Fair article but a bit of a muddled message. If a better economy improves almost all safety measures, doesn't it make sense to remain focused on the economy? That seems to be the ultimate conclusion of the article, yet its premise suggests that such would be a mistake.
As an additional point, there is an important distinction between "what makes a place good to live" and "what should the Prime Minister focus on".
While it may be true that feeling safe and secure is a top priority, if most Canadians *do* feel reasonably safe and secure already, yet feel that our economy is in shambles, then once again it makes most sense to focus principally on the economy.
Again, I think an age breakdown would be extremely helpful in guiding any government directed 'building' policies and actions towards improving the future. I don't know how many older home owners, for example, might list housing as more important than, say, healthcare versus untold numbers of young people who have neither affordable housing nor access to a gatekeeping family physician and who by survey may end up calling the two 'equivalent' in concern. Because we know the Liberal government was very much elected in large measure by what I'll conveniently call the Boomer cohort, a government dedicated to addressing their age- and situation-dependent concerns (because polls) over those of the working generations seems to me a guaranteed way to further a an increasingly failed state for the following cohorts.
So, without knowing the age breakdown of the polling numbers, I think government can be badly misled spending time and money on symptoms that concern specific cohorts of voters rather than deepening national problems that are undermining efforts to find and implement effective solutions that build a nation. Every trend line about quality of life for younger cohorts in Canada is in serious decline no matter how many Boomer-related policies might be furthered based on national polling data across all cohorts.
This is a good point. I am a member of what I hope you are not disparaging by calling us Boomers, and yet I have recently written the P M and Min of Housing that if they ignore the lack of affordable housing for young working people, more of them will weirdly migrate to the Conservatives who at the last election didn't offer any solutions either. But, without jobs and a strong economy they won't be able to afford a house no matter how low the prices drop. So, this government has to deal with many interconnected issues and I certainly thought and still think they have the capability to do it
We share the same concerns, which is an excellent starting point. And no, I am not disparaging Boomers. But I am trying to point out to Boomers that the country they grew up in and the one their children have inherited are like two completely different countries with completely different circumstances, challenges, and opportunities. When Boomers vote for self interest, they are very much central to what ails this country and will (I think probably) break it... not from maliciousness or selfishness but from a vast reservoir of 'do-good' ignorance. A good way to connect the old with the new is to compare and contrast by recalling not dollar amounts but how many months/years of work did it take to pay for many of these basics. When you find out this ratio has increased not by a doubling or tripling but factors, only then does it begin to hit home how difficult and constraining the future is for those at the front end of their working lives. And it takes government to effectively address any of these systemic imbalances they - the following generations - have inherited. And government requires political capital, which is what is missing (for various reasons) from today's federal government.
Hello Tildeb, I do know about the challenges of the kids in my generation! Of course I do; I have two kids who have fortunately finished school and since they were looking for houses about 7 years ago, were able to buy, but at prices that I would never have imagined. So, I do know and it is wrong to think Boomers do not know the difference between then and now. We are concerned about the economy we are leaving to our kids and grandkids. And you can not expect Boomers -- or anyone -- to vote against their self interest. I might have considered to vote Conservative under other circumstances (no threat to our economy or sovereignity, no really terrible Conservative running for PM, or if the Liberals nominated someone to run for PM who was really terrible, and maybe if the Conservatives were actually offering solutions and not reactionary hate). I have drafted several ideas to solve the houseing problems, have sent them to Carney and Min of Housing and will send to the Line Editors as a proposed column. I suggest that everyone concerned about this issue send actual ideas to solve it to their representative and maybe also Line Editors who could gather the ideas and examine them.
Canada is a public service workers dream environment. Public sector workers are dominant in many aspects of our daily life. The obvious one being healthcare but if we add in schools, universities, daycare, dental care etc. it is easier to understand the recent survey.
We have hundreds of thousands of Canadians across three levels of government who don’t worry much about the economy. Their jobs will carry on regardless of our economic woes and will leverage their monopoly status for wage increases far beyond what private sector workers will get in a economic downturn.
Do these workers skew a survey that ranks economic development far down the list of happiness? Probably somewhat, but it is a positive development to see public safety in the minds of everyone. The open vagrancy in communities all across Canada needs addressing but political causes are hindering progress.
Polling is important in determining the issues of greatest concern for people at a given moment in time. I'm interested in understanding exactly what feeling safe means, what does that entail for people. Safe from invasion, safe from storms and forest fires, safe from car theft or home invasion. I live in downtown Toronto and I don't actually fear any of those things in a significant way. I do fear being caught on the subway platform with a drug crazed homeless person who is literally out of his mind. I fear for the future of a province that can't figure out what supportive mental health teams, appropriate psychiatric treatment and supportive housing even looks like.
I also fear for the future of our nation if we are unable to get our productivity up to a competitive level so we can improve our standard of living and prosperity which will in turn reduce housing costs and fund more and better social services - see above. For me economics is where we start to reverse the downward spiral our nation has been on for the past decade and more.
The Myth of the Rational voter. When it's cheap to believe something that aligns with your social desirability bias and doesn't cost you anything, you support it. As Daniel Audet points out the economic health of a community is a means, not an end, so the polls were asking people to make apples and oranges choices. Ask people where they would like to see their own taxes spent or if they could improve on their well being by keeping the money and distributing it themselves and you would have a more meaningful basis for political decision making.
Why vote based on any of these issues when you can get caught up in a frenzied moral panic and vote for the Democrat Party of Canada in a faux US election against a pro-wrestling caricature of Donald J. Trump?
It is sad that this article confirms the issues that Poilievre pushed hard to maintain at the forefront, the ones that almost everyone; the media, the Liberal supporters and even the PC premiers said was absolutely the wrong message and that he lost because he refused to pivot. When will people finally realize that the Liberals game plan is to find a significant wedge issue to stoke fear in enough Canadians to end up remaining in control. The media were complicate, as were the polling firms with the daily numbers in maintaining that fear of economic warfare, Poilievre's message was drowned out by the noise.
Now that the election is done and the dust has settled, we find that the threat of economic war with the US was not the existential crisis that the Liberal machine pretended it was, the prediction made by the head of the Eurasia Group about Canada 'quietly folding' after the election came to pass and we should really be focusing on all of the things that Poilievre said were/are important.
And yet people still maintain that it is Conservatives who lie to us and govern by fear. People need to learn to think for themselves and allow themselves to be so easily fooled by misinformation and propaganda spread by so-called experts and our media. My biggest fear is that it is only going to get worse once AI becomes the accepted standard for the source for our information.
I agree with the tiered sentiments of Canadian priorities that we tend to capture as defining our optimum quality of life. The sad reality is that we don’t have governments who are good at investing, managing or responding to those needs; which leaves Canadians to their own devices to define their own upward mobility and happiness. Speaking from experience, years ago I became increasingly unhappy living in the cities and suburbs for a host of reasons that touched on the priority tiers Mr. Colledge speaks to in his article. So rather than waiting for governments to come-up with and implement plans that I was certain would never happen, I took matters into my own hands and made some rather life-changing decisions that have indeed delivered that sense of happiness that I needed. One of the biggest changes I made that satisfied my desire for a better quality of life: I got the hell out of the cities/suburbs and never looked back. I recently returned to the city for a day of pre-scheduled meetings, my first trip outside my home community since prior to the pandemic. That trip cemented my resolve that I had indeed made the right decision for myself by leaving. Rural Canadian living offers and provides arguably superior quality of life outcomes that many Canadians are aspiring for today; as compartmentalized, discussed and prioritized in Mr. Colledge’s peice. Better housing and related affordability options, safer communities, more green spaces, improved sense of belonging, less saturation and congestion of people and traffic, community-fused health care and education, reduced crime, optimized work-life balance, etc. Canadians have the power to chart their own way to their own happiness. Unfortunately, we’ve also become cultured to expecting governments to fix all our problems, despite knowing deep down governments have no capacity to do so, at least successfully — when they try. They excel at pissing away money and fucking things up, and we’re all so used to it that we just shrug in indifference and keep on complaining. This won’t change. But Canadians — Canadians can be the change. Each of us has capacity to make changes in compartmentalized ways, and I can think of no better a reason to do so than to improve one’s quality of life for themselves and their families. Sometimes that involves bold changes. Nevertheless, Canadians’ destinies and paths to prosperity largely rests on our own respective shoulders. Governments haven’t been the answer in the past, and they certainly won’t be the answer in the future. If anything, governments and policy makers spanning time created these problems in the first place.
Aging Gen-x'r here. I grew up in the 70s-80s when crime was a LOT worse in Toronto. At 18 I was working as a bus boy at a bar in the summer that someone described as "where people were last seen".. Yet, I didnt feel unsafe. A lot of that is the age I was, but I suspect across age categories there has been a large shift.... Sure, there are the usual suspects (social media, infotainment / legacy media etc) but the facts of the matter is that it is materially safer now yet we all feel more vulnerable. I am not sure what any politician can do to change that.
To see the scope and depth of our federal government's capitulation - and policies/decisions that further this lack of involvement when it comes to law enforcement - you might want to take a boo at The Bureau by Sam Cooper and the ongoing travesty that is Canada's role in helping transnational crime (sure, but a paltry 4 billion dollar settlement by TD in the US isn't really much of a news story when it involves over a trillion dollars worth of real estate in Canada used to launder money. I'm sure that has almost no effect on Toronto and Vancouver housing prices.). In other words, when Toronto police suggest leaving car keys closer to the vehicle that will probably be stolen - to 'reduce' property crime is the thinking here - I doubt I'm alone that we've reached a point of lunacy when it comes to dealing with crime.
