Mark Carney Told A Room of Youth Voters to Be Prepared for “Sacrifices”

People younger than Boomers have long felt that they have been left behind. Mark Carney decided to badly punctuate that in a speech.

One of the long running themes I’ve had when discussing the mainstream media is how often they exacerbate the generational divide. So often, the mainstream media spends its days scolding younger generations with their favourite memes of “Millennial’s have killed (insert literally anything here)”, berating younger generations for being bad with their finances (the ever famed avocado toast and lattes should ring a bell on that one if you are struggling to remember those hit pieces), accusing them of being deadbeat losers for not buying their own family homes, or demonizing their safe havens and culture by saying that social media and video games are the worst things that have ever happened to society and that younger people should be ashamed to have consumed either at all. This while glorifying Boomer culture with constant references to 70s music or constantly talking about “the good old days”.

Then, to make matters worse, when “youth” (which really means anyone younger than boomer age) decide to retreat to the safe havens they know and love – be it games, social media, discussion forums, or other online service – the mainstream media have the audacity to flip out and scream angrily about why their viewership is tanking. When people like me point out that maybe you shouldn’t constantly tell whole generations that they are the worst thing that has happened to society, but such logical advice generally gets ignored in favour of trying to find ways of blaming the youth for their “incorrect” choices (or, even worse, blame “Tech Giants” and demand legislation to make it harder to consume content that isn’t produced by their news rooms and movie studios in the fake interest of “fairness”).

The reality has long been that people don’t like constantly being told that they are horrible people. I know, this is just a massive mind blowing revelation. If people are going to flick on the TV to be told why they are terrible people, sooner or later, they are going to eventually flick the TV off and never turn it back on again (ala cord cutting). They’ll know where they can feel half way normal and more often than not, that is through an online service. If they are really lucky, maybe they’ll even be told that they are actually a decent person which is an especially mind blowing thought.

Of course, retreating to the online environment isn’t necessarily a perfect solution, but it sure as hell beats the toxicity that youth face in day to day living. It is fortunate that the “youth” of today do have online environments that they can retreat to when life happens to get ugly. Having some space is extremely valuable. The unfortunate thing is that what we are seeing is largely driven by culture. It is more coincidental that the technology to facilitate those safe spaces just happens to be there (and it is a fantastic coincidence).

None of this erases the problems “youth” face, however. Generation X and Y both had to deal with growing up seeing home ownership as either a difficult thing or downright impossible. While there were some lingering opportunities floating around for Generation X (not a whole lot, mind you), those opportunities only further evaporated when Generation Y came along. Society went from simply walking down the street, seeing a “help wanted” poster, walking into the store and having a job within an hour to seeing a desolate wasteland where opportunities seem to be as rare as a unicorn. To this day, I will never forget the day I walked into a McDonalds with a university degree, asking for a job, handing in a resume, and not even be considered for a job interview. That is seriously how bad the job market was for me more than twenty years ago. It is around that time that I started calling Canada “The Land of No Opportunity”.

The worst part is that the rarity of getting a good job at all is still up there. There are fake job postings abound, companies who use career fairs to advertise their company while having no intention of hiring anyone, or even postings where the candidate was already selected and the posting was little more than a box ticking exercise to hire the selected candidate. That isn’t even getting into the problems of things like nepotism or wage suppression tactics that is adding a whole layer of toxicity in the already awful environment. It is no mystery why the “youth” are not moving out of their parents houses. It’s not that they are lazy or have no motivation, but rather, they simply can’t regardless of whether or not they want to – and crippling student debt eating at our financial futures sure as hell aren’t helping either.

Between the cost of living being absolutely unrealistic, people forced to work 2, 3, or 4 jobs to make ends meet, having either no hope of moving out or being stuck in a slum, realizing that all that education they got to “get ahead in life” ended up being either next to worthless or completely worthless, the “youth” have had 20 or 30 years of basically realizing just how downright hopeless everything is. Many want to do good in this world and they have basically been forced down a life path where they basically end up being largely invisible and forgotten. Marriage? Forget it. Kids? Not in a million years. All of those stages in life are either not happening or are happening only because of minor “privileges” like defying the odds and landing a half decent job or having parents that are willing and able to lend a financial hand. Either way, hope is the last thing on a lot of people’s minds. That all got replaced by just surviving. This is a sampling of the 20 or 30 years of our lives which is basically every moment after high school.

