Don’t worry. Those fine minds in government already know it’s going to get worse, even if they’re not prepared to admit it openly yet.
“The coming period of recession will … accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations,” reads the report, entitled Whole-of-Government Five-Year Trends for Canada. “For example, many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live,” it adds.
The report, labelled secret, is intended as a piece of “special operational information” to be distributed only within the RCMP and among “decision-makers” in the federal government.
A heavily redacted version was made public as a result of an access to information request filed by Matt Malone, an assistant professor of law at British Columbia’s Thompson Rivers University, and an expert in government secrecy.
Describing itself in an introduction as a “scanning exercise,” the report is intended to highlight trends in both Canada and abroad “that could have a significant effect on the Canadian government and the RCMP.”
Right from the get-go, the report authors warn that whatever Canada’s current situation, it “will probably deteriorate further in the next five years.”
We always knew that the age of prosperity had to end sometime. And apparently, that time was 2008. Everything since then has merely been positioning and bracing for impact while running up the tab before the bar burns down.
This isn’t necessarily going to be a bad thing for some people, for in chaos there is always opportunity. But the degree of difficulty is increasing, and the old reliable rules for success no longer necessarily apply.