Canada’s response to US threats of tariffs and annexation includes economic, industrial, and infrastructure proposals. But more robust community services must also play a key role, Prosper Canada’s Elizabeth Mulholland writes.
Securing Canadians’ future prosperity requires more than new ports, pipelines, and trading partners: our community services also require urgent attention and investment if Canadians are to weather the economic turmoil ahead and build a strong foundation for future prosperity.
Aggressive US tariffs are fundamentally reshaping the global trading system and threaten to cause an economic tsunami that will overwhelm national economies and unwind prosperity gains around the world. Canadians have responded to the tariffs and accompanying annexation threats with an upswelling of national unity and love of country, as well as a suite of retaliatory trade actions, all expressed in our shared fighting language: hockey.
More fundamentally, though, this crisis has Canadians asking what we need to do to build and defend our future prosperity in this new reality.
The response has been a raft of proposals to remove barriers to interprovincial trade and labour mobility; diversify our trading partners; bolster our military defences; invest in infrastructure, workers, and businesses to shore up critical industries; build housing; and adjust our tax and employment insurance regimes to give relief and support to businesses, workers, and seniors who have been hardest hit.
Providing vulnerable individuals and families with hands-on financial help to navigate the growing financial pressures ahead is our critical first line of defence.
These economic, industrial, and infrastructure responses are relevant and to the point, but are they enough?
Past crises, like the Great Recession of 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic, have shown that economic shocks don’t just hit our macro-economy; they inflict real and immediate financial hardship on millions of households that translate over time into increased homelessness, food insecurity, addiction and mental health crises, family breakdown, and domestic violence.
Providing vulnerable individuals and families with hands-on financial help to navigate the growing financial pressures ahead is our critical first line of defence if we want to stave off these broader impacts and longer-term financial vulnerability, poverty, and hardship.
That is why, on April 7, Prosper Canada launched a new national program, Resilient Futures, to deliver free community financial-help services that will enable one million struggling Canadians to build their financial capability and resilience and boost their incomes by $2 billion over the next four years.
Community non-profit organizations, selected through a national call for proposals, will be trained and funded to deliver proven tax filing, benefit assistance, and financial counselling and coaching services to help families get back on their feet. They will also build partnerships and capacity to ensure that services reach and benefit underserved rural, remote, Indigenous and Black communities, and people with disabilities.
Supported by a $60-million investment from the children and families component of the Government of Canada’s Social Development Partnerships Program, Resilient Futures exemplifies targeted action and investment to enable community organizations to effectively support struggling Canadians to stabilize financially and build a stronger financial foundation for their future.
More investments like these are needed.
Canada’s community services act as shock absorbers, safety nets, and, ideally, springboards for people and communities hit hard by economic downturns and restructuring. Without them, temporary employment and earning setbacks become one-way journeys into permanent poverty for too many people.
Canada’s community services act as shock absorbers, safety nets, and, ideally, springboards for people and communities hit hard by economic downturns and restructuring.
Food security programs, affordable and supportive housing, mental health services, skills training, caregiver supports, seniors’ services, supports for people with disabilities, child care – these services all make our economy more productive by boosting labour-market participation, employment stability, and earnings and by reducing downstream healthcare, policing, child welfare, and shelter costs.
Many community services have already been stretched to the breaking point, however, by our ongoing affordability crisis and need more attention and resources urgently to handle what’s coming.
Our economy may well recover from the current upheaval without more robust community services – but many individuals, families, and smaller communities will not. Instead, as history tells us, provincial welfare rolls will increase and remain elevated even when the economy improves, with far more people trapped in poverty.
This is no time to send Canada’s team onto the ice short a key player.
Instead, let’s invite national community sector leaders to join federal, provincial, and Indigenous governments, business, and labour at the table as we map out the priority policies and investments we need to steer Canada to a better and more prosperous future for everyone.