Its totally embarrassing and maddening the blind eye all levels of government show towards money laundering. The stuff that was happening at the BC casinos was particularly infuriating as you really could see a certain level of open complicity because, hey, its a lot of money coming into provincial coffers..... Similarly dynamic in London during the era of all that Russian post Soviet oligarch money flooding in. "Sure its dodgy, but look what its doing to the finance sector!"
But with respect to property crime, there really is a LOT more anger that should be spread around, especially to the courts. I remember attending a local fraud seminar by the police back in 2014 when mortgage fraud was on the uptick. The local cop had a great story about a fraudster going around selling "magnetic mattresses" to people. Collects a deposit and then pisses off with the deposit. A local guy, they arrest him... So what do you do with him. At the time it was $15k in theft. To prosecute him jail him is a LOT of time and money which is not in the budget. So plea a house arrest. But of course he does it again. There is only so much court time, so much budget for jails, so much budget for crowns etc etc etc etc. That and the cost of cops themselves. So at the end of the day, its gonna be more money to do all this. So, which brave politician is going to raise taxes to do that ?
But back to the original point, if we use murder as a general proxy for overall level of crime, we are less likely to be a victim of crime now than in the past.
Very few houses burn down. And the cost of firefighting goes up. What brave politician is going to raise taxes to address putting out house fires?
You see the problem? By framing it as an economic issue rather than a law and order one, you are granting that failure to enforce the law is the most cost effective way of dealing with crime. That's the lunacy at play. Enforcing the law is a costly business and always will be. The question is whether enforcement is the goal or allowing crime to become - in effect - legal. That's the path we're on. Yet no one bats an eyebrow when billions and billions and billions are spent on anything with a progressive label. All of a sudden, economics is no longer the lens and 'social justice' and 'aid' becomes 'investments' rather than 'expenses'!!!
In case you were wondering, finding hypocrisy is usually a pretty good indicator of an ideological narrative hard at work covering up what's true and replacing it with something to do with 'vibes'. What's true is that crime generally is no longer considered illegal enough to the point of coming up against enforcement and personal consequences. Those are the hallmarks of a failing state.
Not sure I agree with the framing quite that way. I worry more about policy that chases diminishing returns. To build on your fire scenario. We spend x million a year in the city to have y fires per year. If we spend 2x, we will have 0.75y fires. if we spend 10x, we will have 0.65y.... Do we really want to get as close as possible to that asymptote ? Whats a reasonable number ? Whats the opportunity cost ? Crime / safety is not the only issue-- healthcare, road repair, education, defense (at the fed level) etc etc etc etc.
Politics should be arguing about allocating fixed resources, not finding identity and meaning in it. If you want to argue how social justice politics are a "bad thing" have at it. I am certainly not going to defend it. But the fact of the matter remains. We are not going to find a scenario where there is zero crime. Materially its not as bad as it was. Do we want it better, sure. Tell me what the endgame / goal is and how will we get there. Whats the cost etc. How will you measure success? Sorry I do want to see it in empirical and measurable consistent terms. The fact that politicians redefine and retcon things means we should just abandon those politicians.
Yes, the old phrase 'turning a blind eye' is so relevant in our political, legal and enforcement systems and I can't think of a personal or pubic situation where that was the correct option.
I remember the 90's (and the 80's to some extent) and Toronto was definitely a grittier place with a lot more visible crime.
Statistically, if I recall correctly, crime in Canada (and the US as well) reached its modern peak in the early to mid 1990's and then rapidly fell off. Lots of theories as to why - abortion pro-actively killing off a generation of unwanted kids more likely to become delinquents, unleaded gasoline and paint making people less crazy, etc. - but a big one was probably reaching a sweet spot between prosperity and affordability. The 2000's/(early)2010's was a time when - in Canada at least - you could both get a good job relatively easily and that job would let you afford a relatively good life.
The problem is not that we've returned to the 70's or the 90's rates of crime in absolute terms, it's that we've backtracked after more or less 'solving' crime for a couple of decades. Affordability, employment, overcrowding, mass immigration, and cultural issues have all played a role. We also decided during the tail of the low crime era to focus on fantasy issues, like correcting 'overincarceration' of various groups, to go way too easy on offenders, removing deterrence from the new wave of criminals.
Yes for sure. Directionally things did indeed get worse and I agree there have been some really bad policies that *seem* to make things worse. I am not a criminologist, but from the one survey course I took back in the 80s there was a crazy stat that stuck with me about just how many violent crimes involve drugs/alcohol and how much petty crime involves addiction. It seems the exclusive harm reduction focus has just made things a lot worse here. A pretty fleshed out discussion that made sense and rang true
As for punishment for deterrence, I dont think it works that well. But I think some punishment is important for other reasons like overall social trust/cohesion. If we see people just walking out of Loblaws with $100 of razor blades to sell for drugs and the gov's response is, "Oh its for our poverty reduction plan", that stuff is toxic!
