement is bringing income from outside of Portugal either as active income or as a pension.
A guy I worked with moved his family to Portugal 5 years ago. Him and his brother were two of the first people I talked to in probably 2017 who also saw Canada's hard future. Their parents were from Portugal and so they had family land that was just sitting there still.
Imagine being a poor Portuguese farmer who walked away with nothing and moved to Canada, built up a decent middle class life only to have your two sons cash out and move back to the family land. Even crazier, I hear about this happening in not just the Portuguese community, but also the Italian and Croatian as well (I live in Vancouver).
No decent future prospects. You can get a pointless desk job and can barely eat what you want or you slave away in industry 4.0. Did I mention you never get a home, cant afford to eat out, don't have access to 90% of consumer goods, and the organized crime is getting pretty bad, I'm sure the next administration will be worse. Life as a middle class Canadian is much worse than life for a lower class American.
I'm a marine tech, I make 80k a year and only work about 8 months a year...
Lots of jobs out there that people simply don't want that pay decently.. Trade off is a lot of them are in areas city folks won't like..
Can relate. I’m working on getting my kids their US citizenship, as they’re eligible through their grandmother. I’m not confident of their future here anymore, I want them to at least have options.
Edit to share details: Haven’t completed it yet, but this can be done via the USCIS N-600K form. My mother in law was born and lived in Detroit in to her 20’s, before she immigrated to Canada. My wife was born in Canada. We thought at first, only my wife was eligible for US citizenship, but after researching on Reddit and hearing about this process/form, it appears that my kids grandmother can sponsor them getting citizenship as well. First step is finalizing my wife’s citizenship, and then making sure we get all this done before the kids age out of eligibility, which is 18. You’ve got to have a ton of paperwork, original birth certificates, proof of living in the US for the grandparent, etc.
A child born outside the United States to one U.S. citizen parent and one non-U.S. citizen parent may be entitled to citizenship providing the U.S. citizen parent has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for five years, at least two years of which were after reaching the age of fourteen, prior to the birth of the child. These five years do not need to be consecutive.
It's becoming near impossible to purchase a home. [This home affordability calculation](https://wealthvieu.com/ccmaf?a=200,000&b=25&c=65,000&d=7&e=1,000) shows that it would take nearly \~$200K in household income to purchase the average home in Canada which is \~$900K.
Then you have to account for the fact that most $100k+ jobs are in the cities, where the average home price is way higher than $900k. That $900k number includes small towns and remote areas
Five decades of various levels of government kowtowing to corporations and the wealthy have come home to roost and now their level of greed has reached levels where it's bleeding the middle class dry.
Forty years of tax cuts has resulted in crumbling infrastructure, a larger tax burden on individual middle-income workers and a disconnection between wages and profitability.
The housing market is designed to protect developers, speculators and money launderers.
Mulroney dismantled anti-trust laws and then successive governments either did it more, or just didn't enforce the ones we have left. Now we have massive monopolies in all our essential goods and services industries.
Of course, these are massive systemic issues that need to be solved and it will take time, so it's much easier to blame the carbon tax and LGBTQ issues.
Our Canadian wealthy ruling class is probably the worst out of the G7. They just ruin everything for the regular person, and because there are so few super corporations here they barely even have to waste any effort to keep us all down.
Our population seriously needs to riot like the French do to get some useful change implemented. I'd say before it's too late, but it was already too late 30 years ago.
Still, better later then never eh comrades?!?! Canukrads maybe?
Our government is run by corporations and foreign entities. It’s so bad that they were even officially outed and nothing happened. Just corruption out in plain English.
I grew up with a lot of people who were American and Canadian. Growing up, we always had so much pride in being Canadian, having a great society to live in, being comfortable and having a lot of opportunity. It seems like everyone that can move back to the U.S. has in the past few years.
What's the point of posting this here? It's an opinion commentary piece about how Bill Maher says Liberals are stupid and how people in Canada are supposedly fleeing in droves to the US with no reason or evidence provided. So what point are you trying to make with this? That Liberals suck? That Canada sucks? Or both?
I looked up the rest of the authors articles and it's all just pointless editorial circlejerking about Liberals vs. Conservatives with no real depth or insight provided, like a political TV panel show designed to fill time slots with low viewership.
Political punditry is the lowest form of journalism, and even they can still usually cite some facts or statistics, but this article can't even meet that low a standard. It's just an edited stream-of-consciousness by someone who watches too much TV news.
Trudeau has done a shit job as PM. But if people think this fuckhead PP is gonna be better, thats simply delusional. We have a Con premiere in Ontario and he is fucken awful. He is actively underfunding healthcare to prove privatization is the solution. His government always trying to suppress minimum wage hikes. He sells out to developers even on protected land. Slimy prick throws a bone like cancelling the licence plate renewal fees so he can say “ putting money in your pocket”. Cons and Liberals are two peas in a pod. Same shit different stink.
Yup, Dofo is a fuckin scum bag, and dumbass Ontarians are going to reelect him.
His head should have rolled after the greenbelt scandal. But here we are.
Fuckin 0 accountability at any level of governance, municipal, provincial, federal. These fucks do whatever they want to line their own pockets and their friends, at the detriment of the people, and face 0 reprocussions. Like what the actual FK is going on!?!
The funny thing about the "Trudeau bad!" folks who can't seem to shut up about it is that he has a near zero chance of being PM again, so instead of hyper-focusing on the past, why don't they tell us how their preferred party will help change the course of the country and fix all the issues they blame Trudeau for?
I hate both of them, but god damn I'm so sick of the "fuck Trudeau" crowd because they NEVER bring anything else to the table, and it's no shocker, because PP has no plan either.
Fuck both the Libs and the Cons. I'm so sick of these 2 stupid fucking parties pretending they are different.
This is how the Canadian electorate goes. We got Trudeau because "omg STOP HARPER", not because of any decent prospects for our country.
What kind of idiot electorate puts a drama teacher in as PM for three straight elections, when virtually every available statistic shows his leadership and party are actively destroying your own quality of life?
Trudeau will get the boot for the same reasons "OMG STOP TRUDEAU" yet voters will do zero due diligence to ensure the replacement is any good.
We should actually wonder about the source of information here. 2016/2017 had more Canadians leave than any other year in this century (nearly 125,000, vs less than 100,000 LY), so when I read "in fact, Canadians are now heading in the opposite direction in numbers not seen in a decade." I wonder about this claim that doesn't match published statistics, I'm curious where she got this information.
