As prices for gas shoot up, meaning not only that driving around is going to get increasingly expensive, but the prices of anything that gets transported by fossil fuel are going to get increasingly expensive...
As we approach what some people are already cheerleading as World War III...
...I face a very interesting juncture. Personally, professionally, financially.
See, starting a couple of years ago, the Liberals under Trudeau (and Marc Miller) decided that our immigration targets were badly off, and decided to start dismantling certain things that had long been in place, changing not only the number of immigrants being allowed into Canada, but the options available to them once they get here.
They did not do this in a delicate, gradual way, but rather, a slash-and-burn one.
We had, at that point -- and still have, at a greatly reduced scale -- something called the LINC program ("Language Instruction for New Canadians"), by which recent immigrants can get government-funded English language instruction as part of their journey to citizenship. It is set up in unusual ways, designed, I would argue, more by bureaucrats than educators. I could go off the rails complaining about the so-called PBLA system and the underlying philosophies of instruction laid forth in the Canadian Langauge Benchmarks document, which I invite you to peruse at your leisure -- but this is not the time: suffice to say, I have taught LINC classes, grappled with the model, and found it wanting.
True confession: there is at least one Iranian woman in her 70s who can barely get "Can I help you" right, is just as likely to say "Can I help me?", who is now a citizen of Canada because of her skill and generosity as a baker (specifically at making baklava), because it just seemed cruel and unusual to submit her to language instruction that was delivered in such a haphazard, back-assward, incoherent, a-systematic fashion (I say this as the person who was designing the actual classes, but doing so under considerable contraints: teaching LINC is like trying to teach swimming with one leg tied behind your back to the opposite arm). She was never going to deliver anything more than badly broken English as a result of her LINC experience. I worked with her for months, and finally gave up, gave her her level 4, and changed classes. But I hope she is still making baklavas and doing okay; ten years later, I don't remember the names of any other students in that class, but thank you for sharing your pastries, W____, (not just with me, but with the whole class, mind you... though she did make extra for the teacher). You may not remember a single lesson I taught but I remember your baking well.
Pro-tip: If ever you go to a bake shop and the person behind the counter asks "Can I help me?" instead of "Can I help you", get excited: the baklava will be astonishing.
Anyhow.
Regardless of how wonky it is, how ineffective it is, how bizarre the tenets of the Cult of LINC are -- the majority of English-language education for immigrants, for decades, has followed this model, here in Canada. Students, provided they are Permanent Residents -- not just visitors, and not yet citizens -- get free instruction, which they can use towards attaining citizenship. The model has been in place since the 1990s, and is still there now, but vastly fewer people are teaching these classes these days, not because someone figured out that LINC is basically a cargo cult, but because the Liberals canceled tons of contracts. Including the one at the school I have been working at, as a tutor, since I left the LINC system in 2017. There's lots online about it...
...but it was only the first part of the asault. Having blown up the language instruction for immigrants, next, the Liberals turned on the international students, changing the terms by which they could study in BC, making it vastly harder for anyone who had come here with a plan in place to work and study until they could earn Permanent Resident status to be able to actually make their dream a reality. There is an Auditor General's Report to be read here, which I have only skimmed, but the upshot is, the changes were vastly more destructive than they were ever intended to be; in 2025, under their new rules, the Liberals still expected around 250 thousand applications for study permits in Canada, but actual numbers dropped below 100 thousand (BC experienced a 66% drop in international student numbers, apparently). One Redditor I think correctly surmises, "they under-estimated how many students were only choosing Canada for school because they felt it was easy to immigrate permanently this way. Once you strip out the incentive, the entire program collapses."
Yep. So suddenly schools that had been full of international students had empty hallways; instructors were laid off, and administrators found themselves in a very challenging situation: how to keep schools afloat that had been dependent for most of their income on, on the one hand, government-funded language instruction and on the other, well-paying international students?
The educational landscape in BC will still be feeling the effects of Liberal policy for a long time (I am basically bookmarking things for myself at this point, since I haven't read them, but, like, see here, or here, or here). I don't know the half of it -- I have a very dim understanding of our political machinery and matters of running schools.
What I do know is, in order to keep the college alive, the school where I work is buying out a bunch of its staff, which will in the short term cost them a great deal, but in the long term, maybe save them.
With World War III at least potentially on the horizon... with an insane, quasi-fascist kleptocracy having become entrenched down south... with Canadian economic instability looming...
I'm about to be jobless.
Sort of. I've accepted the buy out. It's decent enough that I'll be able to clear my debts and shake a few things up in my life that need shaking. And I've got a temporary plan B in place: I'll be officially starting a position at a used bookstore on Main Street this April, where I've occasionally casually taken a shift here and there over the years (basically when the Minimalist Jug Band had a gig, unless it was a gig I was also involved in). But the rate of pay is vastly less and the hours are few.
I'm not quite sure how that's going to shape up, but the record stores of Vancouver will also be impacted. Also possible I'm going to be doing less writing. Hell, you might even discover that there will be ads on this blog, at some point. I may have to MONETIZE. (Ugh!).
Interesting times, anyhow...
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