Polling is not only Mr. Colledge's area of expertise but also his livelihood so I think it fair to say that he might have some degree of bias regarding its effectiveness and its usefulness. I think we all know that the wording, the interpreter, the timing and the targeted respondents all have a strong influence on the perceived results. Polls are a useful tool for a variety of purposes but I believe the media, in all its forms, often make too much of them.
Trying to set governmental policies based on polls that are aimed at gauging the 'feelings' of a populace is, I believe, a tenuous strategy.
Some well written and valid comments here with a common theme pointing towards the health of the ECONOMY being the primary vehicle in achieving pretty well everything in all the 'tiers'.
Something about the last election gave me a gross feeling about polls and pollsters. It's starting to become very hard to separate measuring opinion from shaping it.
I do wonder what effect those 'weird outlier' Ekos polls had back in January/February in nudging public opinion toward the "Carney saviour" narrative, getting the ball rolling that the Liberals were back in the game and so many others are suddenly voting for him that the Liberals are a totally valid choice again! And also don't even think about voting for the 'collapsing' NDP Bloc or Green because you can stop Poilievre and give it to Trump if you just vote the way the polls are going. To what extent did polls begin to become a self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling prophecy?
And why no Ekos polls toward the end of the campaign when the Conservatives were making up ground?
I trust these guys even less when polling on issues because how the question is phrased, and whether/what alternatives are proposed, can just drag the numbers around by the nose.
If the question was indeed "what makes somewhere a good place to live", it absolutely does not follow from that at all that we should interpret the answer as if the question were "what should the federal government care about" (and still less as if it were "what should the federal government treat as a policy priority").
Many important things that make for an attractive place to live are none of the government's business, and many things that are proper government concerns are none of the *federal* government's business (like great schools).
It's true that too many Canadians behave as if the federal government is their mommy, and think it should look after everything that matters to them. But that is an error — a habit of poor reasoning and broken civics. We should not simply assume that just because something is important, it should be a priority for the federal government.
Despite the new face at the head of the party, the liberals remain the same old, tired, incompetent, corrupt organisation. The elbow up crowd got duped by liberal trickery and the rest of us can only watch as Canada sinks deeper and deeper into irrelevance.
I think this is a great piece, and it ties in well with what Tim Snyder wrote in On Freedom about how we as a society require a certain amount of economic security (note, this is not the same thing as a perpetually-increasing GDP) in order to realize our capacities and our freedom. I caution against any assertion that says that we need to focus on "the economy" that doesn't include specifics about which aspects of the economy we should focus on.
Additional note: JFK's criticisms of GDP are still relevant in that it measures everything about life except that which makes it worth living. All the "development" in the world isn't worth it if it isn't being used to actually materially improve people's lives.
I am also very concerned with (the lack of) law and order mentioned in the election campaigns. The Liberal incumbent for my riding left a brochure for the Liberal Party game plan, and law and order were signally missing. Not a single mention, meanwhile our neighborhood has declined precipitously. Why do criminals have the right to degrade our neighborhoods, make us unsafe, and avoid detention? Why is this acceptable?
I'm not sure how any government addresses the housing crisis when it's pretty common knowledge that there aren't nearly enough qualified tradespeople around to facilitate a boom. Healthcare is in collapse because of provincial governments syphoning off money for other things in their desire to "Americanise" our system. Carney has one foot on Everest and one on K2 and needs to do the double.
The housing crisis is a function of supply and demand, and the federal and provincial governments have done a terrible job of using government policy to reduce the demand side and create a market where prices would level out and trend downward.
We have had market corrections in the housing market in the past, usually in tandem with a horrible economy and tight money supply. In recent years easy access to financing, turning a blind eye to real estate used to front money laundering purposes and investors chasing big margins on home flipping has exacerbated the situation. These are all factors that could have been remedied by government policy. The icing on the cake is flooding the housing market with immigrants who have no place to live.
There is no question that Trudeau not giving provinces and municipalities advance warning, and consultation about a housing plan for increased immigration is arguably his biggest of many failures.
Carney now faces a governance challenge familiar to any capable manager: balancing a long-term strategic plan with the urgent, practical needs of citizens. Just as a company cannot succeed by focusing solely on quarterly profits while neglecting its internal cohesion, a government that prioritizes GDP growth while overlooking housing, health, and public safety risks losing legitimacy. It recalls the post-war Attlee government in Britain, which, despite inheriting a bankrupt state, built durable public support by grounding its policies in the everyday concerns of working people — health care, housing, and employment. Canadians now expect similar clarity of purpose: not just a vision for prosperity, but evidence that it will tangibly improve their lives.
Interesting facts--for me especially the fact that 'access to Nature' ranked relatively high along with economy and jobs. But yeah, seems like if you improve the economy that improves a lot of things mentioned.
Fair article but a bit of a muddled message. If a better economy improves almost all safety measures, doesn't it make sense to remain focused on the economy? That seems to be the ultimate conclusion of the article, yet its premise suggests that such would be a mistake.
As an additional point, there is an important distinction between "what makes a place good to live" and "what should the Prime Minister focus on".
