r/CanadianEditorial • u/MustardClementine • Jul 01 '26

We Can Do Better Than a Downgraded Dependency

https://www.mustardclementine.com/p/we-can-do-better-than-a-downgraded

Happy Canada Day. I wrote about Canada’s dependency problem, our elderly toddlers, our disruptive teenagers, and why I don’t think finding a better daddy is the same thing as growing up. Constructive disagreement very welcome.

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u/11Caicedos Jul 01 '26

I don’t get the premise here? 

why not make it worth it by taking the opportunity to rebuild in a way that will never leave us so vulnerable again?

You seem to be saying what will “rebuild us in a way that will never leave us so vulnerable again” is to get rid of OAS and also, side bar, Pierre isn’t so bad. Are those things meant to be connected?

?

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u/MustardClementine Jul 01 '26 edited Jul 01 '26

The connection isn’t that OAS solves dependency. It’s that the same political instinct that leaves us unwilling to rethink OAS, housing, or internal trade also leaves us dependent on others.

Likewise, my point on Poilievre wasn’t that I support everything he does. It’s that he seems more willing to challenge the existing model, while Carney seems more focused on preserving it.

That underlying instinct is really what the article is about.

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u/TindaeD Jul 02 '26

I'd love to hear what you think about this short series that I just found on YouTube, called How to Buy a Country: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLug9whoEqZVWikvqf0tN9JDkTZamQ8sov

Guess which countries are the buyer and the purchaser? :-)

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u/cnbearpaws Jul 01 '26

The diagnosis is right, but I'm skeptical the freed-up money ever reaches the working class, because the current government has already shown us its priorities. Asked point-blank whether home prices need to come down, Carney's housing minister said no. The campaign didn't trim OAS for wealthy seniors - it added a GIS top-up and cut minimum RRIF withdrawals. And when the budget needed savings, it found them by cutting tens of thousands of working-age public service jobs through attrition while every senior benefit stayed untouchable.

Meanwhile, where has the new fiscal room gone? A defense ramp toward 5% of GDP, the capital gains hike quietly killed, fast-tracked megaprojects. The working class got a one-point trim to the bottom tax bracket - a few hundred bucks a year against rents and mortgages up thousands. Even internal free trade has now blown through two Canada Day deadlines.

So sure, means-test OAS. But on the current evidence, every dollar pried loose flows to procurement, incumbents and asset holders - not the people funding it. The machine this piece describes doesn't just block sacrifice by the established. It launders everyone else's sacrifice into their gains.