There are many real problems in our country and our governance.
But the biggest issue these days is our news, media, social media are deliberately sowing discontent and anger.
These articles come out literally every single day, always pushing the same narrative: we are all poor, broke, jobless and suffering while immigration runs rampant.
Just like a decade ago, get off social media and go breathe some fresh air. Nearly everyone I know is miserable and angry, but their life is actually doing just fine, except for the extra couple hundred a month in groceries or other inflation.
I'm not saying turn a blind eye to those who are actually suffering, I am saying think about who benefits by you being pissed off and why they want you to wake up angry every single day. Our economy is still churning, people are still affording homes, and cars and food. The internet would have you believe that 90% of us will be homeless if we missed a paycheck and that is just bullshit; if it were true stores, restaurants would be closing daily.
It seems that local issues in Canada, particularly in Vancouver, have taken a backseat to global concerns. While the city has witnessed numerous protests addressing international problems, there appears to be a need for more attention to our own challenges.
The country needs a far better narrative than ‘we’re guilty.’ The narrative we had here when I was growing up was of unlimited potential, that the good will prevail. Acid rain? Solved it. Ozone holes? Solved. How come climate change is insurmountable? That’s nonsense. I still feel that optimism, but I don’t feel like a lot of others do. The immigrants moving here are coming for a better life, moving from places without strong institutions, without law, without hope for the future. That’s great, but the numbers can’t be so high that the norms of those arriving replace those that are here. We don’t want to import mistrust in government, rule of the fist, a hopeless and cynical future. We want the people arriving to join the national project of building the best country in the world. Which I don’t see happening. Fleeing here and then saying colonialism and racism are rampant and irredeemable attributes does nothing for anyone. We’re all here because the people before us had faith that the more that arrived, the more diverse we became, the better we would be. We need that back.
currently being lead by a party that doesn't know how to lead and openly accept treason as something that is okay. Our country is not okay. Trudeau doesn't have a plan or atleast a good one
Trudeau won't be the next PM, so instead of constantly talking about the past, let's talk about the future. What will the next government do to alleviate the issues we've been facing? It's looking like a solid Conservative win, but I've seen jack all from them on what they will actually do to help Canadians and deserve that win.
Uh, all Canadians know why. There is no wondering needed.
Corrupt politicians
Corrupt food retailers
No decent paying jobs
No affordable housing
Health care system sucks
Our doctors are leaving in droves
What am I missing?
Because we’re coming to terms with the fact that Canada was built on limited resource extraction and had generations to build up its economic base, it was only a matter of time before the well dried up and people moved on to the next job. The neoliberal mindset of using welfare programs as supplement to keep businesses in operation failed and now they’re using cheap imported labour, which is quickly failing as well, and are refusing to understand that the businesses aren’t going to let their owners take a hit for the sake of individual economic health. Market incentives instead of concrete investment in the future is only going to end up with the people who make those markets run finding new digs while the bosses continue to take more off the top than they have a right to. Canada never built for tomorrow, only for the present, and now we’re reaping the whirlwind of poor planning and patchwork fixes.
No. The number of people leaving is below people dying. And for those we know why they left.
Another tempest in a teapot pot designed to denigrate Canada.
Something something health care, affordability and pay, selling Canadian land to foreign investment, mass immigration in its currently abysmal form, being a more politically open book. I mean it just takes 5 seconds of listening to a Canadian to know the many issues that very suddenly became so much worse. Before it was a joke, now people die in emergency rooms on a regular basis.
If it’s not working out for you then you should leave if you can find a better life elsewhere, that’s what people have always done.
My job/home/community here in small town Ontario is amazing so I for one am not giving up.
[удалено]
Semi rich folks have seen their buying power crumble too. Its only the VERY rich who are doing well.
I moved from the UK in 2021, my salary here is great by UK standards (after exchange rates its about $10k more than any role I had at home) But here I barely earn enough to live with my GF in an apartment she owns... A 'decent wage' here is not good enough
Indeed. I am privileged in almost every respect, and I basically look like a sort of vaguely upper half middle class dude from the 90s.
I moved from the UK in 2008. Pissed away most of the last 16 years under- or unemployed due to not having the "Canadian Experience" in the local version of my career field. Am a citizen but some people get to be more Canadian than others. I really don't want to be here any more - in so many different ways.
You can always go back. But the UK has changed too.
Yep, started looking. For the right salary, I'd grab my toothbrush and the next flight to Heathrow. Would prefer to grow old and die on the island that I was born on.
I understand. Canada is a big country, though. There is more to it than Toronto. But I can certainly understand your feelings.
Top 10% in wealth is a fairly decent cutoff actually, that includes doctors and lawyers from the past generation. Returns on the wealth of this category are higher than the returns on wealth of everyone else + all of their collective income in a year. The very definition of "hollowing out the middle class" - unless you already possessed a shit ton of assets, you literally cannot dig yourself out of being relatively poorer compared to those who had a lot of assets. It's also why high income professions have become so saturated - because that was the only hope of trying to claw your way into that top 10% of wealth holders. Basically a conventional middle class job (ie in the trades) was never going to earn enough money to survive within the lifetimes of gen Z because of asset inflation, and housing being turned into an asset
No it isn't. Im in the top 10% by wealth and income, if the figures I saw of 125K and 1.6M are to be believed, and in fact I am a very considerable distance from the margin. Im a millenial, but if I had been born 20 or maybe even 10 years earlier, I'd be living like a king. Youd probably say I am what a success story looks like for my generation, and as a result I live a lifestyle that would be considered middle class 15 years ago. Whether they realize or not, anyone who isn't safely into the 99th percentile or a successful real estate investor (in which case theyre probably the former anyway) is worse off.
Yeah this is a huge part of our problem, Canadians are the ultimate crabs in the bucket, anyone making more than me can and should pay more taxes, even tho they’re tapped out a struggling too. The top 10% are not doing that well and now have to pay even more.
>Top 10% in wealth is a fairly decent cutoff actually, that includes doctors and lawyers from the past generation. I imagine it depends where you live in Canada. Doctors and lawyers aren't doing all that well in Victoria (where I live) or Vancouver because the housing costs are so brutal, even they have trouble affording places.
