We’re heading into July 4th weekend, but many people might not feel like celebrating as the world and the economy keep changing. Part of that change involves grieving – and that’s all right.
“Marketplace Morning Report” talked to her about grief and what it has to do with the economy.
Kimberly Adams : When we talk about grief and loss, especially in the moment we’re in, how can we use that language around what’s happening to the economy?
Megan Devine: If we think about how we use the language of loss to talk about pain and grief around joblessness, it’s like we sort of have to have a bigger conversation of how do we talk about grief at all. And certainly in our culture, we tend to look at grief as sort of a problem to be solved. You have to be resilient, you have to be strong and look on the bright side, and that’s not going to fly right now. What’s really important here is to acknowledge that this is hard. That is true for any kind of loss across that entire [grief] continuum, from those smaller everyday losses through job loss, through concerns about being able to pay your mortgage or find childcare, through the death of somebody you care about.
Adams: Grieving the loss of a way of life, that kind of shows up in so many ways, given what we’re going through. Not just people who lost their jobs, but maybe [you’re] working from home when you don’t want to be, wishing your kids could be in camps so that your work can get done, or even just missing the before times.
Megan Devine, psychotherapist and author. (Courtesy photo)
Devine: There’s so much to grieve. I don’t think we’ve ever really had a time, certainly in sort of recent history, of such compound and cascading losses. And I think you’re right to call it a loss of a way of life. We can’t rush back to normal. We can’t rush back to the way life used to be because that life doesn’t exist anymore. I think another really tricky part of this is the new normal hasn’t arrived. That story is still unfolding. And that’s really hard for people when they want to be able to hold on to something stable, and I think that’s also why we sort of rush to [the idea of] let’s reopen the economy, let’s be resilient, find another way to be strong.
Adams: If we use the language of grief and loss to talk about the changes that are happening in the economy right now and how we’re dealing with them, what does that mean for the eventual recovery?
Devine: I think that we’ve sort of built this idea that resilience is good for business, right? This might be a little bit of a stretch, but that sort of American economic narrative of being strong and resilient, that way of doing business and that way of life has also sort of been turned on its head during all of this. So it’s a loss and it’s also an opportunity. I’m really careful about using opportunity in the same sentence as grief because we rush into that transformation narrative, [which is] here’s this really difficult thing that happened and how can we very quickly turn it around so that things are even better than before. That’s not going to work here. I think that sort of transformation narrative of grief does a real disservice to those who have lost so much, not just their jobs, but they’re concerned for health care, they’re concerned for their families, and the ongoing ripple effects that will play out for a very long time in a lot of different sectors for a lot of different people.
Thinking about that idea of, times of crisis are also times of great opportunity, is going to be really tricky. What we can pull from the grief language is acknowledgement. That seems really weird, but we can’t build a new life until we tell the truth about what’s happening. Naming the loss and allowing yourself to have your feelings about it. Not so that you say stay sort of stuck in those feelings and rumination. There’s a difference between acknowledging your experience so that you can see your clear path forward versus ruminating about your feelings. That’s sort of an amorphous how we take the skills of grief to address job loss and economic uncertainty, but the the foundation is the same. Acknowledging what is real, allowing yourself to state that and to validate the truth of that situation, and then looking at creative ways forward while standing in that truth of your own experience.
Adams: Changes we’re experiencing in the economy and to some extent, even a lot of these job losses, it’s a collective loss. Does that make a difference in how we’re processing the grief around all of this loss?
Devine: I think it does make a difference. Very often when there is a mass tragedy, we as bystanders, as people not affected by that tragedy, sort of are like, “We’re with you. You’re not alone.” And the reality for the people who actually directly experience it, they’re like, “We actually are alone, you know. You’re not with me.” This pandemic and all of the things that have rippled out and happened because of and within this pandemic, nobody has been immune. There are no bystanders. That means we are actually all affected by this and we’re all in this together. So that idea, you’re not alone, in this [pandemic], isn’t lip service this time. That’s powerful.
Adams: Given how the American culture handles grief, specifically, what does that mean for how we’re processing this moment of what’s happening in the economy?
Devine: I think we tend to separate the “economy,” from the human scale. And that’s sort of an odd quirk here, where we elevate the economy above the culture. There’s a great astrologer, Caroline Casey, who talks about, do we have an economy or do we have a culture? And a culture is what we cultivate together. What do we grow together as a community. That’s a really interesting way to frame thinking about how do we move forward with this new economy in this new world that is still forming.
There’s this sort of idea around branding and marketing — just to take that that segment of the business world for a moment — marketers tell stories. The old story of the world is gone now. The new world story hasn’t yet arrived. How are we going to talk about that middle space, the world that is still dissolving and still forming? That sounds like sort of metaphysical and woo, but the truth is we don’t know how this story is going to be in six months, or a year from now, or 18 months from now. What do we want to cultivate together? What sort of culture do we want to create? What do we want to grow together? And how does our economy reflect what we have cultivated? What have we cultivated in the past? And how do we want that to change for the future? If we want to create a community that is more equitable, more just across a lot of different segments of of humanity and the world itself? It’s an important question to ask how does the economy serve the culture, and as a culture, what do we want to cultivate together? What do we grow in this new world, given that we have to rebuild?
