How we move the needle on Canada's budget compass
A week in the life of Gen Squeeze offers a snapshot of what goes into shifting the country's policies and priorities
Changing systems is a marathon, not a sprint. There’s lots of inertia behind the status quo that’s difficult to disrupt. But every once in a while, things begin to pile up, inching us towards a tipping point. It feels like we might be approaching one now.
For months, we’ve been hard at work in Ottawa and in MP offices across the country, making the case for urgent federal action on generational fairness. We’ve been invited to dozens of meetings with the people in charge of the federal budget. We’ve shone a light on the most recent data and our best thinking on policy changes to tackle looming public and climate debts. We’ve shared your stories of housing grief, child-care gratitude and angst, and worry about the country we’re leaving to our kids and grandkids.
These many steps towards achieving big-picture policy change rarely follow a straight line, and the process likely appears somewhat nebulous from the outside. We thought a snapshot of this past week might help bring you “behind the scenes” to glimpse what we do year-round to make Canada work more fairly for all generations.
🗓️ MARCH 18
Federal Housing Minister Sean Fraser acknowledges the “generational divide” on housing, and affirms that Canada’s housing plan will:
“…tackl[e] the issue of generational fairness. Making sure that young people in this country can afford a place to rent if they choose and make sure that the dream of home ownership doesn’t escape them.”
🎉 That’s straight from the Gen Squeeze playbook! We hope you’ll join us in thanking Minister Fraser, and holding him to this commitment in budget 2024 by tweeting him @SeanFraserMP, or reaching him on Facebook, SeanFraserMP or by email, sean.fraser@parl.gc.ca.
🗓️ MARCH 19
Gen Squeeze Founder Paul Kershaw is invited to meet with a raft of senior advisors in the Ministry of Finance.
With budget day fast approaching, Paul reminded all of these key staffers about the urgency of addressing generational tensions in our fiscal, housing, family and climate policies. Doing so will put Canada on stronger economic footing, reduce wealth inequality, and address the growing financial vulnerability of younger people. Given new data showing that Canada ranks 8th in the world on happiness for those over age 60, but 58th in the world on happiness for those under 30, it’s clear that we need to reverse Canada’s fading promise for younger and future generations.
🗓️ MARCH 20
Dr. Kershaw’s packed day in Ottawa includes:
Meeting with leaders in the Prime Minister’s Office to engage on the same themes as with the Ministry of Finance.
Meeting with senior advisors to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change.
Connecting with Randy Boissonnault, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Official Languages.
A media scrum on pollution pricing, alongside Parliamentary Secretaries Adam Van Koeverden and Julie Dabrusin and MP Patrick Weiler.
Paul’s message: putting a price on pollution is what good ancestors do. The ‘axe the tax’ campaign can’t make the costs of our pollution go away — these costs will continue to grow, and present a bigger bill down the road to younger and future generations. The only choice Axe the Tax campaigners are giving us is to pay less now, and get a rebate. Or ask our kids to pay more later.
🗓️ March 21
Paul meets with leaders from the office of the Federal Housing Minister to acknowledge Minister Fraser’s comments about generational unfairness in housing, and share with them the concrete evidence-based solutions Gen Squeeze has to address these tensions.
🗓️ March 22
The Gen Squeeze team meets with BC government health leaders on Get Well Canada’s recommendation to grow investments more urgently in the social conditions where health begins than in medical care, and to track the balance of these investments over time with new budget metrics.
😮💨 Phew… and that’s only our government-related activities! All the while, we’re also working with community and research partners to advance our work and bring you the most current data on promoting wellbeing for all generations.
Overall, it’s fair to say that we’re breaking new ground when it comes to influencing the policies that can make Canada work for all generations. While it’s never wise to count one’s chickens before they’ve hatched — especially when we know the risks created by past birds coming home to roost — we’re more hopeful than ever that the April 16 federal budget will bring real change.
Don’t forget to stay tuned for our federal budget analysis at budget season 2024 and in The Globe & Mail.
It's what Paul does not say when he has the attention of national media that tells me how much he is in the grips corporatism. He does not say the tar sands threaten the young and future generations more than any other singular thing in Canada. The international climate community knows it. Canada sits as one of the worst carbon offenders there.
I support Paul's efforts. However, meetings with ministers and government officials and taking vague government statements about recognizing generational fairness as evidence of Generational Squeezes effectiveness makes me think of how oil executives placated and carried on in their ways for decades. As they do today. Our men and women of government are so removed from the fundamental ideas that the finest minds are saying Suzuki, Astra Taylor, Chomsky, George Monbiot , John Ralston Saul and hundreds of others including a litany of modern economists saying we must drop the GDP as our measure of success and turn to a circular regenerative economy or as Tomson Highway said in his 2022 Massey lectures our straight line of blind growth is killing us. It would be bad politics to address the Tar Sands as the thing in Canada that squeezing the most life out of us so we work with the powers that be, we go with the grains because going against them would be too much to bear. The seeds of a paradigm shift have long been here and left un-watered and mostly ignored. First, we must experience collapse. The climate catastrophes and financial collapse of 2008/09 that we have faced weren’t enough-greater collapse is needed for us to face that in our arrogant materialistic joy ride believing we can grow our way out of a growth problem that science will solve it when we have had solutions for centuries and technology has in fact enabled it. Seen in the brilliant technologies that allow for the Tar Sands. For centuries we have had knowledge of ways of living as a part of nature and not above it or separate from it, but we went right on exploiting it at all costs.
Canada’s economy is very much a subsidiary of American corporations. Decades ago, Sheldon Wolin said the degree to which corporations controlled the levers of power including government and media Western Democracies were really best described as states of corporate totalitarianism. Its concentration of wealth would lead to nations with its people filled with resentments and vulnerable to strong men-fascists like Trump and men with simple slogans like axe the tax. The resentful people would be mostly unconscious of the corporate forces and look for politicians to blame and seek out those politicians that could harness their resentments rather than go after the corporatism that held us in its grips. That boys and girls was what John Ralston Saul was getting at when he called us an Unconscious Civilization. Corporatism is killing us. Pierre Poilievre is just idiot of that.