The Toronto Star* is currently running a tremendous series of articles on the breakdown of social cohesion in Canada. The research has been led by Michael Valpy, who is now an academic but was at one time, if memory serves, an occasional commentator on religious issues. I hope he wouldn't be offended by my saying that there's a deep religious sensibility running just below the surface of these articles.
The pieces published so far have already looked at a wide range of cohesion issues: the problems faced by aboriginal peoples, the difficulties immigrants encounter in trying to make their way in a new land, the age-old issue of "what does Quebec want?", and so on. However, as an economist and baby boomer I'm most interested in the growing wealth gap between older Canadians and the young. Indeed, it's an issue I've posted about many times on this blog, most recently just a couple of posts ago ("Pay it backward").
In an article titled "The young will inherit a future they didn't choose", Valpy and his team identify a cohort they dub "Spectators". They're mostly male, mostly under the age of 35, and they've made the decision effectively to turn their backs on participation in mainstream Canadian society, because they've concluded the game has been rigged against them. As one "Spectator" puts it, "(people) are caught in a yoke by the richies ... The gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger and the rich are putting in mechanisms to stop anybody else from getting rich.”
Ouch. I'm a retired boomer with a son who falls into the "Spectator" age bracket. I'd never allow anyone to claim that I got my education and made my money easily, but I'm appalled at how much harder it now is for people my son's age to get themselves established in the workforce, even with the benefit of a university degree. To quote from the study again, “In a decade or two.....the younger voters will be in the prime of their lives and paying for the political choices of their now departed grandparents which are not likely to reflect the priorities or, one could speculate, the needs of next Canada.”
Indeed so. There are few signs that my generation, which votes en masse, is prepared to stop awarding itself all sorts of prizes and baubles and passing the bill on to its descendants. (Unlike our own parents, we don't even have the tattered excuse that "we were in the war". We just feel entitled.) Sadly, there are even fewer signs that the "Spectators" can be persuaded that the only way to prevent this from happening is to start turning out on election day themselves. They know they've got a problem, but they have no real idea of what they can do about it.
The Star hasn't announced whether the full Atkinson series will be published as one of its e-books or in a conventional paper format, or will remain as a series of pieces in the daily paper. It's sufficiently sobering and important to merit a much wider audience -- both within Canada and elsewhere, because these problems are common to every advanced nation today.
* Like a lot of other newspapers, the Star now has a paywall, but non-subscribers can read up to ten articles a month free of charge, which will be enough to give you the flavour of this series.
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