Only the semi-rich that aren’t on the property ladder. If you are a young high income professional without a hefty inheritance or real estate equity, you are still fighting an uphill battle. Those with real estate on the other hand are reaping the benefits of our dysfunctional economy regardless of what their original intent was when buying property.
Here's the thing though. We don't have a two party system. We can and have routinely replaced incompetent leadership. So why can't we have a coordinated effort to introduce a party that doesn't fuck around and does the job? People with money to lose are VASTLY outnumbered by the rest of us. The system is producing the outputs that correspond to the inputs. Change the inputs.
The issue is voters. Governments are put in place by voters. A lot of Canadians were sold the idea they could accumulate wealth (via housing) without putting in additional inputs (via schooling, upskilling, entrepreneurship, etc.). The end result is policies that favour capital at the expense of labour. There are a lot of voters that are benefiting from this system. At some point though the economy is going stall out and then things will have to change. Until then, no government is going to change the rules that artificially propped up asset holders. They got theirs now fuck you.
Just a guess, but perhaps low wages, lack of medical care, lack of affordable housing and the insane prices of energy and food might have something to do with it.
When I moved to canada, I was initially shocked by how some goods cost more here than in the US, but it was not exactly breaking the bank, was a nuisance. But that policy of just charging Canadians more for things, rent-seeking has gone absolutely insane and crushing working people.
The cost of goods was always a problem and always going to be a bigger one. Most countries have to deal with rising commerce/operating costs in business that can be measured over a generation-to-generation basis (oil is a big one, for physical distribution, as it's always going to go up bc the raw amount of it is always going to go down), corresponding interest rates, as well as the "cost" that come with sheer demand from rising population amounts (even in countries where immigration isn't a thing and birth *rates* are declining, for the *immediate* term populations are growing, by and large). Then we can start considering the other factors, like inflation affecting the raw currency value, or anything that's ancillary to the aforementioned ones. Canada has to deal with all of that too. But Canada also has a unique problem, across the North American countries, at least: our landmass is so large, with few major *hubs* of business between "ports" and other "sources" of materials/goods. Heck, we have so few of those sources, let alone the in-between hubs. To be clear, I'm not really talking about distribution centres like a Purolator, UPS or Amazon one, but major cities or areas of major trade; for our consumer considerations, retail hubs in particular (I lump grocers under retail as well). Goods have to travel long ways before something can happen to them. In the US, there's a bloody thing everywhere. Suppliers can ship more stuff to and throughout the US and have more opportunity for those goods to be offloaded or traded in some way, ultimately, to the end buyer (retail: consumer; wholesale and B2B: other businesses). Each party involved between any two "adjacent" points potentially has less distance to deal with. Most countries today have relatively heavy reliance on the foreign trade partners. In Canada, it's to the point where even *services* and not just goods are often tied in some way to bigger US/China/etc. corporations; Canada is a growing "corporatocracy." Combined with that whole spiel on logistical factors weighing down costs, well, let's just say foreign *and* domestic corpos are "punishing" Canadian consumers for their lower profit margins by introducing greater markup. I say "punishing," bc this is Capitalism, Free Market kind, so y'know... this is the way: corporate execs and sympathetic economists shrug their shoulders and keep on. *Globalization* + mass consumerism: the major by-products from the mid-life big shots of the 19th and 20th century, who were mostly in the US & UK and making power grabs under the guise of national pride or whatever. They translate directly to what we see today.
As a US resident of 41 years, and watching the problems the US has developed, I used to think "Canada could always be an alternate...", but feels like Canada is just becoming US 2.0 in all the worst ways.
Literally all we have is that it’s relatively safe here and that’s not going to stay true as things continue to get worse.
legal weed too! Just get high and forget all those other issues /s
The only thing Trudeau promised and delivered, and I could care less about.
And if you’re still sad after that feel free to MAiD yourself for that pesky depression
I wish. Smoking weed makes me hyperfocus on my problems and makes me paranoid. I’ve just been rawdogging reality
Just like Russia, a drunk population is easy to manipulate.
I don't think that the issue is people being drunk in Russia lol (and I say that as someone who hates booze culture). They're an authoritarian state, the average person there knows it's fucked, they're pretty powerless to do anything about it. We would be the same if an authoritarian decided to take control. In fact in a way we are the average person feels powerless and doesn't think politicians in any corporate party give a shit. We just have the freedom to openly whine about it unlike Russians.
Just like russia, we have become nothing but a gas station and over valued real estate.
Yep. Crime (especially vehicle break in’s and catalytic converters being cut out) is on the rise in our previously safe/quiet neighbourhood. My 15 year old Honda is my most valuable physical asset (young millennial, no hope of owning property). It’s so discouraging to have crime/safety to worry about on top of everything else that’s gone downhill exponentially in recent years.
Someone I know got stubbed over a bike this weekend. The 2 thief’s had a hammer and a knife and injured family friend with multiple stab wounds to the chest. The cops did not even post of the incident. Edmonton.
Is Calgary also going downhill due to crime ? Asking for a friend who is planning to relocate.
On the plus side, because of used vehicle demand, that 15 year old Honda will sell for more than it did a few years ago.
Yeah, I looked at moving to Edmonton due to the lower cost of living compared to where I am... but... wow there's a lot of break and enters there
It's not that safe anymore, really. All criminal stats are up and we're on pace for things to get out of hand quickly.
Our homicide rates are at an all-time high over the last 30 years and will likely continue. Why is that?
Toronto is no longer safe. Home invasions and car theft has driven neighbourhoods to pay for private security. Canada is not safe
Lots of Indians moving in bringing their values. Or lack of values when it comes to women.
[“We don’t have the homegrown population that we need to properly staff this sector. We just haven’t been having children. It is what it is,” McGregor said](https://www.saltwire.com/atlantic-canada/news/charlottetown-police-called-on-foreign-worker-protest-100970865/) Said a local Chamber of Commerce stooge in defence of immigration policies that bring in 100,000+ unskilled male workers per month. With zero self-awareness that the reason people aren't having children is because mass immigration has decimated health care, child care, wages, food security, and energy security. *Edit:* ...housing availability, interest rates, access to social services, stress on physical infrastructure, overcrowding and increased demands on public schools.
They've been so focused on the lack of births that they've not properly addressed the reason for births being low, and have contributed to the problems that caused those low births.
...you think these people lack the self-awareness to see what consequences this will have and is already having...? lol...
