Unbroken

Lots of Canada-bashing lately. A nation on the brink.

Here’s the latest. Financial anxiety is surging in our country, claims a Léger poll, thanks to the cost of food, housing and energy. “The crisis is deepening faster than many people realize,” says the sponsor (United Way), “now affecting Canadians who once considered themselves financially stable.”

The shocker: new data shows half of the people in our country say they could cover living expenses for only one month, or less, before falling into debt.

Seriously. Half.

The poll concludes 60% “are now gripped by anxiety when thinking about their personal finances.” Even more – two-thirds – have anxiety over the country’s finances, with one in four expecting deterioration.

So, how did we get here, when Canada is one of the wealthiest countries on the planet with a first-world quality of life, incomes rising faster than inflation, a 70% home ownership rate and where 94% of people who want to work have a job?

Part of the stress may be coming from leaders telling us Canada is broken. Over and over and again.

For example, when news broke that Canadian GDP growth had slipped barely below zero in the latest quarter Con leader Pierre Poilievre called an emergency media conference to declare Canada had plunged into recession – the only major industrialized country to crash. Economists called it a ‘wimpcession’ and told PP to chill. Instead he got shrill.

The career MP called it a “full-blown Carney recession” and won the sound bite he was after:

But wait. A week later, everything had changed.

Last Friday StatsCan announced Canada added a staggering 88,000 new jobs in a month. That number blew US employment growth out of the water and negated one of the chief indicators of an economic downturn – job loss.

“Canadian employment surged 87.8k in May which should silence the recession crowd,” said BMO economist Ben Reitzes. “The Canada story remains the same: the economy is hanging in there despite the headwinds from trade and now energy prices. Just when you think Canada is crumbling amid a string of negative data points, things reverse. We’ve seen this story a few times in the past year. The economy isn’t booming, but it isn’t falling apart, either.”

True. The unemployment rate has just fallen – the opposite of what happens during a recession. There are a lot more people working in construction and in factories. All of the gains were in full-time work, and the bulk were in the private sector. Reitzes says temp jobs for the World Cup were a myth and wages continue to outpace inflation. It is, in short, “an unambiguously strong report.”

And was there an emergency media scrum so Poilievre could comment? Maybe retract the latest ‘Canada is broken’ lament that has helped dispirit a nation?

Nah. Crickets.

This is not to rag on opportunistic, negative, self-dealing politicians, but instead to remind us all of what the basic problems might be. The country is not fraying at the seams, and the economy will likely show overall growth this year. The fact we have survived the Trump tariff onslaught is cause for pride. Canada has actually earned a mess of respect since the current guy took over.

The problem is more with ourselves than with our country.

For the last 18 years (in 6,000 posts and with 965,000 comments) this pathetic blog has addressed our real estate fetish. That alone has driven Canadians into more than $2 trillion in personal debt and since 2021 has been Hoovering away the equity and personal wealth of recent buyers. Ownership costs have exploded higher while capital gains have evaporated. Our emotional commitment to housing is making the population poorer.

Moreover, we suck at investing and suffer the disease of financial illiteracy. Even the United Way poll concludes that this “appears to be a challenge.

“Only 43% of respondents meet the threshold for a good level of financial literacy. While 80% correctly understand that savings earning interest will grow beyond the initial amount, fewer demonstrate a solid understanding of inflation (69%) or investment diversification, with only 57% correctly identifying that buying stock in a single company is not safer than a mutual fund.”

Remember that 80% of the money people have stuffed into TFSAs is in no-growth cash or GICs while Canadians in general have three times as much of their savings or retirement funds stuffed in high-cost mutual funds as in cheap, liquid ETFs. In many ways we’re the architects of our own financial stress.

Does this explain the poor, the disadvantaged and the unfortunate among us?

Of course not. But they don’t come here. You do.

About the picture: “Here is a picture,” say Cal and Jen, simply, “of Daisy the Sheltie.”

To be in touch or send a photo of your beast, email to ‘garth#@garth.ca’.

Source: https://www.greaterfool.ca/2026/06/09/unbroken-2/