April 9, 2023
I walked into the garage and stumbled in the dark towards the garage door handle to release it from the cable so that I could push up the garage door by hand; the power was out. We had an ice storm yesterday and the local hydro was still fixing the lines. It was getting cold in the house when we woke up in the morning without power.
When I pushed the garage door up, I saw our neighbor walking towards me up the driveway with a cup of coffee in his hand. And I heard a loud generator working in his driveway, explaining his coffee. He came to offer coffee or whatever we needed. That was nice of him. I told him we were just going to find an open restaurant to warm up and enjoy our coffee and breakfast.
Over our meal, I wondered what a nice lifestyle our neighbor has living in a five-bedroom house with one child. And he works at home allowing him to take a bicycle ride for a break and do chores around the house during working hours.
Canada offers a charmed life for many people, educated here and with a job. I socialize with them and enjoy their company most of the time. They are relaxed and enjoy the good life, although some are smug.
And their smug attitude in believing they deserve what they have bothers me. They truly believe that they worked and earned their status in life. And their good life makes this generation comfortable, less ambitious, and more complacent. Less achieving. I think that this is sad. This attitude, in my view, has pervaded the way Canadians and government look at issues.
I thought of the immigrants coming into this country and fully understand why they want to come here when they see what some people here have. But the immigrants have challenges. They do not speak the language fluently, if at all; they are not familiar with local culture; they have no local experience. And no local contacts.
And now the country allows half a million immigrants a year into the country for the next few years; bumping up the population when a recession threatens, there is a housing shortage and affordability gap, on top of a healthcare crisis. All these issues affect immigrants.
Although we identify these issues with some recalcitrance,we resolve them slowly, if at all. Often, we ignore them, thinking it doesn’t affect us, so no need to do any planning.
Potholes on the streets? No problem, it is the weather. This view is nonsense. The northern states in the US have similar climates with excellent roads.
Healthcare crisis? No problem, we’ll let in more foreign nurses and doctors, ignoring the fact that they have to be locally licensed, a time-consuming exercise that can take years.
Housing crisis? No problem, we’ll let in more construction and tradespeople, forgetting that they also need local licensing, and we also need land to build on.
No land to build on? No problem, we’ll just make our cities denser. We’ll let three units be built on single-family lots in Ontario, starting this summer, which will destroy some older, attractive neighborhoods.
Food price inflation? No problem, the government provides a subsidy; prints money, and just increases the national debt. Debt is for future generations to resolve.
It may be only me but methinks we do not solve problems but delay them, thereby creating fresh problems.
I think the country has become too complacent and downright lazy. We havelost our edge, our dynamism. We sloganeer about equity, diversity and inclusion, and LGBTQ…., matters, and forget that these ideals are impossible to materialize without creating jobs and opportunities and investing in technology and the future. You cannot have equity, diversity, and inclusion in the abstract, it exists in organizations employing people.
So, let’s get back our work ethic and get off our collective fat butts and build the economy by providing the opportunity for future generations.
andrasthehun.ca 