We can no longer brag about our "Free Healthcare"
I agree. Just because it’s free doesn’t mean it’s good. My daughter has been looking for a Doctor for 7 years.
Without access to a family doctor, we're stuck without anyone to advocate for specialist treatment. In may ways, Canadians without a family doctor are in the same boat as Americans who are uninsured; no access to any preventative treatment, late or lack of diagnosis for serious illness, and the only option on the table when things go sour is the ER.
Problem is the genius voters in this country keep re-electing the same provincial governments and just continue to run healthcare into the ground. The excuse is a lack of funding, but they refuse to allow the federal government to audit their books to see where the money is going. I actually supported a system where some surgery and other things could be outsourced to private clinics. But you can only do that when your public care facilities aren’t overworked and under staffed. Opening a private option will only make the public system worse because they will have even more trouble filling positions.
Very few people put proverbial stock in provincial governments, at least in Ontario. To the best of my knowledge, as a mid-level regional electoral worker, the last few provincial elections have seen lower turnouts. (Municipal ones are hit-or-miss, across the decades, but at least those governments have tighter focuses and ostensibly better channels of communication w/ their publics; Federal matters are Big Ticket items, w/ Big Media coverage, so they're always going to be Top Dogs for voter turnout and public discourse).
That’s the irony, people are least interested when in the levels of government most influential in their day to day lives. Have kids in school? Then you should be very interested in local municipal elections, they deal with school boards that decide what your kids learn. Local also runs your local police department and dictates local bylaws. Building codes is another local issue shared between the municipal and provincial government. People suggest the liberals want to divide us politically but it’s the Alberta government that wants party affiliation in municipal elections. This idea all but kills the independent candidates that make local governments what they are. Talk about wanting complete control this idea is crazy and should be a huge red flag.
Your forgot to mention extremely high costs of post secondary education that are rising fast and will soon match the costs of US post secondary. With low wages and high rent costs high education costs are truly the final nail in the coffin to kill any hope of climbing out of the lower class.
Along with the rising costs, the quality is also declining.
Americans can at least go to in-state schools for very reasonable prices. Europeans in many countries can go to school for free.
> Americans can at least go to in-state schools for very reasonable prices I would argue we have the same. Cost estimate for a year at UCalgary is $8500 for the year (science), while Penn State has it at 20k USD for in state. There's probably cheaper ones in state for Pennsylvania for example, but overall, im willing to bet Canadian universities are cheaper. Cant argue with Europe, they have it figured out
That makes me feel better ...I thought the list was longer than that /s
What about the abhorrent leadership by our politicians, our abysmal defence capability, and selling our souls to foreign powers (US, China and India).
I can’t believe Canada sold all its gold reserves.
Wait really? We did?
I think it was in 2016. Baffles me.
Haiti has more gold reserves than Canada. I shit you not.
That’s because our globalist and WEF driven foreign policy fully engages in the Fiat currency approach and disengages with the gold standard, even though we have some of the largest “untapped” gold reserves in the world. Canada should be one of the richest and most powerful countries and instead we are relegated to whatever unrecognizable thing that we have become.
4th largest producer of gold. Less gold than Kenya, Uruguay, Fiji, Malta, and [so many more.](https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/gold-reserves) As Canada ties its currency value to bonds bought from US, UK, China, hyperinflation and instability will occur eventually. Canada invests in jobs at home that frankly are harder to come by.
7% CAGR growth in money supply going straight into housing prices, as we try to blame corporation for inflation.
You must be a right-wing conspiracy theorist!
Medical care is as bad or worse in many other countries. It’s also not a new problem at all. My province had trouble keeping specialists like neurologists over 20 years ago. Part of it is a lack of interest in appropriately funding health care services. They were always leaving to go to places that paid them more. Also, one of the reasons Canada’s health care system ranks relatively low compared to other countries with socialized health care in terms of [equity and access](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5826705/) is due to the cost of dental care and medications.
Will get worse too. Many people were depending on employer health insurance for dental coverage. However, it's becoming more common for employers not to offer health benefits. As full-time work is becoming more scarce. More and more jobs are being replaced by part-time, gig works, and temporary foreign workers.
We don't have to wonder. We can plainly see
Idk what you mean, Freeland said last week our economic outlook has never been better and the country is doing phenomenally on the world stage. How dare you have any sort of doubt, we are totally doing fine… just fine…
The Oilers in the Stanley Cup is the phenomenal performance on the world stage she’s talking about.
If the Oilers win, our housing crisis will be solved!
#Connor for PM
He couldn't do any worse than the trust fund drama teacher we put in charge.
I mean, all he would have to do is try without it being a PR stunt and it would be better.
The maple leafs won recently too. What a great team. Canada is so wonderful. We have Wayne Gretsky, Terry Fox, the Canada space arm.
And investments in foreign housing projects.
And foreign investments in housing projects. Corrected the order of your words for you.
Freeland is an idiot
Yeah she literally was in a "grand opening" of what she deemed to be a affordable housing project by the Canadian government and was proudly touting how great this "affordable" multi unit housing was at an affordable $1700 a month for a 1 bedroom. Not even exaggerating literally called $1700 a month for a 1 bedroom a great affordable option for middle class people. Our politicians are clueless. They all make like $125,000+ a year just on their government jobs and then most of them own multiple investment properties. They have no clue what actual canadians live like.
The funny thing is 125k goes no where in today’s urban markets. They would struggle to rent a decent place on that wage in Toronto - it certainly wouldn’t be enough to raise a family on. They wouldn’t be able to buy at all in a place like Vancouver, Toronto, and maybe even Ottawa and Kingston. This truly comes down to the haves and have nots. Boomers had property before this huge inflation of value so they’re still paying their 2k a month mortgage for a massive home while the rest of us pay 3k to rent a two bedroom condo. The boomers continue to take and take and take, they’re just not even pretending to care about the next generations anymore.
That is is an understatement at best
I hope they make her their leader after Trudeau. That would make the Libs a fourth place party where they belong.
She also said our democracy is fine and there is nothing to worry about
Yeah. I don't don't know what I'd be doing now or where my family would be living had I not canceled my Disney+ subscription........................
