How campaigns milk the middle class
Leaders exploit fact that group is increasingly hard to define
Jennine Ambrose is a single mother who may have to quit her $18-an-hour call centre job because she can’t afford daycare for her 4-year-old son.
Katy Pedersen doesn’t need the government’s $160 monthly child-care cheque, but she’s grateful for the boost to her 3-year-old son’s university savings.
Aside from their toddlers, there is little these mothers have in common. Yet, they are both members of Canada’s middle class.
That group — a favourite target for pandering politicians — is so encompassing that it can include a single mother who earns $35,000 a year and a family pulling in more than $120,000, depending on whom you ask.
There are hundreds of working definitions of the middle class — based on everything from a family’s wealth to how many computers they own — and some economists say the term has become so nebulous as to be meaningless.
Anxieties about the struggling middle class have sharpened into focus in the aftermath of the Great Recession, amid slow economic growth, widespread job losses, declining job security, cost-of-living increases and sky-high household debt loads.
The fate of the middle class is one of the defining issues of this federal election campaign, said Frank Graves, president of EKOS Research.
A decade ago, 70 per cent of Canadians self-identified as middle class. That number has dropped below 50 per cent, Graves said, adding that just 13 per cent of Canadians believe their children will be better off than they are.
“The whole middle-class bargain is broken,” he said. “It’s deeply concerning and people say it’s always been like that. Well, no it hasn’t.”
“Middle class” is so amorphous a term that it can include Canadians eking out barely more than $30,000 a year and a professional who earns $120,000 a year, depending on which statistician or political party you ask.
Talking to members of Canada’ middle class paints a diverse picture of the needs and aspirations of individuals in this group. Name: Jose Cabanes. Job: Customer service worker at Greater Toronto Airport Authority. Annual Income: Under $50,000 for household. Are you middle-class? Absolutely. Can you define middle-class? “The people who are privileged that are separate from the vicious cycle of minimum-wage earnings. But they’re finding it very hard to make ends meet. It’s very hard.”
Cabanes had a managerial job and comfortable middle-class lifestyle in the Philippines. Still, he moved his family to Canada in 2009 in search of better opportunities for his four children.
Now, he’s making $11 an hour at a contract job that nets him barely enough to provide for his family. They had to sell their home in Brampton when the mortgage got too difficult to pay and now rent.
“It’s not the kind of life I was thinking when we decided to migrate to Canada,” says the 56-year-old.
“We are finding it hard to make ends meet. We are drowning in debt.”
His twenty-something children live at home and are going to college. In the summers, they work to help out.
He says it’s hard to improve his fam- ily’s quality of life because of the contractual nature of his job.
He’s looking for a better-paying job, but also lobbies with his fellow workers for a $15-an-hour minimum wage. He wishes he could find employment in the kind of social services job he was doing in the Philippines, but no one will hire him. Name: Katy Pedersen. Job: Director of digital fundraising and engagement at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital. Annual Income: More than $150,000 for household. Are you middle class? Unsure. Can you define middle-class? “It’s become a buzzword. I don’t know what that even means anymore. I don’t know if that applies to me, to my friends, to my parents. I guess we are, but it’s such a broad category.”
Pedersen doesn’t want the childcare cheque she receives each month.
She’d rather see the money redirected to target some of the lessfortunate families in her east Toronto neighbourhood, an area where children living in million-dollar homes attend school with kids living in social housing.
“I got a gross feeling when I got that money,” says Pedersen, 34.
“I meet parents on the playground in our neighbourhood, which is a fairly mixed income neighbourhood, for whom it makes a big difference.
“When you look at the cost of child care in Toronto, which is what this benefit is supposed to support, even at the low end, it doesn’t even buy a day.”
She feels she can “put the money to work” better by putting it directly into a Registered Education Savings Plan for her 3-year-old son, Henry. Name: Jennine Ambrose. Job: Call-centre employee. Annual income: $35,000. Are you middle-class? Not yet. Can you define middle-class? “Middle class means people that . . . can work 35 hours, just like me, but they get a higher salary. They can afford a house in Toronto and not an apartment. They have a car, they don’t have to take the bus. They’re a little bit more comfortable. They can take vacations.”
All Ambrose wants is to own her own home. Then, she says, she’ll be middle class.
The 27-year-old and her 4-year-old son have lived with her mom and her sister in a small Scarborough apartment for the past two years. It’s a lot less crowded than before, when they lived with six other family members in social housing.
By living with her mom, Ambrose is able to save for her house. She’s already set aside $10,000 for a townhouse.
But that nest egg could soon disappear.
Her son, Andreas, started school in September and she’s worked it out so that her cousin picks him from school. That arrangement is coming to an end in January, though, and she has no idea what she’s going to do.
“I don’t think I can afford daycare. I’d probably have to quit my job,” she says.
The most affordable child care in her area is $800 a month. Ambrose earns $1,000 every two weeks. She’s already living paycheque to paycheque. Name: Lisa Belanger. Job: Speaker, health promotion expert, author. Annual Income: Difficult to say. Are you middle-class? Yes, I think. Can you define middle-class? “What even is middle-class? Is it cash flow? Is it net worth?”
Lisa Belanger has spent one-third of her life in university.
Sure, she was offered a professorship in Chicago, with the promise of “that ultimate middle-class life.”
But that would have meant forcing her husband to leave his well-paid oil industry job, giving up meaningful work with cancer survivors and leaving the mountainous beauty of Canmore, Alta., all for precarious, contract work.
She chose to stay in Canmore and start a charity for those battling cancer and survivors. It literally pays her nothing, but it means a lot to her. Her best friend died from cancer when Belanger was 18.
Her husband lost his job after the oil-price crash. Their income is unsteady, but Belanger says they’re doing well thanks to her entrepreneurial endeavours and the two income properties they own.
“I can make $10,000 one month and I can make zero for six. My income is so fluctuating.”