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OTTAWA – Canada’s unemployment rate held steady at 6.5 per cent last month as hiring remained weak across the economy.
Statistics Canada’s labour force survey on Friday said employment rose by a modest 15,000 jobs in October.
Business, building and support services saw the largest gain in employment.
Meanwhile, finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing experienced the largest decline.
Many economists see weakness in the job market continuing in the short term, before the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts spark a rebound in economic growth next year.
Despite ongoing softness in the labour market, however, strong wage growth has raged on in Canada. Average hourly wages in October grew 4.9 per cent from a year ago, reaching $35.76.
Friday’s report also shed some light on the financial health of households.
According to the agency, 28.8 per cent of Canadians aged 15 or older were living in a household that had difficulty meeting financial needs – like food and housing – in the previous four weeks.
That was down from 33.1 per cent in October 2023 and 35.5 per cent in October 2022, but still above the 20.4 per cent figure recorded in October 2020.
People living in a rented home were more likely to report difficulty meeting financial needs, with nearly four in 10 reporting that was the case.
That compares with just under a quarter of those living in an owned home by a household member.
Immigrants were also more likely to report facing financial strain last month, with about four out of 10 immigrants who landed in the last year doing so.
That compares with about three in 10 more established immigrants and one in four of people born in Canada.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
The Canadian Institute for Health Information says health-care spending in Canada is projected to reach a new high in 2024.
The annual report released Thursday says total health spending is expected to hit $372 billion, or $9,054 per Canadian.
CIHI’s national analysis predicts expenditures will rise by 5.7 per cent in 2024, compared to 4.5 per cent in 2023 and 1.7 per cent in 2022.
This year’s health spending is estimated to represent 12.4 per cent of Canada’s gross domestic product. Excluding two years of the pandemic, it would be the highest ratio in the country’s history.
While it’s not unusual for health expenditures to outpace economic growth, the report says this could be the case for the next several years due to Canada’s growing population and its aging demographic.
Canada’s per capita spending on health care in 2022 was among the highest in the world, but still less than countries such as the United States and Sweden.
The report notes that the Canadian dental and pharmacare plans could push health-care spending even further as more people who previously couldn’t afford these services start using them.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
Canadian Press health coverage receives support through a partnership with the Canadian Medical Association. CP is solely responsible for this content.
As Canadians wake up to news that Donald Trump will return to the White House, the president-elect’s protectionist stance is casting a spotlight on what effect his second term will have on Canada-U.S. economic ties.
Some Canadian business leaders have expressed worry over Trump’s promise to introduce a universal 10 per cent tariff on all American imports.
A Canadian Chamber of Commerce report released last month suggested those tariffs would shrink the Canadian economy, resulting in around $30 billion per year in economic costs.
More than 77 per cent of Canadian exports go to the U.S.
Canada’s manufacturing sector faces the biggest risk should Trump push forward on imposing broad tariffs, said Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters president and CEO Dennis Darby. He said the sector is the “most trade-exposed” within Canada.
“It’s in the U.S.’s best interest, it’s in our best interest, but most importantly for consumers across North America, that we’re able to trade goods, materials, ingredients, as we have under the trade agreements,” Darby said in an interview.
“It’s a more complex or complicated outcome than it would have been with the Democrats, but we’ve had to deal with this before and we’re going to do our best to deal with it again.”
American economists have also warned Trump’s plan could cause inflation and possibly a recession, which could have ripple effects in Canada.
It’s consumers who will ultimately feel the burden of any inflationary effect caused by broad tariffs, said Darby.
“A tariff tends to raise costs, and it ultimately raises prices, so that’s something that we have to be prepared for,” he said.
“It could tilt production mandates. A tariff makes goods more expensive, but on the same token, it also will make inputs for the U.S. more expensive.”
A report last month by TD economist Marc Ercolao said research shows a full-scale implementation of Trump’s tariff plan could lead to a near-five per cent reduction in Canadian export volumes to the U.S. by early-2027, relative to current baseline forecasts.
Retaliation by Canada would also increase costs for domestic producers, and push import volumes lower in the process.
“Slowing import activity mitigates some of the negative net trade impact on total GDP enough to avoid a technical recession, but still produces a period of extended stagnation through 2025 and 2026,” Ercolao said.
Since the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement came into effect in 2020, trade between Canada and the U.S. has surged by 46 per cent, according to the Toronto Region Board of Trade.
With that deal is up for review in 2026, Canadian Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Candace Laing said the Canadian government “must collaborate effectively with the Trump administration to preserve and strengthen our bilateral economic partnership.”
“With an impressive $3.6 billion in daily trade, Canada and the United States are each other’s closest international partners. The secure and efficient flow of goods and people across our border … remains essential for the economies of both countries,” she said in a statement.
“By resisting tariffs and trade barriers that will only raise prices and hurt consumers in both countries, Canada and the United States can strengthen resilient cross-border supply chains that enhance our shared economic security.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 6, 2024.