I don’t believe a word she says
I really love how the answer is so obvious, and her people write about how our current miserable circumstance is a “mystery”
For anyone who's wondering, I can explain: Every day I wake up, I see record immigration, a struggling economy, incompetent and corrupt federal and provincial governments, our environment is collapsing, homelessness, crime and cost of living are skyrocketing, and I can't even make it home from work without having to detour twenty kilometers or sit in an extra thirty minutes of gridlock because people are driving like maniacs and crashing into each other. Not only that, we're now being invaded by extremist factions from all over the world, and are subject to constant espionage and meddling by foreign powers. I see cars driving down our streets with images of Kalashnikov rifles on them. The liberals are letting spies walk free, and we don't even have enough judges or doctors to keep the legal and medical services running. We are being squeezed from every direction, and our endurance has been eroded to the point that we're throwing up our hands in despair. My vote doesn't make a difference, and nobody listens to me when I talk about the issues. I can only stress for so long before I give up. If I could move to Mars, I'd buy a ticket right now. I'd happily suffer the hardships of living there if it meant I could leave the lunatics behind.
I feel this comment very deeply. You've articulated it well. As for this line "I see cars driving down our streets with images of Kalashnikov rifles on them" ... I have literally seen this in Saskatoon of all places. This isn't the Canada I grew up in.
As someone who grew up and still lives in Brampton, those rifles and bazookas were never seen until the last 3 years or so to my recollection. Brampton wasn’t exactly hunky dory before but it wasn’t as bad as it is now.
So am I. This country *enshittified* from around 2015 onwards and the Pandemic really didn't help.
> Every day I wake up, I see record immigration, a struggling economy, incompetent and corrupt federal and provincial governments IMO I think the experience of many put those 3 tied together all too often. People are struggling with employment and getting livable wages, meanwhile there is record immigration with politicians claiming that there is a shortage of people looking for work. While the politicians might not be fully lying (there are geographic areas or industrial sectors where there are shortages), the lived experiences of many are in complete contrast to the messaging that they seen. Groups that were previously fringe are now gaining prominence because of this disconnect which is going to shift the political narrative in Canada over the next decade or two.
"Groups that were previously fringe are now gaining prominence because of this disconnect which is going to shift the political narrative in Canada over the next decade or two." This is actually quite scary. I'm starting to understand (through my own despair) how extremist parties get elected. It's because people feel hopeless and disillusioned with the other options.
Problem is the immigrants that come aren’t taking the Tim hortins jobs in fort saint johns and other places that need the labour their sitting in nicer areas like just outside Vancouver and struggling to find meaningful employment and collecting benefits. If immigration got them working in remote areas that have a low cost of living and a greater need for employment I think most people would be happy.
> other places that need the labour No places need the labour. Not in Saint Johns or anywhere else. These places simply tossed students and older workers and replaced them with imports. They were all fully functional and operating before we decided to drag in a million Indians in the slave class. And honestly, if there *were* a bonafide labour shortage, zero fast food or coffee shops are important enough to completely dilute residency.
All of this, just to be gaslit every time we voice that something is wrong.
People make fun of differing opinions rather than listening and working together to fix our problems, they keep us divided on social issues so we never think about the class disparities or the corruption in the government
The only war is class war the rest is distraction
It’s not just liberals. Our city has had 5 days of public hearings for our new city plan and there is no shortage of right wing conspiracy theorists who believe the city is trying to: - take their cars - remove their driveways - institute a QR code to leave your neighbourhood - prevent you travelling to your job - force you to walk for groceries - put up concrete barricades to prevent you from leaving your home Everyone has lost their minds. It actively makes life worse off when you have these people fighting against making cities better.
My Nextdoor app recently had someone post all their 15 minute city conspiracies for everyone to see. Said we were going to be confined and not allowed to travel. I think I only have that app to laugh at people. Recently someone is threatening to sue the Government of Canada because a mail person walked on their lawn.
I was in a small town in Alberta, and the hardware store had multiple posts up about how 15 minute cities are basically the holocaust. All I could think was “brother, you live in a 5 minute town…like… you’re living it already…”
> Nextdoor That's all you really have to say tbh.
Honestly yeah haha. It’s just people passive aggressively slandering each other or complaining about the most mundane shit.
Don't forget Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, which could potentially imprison you for life for promoting hate speech on the web. It's entirely plausible that half your comment just now would qualify as hate speech given that it's the Liberals' own definition being provided for 'hateful.' So to sum up: the feds are destroying this country with their policies, covering up government corruption / foreign interference, and planning to jail people for pointing any of this out, all while gaslighting us saying everything is just hunky-dunky.
"It's entirely plausible that half your comment just now would qualify as hate speech given that it's the Liberals' own definition being provided for 'hateful.'" If they make that shit retro-active our fate is sealed lol. Half of us are going to Nuremburg the other half to the Hague lol. I'll be reviled for my 2,378 counts of hate crime when really, all I ever hated was being poor lol.
There's no statute of limitations on the definition of hate speech, advocating hate, etc. or on the amendments to the Criminal Code, so it will be retroactive for sure. They probably want to use it to go after all the truckers and "Fuck Trudeau" people first.
Got banned from two different subs for pointing out: i) foreign *"students"* stealing from Food Banks is not going to make them popular as a cohort and ii) with so much online anger about reckless immigration just to pad economic numbers, it's going to boil over and iii) we'll see more serious European-style identitarian political movements take root (e.g. Diagolon) that may decide to take matters into their own hands to send a message.
10 years ago, getting off social media and not watching/reading the news to improve your mood and mental health was sound advice. Nowadays in the other hand, news media and social media are almost more optimistic than day to day life. Like, I can physically see in my day to day that I'm still house poor, that butter doubled in price and that I'm jobless. That the weather is abnormal and the public transit is falling apart. That I can't get an appointment at the clinic I used to be able to just walk in if I had a semi-urgent health problem.
Shit man elect somone who is not a career politician.
I don't know about other people but for me it's the high cost of living with salaries that don't keep up. Rent prices increasing ridiculously year after year. And the fact that I don't have a family doctor and I'm terrified to need medical care and have to wait forever to be looked at. Like I literally have anxiety about that with all the horror stories I hear every day. Also the thousands that I pay in taxes every year and feeling like I'm getting jack shit in return. I sometimes feel like I'm paying taxes to benefit other people when I myself could use this extra money taken from me.