While it may be true that feeling safe and secure is a top priority, if most Canadians *do* feel reasonably safe and secure already, yet feel that our economy is in shambles, then once again it makes most sense to focus principally on the economy.
Again, I think an age breakdown would be extremely helpful in guiding any government directed 'building' policies and actions towards improving the future. I don't know how many older home owners, for example, might list housing as more important than, say, healthcare versus untold numbers of young people who have neither affordable housing nor access to a gatekeeping family physician and who by survey may end up calling the two 'equivalent' in concern. Because we know the Liberal government was very much elected in large measure by what I'll conveniently call the Boomer cohort, a government dedicated to addressing their age- and situation-dependent concerns (because polls) over those of the working generations seems to me a guaranteed way to further a an increasingly failed state for the following cohorts.
So, without knowing the age breakdown of the polling numbers, I think government can be badly misled spending time and money on symptoms that concern specific cohorts of voters rather than deepening national problems that are undermining efforts to find and implement effective solutions that build a nation. Every trend line about quality of life for younger cohorts in Canada is in serious decline no matter how many Boomer-related policies might be furthered based on national polling data across all cohorts.
This is a good point. I am a member of what I hope you are not disparaging by calling us Boomers, and yet I have recently written the P M and Min of Housing that if they ignore the lack of affordable housing for young working people, more of them will weirdly migrate to the Conservatives who at the last election didn't offer any solutions either. But, without jobs and a strong economy they won't be able to afford a house no matter how low the prices drop. So, this government has to deal with many interconnected issues and I certainly thought and still think they have the capability to do it
We share the same concerns, which is an excellent starting point. And no, I am not disparaging Boomers. But I am trying to point out to Boomers that the country they grew up in and the one their children have inherited are like two completely different countries with completely different circumstances, challenges, and opportunities. When Boomers vote for self interest, they are very much central to what ails this country and will (I think probably) break it... not from maliciousness or selfishness but from a vast reservoir of 'do-good' ignorance. A good way to connect the old with the new is to compare and contrast by recalling not dollar amounts but how many months/years of work did it take to pay for many of these basics. When you find out this ratio has increased not by a doubling or tripling but factors, only then does it begin to hit home how difficult and constraining the future is for those at the front end of their working lives. And it takes government to effectively address any of these systemic imbalances they - the following generations - have inherited. And government requires political capital, which is what is missing (for various reasons) from today's federal government.
Hello Tildeb, I do know about the challenges of the kids in my generation! Of course I do; I have two kids who have fortunately finished school and since they were looking for houses about 7 years ago, were able to buy, but at prices that I would never have imagined. So, I do know and it is wrong to think Boomers do not know the difference between then and now. We are concerned about the economy we are leaving to our kids and grandkids. And you can not expect Boomers -- or anyone -- to vote against their self interest. I might have considered to vote Conservative under other circumstances (no threat to our economy or sovereignity, no really terrible Conservative running for PM, or if the Liberals nominated someone to run for PM who was really terrible, and maybe if the Conservatives were actually offering solutions and not reactionary hate). I have drafted several ideas to solve the houseing problems, have sent them to Carney and Min of Housing and will send to the Line Editors as a proposed column. I suggest that everyone concerned about this issue send actual ideas to solve it to their representative and maybe also Line Editors who could gather the ideas and examine them.
Canada is a public service workers dream environment. Public sector workers are dominant in many aspects of our daily life. The obvious one being healthcare but if we add in schools, universities, daycare, dental care etc. it is easier to understand the recent survey.
We have hundreds of thousands of Canadians across three levels of government who don’t worry much about the economy. Their jobs will carry on regardless of our economic woes and will leverage their monopoly status for wage increases far beyond what private sector workers will get in a economic downturn.
Do these workers skew a survey that ranks economic development far down the list of happiness? Probably somewhat, but it is a positive development to see public safety in the minds of everyone. The open vagrancy in communities all across Canada needs addressing but political causes are hindering progress.
Polling is important in determining the issues of greatest concern for people at a given moment in time. I'm interested in understanding exactly what feeling safe means, what does that entail for people. Safe from invasion, safe from storms and forest fires, safe from car theft or home invasion. I live in downtown Toronto and I don't actually fear any of those things in a significant way. I do fear being caught on the subway platform with a drug crazed homeless person who is literally out of his mind. I fear for the future of a province that can't figure out what supportive mental health teams, appropriate psychiatric treatment and supportive housing even looks like.
I also fear for the future of our nation if we are unable to get our productivity up to a competitive level so we can improve our standard of living and prosperity which will in turn reduce housing costs and fund more and better social services - see above. For me economics is where we start to reverse the downward spiral our nation has been on for the past decade and more.
The Myth of the Rational voter. When it's cheap to believe something that aligns with your social desirability bias and doesn't cost you anything, you support it. As Daniel Audet points out the economic health of a community is a means, not an end, so the polls were asking people to make apples and oranges choices. Ask people where they would like to see their own taxes spent or if they could improve on their well being by keeping the money and distributing it themselves and you would have a more meaningful basis for political decision making.
