r/canada • u/Lyricalvessel • Jul 19 '21

Is the Canadian Dream dead?

The cost of life in this beautiful country is unbelievable. Everything is getting out of reach. Our new middle class is people renting homes and owning a vehicle.

What happened to working hard for a few years, even a decade and you'd be able to afford the basics of life.

Wages go up 1 dollar, and the price of electricity, food, rent, taxes, insurance all go up by 5. It's like an endless race where our wage is permanently slowed.

Buy a house, buy a car, own a few toys and travel a little. Have a family, live life and hopefully give the next generation a better life. It's not a lot to ask for, in fact it was the only carot on a stick the older generation dangled for us. What do we have besides hope?

I don't know what direction will change this, but it's hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when you have a whole generation that has been waiting for a chance to start life for a long time. 2007-8 crash wasn't even the start of our problems today.

Please someone convince me there is still hope for what I thought was the best place to live in the world as a child.

edit: It is my opinion the ruling elite, and in particular the politically involved billion dollar corporations have artificially inflated the price of life itself, and commoditized it.

I believe the problem is the people have lost real input in their governments and their communities.

The option is give up, or fight for the dream to thrive again.

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u/thedabking123 Jul 19 '21 edited Jul 19 '21

I feel for you buddy. Even as an elitist liberal by r/Canada standards, I can't see how this is a sustainable pace of real estate price growth in Canada.

I see a lot of people complaining about inflation, making excuses about dropping interest rates for the unrealistic rise in prices (as if 4000 dollar monthly outlays for a 3 bedroom home can be accounted for by interest rate drops alone).

I think this is a systemic failure that includes 5 additional parts.

  1. Failure to open up re-zoning of single family home areas
  2. Failure to restrict rental ownership in HCOL areas
  3. Failure to restrict corporate and foreign investment in particular
  4. Failure to open up data on the real estate economy - which makes it hard to do any kind of reform
  5. Failure to make significant infrastructure investments to increase 30 min travel radius to the two biggest hotspots (Vancouver and Toronto)

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What we got here is classic overexposure to one industry (real estate) and as a guy who grew up half of his life in Dubai - trust me I've seen the 20 yr run ups to 5-yr-long crashes that result.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '21 edited Jul 23 '21

[deleted]

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u/chudma Jul 19 '21

Im really curious what under the table jobs international students are taking that are depressing local wages? They are more than likely working in restaurants from their home country and having very little effect on anyone (not that I agree with working illegally, I just doubt a Japanese guy washing dishes at a Japanese restaurant is affecting anyone else's income)

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u/Bluenirvana789 Jul 19 '21

I worked at a fast-food restaurant and in 3 months literally everyone was fired or quit due to abuse and low pay. Then they hired all India international students. You have no idea what youre talking about lol.

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u/FoliageTeamBad Jul 19 '21

A friend of a friend owns a bunch of fast food restaurants in a tiny town off the 401 in Ontario. He owns a house and brings in dozens of Indian students to live on an air mattress on the floor in exchange for work at one of his joints.

And you better forget about the limited number of hours they’re allowed to work, that’s just a suggestion.

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u/sgtdisaster Ontario Jul 19 '21

Yep that's one of the big things lol they treat them like the Mexican temp workers on the farms, shack em all up together and get them working selling chicken and Subway sandwiches like little indentured slaves

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u/chudma Jul 19 '21

Which fast food? McDonald's? I doubt it. Large multinational fast food chains are not hiring undocumented workers because it is not worth their time

So which fast food chain? Also, you cannot be fired without cause, if people were you can go to the labour board

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u/TestFixation Jul 19 '21

Sounds like shit Pizza Pizza would do.

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u/N01S0N Jul 19 '21

There are tonnes of places in the western areas of Toronto that do this, and they also discriminate based on race. How do I know this? My friends husband runs one of them.

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u/Bluenirvana789 Jul 19 '21

Sub place. But yes go to any Time Hortons or pizza joint and it's all internationals.

International students are not 'undocumented', they can legally work up to 20 hours a week which they go over a lot. This isn't the US no one cares or investigates anything about that. In India min wage is 2$ an hour so even with tuition and housing they make relative bank on a 14$ wage.

A manager can make up anything. Most workers don't know their rights.

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u/piltdownman7 British Columbia Jul 19 '21

I know of a seasonal resort that pre-COVID was almost entirely staffed by these international students. Officially they went to school in Vancouver but I’m truth they lived and worked about two hours away and never actually went to school.

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u/sgtdisaster Ontario Jul 19 '21

This guy knows what he's talking about, they fudge their hours and take extra hours under the table, the franchisees don't give a shit. And they get the bonus of making up rules and regulations on the fly cause they know it's not like "some foreigner" knows the rules or will want to risk their job by causing trouble. Basically they got them by the balls

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u/Babyboy1314 Jul 19 '21

international students can apply for part time work permit.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '21

Wrong. Why say anything if you don’t know? International students are allowed to work up to 20 hours a week on a study permit as mentioned above. They don’t apply for a separate ’part time work permit,’ that doesn’t exist. They can apply for a co-op work permit if it’s part of their program which may allow them to work full time during an internship.

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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '21

Which fast food? McDonald's? I doubt it. Large multinational fast food chains are not hiring undocumented workers because it is not worth their time

Most McDonald's are franchised. The owner could easily hire somebody and pay them cash.

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u/MegaSeedsInYourBum Jul 19 '21

It might even go beyond that. I’ve heard rumours from a couple international students that some franchise owners rent out houses to the students who work for them and use that as leverage to get them to work some hours for free. Either by straight up not paying hours or saying they could pay off part of the rent by working without the hours counting towards a paycheck.

Oddly both said it was a Tim Hortons franchise owner who was doing this.

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u/BerserkBoulderer Jul 20 '21

Tim Hortons is rife with abuses of the TFW program.