THE CANADIAN PROSPERITY ILLUSION Part 2

 

Prosperity Illusion – Part 2

The Spin Continues

By Jim Taylor – Voice of Nanaimo

In my last column, The Illusion of Prosperity, I argued that the feel-good story about our economy doesn’t match what ordinary people are actually living. On paper, we’re told things are “strong” and “resilient.” On the ground, people are playing bill-payment roulette every month.

Now along comes the Nanaimo Foundation’s new Vital Signs report – rolled out at Woodgrove with speeches, smiles and careful language. It is presented as a community “checkup.” Read past the spin, and it’s really Exhibit B in the case that prosperity has become more illusion than reality.

The report calmly notes that the benchmark price of a home has nearly tripled in a decade. Rents for a one-bedroom apartment rose 13.5 per cent between 2022 and 2024. One in seven homeowners is paying more than 30 per cent of their income on mortgage payments. One in three renters is paying more than 30 per cent on rent.

That’s not “vibrancy.” That’s strain.

Then we get to so-called “child poverty.” The report says about 17 per cent of children in Nanaimo and more than 20 per cent in Ladysmith are below the poverty threshold. Let’s say out loud what that language tip-toes around:

If the kids are poor, the parents are poor. Poverty doesn’t just happen to children; it happens to the whole household.

So roughly one in six families with kids in Nanaimo – and more than one in five in Ladysmith – are officially below the line. That’s not a fringe problem. That’s a structural feature of our “prosperous” community.

Food insecurity tells the same story. Food banks in Nanaimo, Ladysmith and Gabriola report 5,600 individual clients and 13,100 visits in a single month. Health surveys say local youth are skipping or shrinking meals for financial reasons and some are going to bed hungry. That isn’t “a few people falling through the cracks.” That is an alternate food system running parallel to the grocery stores.

Then there’s wages. Living Wage B.C. now pegs the Nanaimo living wage at $24.40 an hour. The headline version says: “That’s what it takes to cover the basics for a typical family.” The part that tends to get lost in the spin is this:

– The living wage is calculated per worker,

– And the model assumes two adults both working full-time.

In other words, the “basic” family budget expects two paycheques at $24.40 an hour. If you’re a single parent with two kids, you would need the equivalent of two living-wage incomes just to hit the same standard – or some mix of higher wages, longer hours, child support and government transfers.

Put bluntly:

The official “living wage” assumes a two-income household just to stand still. Anyone trying to make it on one income is, by definition, starting below the line.

All of this – housing stress, family poverty, food bank usage, the two-income living-wage reality – is drawn from the same kinds of sources our leaders constantly tell us to trust: Statistics Canada, local agencies, independent researchers.

And yet watch how quickly the spin machine gets to work.

The Vital Signs report makes sure to highlight “promising signs”: improved graduation rates, declining crime, increased transit use, more parks and green space. All good things. None of them pay the rent or fill the fridge.

The Nanaimo Foundation’s CEO talks about “compassion, innovation and collaboration” and reminds us, as we head into Christmas, to consider donating to charities because it’s “been a really hard time.” Again, that’s not wrong. Charities are under huge pressure and deserve support.

But step back for a moment and look at the bigger picture. We now have a system where:

– Families can’t cover basics on one full-time income,

– Many can barely cover them on two,

– A growing share of households are officially below the poverty line,

– Food banks are normalized as permanent infrastructure,

– And charities are described as the “scaffolding” holding the community up.

This isn’t just a rough patch. It’s the new normal. And yet the public message remains, “We’re doing well overall; we just need a bit more generosity and collaboration.”

The spin continues at higher levels, too. Nationally, Ottawa shrugs at tens of billions in new deficits and tens of billions more in annual interest costs as if it were still the 1970s – back when Canada was younger, the debt was smaller, and a single blue-collar wage could buy you a house, a car and, yes, a boat and trailer. That world is gone, but the spending reflex hasn’t caught up.

Locally, we see our own version: councils pushing ahead with questionable projects and feel-good plans as if the money fairy still lived down the hall. It’s cranes, concepts and consultations on one side of the ledger; food banks, rent stress and living-wage families barely hanging on, on the other.

So where does that leave us?

First, we should be grateful that Vital Signs exists at all. Someone is at least putting the numbers in one place where they can’t be completely ignored.

But second, and more importantly, we need to stop letting these numbers be wrapped in a reassuring story that drains them of their meaning.

If one in three renters is in housing stress, if one in five families with kids is below the poverty line, if the “living wage” requires two full-time incomes at $24.40 an hour, then we are not dealing with a few unfortunate outliers. We are dealing with a model that isn’t working for a large slice of ordinary people.

That is the Prosperity Illusion in a nutshell:

– Up front, we’re shown growth, home values, amenities and glossy reports.

– In the background, the fundamentals – wages vs costs, debt vs income, families vs bills – are quietly falling apart.

Part 2 of this story is simple: the data has now caught up with what many households have felt for years. The question is whether our leaders will keep spinning, or whether citizens will finally insist that reality, not marketing, be the starting point for every budget, every project and every promise made in our name.

Because if the spin continues, the illusion will hold a little longer. But the bill will still come due – and it won’t be paid out of press releases.