Canada ranks 14th in the world for happines and has been sinking since Trudeau took office in 2015, when Canada ranked fifth. Canadians would be happier living in Germany or Iceland. I am old enough to remember when I thought Canada was the best place on Earth to live.
Why are Canadians not happy? Part of the reason is the cost of housing, with major Canadian cities like Vancouver, Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, and Montreal ranking among the least affordable in North America with only Edmonton, Winnipeg and Calgary making the list of “most affordable”. One third of Canada’s population live in the five “least affordable” metros listed while less than 10% live in the “most affordable”. Canadian housing prices are at crisis levels.
The cost of housing is driven by obvious factors - the cost and availability of serviced land, construction costs, the level of interest rates and the balance between supply and demand. Canada is among the least populated countries on the planet and has billions of acres of unoccupied land so the cost of land shouldn’t be an issue. But it is, the result of over regulation, inane permitting processes, the preponderance of so-called “heritage committees” wanting new homes to be built like they were in the 1800’s, and municipal corruption. We know the cost of land is a primary culprit since construction costs are well known (published annually by Altus Group by major Canadian jurisdiction and by type of construction) and have been quite tame for decades.
Interest rates are another problem. Governments forced rates to unsustainably low levels through “quantitative easing” driving up the price of homes while the home building industry was strangled by regulations and permitting costs, so fewer homes were built than needed to support organic population growth let alone necessary immigration. Development costs in the Toronto area add about $137,000 to the cost of a detached home and are set to rise by 50%. The housing issue is entirely home grown and much of it the result of Trudeau leadership and poor municipal governments.
A second cause of unhappiness is the rising cost of living, a predictable outcome of two key factors - massive increases in the money supply outpacing economic growth and a hamstrung energy industry contributing to the global shortage of fossil fuels. Inflation in Canada is approaching double digits and wages are lagging well behind. It is hard for Canadians to be happy when they can’t afford their rent or mortgage payments, the cost to keep food on the table or the cost of fuel to heat their homes or power their vehicles. This problem is largely home grown since Canada is one of the few jurisdictions in the world that was capable of rapidly increasing oil & gas production to ease the global shortage but led by a government unwilling to permit the necessary pipeliness and terminal infrastructure needed to do so. That lies at Trudeau’s door as well.
A final cause is government promoting identity politics, pitting groups of Canadians against one other with cries of racism, misogyny, homophobia, Islamaphobia, transphobia and a plethora of other pieces of divisive rhetoric and bombarding Canadians with specious alarms over climate change terrifying our children, some to the brink of suicide. Rather than lead Canadians with unifying messages and policies that deal with rather than paper over the issues confronting Canadians, our Prime Minister labels those opposing his terrible policies with invectives and invoked the renamed War Measures Act to suppress their valid complaints.
Canada used to be a cosmopolitan country largely free from the bigotry we see elsewhere offering our vital immigrant population (which is most of us) the opportunity to build lives devoid of the problems they came to Canada to escape and prosper in communities that by and large accepted them with open arms. It is less so today, a result of the identity politics of the Liberal government over the past 8 years. Now our population must carry trillions of mortgage and credit card debt while our government expands without limits and imposes higher taxes to pay for the massive debts taken on since Trudeau was first elected. Household debt is now a record 182% of income with the costs of carrying that debt racing higher as we grapple with rampant inflation. In parallel, national debt taken on by Trudeau’s government exceeded all the debt Canada had incurred since Confederation, adding hundreds of billions to the now trillion dollar amounts Canadians will sooner or later have to repay.
We face the prospect of economic collapse which may be avoided only through massive expansion of our mining, oil & gas and forestry industries but we are led by a government that not only eschews those opportunities but overtly suppresses them with oppressive regulations. Welcome to Trudeau’s Canada.
Add restrictions on personal freedoms via lock-downs, wearing a mask that does not work, and forced vaccinations that did nothing to stop the virus. It also divided us with friends neighbors and family over personal choices of c_vid vaccinations and normal interactions. Get rid of trudeau and bidden first. We also need a more democratic way of having govy accountability "all the time", not every 4 years.
Pretty much the same in Australia. I also think that it’s high costs of housing that amplify your final point ... when people can’t afford their own home they have plenty of time to sympathise with all the woke crap. Owning a house grounds people.