Why vote based on any of these issues when you can get caught up in a frenzied moral panic and vote for the Democrat Party of Canada in a faux US election against a pro-wrestling caricature of Donald J. Trump?
It is sad that this article confirms the issues that Poilievre pushed hard to maintain at the forefront, the ones that almost everyone; the media, the Liberal supporters and even the PC premiers said was absolutely the wrong message and that he lost because he refused to pivot. When will people finally realize that the Liberals game plan is to find a significant wedge issue to stoke fear in enough Canadians to end up remaining in control. The media were complicate, as were the polling firms with the daily numbers in maintaining that fear of economic warfare, Poilievre's message was drowned out by the noise.
Now that the election is done and the dust has settled, we find that the threat of economic war with the US was not the existential crisis that the Liberal machine pretended it was, the prediction made by the head of the Eurasia Group about Canada 'quietly folding' after the election came to pass and we should really be focusing on all of the things that Poilievre said were/are important.
And yet people still maintain that it is Conservatives who lie to us and govern by fear. People need to learn to think for themselves and allow themselves to be so easily fooled by misinformation and propaganda spread by so-called experts and our media. My biggest fear is that it is only going to get worse once AI becomes the accepted standard for the source for our information.
I agree with the tiered sentiments of Canadian priorities that we tend to capture as defining our optimum quality of life. The sad reality is that we don’t have governments who are good at investing, managing or responding to those needs; which leaves Canadians to their own devices to define their own upward mobility and happiness. Speaking from experience, years ago I became increasingly unhappy living in the cities and suburbs for a host of reasons that touched on the priority tiers Mr. Colledge speaks to in his article. So rather than waiting for governments to come-up with and implement plans that I was certain would never happen, I took matters into my own hands and made some rather life-changing decisions that have indeed delivered that sense of happiness that I needed. One of the biggest changes I made that satisfied my desire for a better quality of life: I got the hell out of the cities/suburbs and never looked back. I recently returned to the city for a day of pre-scheduled meetings, my first trip outside my home community since prior to the pandemic. That trip cemented my resolve that I had indeed made the right decision for myself by leaving. Rural Canadian living offers and provides arguably superior quality of life outcomes that many Canadians are aspiring for today; as compartmentalized, discussed and prioritized in Mr. Colledge’s peice. Better housing and related affordability options, safer communities, more green spaces, improved sense of belonging, less saturation and congestion of people and traffic, community-fused health care and education, reduced crime, optimized work-life balance, etc. Canadians have the power to chart their own way to their own happiness. Unfortunately, we’ve also become cultured to expecting governments to fix all our problems, despite knowing deep down governments have no capacity to do so, at least successfully — when they try. They excel at pissing away money and fucking things up, and we’re all so used to it that we just shrug in indifference and keep on complaining. This won’t change. But Canadians — Canadians can be the change. Each of us has capacity to make changes in compartmentalized ways, and I can think of no better a reason to do so than to improve one’s quality of life for themselves and their families. Sometimes that involves bold changes. Nevertheless, Canadians’ destinies and paths to prosperity largely rests on our own respective shoulders. Governments haven’t been the answer in the past, and they certainly won’t be the answer in the future. If anything, governments and policy makers spanning time created these problems in the first place.
Aging Gen-x'r here. I grew up in the 70s-80s when crime was a LOT worse in Toronto. At 18 I was working as a bus boy at a bar in the summer that someone described as "where people were last seen".. Yet, I didnt feel unsafe. A lot of that is the age I was, but I suspect across age categories there has been a large shift.... Sure, there are the usual suspects (social media, infotainment / legacy media etc) but the facts of the matter is that it is materially safer now yet we all feel more vulnerable. I am not sure what any politician can do to change that.
Well, one could conceivably make crime illegal again. But that seems a bridge too far.
Wait, murder is OK now ?
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2021001/article/00017-eng.htm
I guess thats why the graph stops in 2020. Well, the more ya know!
To see the scope and depth of our federal government's capitulation - and policies/decisions that further this lack of involvement when it comes to law enforcement - you might want to take a boo at The Bureau by Sam Cooper and the ongoing travesty that is Canada's role in helping transnational crime (sure, but a paltry 4 billion dollar settlement by TD in the US isn't really much of a news story when it involves over a trillion dollars worth of real estate in Canada used to launder money. I'm sure that has almost no effect on Toronto and Vancouver housing prices.). In other words, when Toronto police suggest leaving car keys closer to the vehicle that will probably be stolen - to 'reduce' property crime is the thinking here - I doubt I'm alone that we've reached a point of lunacy when it comes to dealing with crime.
Its totally embarrassing and maddening the blind eye all levels of government show towards money laundering. The stuff that was happening at the BC casinos was particularly infuriating as you really could see a certain level of open complicity because, hey, its a lot of money coming into provincial coffers..... Similarly dynamic in London during the era of all that Russian post Soviet oligarch money flooding in. "Sure its dodgy, but look what its doing to the finance sector!"