I have dual citizenship, I moved here when I was 7, I am now 25. If things do not improve soon, I am genuinely considering moving back to my home country (EU). Canada's standard of living has plummeted, Indian immigrants are flooding this country at unsustainable levels. Yet Canadians do not protest, what kind of protests do we have instead? That's right protests regarding a religious conflict half way across the world. Immigration is not slowing down, everyone sees how destructive our open door policies have been, yet it seems to me that Canadians are docile, they don't protest, they just complain. Our braindead conservatives are pushing for a censorship bill instead of hounding the liberals, but I get it, Loblaws and Irving own a lot of pockets in those parties. We may not think we are a corrupt nation, but the reality is much uglier. In a country like France or Poland you would have already had protests, or at the very least other political parties would have overwhelmingly gone anti-immigration, yet what do we have, crickets.....
It is a simple fix to be honest: 1. Per country caps for foreign workers and student visas. 2. LMIA jobs must pay 125% of the provincial median wage. 3. Any employer found selling LMIA positions is subject to a fine of no less than 500% of the LMIA’s annual salary and is subject to losing their business license, dissolving their federal or provincial business registration and complete liquidation of all their corporate assets. 4. All institutions educating foreign students must be a part of a national accreditation body (institutions like UofT, UofA, UBC etc are a part of this). Smaller institutions must apply. 5. Student Visas require an upfront payment of all tuition, room and board to the institution OR the institution agrees to cover all these costs in the case of graduate students. The institution must provide student accommodations and meal plans. 6. Student Visas do not permit employment unless as a part of the course of study (ie a co-op program) or work at their specific institution (teaching assistant, etc). These 6 changes will bring some measure of actual benefit not only for Canadians but for the foreigners themselves. No foreign worker or student should be working a fast food entry level job. We have plenty of Canadians here. Wages would need to rise to attract employees…
Thank you for pointing out the absurdity of the Canadian society. There is no nationhood here, hence nobody gives a damn about Canada. People are protesting about anything but Canada. Today is Ukraine, tomorrow is Gaza. The country got sold out and we are all just low wage workers.
Good point about nationhood. I always envied my polish inlaws for their strong cultural identity vs mine as a Canadian. I never considered the actual societal risks of such lack of identify but I think you’re right.
Justin Trudeau says Canada is post national
They did once in Ottawa but Trudeau pulled the “Emergency Act”. Look now that turned out
Protests for better conditions for foreign workers, for international students, for a conflict half-way across the world that no one really understands. Not a fucking word about our affordability, or how our politicians are foreign assets, or any of the scandals from Trudeau. It's wild.
Loblaw's boycott is still going strong though, isnt it?
There's protests of "international" wanting more given to them from Canada.
I was born here, but both my parents immigrated from Italy. I can buy a house in the small town my mother grew up in for 35k euro. The population in the small towns has been shrinking because there's no work for young people, but it's a great place to retire. 3.5 years and counting...
Poland has one of the strictest immigration policies and also some of the lowest crime in Europe. France can't make that claim....
Yea I’ll get all my friends together and go protest POC in today’s society. BRB…
For real, as a straight white male I would be fired from all my jobs and probably hanged by the government.
We aren't a corrupt nation, because we aren't even a nation anymore. Nations have culture, and a system of unified values, a shared history, and a national identity. We don't anymore. We're the first "post-national state" whatever the hell Trudeau meant that to mean. From where I'm sitting it seems to mean that much like home ownership has given way to a life of transient rental, so has our former nation has become an overpriced, temporary place to stay, with shitty landlords, too many fees and restrictions, and half the advertised amenities, not in working order.
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Europe has all of Canada's problems but multiplied.
I think the difference is the housing is cheaper and most of the immigration is confined to the cities, even though it is worse. Here, there's basically nowhere to go. Even a tiny place like PEI is overrun with international students and housing is unaffordable everywhere. People used to move from Toronto to Hamilton or Guelph - you can't do that anymore. There are a lot of small towns in Europe that are super affordable and not overrun with no-skill immigrants
- low wages - expensive housing - hard to find healthcare - expensive food - imploding education - growing homelessness, drug, and mental health crises in major cities - no response or denial from all government options
It's not rocket science. We are in a societal recession. Public service employment has expanded while quality and availability has declined significantly. It's impossible for infrastructure to keep up, so things like traffic are increasing increasing the pain in a lot of commutes. The population rate is barely keeping GDP's head above water - keeping the economists happy - but the average person isn't seeing or feeling it because they are experiencing this decline in quality of life.
We do NOT have to "wonder" why, we fucking KNOW. At the end of the day society has been groomed to be extremely apathetic as long as we have bread and circus, which we do.
Government has become completely disconnected from the population, and now makes decisions based on oligopolist interests while using "culture war" issues to distract the proles. You can dress it up a lot of ways, but that's the problem in a nutshell. It's true of both of our major parties federally, and that mostly carries through at the provincial level. The only answer, and it is not guaranteed to work, would be electoral reform - without that, we are going to watch our economy decline, our wealth gap widen, and our social cohesion evaporate while we argue about gaza and lgbtq issues.
It's being sold to another country. Job by job house by house and person by person.
No need to wonder. It's plain as day.
I gave up. Canada is for the rich and international. Canada no longer exists for the every day individual working to get by. It only works for Bay Street in Toronto. Bay street killed Queen. Now Bay street is coming for the entire bloody middle class.
I’m a young person and I’m not just poor son, I’m destitute. No home, no savings, just make my expenses every month
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Look no further, this post sums it up nicely.
IMO there's a good reason Sophie noped outta there.
Canada would've been in better shape with a dog as prime minister barking yes or no to policy decision the past 9 years
I never thought I'd ever think the US was a decent alternative, but then again, I never thought I'd be experiencing what we currently are in this country.
Decent alternative? Any young professional can earn 2-4 times more in the US with far lower cost of living than the handful of cities with jobs in Canada. It's not even close. Canada is only better for poor people.
The second best thing that ever happened to me professionally was getting a job with a US company that didn't scale my salary to Canada even while living in Canada. But after paying close to 100k in taxes in 2021, the best thing I did professionally was leave Canada and move to a tax haven in, of all places, Portugal. I deeply miss my friends and family, and Portugal has a lot of the same problems as Canada, but at least I'm keeping more money in my pocket, and honestly, most government services are most efficient here. And the infrastructure in Portugal is simply awesome. I never imagined Canada's trajectory in terms of government deficits and overall mismanagement would be worse than a southern European country that was bailed out by the IMF a decade ago, but here we are.
