Despite what you may have heard during last fall’s federal election campaign, Canada is not falling apart at the seams.

Dr. Ian Lee, a professor at the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University, spoke at the OCA’s annual general meeting on March 11. His message to the audience: Canada is certainly not without its problems, but any sentiments about income inequality, the erosion of the middle class, senior poverty and housing affordability were entirely overstated. He characterized such debates during the election as “a giant bidding war to address imaginary crises.”

“If you were new to Canada during fall election, you would think that we were a third-world country with collapsing wages, grotesque inequality, and where a tiny number of people held all the wealth, and everyone else lived in abject poverty,” he said. “In fact, when you look at the empirical data provided by such organizations as the OECD and other reputable organizations, Canada compares extremely well with the rest of the world.”

Dr. Lee began by debunking the myth put forward by electioneers that suggested that Canada’s middle class was in dire straits. He presented evidence from Statistics Canada that shows that real per-capital household income in Canada has risen to record levels between 1926 and 2016. Moreover, Canada ranks among the top 10 OECD countries in terms of disposable household income per capita. And to the point raised by some that income inequality is a massive problem in our country, he presented evidence showing that the top one percent of the country’s earners hold about 10 percent of its wealth.

“Anti-poverty NGOs claim that poverty is increasing in Canada,” he continued. “In fact, poverty has never been lower than it is today.”

Statistics Canada data shows that in 1967, one in four Canadians earned below the low-income cutoff (LICO) line. In 2019, that figure had dropped to just 8.7 percent. What’s more, he added, the notion that poverty among seniors is a massive problem in Canada is also false. Indeed, while less than nine percent of the country as a whole lives below the LICO line, less than 4 percent of seniors are similarly affected.

He presented a similar message about the overall financial health of students and recent graduates. Where the Canadian Federation of Students has argued that these people suffer from a lack of jobs, a lack of good jobs or jobs in the gig economy, in fact youth unemployment is low, average incomes of graduates after two years in the workforce is between $47,000 and $67,000, and although gig economy work is highest among students, these tasks are arguably replacing those minimum-wage service jobs that older Canadians also worked at similar periods in their lives.

All this said, Dr. Lee was cautious to add that Canada is not without its share of problems.

Our manufacturing sector, particularly as a share of gross domestic product, has been tracking downwards since the early 1940s, and Canada’s unit labour costs per hour—an agreed-upon measure of productivity—remains much higher than in the United States. He also pointed to the fact that spending on health care, as compared to real personal income per capita is surging to unprecedented levels. Moreover, spending on health care is highest—and rising—particularly among those aged 75 and above.

He also pointed to rising government expenditures as compared to revenues, the former of which is forecasted to grow at a significantly higher rate through 2044.

Dr. Lee concluded by speaking a bit about the effects of the COVID-19 virus on the global economy. And while the effects of the virus have caused significant financial impacts on almost every industry in the world, he cautioned the audience to remain calm.

“In a typical year,” he said, “influenza and pneumonia account for more than 55,000 deaths in the United States.”

Deaths from COVID-19 as of the time this article was published now number nearly 9,000 worldwide. Meanwhile, more than 84,000 people who were affected by the virus have recovered or been discharged from hospital.

Although the impact of the virus is still unknown, he argued that some perspective on its scope is needed.