Spencer Fernando is a writer, commentator, podcast host and former political insider. His career has included spells working for the Conservative Party and Manitoba Progressive Conservatives. He is now a campaign fellow with the National Citizens Coalition. His work can be found here.
A new Ipsos survey conducted for MNP demonstrates the extent to which many Canadians are on the brink of financial disaster.
According to the survey, 49 per cent of Canadians say they are within $200 of insolvency.
Additionally, 31 per cent said they don’t make enough money to pay bills and debts.
The survey also measures the debt sentiment of Canadians.
That index fell to 87, the lowest number (lower is worse) since the index was introduced in 2017.
Where did all of that printed money go?
According to those who defend the Liberal government and Bank of Canada, this shouldn’t be happening.
After all, the government has spent a massive amount of money and run huge deficits, while the Bank of Canada dramatically increased the money supply.
Surely, with all of that money flowing around everyone should be getting richer and richer, right?
Of course, we know that’s not how it works.
Money doesn’t create value, it is merely a way to measure value.
Creating more money without increasing the supply of valuable goods and/or services simply means that each unit of money loses value, which we see represented as rising prices.
The best way to think about it is to imagine you were stuck on a small island with 10 people. If you used seashells to trade, and then someone found a stash of seashells that doubled the seashell supply, you wouldn’t feel any wealthier and the island wouldn’t be any more abundant.
Our country, and the entire Earth, functions the same way, albeit at a much larger scale.
No matter how much money the Bank of Canada prints, no matter how much our federal and provincial governments spend, we can’t magically make prosperity appear.
Prosperity requires real productivity, and increasing productivity requires technological advancement.
Our nation should be incentivizing that productivity and advancement through lower taxes for individuals and businesses.
We should also embrace our energy sector, because abundant and affordable energy is one of the prerequisites for a civilization to advance.
When considering the disturbing fact that nearly half our country is on the brink of insolvency, we can see how this has impacted politics in Canada.
While the political and media elites (many of whom are financially secure thanks to taxpayer dollars) lament "populism" and "anger," they rarely look at the root causes.
How is it possible that in a country as abundant as Canada nearly half of the population is only $200 away from insolvency?
How is it possible that in a country that is mostly vast empty space, we have such an unaffordable housing market?
That can only happen through the failures of a political class that has put their own ideological ambitions ahead of common-sense economic and monetary policy.
Canadians should be angry about this, and we should be demanding a significant change.
Our country can’t continue to go on like this.
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