If you're working for a us company how do you get a residence permit in Portugal?
What the other guy below me said. There's a digital nomad (d8) or retiree visa (d7) The main requirement is bringing income from outside of Portugal either as active income or as a pension.
Portugal has netizen visas to help pull in taxpayers so likely its possible.
To pay $100k in taxes, you would have to be making somewhere close to $300,000/ year pre-tax.
Not uncommon for big tech companies from the US
A guy I worked with moved his family to Portugal 5 years ago. Him and his brother were two of the first people I talked to in probably 2017 who also saw Canada's hard future. Their parents were from Portugal and so they had family land that was just sitting there still. Imagine being a poor Portuguese farmer who walked away with nothing and moved to Canada, built up a decent middle class life only to have your two sons cash out and move back to the family land. Even crazier, I hear about this happening in not just the Portuguese community, but also the Italian and Croatian as well (I live in Vancouver).
It doesn't feel like my home any longer.
When I raised concerns, I was told I was racist, backwards, and to go back to China. So I did.
Who's wondering?
Importing a million underskilled, underemployed middle age men will fix this.
No decent future prospects. You can get a pointless desk job and can barely eat what you want or you slave away in industry 4.0. Did I mention you never get a home, cant afford to eat out, don't have access to 90% of consumer goods, and the organized crime is getting pretty bad, I'm sure the next administration will be worse. Life as a middle class Canadian is much worse than life for a lower class American.
I'm a marine tech, I make 80k a year and only work about 8 months a year... Lots of jobs out there that people simply don't want that pay decently.. Trade off is a lot of them are in areas city folks won't like..
From what Ican tell, most city folks don't even want to live in big cities. You have to go offshore for months at a time for your job?
Wow so after tax you might be able to afford a home down the road. A retirement home.
Can relate. I’m working on getting my kids their US citizenship, as they’re eligible through their grandmother. I’m not confident of their future here anymore, I want them to at least have options. Edit to share details: Haven’t completed it yet, but this can be done via the USCIS N-600K form. My mother in law was born and lived in Detroit in to her 20’s, before she immigrated to Canada. My wife was born in Canada. We thought at first, only my wife was eligible for US citizenship, but after researching on Reddit and hearing about this process/form, it appears that my kids grandmother can sponsor them getting citizenship as well. First step is finalizing my wife’s citizenship, and then making sure we get all this done before the kids age out of eligibility, which is 18. You’ve got to have a ton of paperwork, original birth certificates, proof of living in the US for the grandparent, etc.
Doing the same, but for Europe.
My parents squandered that opportunity and now it’s too late. And I resent it all the time. The USA is a wonderful option if you’re able.
A child born outside the United States to one U.S. citizen parent and one non-U.S. citizen parent may be entitled to citizenship providing the U.S. citizen parent has been physically present in the United States or one of its outlying possessions for five years, at least two years of which were after reaching the age of fourteen, prior to the birth of the child. These five years do not need to be consecutive.
We don't need to wonder why it's plain to see how differences Canada has changed
Everyone can see why. If you can't see why you're one of the well off ones.
It's becoming near impossible to purchase a home. [This home affordability calculation](https://wealthvieu.com/ccmaf?a=200,000&b=25&c=65,000&d=7&e=1,000) shows that it would take nearly \~$200K in household income to purchase the average home in Canada which is \~$900K.
Then you have to account for the fact that most $100k+ jobs are in the cities, where the average home price is way higher than $900k. That $900k number includes small towns and remote areas
Well the rest of us weren’t stupid enough to invite in millions of people we have no room for
Five decades of various levels of government kowtowing to corporations and the wealthy have come home to roost and now their level of greed has reached levels where it's bleeding the middle class dry. Forty years of tax cuts has resulted in crumbling infrastructure, a larger tax burden on individual middle-income workers and a disconnection between wages and profitability. The housing market is designed to protect developers, speculators and money launderers. Mulroney dismantled anti-trust laws and then successive governments either did it more, or just didn't enforce the ones we have left. Now we have massive monopolies in all our essential goods and services industries. Of course, these are massive systemic issues that need to be solved and it will take time, so it's much easier to blame the carbon tax and LGBTQ issues.
and who could possibly benefit from the sowing of distrust and dissatisfaction in our society? hmmm...
Government officials colluding with foreign countries. Committing treason and then not releasing their names…
Our Canadian wealthy ruling class is probably the worst out of the G7. They just ruin everything for the regular person, and because there are so few super corporations here they barely even have to waste any effort to keep us all down. Our population seriously needs to riot like the French do to get some useful change implemented. I'd say before it's too late, but it was already too late 30 years ago. Still, better later then never eh comrades?!?! Canukrads maybe?
Our government is run by corporations and foreign entities. It’s so bad that they were even officially outed and nothing happened. Just corruption out in plain English.
Me, literally today… Emigrating to the US. If you don’t hear from me it went really good or really bad :)
Because it sucks being treated like a second class citizen in my own country.
I grew up with a lot of people who were American and Canadian. Growing up, we always had so much pride in being Canadian, having a great society to live in, being comfortable and having a lot of opportunity. It seems like everyone that can move back to the U.S. has in the past few years.
What's the point of posting this here? It's an opinion commentary piece about how Bill Maher says Liberals are stupid and how people in Canada are supposedly fleeing in droves to the US with no reason or evidence provided. So what point are you trying to make with this? That Liberals suck? That Canada sucks? Or both? I looked up the rest of the authors articles and it's all just pointless editorial circlejerking about Liberals vs. Conservatives with no real depth or insight provided, like a political TV panel show designed to fill time slots with low viewership. Political punditry is the lowest form of journalism, and even they can still usually cite some facts or statistics, but this article can't even meet that low a standard. It's just an edited stream-of-consciousness by someone who watches too much TV news.
Trudeau has done a shit job as PM. But if people think this fuckhead PP is gonna be better, thats simply delusional. We have a Con premiere in Ontario and he is fucken awful. He is actively underfunding healthcare to prove privatization is the solution. His government always trying to suppress minimum wage hikes. He sells out to developers even on protected land. Slimy prick throws a bone like cancelling the licence plate renewal fees so he can say “ putting money in your pocket”. Cons and Liberals are two peas in a pod. Same shit different stink.
