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'well, you broke me; congratulations': inside the thoughts of the canadian economy
dear diary: 'perhaps one day, surviving remnants of the canadian economy can be preserved in national parks and slowly reintroduced into the wild'
nov 25 2023
3 minute read
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this week’s fiscal update confirmed much of what we already knew about the state of the canadian economy: everything is bad, and it’s going to get worse. economic growth (which has already been in a per-capita recession for months) is slowing to a crawl. debt is set to soar. and the unemployed will likely see their ranks swell by the hundreds of thousands.
monday
here’s how you usually destroy an economy: war, famine, conquest and mass-death — the four horsemen, basically. ecological disaster is also popular; the economy of saint vincent and the grenadine, for one, carries the notable handicap of being constantly blown up by volcanos.
but for the life of me, i can’t remember any of these events preceding my own turn towards ignominy and stagnation. one day, you’re leading the oecd in per-capita gdp growth . the next, you have a productivity rate lower than alabama and a subway sandwich now costs $20. i would like to ask someone if we lost a war and are now paying reparations to an enemy i forgot about, but i’m scared i’ll look stupid.
tuesday
we’ve all had that one friend: handsome, charming, good job … and yet for the life of him he can’t hold down a good relationship. some latent flaw — fear of commitment, control issues, a gambling addiction — keeps plunging him right back into bachelorhood.
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have i become that guy? i mean, here i am: everybody’s dream economy. oceans of oil. hectares of lumber. millions of the world’s educated and upwardly mobile banging at the gates to be let in. you’d think this would be enough to at least build an affordable house or two, but you’d be wrong.
wednesday
there’s nothing sadder than witnessing a fading superstar trying desperately to grasp that one last moment in the limelight. the aging rocker still railing against the establishment at age 80. the former beauty queen who’s now more botox than flesh.
but i’ll admit it: i paid $30 billion i don’t have to subsidize a bunch of unsustainable electric vehicle factories. you try getting up each morning and looking in the mirror to see only a debt-ridden petrostate with a few grocery oligopolies thrown in for colour. just give me my moment of pretending to be a “green energy superpower.” tell me i did a good job fighting “environmental racism.”
thursday
there are times i have fleeting glimpses of what seems to have come before. large resource projects built to budget on short timelines. whole sectors thriving without even a thought to government subsidy or support. home completions topping more than 200,000 per year . were these hallucinations, or are they scattered images from a past that none of us remembers? i know that *somebody* drilled the wells, cleared the farms, built the factories and founded the services that sustain me — but was it me?
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friday
in my darker moments, i think of the bison. about 30 million of them roamed the u.s. and canadian plains as recently as the 1840s. and within 50 years, the species is driven to the edge of extinction. the moral being that there is no abundance so overwhelming — no wealth so total — that it can’t be dismantled with only a single generation of reckless mismanagement.
i only hope that, like the bison, they’ll be able to stop us before we completely go off the cliff. perhaps one day, surviving remnants of the canadian economy can be preserved in national parks and slowly reintroduced into the wild. our grandchildren may not know affordability or home ownership, but with luck they will be able to visit these things on ranches.
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