But with respect to property crime, there really is a LOT more anger that should be spread around, especially to the courts. I remember attending a local fraud seminar by the police back in 2014 when mortgage fraud was on the uptick. The local cop had a great story about a fraudster going around selling "magnetic mattresses" to people. Collects a deposit and then pisses off with the deposit. A local guy, they arrest him... So what do you do with him. At the time it was $15k in theft. To prosecute him jail him is a LOT of time and money which is not in the budget. So plea a house arrest. But of course he does it again. There is only so much court time, so much budget for jails, so much budget for crowns etc etc etc etc. That and the cost of cops themselves. So at the end of the day, its gonna be more money to do all this. So, which brave politician is going to raise taxes to do that ?
But back to the original point, if we use murder as a general proxy for overall level of crime, we are less likely to be a victim of crime now than in the past.
Very few houses burn down. And the cost of firefighting goes up. What brave politician is going to raise taxes to address putting out house fires?
You see the problem? By framing it as an economic issue rather than a law and order one, you are granting that failure to enforce the law is the most cost effective way of dealing with crime. That's the lunacy at play. Enforcing the law is a costly business and always will be. The question is whether enforcement is the goal or allowing crime to become - in effect - legal. That's the path we're on. Yet no one bats an eyebrow when billions and billions and billions are spent on anything with a progressive label. All of a sudden, economics is no longer the lens and 'social justice' and 'aid' becomes 'investments' rather than 'expenses'!!!
In case you were wondering, finding hypocrisy is usually a pretty good indicator of an ideological narrative hard at work covering up what's true and replacing it with something to do with 'vibes'. What's true is that crime generally is no longer considered illegal enough to the point of coming up against enforcement and personal consequences. Those are the hallmarks of a failing state.
Not sure I agree with the framing quite that way. I worry more about policy that chases diminishing returns. To build on your fire scenario. We spend x million a year in the city to have y fires per year. If we spend 2x, we will have 0.75y fires. if we spend 10x, we will have 0.65y.... Do we really want to get as close as possible to that asymptote ? Whats a reasonable number ? Whats the opportunity cost ? Crime / safety is not the only issue-- healthcare, road repair, education, defense (at the fed level) etc etc etc etc.
Politics should be arguing about allocating fixed resources, not finding identity and meaning in it. If you want to argue how social justice politics are a "bad thing" have at it. I am certainly not going to defend it. But the fact of the matter remains. We are not going to find a scenario where there is zero crime. Materially its not as bad as it was. Do we want it better, sure. Tell me what the endgame / goal is and how will we get there. Whats the cost etc. How will you measure success? Sorry I do want to see it in empirical and measurable consistent terms. The fact that politicians redefine and retcon things means we should just abandon those politicians.
Yes, the old phrase 'turning a blind eye' is so relevant in our political, legal and enforcement systems and I can't think of a personal or pubic situation where that was the correct option.
I remember the 90's (and the 80's to some extent) and Toronto was definitely a grittier place with a lot more visible crime.
Statistically, if I recall correctly, crime in Canada (and the US as well) reached its modern peak in the early to mid 1990's and then rapidly fell off. Lots of theories as to why - abortion pro-actively killing off a generation of unwanted kids more likely to become delinquents, unleaded gasoline and paint making people less crazy, etc. - but a big one was probably reaching a sweet spot between prosperity and affordability. The 2000's/(early)2010's was a time when - in Canada at least - you could both get a good job relatively easily and that job would let you afford a relatively good life.
The problem is not that we've returned to the 70's or the 90's rates of crime in absolute terms, it's that we've backtracked after more or less 'solving' crime for a couple of decades. Affordability, employment, overcrowding, mass immigration, and cultural issues have all played a role. We also decided during the tail of the low crime era to focus on fantasy issues, like correcting 'overincarceration' of various groups, to go way too easy on offenders, removing deterrence from the new wave of criminals.
Yes for sure. Directionally things did indeed get worse and I agree there have been some really bad policies that *seem* to make things worse. I am not a criminologist, but from the one survey course I took back in the 80s there was a crazy stat that stuck with me about just how many violent crimes involve drugs/alcohol and how much petty crime involves addiction. It seems the exclusive harm reduction focus has just made things a lot worse here. A pretty fleshed out discussion that made sense and rang true
https://podcasts.apple.com/nz/podcast/this-is-a-very-weird-moment-in-the-history-of-drug-laws/id1548604447?i=1000655151308
As for punishment for deterrence, I dont think it works that well. But I think some punishment is important for other reasons like overall social trust/cohesion. If we see people just walking out of Loblaws with $100 of razor blades to sell for drugs and the gov's response is, "Oh its for our poverty reduction plan", that stuff is toxic!