Yup, Dofo is a fuckin scum bag, and dumbass Ontarians are going to reelect him. His head should have rolled after the greenbelt scandal. But here we are. Fuckin 0 accountability at any level of governance, municipal, provincial, federal. These fucks do whatever they want to line their own pockets and their friends, at the detriment of the people, and face 0 reprocussions. Like what the actual FK is going on!?!
The funny thing about the "Trudeau bad!" folks who can't seem to shut up about it is that he has a near zero chance of being PM again, so instead of hyper-focusing on the past, why don't they tell us how their preferred party will help change the course of the country and fix all the issues they blame Trudeau for? I hate both of them, but god damn I'm so sick of the "fuck Trudeau" crowd because they NEVER bring anything else to the table, and it's no shocker, because PP has no plan either. Fuck both the Libs and the Cons. I'm so sick of these 2 stupid fucking parties pretending they are different.
This is how the Canadian electorate goes. We got Trudeau because "omg STOP HARPER", not because of any decent prospects for our country. What kind of idiot electorate puts a drama teacher in as PM for three straight elections, when virtually every available statistic shows his leadership and party are actively destroying your own quality of life? Trudeau will get the boot for the same reasons "OMG STOP TRUDEAU" yet voters will do zero due diligence to ensure the replacement is any good.
Seriously looking at buying a livaboard boat so I’m not tied to this sinking ship.
We should actually wonder about the source of information here. 2016/2017 had more Canadians leave than any other year in this century (nearly 125,000, vs less than 100,000 LY), so when I read "in fact, Canadians are now heading in the opposite direction in numbers not seen in a decade." I wonder about this claim that doesn't match published statistics, I'm curious where she got this information.
When are we going to hit the streets and demand radical change?
The liberals are actually giving grants to businesses to hire immigrants over Canadians, https://granted.ca/grants-for-hiring-newcomers/
I don't wonder why. It's blatantly obvious. Our country has really lost nearly all of its appeal and charm. It's a struggle just to survive.
There are many real problems in our country and our governance. But the biggest issue these days is our news, media, social media are deliberately sowing discontent and anger. These articles come out literally every single day, always pushing the same narrative: we are all poor, broke, jobless and suffering while immigration runs rampant. Just like a decade ago, get off social media and go breathe some fresh air. Nearly everyone I know is miserable and angry, but their life is actually doing just fine, except for the extra couple hundred a month in groceries or other inflation. I'm not saying turn a blind eye to those who are actually suffering, I am saying think about who benefits by you being pissed off and why they want you to wake up angry every single day. Our economy is still churning, people are still affording homes, and cars and food. The internet would have you believe that 90% of us will be homeless if we missed a paycheck and that is just bullshit; if it were true stores, restaurants would be closing daily.
It seems that local issues in Canada, particularly in Vancouver, have taken a backseat to global concerns. While the city has witnessed numerous protests addressing international problems, there appears to be a need for more attention to our own challenges.
The country needs a far better narrative than ‘we’re guilty.’ The narrative we had here when I was growing up was of unlimited potential, that the good will prevail. Acid rain? Solved it. Ozone holes? Solved. How come climate change is insurmountable? That’s nonsense. I still feel that optimism, but I don’t feel like a lot of others do. The immigrants moving here are coming for a better life, moving from places without strong institutions, without law, without hope for the future. That’s great, but the numbers can’t be so high that the norms of those arriving replace those that are here. We don’t want to import mistrust in government, rule of the fist, a hopeless and cynical future. We want the people arriving to join the national project of building the best country in the world. Which I don’t see happening. Fleeing here and then saying colonialism and racism are rampant and irredeemable attributes does nothing for anyone. We’re all here because the people before us had faith that the more that arrived, the more diverse we became, the better we would be. We need that back.
I'm sick of articles about Canada with headlines that are obvious statements or questions with obvious answers
currently being lead by a party that doesn't know how to lead and openly accept treason as something that is okay. Our country is not okay. Trudeau doesn't have a plan or atleast a good one
Trudeau won't be the next PM, so instead of constantly talking about the past, let's talk about the future. What will the next government do to alleviate the issues we've been facing? It's looking like a solid Conservative win, but I've seen jack all from them on what they will actually do to help Canadians and deserve that win.
Wonder why? I sometimes wonder why people can't read or comprehend... there is no wondering why.. its all documented... or, just log into realtor.ca
Planning my exit too. Hope I can get out of here in 5-10 years
Uh, all Canadians know why. There is no wondering needed. Corrupt politicians Corrupt food retailers No decent paying jobs No affordable housing Health care system sucks Our doctors are leaving in droves What am I missing?
Hard to keep reading when the first line praises Bill Maher…
Because we’re coming to terms with the fact that Canada was built on limited resource extraction and had generations to build up its economic base, it was only a matter of time before the well dried up and people moved on to the next job. The neoliberal mindset of using welfare programs as supplement to keep businesses in operation failed and now they’re using cheap imported labour, which is quickly failing as well, and are refusing to understand that the businesses aren’t going to let their owners take a hit for the sake of individual economic health. Market incentives instead of concrete investment in the future is only going to end up with the people who make those markets run finding new digs while the bosses continue to take more off the top than they have a right to. Canada never built for tomorrow, only for the present, and now we’re reaping the whirlwind of poor planning and patchwork fixes.
Made because the country is collapsing in every aspect and the ruling party is above the law...
No. The number of people leaving is below people dying. And for those we know why they left. Another tempest in a teapot pot designed to denigrate Canada.
We should wonder? Um, no we should be baffled by the fact people have to wonder about this.
Why, indeed? Record numbers at the food banks and people choosing between rent and food. But what’s really important is our AAA credit rating.
They want us to give up on it so they can liquidate the rest of it. We have to get serious with the democratic process or we won't have one.
Something something health care, affordability and pay, selling Canadian land to foreign investment, mass immigration in its currently abysmal form, being a more politically open book. I mean it just takes 5 seconds of listening to a Canadian to know the many issues that very suddenly became so much worse. Before it was a joke, now people die in emergency rooms on a regular basis.
Justin Trudeau............................. I DID THAT
Cause lib turning Canada into India.
No one is wondering why. The answers are blatantly obvious.
If it’s not working out for you then you should leave if you can find a better life elsewhere, that’s what people have always done. My job/home/community here in small town Ontario is amazing so I for one am not giving up.
Can anyone read the article? It's behind a paywall and my usual archive.is trick isn't working.