There is a silent generational crisis occurring in homes across Canada.
The Generation raising young kids today struggles with less time, stagnant household incomes, and skyrocketing housing costs compared to the 1970s.
This website examines the decline in the standard of living, and proposes a practical solution – A New Deal for Families.
The New Deal invites Canadians to…
Think Like a Beaver
The beaver is a national animal to be proud of. Sure, it may not be as regal as the eagle to the south. But the beaver is a builder.
Recall the last creek or river you 
passed by where beavers dutifully constructed a dam. Ever wonder why they build it?
Nobody lives in the dam. The dam does not provide shelter to a single beaver family.
Beavers build the dam, because the dam creates a reservoir. When the reservoir is deep enough, the beavers are efficient, able to swim faster than they can walk on land. When the reservoir is deep enough, the beavers gain security, further out of reach from bears and other predators. When the reservoir is deep enough, it provides a safe home for beavers to build lodges for their families.
Whenever the dam springs a leak, whether from wear, heavy runoff or an earthquake, busy beavers adapt, just as all good managers do. They fix the dam, renovating it to withstand the new challenges in their environment. No individual beaver stands to gain alone. Beavers adapt because they all depend on the dam to safeguard their shared standard of living.
Such logic inspires this website. I urge all readers to think like a beaver: to renew interest in our national dam – the policy architecture on which citizens depend to safeguard our shared standard of living – and to ask some fundamental questions. Who stands on guard for the dam? When did we last renovate it? What are the greatest challenges to which we must adapt? How should we respond?
Thinking like a Beaver is important now, because Canadians are a pretty self-satisfied group these days. We’ve won hockey gold at the 2010 Olympics. We hosted the world’s political leaders at meetings of the G8 and G20. We weathered the recession of 2008 better than our American neighbours, and many other countries. As a proud Canadian, I know we have much to appreciate. But our self-satisfaction with what is going right risks distraction from what is going wrong.
Distraction is often the luxury, symptom or tactic of the powerful. Distraction silences some voices because it tunes attention to others. In response, I regularly urge citizens to listen carefully… for what we are silent about, and do not prioritize in government budgets. An especially deafening silence is the dramatic decline in the standard of living for the generation raising kids. I focus on this decline throughout the website.
pkershaw
I have questions. Why is it necessary to have children before you can afford to house and feed them? Why is it necessary to have a mortgage on top of huge student loan and other debt? I would fully support a couple qualifying for three years of leave while they raised their children, with mom and dad each taking one and a half years off their respective jobs provided they weren’t paying off debt accumulated before the arrival of offspring. I meet with people regularly to whom the concept of planning and saving for what they want is a new concept. We have become a society of “what I want I am entitled to”. We need to start being accountable for all our personal debt and look to ourselves to make it right. If you want children, plan for them, and for the basic costs involved in raising them. I believe parents should raise their children. Perhaps we as a society could look at a tax break that would allow a couple to have one parent stay home and provide parenting while the other works outside the home? Our children are our future. If we believe that then we should work at looking at our needs rather than our wants.
I disagree that we are a society of entitlement, unless you are speaking of the wealthy baby-boomers that believe they have received nothing from Canadian society and therefore owe nothing in return to future generations. I felt it was necessary to have a baby before I could really afford it because I am a 35 year old woman and the financial security of my family is nowhere in sight. Even as employed professionals, my partner and I have huge student loans that got us here (our parents weren’t wealthy either). I’ve never even contemplated buying a house because I don’t actually believe it will ever be something I can afford. Planning and saving has been pretty much all I’ve thought about for the last decade, but that doesn’t mean I actually had the financial means to do so. I’ve focused on working as much as I possibly could while in school, then paying off my student debt to the greatest extent I could, and living within my means at all times. Of course, I can’t speak for everyone of my generation, but I think it’s a very unfortunate conception that we just want everything we want handed to us. I’m perfectly willing to continue working as hard as I do for the rest of my life, but I would like this to translate to a sense of confidence that my child will be able to succeed, and that I might have enough time to spend with her to ensure she feels secure and is educated on the values I think will enable her to grow up to be a compassionate, just, and contributing member of society. I also wish our hard work would enable us to feel a relief from the constant anxiety about how to pay for rent, (exorbitant) childcare, healthy food, and minimal recreational activities for our daughter. I would love to be able to raise my own child as you mention, but how could I possibly afford to stay home with her? I feel that the attitudes you are exhibiting reflect the sense of generational misunderstanding to which the author refers. I certainly attempt to understand the position from which older generations speak, and the insecurity that must be associated with growing older, and steadily decreasing earning potential. I am very disappointed with the lack of any attempt I see from these same people to understand my family’s position, and the fear that I feel when our earnings do not cover our basic costs of living (no matter how hard we work), and my knowledge that unless something changes drastically in our social policies, I will not be able to afford to have a second child no matter how much I may wish to. Having a child has become a luxury most of my peers have decided they can’t afford.
…And my comments have not even touched on my fears about the environmental legacy of my parents’ generation!