We like to believe change happened to us.
That someone else is to blame for what (we believe) Canada has become. But the truth is harder – and far more important. Whatever that change is, we let it happen. Not through grand decisions, but through a thousand quiet choices, silences, and compromises. This is a reflection on what we’ve become, how we got here, and what we must reclaim – together.
Let me start with a familiar scene. You’ve likely heard it – or maybe even said it.
To be honest, I myself have.
It usually begins with a sigh. A quiet comment. Maybe at the kitchen table, maybe during a phone call, maybe shared over coffee with someone who knows what you really mean.
Most often it starts subtly as a passing reflection:
“Things have changed.” And then, the tone shifts.
“Canada isn’t what it used to be.”
“It’s the newcomers.”
“They bring their problems here.”
“They don’t understand our values.”
What’s striking – almost surreal – is how often these conversations are happening within immigrant families themselves. Families who once arrived with hope now speak with resentment. The very people who came here seeking opportunity now speak of others as if they don’t belong.
What begins as discomfort quickly turns into blame. Disappointment becomes othering. But beneath these words is something far more revealing – not just a fear of change, but a refusal to look inward.
Yes, Canada has changed. It’s always been changing. But over the last four to five years, the pace has accelerated – in public life, economic access, civic norms, and collective trust. The deeper question, though, isn’t just what changed. It’s how did these changes take root? And more urgently: for the shifts we now find most uncomfortable, who allowed them to happen without resistance?
Because let’s be honest.
Immigrants don’t write immigration policy.
Students don’t set tuition fees or turn education into a revenue stream.
Renters didn’t turn housing into a speculative market.
And newcomers didn’t invent tribal politics – they learned it by watching us.
The idea that “they came and ruined it” is more than lazy – it’s dangerous. It collapses complex, systemic shifts into a convenient target. It reduces civic erosion to a matter of identity and deflects attention from the decisions we made – or didn’t make. From the things we tolerated because they served us. From the responsibilities we quietly outsourced.
A lot of questions are being asked these days. But too often, they’re being asked halfway — stopping at the convenient point, not the honest one. If we’re going to ask them, let’s ask them fully. Let’s commit to asking the tough questions.
If Canadian values are indeed fading, who let go of them?
Who was supposed to teach the culture we now accuse others of not understanding?
If, as said, our immigration system no longer prioritizes merit – who changed the criteria?
If our institutions feel unprepared to handle today’s complexity – who hollowed them out through underinvestment and compromise?
If its true that cheap labour is reshaping our economy – who quietly benefitted while preaching fairness?
If, as widely acknowledged, housing is unaffordable – who turned homes into investment portfolios, ignored the warnings, and bought the second and third properties anyway?
If we no longer build what we need here – who decided to outsource manufacturing in pursuit of profit, and at what long-term cost?
We can’t keep blaming people for playing by rules we wrote. Or for not honoring a civic fabric we never showed them how to hold. We’ve confused multiculturalism with polite coexistence – and tolerance with passivity. We assumed diversity would work itself out, without the effort of building civic trust and mutual accountability. We let go of the harder work – of integrating people into a shared culture rather than simply accommodating difference.
Blame is easy. It’s clean. It makes us feel righteous and wronged. But it also robs us of agency.
What’s harder, and, I would contend, more necessary, is accountability.
Because a society doesn’t fall apart overnight. It wears down. Quietly. In moments of silence. In decisions made for convenience. In systems designed for efficiency, not ethics. In the way we softened standards and outsourced responsibility to governments, institutions, markets – “someone else.”
We talk about how politics has become tribal. That ethnic alliances and block voting are pulling us apart. But politicians don’t invent tribes. They respond to them. Tribalism only flourishes when our broader civic values have already been diluted – when our institutions no longer feel like they belong to all of us, and instead serve only the loudest or the most organized.
We speak of rising insecurity and social breakdown as if it happened suddenly. It didn’t. What we’re witnessing are symptoms – not shocks. They’re the result of erosion, not disruption. The result of a thousand small compromises.
And perhaps the most corrosive shift of all is how comfortable we’ve become with blame as an identity. Once we see ourselves as victims of someone else’s actions, we no longer feel the need to act.
We wait. We complain. We withdraw. And cynicism takes over.
But this moment – this discomfort – could be something else entirely. It could be a reckoning.
What kind of country do we want to be? And more urgently: what are we prepared to do about it?
Are we ready to rebuild a civic culture that insists on shared obligation, not just individual rights?
Are we willing to demand systems that serve the common good, not just political convenience or profit?
Are we prepared to sit in discomfort – to ask the hard questions, challenge our own nostalgia, and let go of the urge to find simple villains?
Are we ready to stop being stakeholders and start being stewards?
This isn’t about excusing bad actors – it’s about something bigger: reclaiming ownership. Not just of policy or politics, but of the space we each hold in this shared place we call Canada. The identity we shape. The values we live. The culture we pass on.
Canada isn’t lost. It’s waiting – for courage, for clarity, for people willing to take the wheel again. People willing to stop asking “Why did they do this?” and start asking “What did we let go of?”
We don’t need blame or shame. We need honesty.
We don’t need scapegoats. We need stewards.
Because if we don’t like what we see, the only place left to look is the mirror.
And from there …
With clarity, with courage, we begin again.