Widening gap

Re: Are Canadians seeing real economic progress? John Ivison, Sept. 17

There are time-bombs for the middle class that the Liberal government and economists disregard. Improvement in middle-class wellbeing mostly results from additions to the national credit card imposed on next generations.

Population growth of one per cent, whether from immigration or natural growth, requires more than one per cent of GDP growth. The front-end loaded cost of building their housing and infrastructure adds to GDP but it’s not wealth-generating capital investment.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to close the gap for First Peoples but the gap continues to widen exponentially. For example, ten per cent of Nunavut’s population is effectively homeless, and the territory’s immediate housing deficit is 3,000 units, or $1.5 billion. The immediate deficit for First Peoples’ housing nationwide, largely in communities having no economic reason to exist, is a hundred thousand units and tens of billions of dollars.

The apparently good unemployment numbers don’t consider people of employable age who aren’t looking for work. There’s a burgeoning underclass doubling every twenty years, largely but by no means exclusively First Peoples, who lack education, skills and motivation for employment. Worse, a recent report has 40 per cent of current jobs threatened by technology over the next twenty years and only a third of them, secure.