On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, John Carter points out the screamingly obvious fact that it’s insane to propose imprisoning young Canadians in a dying economy if they can’t scrape up half a million dollars to escape:
First, young Canadians don’t have shit. They definitely don’t have half a mil to pay the boomers in extortion fees so that they can leave the country.
Second, how are they planning to enforce this? Charge $500k for a passport? What stops the US from just offering amnesty? Ottawa can’t tell Washington what visas it can and cannot offer.
Third, and what makes this malicious boomerfap especially piquant, young Canadian professionals don’t leave because they especially want to. Wanderlust aside, most would prefer to remain close to family and friends.
They leave because they don’t have a choice. The Canadian state is set up to restrict opportunity to the point of nonexistence. Canada is a country that strangles ambition in the crib. As the old joke goes, if Musk had stayed in Canada he’d be a mid-level financial manager at CIBC (with any possibility of further promotion eliminated by the all-of-society DEI imperative).
Canada invests an absurd amount into educating its youth. It then refuses to allow them to use their training. So they leave. The University of Waterloo is one of the best engineering schools on the planet; virtually all of its graduates end up in the Bay area. Because the alternative is sitting on their hands or trying to get a job in the Ministry.
It would be a mistake to see Canadian investment in education as intended for the benefit of Canadian youth, by the way. Like everything else in Canada’s political economy, this is a subsidy to a Liberal Party client group, in this case the academics and administrators staffing the universities. The primary purpose of the universities is providing sinecures to liberals; the secondary purpose is indoctrination of the youth with liberalism; the third, to launder liberal ideas through intellectual channels. Whether the kids learn anything, or whether they can use whatever useful knowledge they acquire to (lol) better themselves or (lmao) “build the country”, is not a priority.
If it were not for the Laurentian Elite running the country into the ground, if young Canadians were not sabotaged at every step of their lives, then there would be no brain drain problem.
But as usual, boomerlibs would rather punish the youth to try and fix the problems the boomerlibs caused.
If you haven’t been paying attention to the progressive hellscape that Canada is becoming, here’s the wife of the Prime Minister boasting to the Liberal convention in Ottawa about how wonderful things are in Soviet Canuckistan:
It would make perfect sense for new grads to look for greener pastures, wouldn’t it? Which is why the Liberals want to force them to stay here, of course.
I have to admit that the constant whine of “it’s all the boomers fault” is grinding me down. Also, is Carney married to a vampire?
At any rate, I guess every generation needs someone to blame for their own misfortunes. As someone born in 1961 I guess I fall into the Boomer category, although I like the Generation Jones model as I wasn’t old enough to get the late 60s stuff, and too old to get the mid 80s stuff. I was busy with our 1st child in ’83 and serving in the Navy. In typical “boomer” fashion I enjoyed the early 80s 20+% interest rates that put me behind the 8 ball on some early dumb credit card use. Not the brightest money handler at 20. The wife was a stay at home Mom, and when we had 2 more kids in ’88 she was still stay at home until they got into full time school. There was no way I could be a ton of help in the home when I was away so much in the Navy, but when I remustered to the Air Force I was around a lot more. Still didn’t help her a great deal because now I was shift working a week of days and a week of evenings, so no second income until the kids were full time school anyway.
All that rambling to say that we didn’t get our finances in order until the kids were much older, which then allowed us to think of buying a house. Now, in ’95 when we bought our first place, $100k was a lot. The beauty of getting in, as long as the market doesn’t tank you build some equity that you can move. Being in the military, and being posted a couple of times also made for interesting time, though it didn’t cost us in the long run as the costs were covered, we just had to do the leg work of prepping the house for sale and finding a place to live in a new city, twice.
I look at the folks whining and complaining about “boomers” and want to tell them, put your head down and get to work. Yes, life isn’t fair, but it will never get better if you don’t at least try. I was fortunate, I dropped out of high school but I joined the military and made my plan around that. I recognized that the pension was good, and if I was lucky enough to serve the full 35 years I could retire with a living pension, no work needed, as long as we were smart. Getting a house, paying it off, and also getting promoted high enough to get a better pension just made life a bit better. But, I never thought it all fell into my lap, or it was easy. My wife and I live paycheck to paycheck, especially during the 5 years when Cretien froze the military pay. I was a MCpl, I had my maximum incentives, no cost of living increases, no promotions as they were reducing the force, it was a shitty time, and we had 3 kids to feed with one income. But now, life is good. Paid house, pension, money in the bank that can help my grown up kids and grandkids if they need it. As a “boomer” I worked to get to this, and as a “boomer” I have no problem sharing my good fortune with my kids too.
Comment by Dwayne — April 13, 2026 @ 12:53
The jibes don’t come from nowhere. There are comfortable, wealthy, smug Canadian boomers who literally do say things like they’re economizing by only taking one month exotic vacations instead of the whole season. I’m in the same age group as you, but I had serious health issues in my mid-50s and was unable to work until I hit retirement. I used up my life savings over that period, so now I depend on my pension for everything. It’s been over a decade since the last time I took a vacation (and by “vacation”, I mean a cheap driving holiday and staying at cheap-to-mid-range hotels at best). I know a few folks who spend lots of time travelling and doing all the things that the memes poke fun at (one friend is on her third overseas vacation since September). I don’t blame them for enjoying their good fortune, but it gets my blood pressure spiking when they pretend that they’re not the lucky ones and blame young Canadians for “not working hard” or wasting their money on “avocado toast” and the like.
Comment by Nicholas — April 13, 2026 @ 14:15
On the social media site formerly known as Twitter, Ron Butler gives both barrels to his fellow comfortable Canadian boomers, then reloads a few times in this thread:
Comment by Nicholas — April 14, 2026 @ 11:55
The key here is “some”… not everyone who is in their “golden” years were handed life on a platter. We worked for it. It is the tarring of an entire group that makes me mad. I worked hard for what I have. I lived paycheck to paycheck, and in overdraft quite often, for years to finally break through and make progress. Calling everyone who is retired a boomer, and saying it is all their fault for the economy that we are living with is lazy. The Liberal party, who create economic chaos every time they achieve power, are chiefly to blame. If you can’t afford a home because housing costs are so high, perhaps the flood gates of immigrants, refugees, and other visa overstaying illegals may have something to do with that. Do you want better pay? Perhaps you need a better job, and you should stop crying for the company you work for to pay you better. There are a lot of things in the world that affect our economy, and just being retired isn’t one of them.
At any rate, I’m sure the next generation following the boomers will take on the mantle of fault once all the boomers die and leave their piles of money to their children, right?
Comment by Dwayne — April 14, 2026 @ 12:24
I dunno … if any generation could manage a way to take it with them, the imaginary boomers would do it! 😉
Comment by Nicholas — April 14, 2026 @ 12:29