Transcript: Omer Aziz

My interview with the author and former foreign policy advisor

The social and economic crises that we are experiencing in Canada are frequent topics of conversation in this country, with many Canadians expressing the belief that we have seen a decline in our quality of life. My guest on the program this week is a former foreign policy advisor to Justin Trudeau’s government — but he’s on the show to talk domestic policy, and what he sees as “a betrayal of the Canadian dream.”

Omer Aziz is a former Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University and a contributing writer to The Boston Globe. He’s also the author of Brown Boy: A Memoir. His recent essay for The Globe and Mail is titled, “The Canadian dream is on life support.”

This is an edited transcript for paid subscribers. You can listen to the interview for free here.

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TH: It's great to have you on. You published an essay with The Globe and Mail in August that got to the heart of something I've been trying to articulate for a long time. Your essay has really stayed with me. It's one we've already referred to a number of times on the podcast, so it’s just wonderful to have you on today. The title of that essay is “The Canadian dream is on life support.” I think a lot of people feel that way right now. We'll dig into the essay in a moment, but first I want to talk about what it is about the current moment — the Canada of 2024 — that compelled you to write this piece? You returned home to Canada in late 2023 and were shocked. What were you seeing and hearing at that time?

OA: Thanks for having me on. I'm still hearing it and seeing it, actually. What shocked me is people were extremely frustrated and worried about the cost of living, and food prices, and everything else. There was a spike in violent crime, including carjackings, and ordinary random violence, street violence. There seemed to be a political crisis, where politicians weren't responding to ordinary people's concerns anymore. There were too many people, way too many people, with far too few places to live. And when I added all these things up, I noticed that this was a cause of a great structural failure in Canada. 

I began to notice it myself when I would be driving around, when I would be in the city. I would start to get frustrated as well, feeling more anxious and insecure. I noticed what was happening around me — everyone was not being hyperbolic, we were actually witnessing a systemic political failure. We have a social crisis, an immigration crisis, an economic crisis, and potentially an economic catastrophe in the making, with our real estate market. And then, on top of that, in this country that we call a democracy, political leaders have been unable, unwilling, or uninterested in responding. Maybe they have started to change their tune now, but frankly it's probably too late. 

As I mentioned, I started writing the piece late last year, and this year I was working with The Globe and Mail as well. And what happened was the thesis kept getting validated, and even more extreme examples kept coming up. So, basically, I told my editor at The Globe and Mail that we have to publish this now. Because everything I've been arguing and saying is coming to fruition. 

Of course, I'm not the only one. There have been many others, but I think what resonated with this piece was the way it brought these issues together and highlighted them in a strong, and I would hope, compelling way. I think that's why it connected with people across the political spectrum: left wing, right wing, centrist, people of all ethnicities and backgrounds, immigrants, people who were born here. I'm glad it resonated and I'm glad that there's one thing in this divided time that we all agree on. And I just think Canadians deserve better from our elected leaders and representatives.

TH: We'll pull a lot of the threads that you just mentioned, but I want to touch on that anger. I think that is such a key piece. When I lived in Vancouver, I saw it bubble over in traffic a lot. Now that I'm in Toronto, I see it expressed on the subway. I've argued in the past that the root of this anger is the housing crisis. That housing is so foundational, that it impacts every area of your life. What do you see as the root cause, or causes, of the rage that we're seeing right now — on our streets and in our politics?

OA: I would agree with you. I was living in the United States, and I still spend a lot of time there. As expensive as Boston or DC or other places have gotten, there's still available housing and there's places that you can still find affordable housing and rent. It still exists, right? So, I agree with you. I think that housing is the principle, or the proximate, cause of a lot of these anxieties and frustrations — and people feeling like they're moving backwards. 

But I think we can't underestimate the political crisis. I was an advisor in this government and what I noticed — and I talk about this in the piece — is the focus on image-management and PR, for example. The focus on image-management and PR has taken attention away from good policy advice, from good policy implementation, and the rest of Canada is beginning to notice.

So, I think housing is a part of it. Negligence when it comes to political governance is also a part of it. And then just not being a good steward of the country and of the economy. We could have seen this coming. Immigration, the Temporary Foreign Worker program, international students. I wonder why didn't we bring in the top PhDs, and Master's students, and engineering, and nanotech, and biotech, and people all over the world that can come here and enrich our economy and create jobs and create new industries? Why is it that we kept bringing in people to basically fill these jobs that the government said Canadians wouldn't fill? Which I don't think is true. And also, these fake diploma mills and colleges.

We just have too many people. This is a political failure. It should never have happened. We're the second largest country in the world by landmass, and we have one of the smallest populations in the world — what it is now, 35 million or 40 million? Housing in particular is an issue we should have gotten a hold on. I think it's a great political failure for this country, and it's going to take potentially years to course correct.

TH: On that note, I want to read a portion of your essay, which is touching on exactly what you were just talking about so that the listeners have that in their minds as well: “What I realized soon thereafter was that this country was witnessing a systemic political failure, a complete inability of politicians to get change done in ways that manifested at the dinner table. An extreme form of PR and image-management had begun to take over delivering on policy in concrete ways — and the entire country was noticing. Nor was this an accident, the unfortunate consequence of polarization or inequality, but the deliberate result of multiple policy failures — as well as failures of will. I realized that this systemic government failure amounted to something worse than just incompetence or ineffectiveness. It was a betrayal of the Canadian Dream.”Talk to me about what that Canadian Dream is, and how you think that we've gotten to the place that we're at right now.

OA: As I say in the piece, the Canadian Dream was similar to the American Dream, but it was less individualistic and less about guns. I know we have hunters in this country, but we don't have a Second Amendment.

But [the Canadian Dream] did promise a few things. It promised good housing, good neighbourhoods. It promised immigrants and Canadians who play by the rules and pay your taxes, basically a good life would be guaranteed, right? You might not make hundreds of billions of dollars. That was not part of the dream. But you could do well in this country. You could live safely, and you could live better than most of the world. That was the dream. That's what brought immigrants here, brought my parents here. That's what brought international students here. I don't fault them. All the people who have come to this country to seek a better life, I do not fault them. Because our politicians and our policies failed. 

What now has happened — especially for Millennials, for Gen Z, for young people — is that dream is completely out of reach. There used to be a time when you were growing up in Canada, or you were a recent immigrant, and the idea that you could work hard, own your own house, set up a family, live in a safe neighbourhood — these were things that were just taken for granted. It was just taken for granted that there aren't going to be shootings and carjackings when you are on your way to work or school. These things were just accepted as a norm.

Canada was considered a safe, responsible place, and country. Also, a country with bountiful natural resources — breathing incredible air, beautiful nature in this country. That's why so many people came here. 

That dream has been betrayed, has been let down, has been forestalled and deferred. I don't know if we'll get back there. I'm a Millennial. I have Millennial friends. Even if we're successful, the cost of a home in Toronto and Vancouver, and in other parts of the country, has skyrocketed disproportionately to wages and incomes of even high earners, right? Nevermind people who are still struggling and coming up.

Violence in our streets has become unspeakable and unacceptable. I don't want to leave the premiers or local officials off the chain here too. When you have a police officer saying, “Leave your keys out in the front of your living room, in case someone wants to carjack you, or do a home invasion.” That is just so irresponsible and unacceptable. I wonder: Why are these people in office? Why are they in government — federal, provincial, local? What are you doing there, if not to serve ordinary Canadians and ordinary people, and make their lives better?

Instead, we've had people in power who are only in it for themselves and only in it for their own gain. Like I said in the piece, honestly, the rest of the country is noticing. It shows in the poll numbers, it shows in people's anxieties and frustrations. Some of these challenges are global, like with Covid and stuff, but people are not like this in the U.S. I was just telling a friend. In the U.S., you hear a lot of these hysterical headlines, but society and life still goes on — especially in New England and comparable parts to Canada. Whereas in Canada, you hear and read about these headlines, and the negativity, and you feel it on the streets. You feel it when you talk to people. You feel it when you hear politicians speak as well. 

Another thing, finally, is I think Canadians feel manipulated and let down. It's one thing if the prime minister or senior leaders in the government, or the premier, were to come out and say, “Look, that promise we made, we apologize, but we couldn't deliver on it. There were things outside of our control.” If politicians had just levelled with Canadians. Instead, they've pretended like nothing has happened, nothing has gone wrong, and they're all angels. So that means we're the ones that something is wrong with.

I think Canadians don't like being talked down to, and don't like being treated like fools, frankly. I would like to see a change in leadership and new blood. New faces, new ideas. We have to course correct this ship. Don't assume that it's going to go back to what it was before. This thing could keep getting worse. You don't know you've hit rock bottom until you're there — and we could still be sinking.

TH: You touched on immigration earlier in this conversation. This is something I've been covering on the podcast. You write in the piece that Canada's immigration system used to be the envy of the world. I share that view, for sure. But just this week, Robyn Urback in The Globe and Mail wrote that Justin Trudeau's legacy will be the collapse of this pro-immigration consensus, that was decades-long and bipartisan. 

I just recorded an episode this morning with the economist Mike Moffatt, who has been talking about the Temporary Foreign Worker program that you mentioned, which is exploiting workers who come to Canada, but also depressing wages for those who are already here. Talk to me about what we do for the Millennial generation. You raised this point in the piece — that many Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque. There's a class of permanent renters; they're not going to be able to build much wealth. Elaborate on that point for us.