It seems that Canada has hit its Limits to Growth
I am sure you all know about this shortage:
Ongoing national scarcity of children’s over-the-counter drugs
Niagara pharmacist Donnie Edwards can’t predict how long the shortage of children’s medications will continue, despite efforts to increase supplies. Edwards, an Ontario Pharmacists Association board member, said he has heard several explanations for the shortage that has been ongoing since summer. “I’ve heard a number of comments — everything from a shortage of certain raw materials, to supply and demand, to labelling with the two languages. We’ve heard all kinds of different scenarios, and rumour has it they’re trying to work as fast as they can to meet the demand,” he said.
Let’s ask this question: Has the quality of life for many Canadians decreased so badly that life is just about survival for many?
Story 1. Yesterday on the radio I heard a 55 year old man on disability call and chat about who he applied to the MAID [Medically Assistance in Dying] program because he had no place to live. He is on disability because of a work accident and is in a lot of pain. He survived in a rooming house and because he has been there for years he could afford the rent and food on his meagre $1150/month disability payment but, given the high prices, the landlord decided to sell the building. Of course, he could find no affordable place to live and this made him realize that his quality of life was terrible and that suicide via MAID was his only realistic option. Lucky for him he got onto the radio to tell his story and a lady created a GO FUND ME that raised $60,000 so that he could afford rent.
Story #2. Today on the radio I heard a different story but with the same theme: many Canadians no longer have a good quality of life. The lady who called in to say that the school her daughter attended in Kanata had a severe shortage of resources, especially for those with learning disabilities. There were not enough support staff and a teacher shortage – confirmed by this CBC headline:
Ontario is facing a shortage of teachers as many retire or leave the profession. But for many new teachers, it’s taking much longer to get certified, forcing them to take casual positions with no guarantee of benefits and much less pay. Meanwhile, some boards are ‘hiring unqualified people,’ teachers’ union says. Our infrastructure cannot handle the number or people or the cost of living. Our families have fallen apart, wages are not enough to allow for any semblance of a decent quality of life and they are in survival mode.
Story #3. I placed my 92 year old mother on a waiting list for a Long Term Care bed two years ago. At that time I was told the wait would be 2 years. Last month a representative from the department that decides who gets a bed and who does not [as, guess what? there is a shortage of beds!]: she told me the wait for my mum would probably be ANOTHER 5 years!
Story #4: Another CBC headline: “CDNs trying to be a visa to India face backlogs” One of the ladies waiting in line to get a Visa said: ‘I don’t even feel like I am living in Canada.’ Exactly. The Canada we know and love is gone. Gone. Too much growth, too fast, without the infrastructure and changes required in how we live and do: like transportation, like housing – the rules and how we live need to change to maintain a decent quality of life for its citizens. And one of those changes is moving towards Degrowth.
Story #5. A headline from Forbes business magazine yesterday: Top economist Mohamed El-Erian says we’re not just headed for another recession, but a ‘profound economic and financial shift’. One of those shifts is moving from demand being a limiting factor in our economy to SUPPLY being the limiting factor. In other words, the end of cheap stuff is over. The end of easy consumption is over. Permanently. Other economists like who has coined the term
Story #6: In Canada 50% of variable rate mortgage holders with fixed monthly payments have hit trigger point at which 100% of their payments are for paying off the Principle and 0% the interest – at which points lender may increase the payments demanded. What does this mean? Many people are over extended financially. CDNs have hit their limits. I could go on, especially onto the evidence for emotional/mental health/violence/loneliness – all signs that people are overwhelmed and not coping, but I have written about that elsewhere… and don’t even get me started on the housing crisis and wait times in hospitals!
So, is Canada is hitting its Limits to provide a decent quality of life for its citizens? It certainly seems so. And the government response? Build more hospitals? No. Ensure Nurses get full time work with benefits? No. Reduce the training time for teachers from 2 years back to the 1 year it used to be when I trained to be a teacher? No. Instead the solution is to grow the population even more! And comments like “we must keep wages down to avoid inflation from grabbing hold.” And even dumber ideas like those from the government in Ontario: “Let’s develop our best farm land and environmentally protected areas north of Toronto and gut the ability of government environmental waterway protection groups like the Rideau Valley Authority who “stand in the way of development and progress and affordable housing” plus let’s allow Mayors to have extra powers with the ability to ram through pro development rules that require less than a 50% vote of city council”. Yes, really!