Then there is Generation Z who are already coming along and seeing the mess us older “youth” generations got to face. Unlike someone like me who saw that house go from $150,000 to $500,000. Those people are seeing that house start at $500,000 and, for all they know, by the time they get to the point where they absolutely need to buy their own place, that house could very well reach the million dollar mark. It was already unrealistic that home ownership could be a reality based on their own personal abilities, and somewhere down the line, home ownership is going to be a hysterical thought that was never realistic to begin with. The chaos that completely engulfed the finances of Generation X and Y has already happened and all Generation Z gets to see when trying to make a go at this thing called “life” are the bits of wreckage that are left behind.

Do I really need to go on about how bad the “youth” have had it all this time?

So, why say all of that? It’s because Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney, delivered a speech last week ahead of the budget that really marked a moment of true disconnect from reality. In a room full of “youth”, Carney delivered a speech talking about the difficulties ahead. Not a problem, right? Well, in that speech, he also told that same “youth” that they are going to have to make sacrifices and that things will happen slowly. The media even happened to cover that very moment:

Carney touted that his government is preparing to “build a stronger economy” against the backdrop of “a more dynamic, a more competitive, a more hostile world.”

“If we don’t act now, the pressures will only grow,” he said in an address to university students in Ottawa on Wednesday night.

“I will always be straight about the challenges that we have to face and the choices we must make. And to be clear, we won’t transform our economy easily or in a few months — it will take some sacrifices and it will take some time.”

If you want to watch the full speech, you can see it here, but be warned, it is more than a half an hour long.

I honestly have a very hard time thinking of a more tone deaf thing to say to such an audience. The implication here is that Canada’s “youth” has had it oh so very easy for a long time. They had many years of prosperity, but in order to get Canada back on track, they are the ones that will have to put in some sacrifices to help build a stronger future. Honestly, what else is there to sacrifice at this point? We’ve given this country everything. We’ve sacrificed our time, we’ve sacrificed all of our skills that end up rotting away when there are no jobs available, we’ve sacrificed building a family, we’ve sacrificed the idea of marriage in some cases, we’ve sacrificed the idea of home ownership, we’ve sacrificed making a big difference in society, we sacrificed all of our ambition, we’ve sacrificed our mental health and bodies, and, in general, sacrificed our whole lives just for the super luxurious idea of having a few rare moments of actually having a freaking life at all. Yet, here we have a Prime Minister who lived out his life as a big banker boss, never having to worry about put food on the table, basically tell us that we’ve had it easy all this time and it is time to start making some sacrifices. Bull fucking shit.

Here’s the thing in all of this. It is bad enough that the Prime Minister basically inadvertently let slip that he has no clue what people younger than the Boomer generation has had to put up with. It’s even worse what the mainstream media’s reaction was to all of this. I’ll give you a hint. It was almost entirely crickets. No one picked up just how awful such comments were. I caught one talking head at one point saying that he was hoping that Carney would at least offer something for the youth in that room – be it a promise that will help them out – but weirdly offered nothing after. The only other mention I thought even glanced at this issue was something that was posted on The Line which gave… two paragraphs at the end of the commentary:

Millennials and younger cohorts have been beaten over and over by global events and their faith in government and the global economy is basically non-existent. The idea of sacrifice for a future benefit is a big ask from these folks.

So, to answer the question asked off the top, does Carney regret being the dog that caught the car? Probably not yet, but the mandate is young.

Otherwise, it was maybe a mention that it was unclear what “sacrifices” Carney was referring to. Beyond that, just crickets. While Conservative Leader, Pierre Poilievre, managed to get a reasonable talking point in by saying that Canada’s youth have already sacrificed enough, it was, as is typical, steeped in shallow partisanship that was not going to even begin to solve any of the challenges we are facing. At this point, Poilievre could see snow falling and somehow blame Mark Carney for it. The reality is that these problems have gone on through both Conservative and Liberal governments.

Ultimately, Canada’s “youth” have lived in the reality that their country has largely abandoned them since they were in, at oldest, high school. Carney’s speech has, infuriatingly, sent the message that Canada will continue to leave us behind. Do better, Carney.

Drew Wilson on Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook.