Hey Mr. Poloz, can I crash in your basement?

Dear Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz:

Thank you for your advice this week to young Canadians who are unemployed.

“If your parents are letting you live in the basement,” you said in a press conference Monday, “you might as well go out and do something for free to put the experience on your CV.”

Great idea! I’m now writing to ask: Can I live in your basement? I’m not unemployed right now, but if I ever find myself without a job in these precarious economic times while I am still officially a Young Person, can you adopt me?

Not for long, I promise. Just briefly, to give me enough time to work for free to bolster my CV.

If I don’t seem like a good match, can another young Canadian live in your basement? Because while the Basement-Dwelling Millennial has become an enduring and defining trope of our generation, there are a whole lot of people who have never had that option.

When I graduated from university four years ago with more than $50,000 in student debt, for example, I faced immense pressure to land and keep a decent-paying job in my industry immediately. I could not afford to go a month or even a week without paid work. I could not afford to take most entry-level jobs offered in my industry, even the ones that did pay.

And I could not fall back on mom and dad because they live in that other place, Rural Canada, where there aren’t even enough jobs for the parents who live on the upper floors of houses, let alone their potentially basement-dwelling millennial children.

I was lucky. I got a job. I did not end up in my parents’ basement. (Good thing because it’s unfinished, ha-ha!) I am also fortunate and grateful to have been in a position where I could take on debt to educate myself in the first place, and to have been encouraged by wonderful parents to do so. Many young people in this country have fewer options.

I know that you are probably feeling misunderstood this week. You probably had the best intentions. You probably had in mind those young Canadians who are already unemployed and living in their parents’ basements in places where valuable employment options do exist, even unpaid, and whose parents can afford to help them out while they work for free.

But Mr. Poloz, what about everyone else? Do you have room in your basement? Sincerely, Amy Dempsey