THE CANADIAN PROSPERITY ILLUSION Part 3

 

Are Our Leaders Just Deaf???

By Jim Taylor – Voice of Nanaimo

In my last column, The Illusion of Prosperity, I argued that the official story about our economy does not match what ordinary people are living. On paper, we’re told things are under control. On the ground, families are juggling rent, groceries, credit cards and tax bills and hoping nothing unexpected happens this month.

Since then, our leaders at every level have carried on as if they can’t hear a thing.

Federally, the new “Canada Strong” budget projects a deficit of roughly $78 billion this year and more than $50 billion every year after that for the next five years. That is not a one‑time emergency; it is a decision to normalize huge deficits and to push the bill further down the road.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has already warned that this path is unsustainable as interest costs climb. Debt‑servicing charges alone are now in the $55‑billion‑a‑year range, and are expected to keep rising. That means more of every federal tax dollar is being sent to bondholders and less is available for health care, infrastructure and the basic services Canadians think they are paying for.

At the same time, we are told not to worry. The talking points say these are “investments,” that Canada’s fiscal position is “manageable,” that our debt‑to‑GDP ratio is still better than other G7 countries. Technically, some of that is true. But none of it changes the basic reality that we are adding new structural spending on top of already large deficits at a time of higher interest rates and slowing growth.

The numbers themselves are not the real outrage. The real outrage is the refusal to adjust course in light of what those numbers clearly mean. That is where the question arises: are our leaders actually deaf, or do they just find it politically convenient to act as if they are?

You can see the same deafness closer to home.

Nanaimo’s latest Vital Signs report, released by the Nanaimo Foundation, is a polite document with a hard message. It notes that the benchmark price of a home has nearly tripled in a decade. Rents for a one‑bedroom apartment jumped 13.5 per cent between 2022 and 2024. One in seven homeowners is paying more than 30 per cent of income on mortgage payments. One in three renters is paying more than 30 per cent of income on rent.

The report flags child poverty as a continuing concern. About 17 per cent of children in Nanaimo and more than 20 per cent in Ladysmith are growing up in households below the poverty line. Food banks in Nanaimo, Ladysmith and Gabriola Island served 5,600 individuals and recorded 13,100 visits in a single month earlier this year. A significant share of local youth are skipping or shrinking meals for financial reasons and some are going to bed hungry.

Living Wage B.C. now says a full‑time worker in Nanaimo needs to earn $24.40 an hour just to cover the basics for a typical family. That is almost seven dollars higher than the provincial minimum wage. Even more important, that living‑wage model assumes there are two adults in the household both working full‑time. If you are a single parent, or if one partner cannot find full‑time work, you are starting below the line before you even begin.

These are not fringe numbers from a cranky blogger. They are drawn from Statistics Canada, from Living Wage B.C., from local surveys and from front‑line agencies. In other words, from the very sources governments and foundations tell us we should trust.

And yet, despite all of this, our political and bureaucratic class remains fixated on big new commitments, big new projects and big new borrowing. Federally, we are promised new “nation‑building” capital plans. Provincially and municipally, we see the same pattern: ambitious infrastructure schemes, ever‑expanding staff complements and a steady stream of strategies, visions and re‑brands.

None of that looks or feels like a serious response to the Vital Signs reality on the ground.

In the 1970s, when governments last behaved like this, there was at least some logic to it. One income could often support a family. Housing costs, while not trivial, were still within reach of ordinary wages. The tax burden was lower, and public debt, while growing, was nowhere near today’s levels. That world no longer exists.

Today, two incomes often struggle to keep up, especially once you add property taxes, user fees and the hidden taxes buried in every energy, fuel and construction cost. Households are stretched. Charities are being called “the scaffolding of our community” while quietly being asked to plug growing structural gaps in food and housing. Municipalities continue to talk about growth and vibrancy, but they are doing it on the backs of people who are already at the breaking point.

So yes, the question is fair: are our leaders just deaf?

If they truly do not hear what their own reports, officers and community foundations are saying, that is one kind of problem. If they do hear it and are choosing to carry on anyway, that is another problem altogether.

Either way, the burden comes back to us as citizens.

We cannot keep rewarding politicians who talk about affordability while normalizing record‑level deficits. We cannot keep nodding along with local leaders who celebrate every new project but never talk honestly about what must be delayed, scaled back or cancelled to reflect the economic reality their own data describes.

The Illusion of Prosperity is not going to fix itself. Vital Signs and federal budget tables are warning lights on the dashboard, not background noise. If our leaders will not hear them, it may fall to the voters to deliver the one message that always does get through in the end: “No more.”