What’s going on? One way to look at it is that our leaders are trying to keep a socio-economic system that has reached its limits. It is busted. It needs to change. How? I, and many others, would say that fundamentally we need to stop growing. We need BETTER instead of MORE. I heard this comment on the radio by some famous Professor [sorry, I forgot his name] said [paraphrased]: “Our western societies seem to be permanently stuck in teenager like thinking. We are obsessed with grow, grow, grow. More. More. More. Immediate gratification. Immediate gratification. Immediate gratification. Me. Me. Me. Well, that’s not sustainable. We all, whether it be individuals or societies, need to grow up. We need to stop focussing on me, and instead focus on US; focus on long term sustainability – and that does NOT mean “sustainable growth” – the biggest oxymoron I have ever heard – on par with the old joke of “Catholic birth control”.
What can you do? Encourage our leaders to move to a path of degrowth. Consume less, yet, but also support policies that work to reduce our population because if you think our only problems are energy and climate change – you are going to be in for a rude surprise when you are hungry and famine sweeps the globe. Am I making a prediction? Not really. The “when” of that is impossible, but the fact is that famine has been a normal part of human existence and people learned to accept and adapt to that it. The only difference now is that we have the arrogance to think that we are immune to normal, that we have overcome History – no chance of that.
But is there really anything new in all this? I doubt it, except for the fact that we are in denial. Here is a case in point. I was reading a lecture from 1896 which is a collection of lectures about Yoga by Swami Vivekananda. On page 269, in London in October of 1986 he said: “The sum of total happiness and misery in this world is the same throughout [history]. If a wave rises in the ocean, it makes a hollow elsewhere. If happiness comes to one man unhappiness come to another, OR to some animal. Men are increasing numbers and some animals are decreasing as we are killing them off and taking their land; we are taking all means of sustenance from them. How can we say, then, that happiness is increasing?”
Again, I repeat a theme I have in all I write – when I talk about ‘people’ and ‘us’ I mean ALL life. If it seems like we have enough for more humans, but other ‘peoples’ die, in this case the story is about manatees, that means we do not have the resources and ability to preserve the lives of all peoples. You know the old adage, what happens to others will eventually happen to us, for as Karma informs us: “What goes around, comes around”:
Endangered status sought for manatees as hundreds starve Pollution is triggering algae blooms that have killed much of the seagrass on which manatees depend, conservations groups said.
On a different note I leave you with this from the classic SCI FI novel Dune, by Frank Herbert. A this point in the story the main characters are at a junction point where if they make the wrong choice they are going to die. Just like us today, the only difference is that the characters in this story are at least partially in control of their lives, while you and I, not being billionaires, are or at least feel, mostly helpless. The only way to make the right choices that will enable our human survival is for us to stop feeling helpless and DO something! Live your life in degrowth mode before Mother Nature, in her very harsh way, forces you and I do scale back. What this character feels, is what anybody who is aware feels.
Terrible purpose! He sensed it, the race consciousness that he could not escape. There was a sharpened clarity, the inflow of data, the cold precision of awareness. Awareness flowed into the timeless stratum where he could view time, sensing the available paths, the winds of the future…. The winds of the past: all combined in a vision that permitted him to see time becoming space. There was danger. In grasping the present, the felt for the first time the massive movements of complicated currents, waves, surges and counter surges, like surf against rocky cliffs. The now was a nexus, a turning point where the future would be born.
Since we started with a story about MAID and given that many of you would probably like a quantitative, number-based view of this issue, I leave you with this graph showing the increase in medically assisted death [nobody is allowed to call in suicide]. People are giving up. We are in over shoot mode. Put on your seat belts and get ready for a wild ride.
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyZnqhIWELI
https://globalnews.ca/news/9297311/trigger-rate-mortgages-bank-of-canada/
Appendix
Currently “grievous and irremediable medical condition causing enduring, intolerable, and irremediable suffering ” does not include mental illness, but that is going to change in 2023. AN expert panel has said: “The provisions of the Criminal Code preventing a capable adult with a grievous and irremediable medical condition causing enduring, intolerable, and irremediable suffering from voluntarily seeking assistance in dying from a physicianFootnote7 violated section 7 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms of Canada (the Charter): the right to life, liberty, and security of the person and the right not to be deprived of them except in accordance with principles of fundamental justice.”
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