Zack's on Military trail?
haha, no. Hunters down at Oakwood and St. Claire area. I only filled in a couple of times as a favor. But lots of cheap hash :)
Probably not fair but after reading "urgent threat from the United States" I closed the opinion piece. So tired of this ridiculous line of thought.
Polling is not only Mr. Colledge's area of expertise but also his livelihood so I think it fair to say that he might have some degree of bias regarding its effectiveness and its usefulness. I think we all know that the wording, the interpreter, the timing and the targeted respondents all have a strong influence on the perceived results. Polls are a useful tool for a variety of purposes but I believe the media, in all its forms, often make too much of them.
Trying to set governmental policies based on polls that are aimed at gauging the 'feelings' of a populace is, I believe, a tenuous strategy.
Some well written and valid comments here with a common theme pointing towards the health of the ECONOMY being the primary vehicle in achieving pretty well everything in all the 'tiers'.
Something about the last election gave me a gross feeling about polls and pollsters. It's starting to become very hard to separate measuring opinion from shaping it.
I do wonder what effect those 'weird outlier' Ekos polls had back in January/February in nudging public opinion toward the "Carney saviour" narrative, getting the ball rolling that the Liberals were back in the game and so many others are suddenly voting for him that the Liberals are a totally valid choice again! And also don't even think about voting for the 'collapsing' NDP Bloc or Green because you can stop Poilievre and give it to Trump if you just vote the way the polls are going. To what extent did polls begin to become a self-reinforcing and self-fulfilling prophecy?
And why no Ekos polls toward the end of the campaign when the Conservatives were making up ground?
I trust these guys even less when polling on issues because how the question is phrased, and whether/what alternatives are proposed, can just drag the numbers around by the nose.
If the question was indeed "what makes somewhere a good place to live", it absolutely does not follow from that at all that we should interpret the answer as if the question were "what should the federal government care about" (and still less as if it were "what should the federal government treat as a policy priority").
Many important things that make for an attractive place to live are none of the government's business, and many things that are proper government concerns are none of the *federal* government's business (like great schools).
It's true that too many Canadians behave as if the federal government is their mommy, and think it should look after everything that matters to them. But that is an error — a habit of poor reasoning and broken civics. We should not simply assume that just because something is important, it should be a priority for the federal government.
Despite the new face at the head of the party, the liberals remain the same old, tired, incompetent, corrupt organisation. The elbow up crowd got duped by liberal trickery and the rest of us can only watch as Canada sinks deeper and deeper into irrelevance.
I think this is a great piece, and it ties in well with what Tim Snyder wrote in On Freedom about how we as a society require a certain amount of economic security (note, this is not the same thing as a perpetually-increasing GDP) in order to realize our capacities and our freedom. I caution against any assertion that says that we need to focus on "the economy" that doesn't include specifics about which aspects of the economy we should focus on.
Additional note: JFK's criticisms of GDP are still relevant in that it measures everything about life except that which makes it worth living. All the "development" in the world isn't worth it if it isn't being used to actually materially improve people's lives.
I am also very concerned with (the lack of) law and order mentioned in the election campaigns. The Liberal incumbent for my riding left a brochure for the Liberal Party game plan, and law and order were signally missing. Not a single mention, meanwhile our neighborhood has declined precipitously. Why do criminals have the right to degrade our neighborhoods, make us unsafe, and avoid detention? Why is this acceptable?
I'm not sure how any government addresses the housing crisis when it's pretty common knowledge that there aren't nearly enough qualified tradespeople around to facilitate a boom. Healthcare is in collapse because of provincial governments syphoning off money for other things in their desire to "Americanise" our system. Carney has one foot on Everest and one on K2 and needs to do the double.
The housing crisis is a function of supply and demand, and the federal and provincial governments have done a terrible job of using government policy to reduce the demand side and create a market where prices would level out and trend downward.
We have had market corrections in the housing market in the past, usually in tandem with a horrible economy and tight money supply. In recent years easy access to financing, turning a blind eye to real estate used to front money laundering purposes and investors chasing big margins on home flipping has exacerbated the situation. These are all factors that could have been remedied by government policy. The icing on the cake is flooding the housing market with immigrants who have no place to live.
There is no question that Trudeau not giving provinces and municipalities advance warning, and consultation about a housing plan for increased immigration is arguably his biggest of many failures.
Carney now faces a governance challenge familiar to any capable manager: balancing a long-term strategic plan with the urgent, practical needs of citizens. Just as a company cannot succeed by focusing solely on quarterly profits while neglecting its internal cohesion, a government that prioritizes GDP growth while overlooking housing, health, and public safety risks losing legitimacy. It recalls the post-war Attlee government in Britain, which, despite inheriting a bankrupt state, built durable public support by grounding its policies in the everyday concerns of working people — health care, housing, and employment. Canadians now expect similar clarity of purpose: not just a vision for prosperity, but evidence that it will tangibly improve their lives.
Interesting facts--for me especially the fact that 'access to Nature' ranked relatively high along with economy and jobs. But yeah, seems like if you improve the economy that improves a lot of things mentioned.