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Originally Posted by TheIronMaiden
@ Mr.Coffee, there is a lot to agree with on your LNG post. That said, can you be more specific about how Canadians quality of life is diminishing?
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The state of our health care and education systems are in somewhat disarray and can’t afford basic stuff. We have teachers buying school supplies for classrooms, we have high schools such as news ones in south Calgary that are way over capacity and have kids crawling on top of each other in hallways as makeshift classrooms. We have similar problems in health care with bloated giant bureaucracies with no end in sight and public institutions protecting them inhibiting our ability to fix real problems. For example, my wife is a nurse and doing a masters in nursing, and just finished interviewing the CEO of one of the hospitals for a project. Nursing staff shortages are a big problem but partially caused by the way the nursing union offers shifts being basically super inflexible. Front line nurses want it changed to promote more shift flexibility. New nurses want this, management wants this, admin wants this, but the union is against it (not sure why) and so nothing changes. Hospitals obviously lack adequate capacity, way worse than it used to be and was exacerbated by COVID. We have a provincial government openly hostile to doctors and public unions, which helps drive some of these positions to other countries.
Depression rates are at sky high levels and drug and alcohol dependency rates are on the rise. One could likely correctly argue these are a function of COVID but are still a reflection of declining standard of living.
Debt levels for Canadians have never been higher, and we are at the precipice of an inter generational collapse of real estate opportunities for young Canadians trying to start their lives. Now nobody can afford to buy a home in major metropolitan centres like Toronto, Vancouver, and arguably Calgary without dual income.
Not everything is dire and as with everything there are shades of grey to every argument. Mine is that we are at the beginning of a long term decline in standard of living and we should expect same without, as Cliff has said as nausem and he is 110% correct, massive increases in taxation. But that’s where I have a lot of concern. There’s been so much distrust built up in our government and public institutions to properly manage budgets and not be corrupt #######s, so there is a massive cultural tension when it comes to increasing the necessary taxes we need to do. And that’s completely understandable the way Trudeaus Liberals have managed things with so many corruptions and scandals and obvious bull#### going on.
Anyway, I’m musing a bit here too but let me tell you, I’ve worked for Canadians, Americans and groups in the Middle East. Guess who were the laziest and most entitled by a wide margin? Other countries want what we have, if we want to keep it, we have to be smarter and work harder. Smarter as in leverage what our economy is built on, resources. And then work for it all.