Canada: Snowbird Landlord Nation

I've been back in Canada 2.5 months now with sonny. After 24 years abroad, Canada is not the country I left in the mid 90's, or the mid 2000's.

Instead, it is a land that mixes US consumer culture life goals with Soviet levels of governance, where Neoliberal renting goes hand in hand with progressive media symbolism.

HOW IT WAS vs HOW IT IS

When I lived here in the 90's, getting a cheap apartment downtown anywhere in Canada was the norm. Both the places I had in St. John's and Toronto were a few hundred dollars a month, a princely sum at the time. When I returned in the 2000's, downtowns had started undergoing gentrification, but affordable places still abounded in the suburbs.

Now, there are no accommodations to be had in the city at all, unless you are willing and able to pay top dollar for a fashionable apartment, or steep prices for a basement bed.

What went wrong? First, the government that had invested in affordable housing in earlier decades ceased to do so. In St. John's where I live, a full 20% of public housing are 'unliveable' and have gone years, or even decades, without repair. And there is no ongoing work to build new units, despite an $82 billion housing plan promised in 2020. With demand this high, raising the rents and partitioning houses into rooms was a natural result as owners scrambled to double their money. Add to this that real estate has become a no brainer for investing, a trend which the government is unwilling to tackle.

Add in inflation and you can see how the crunch came to be. But what many don't see is the way Canadian culture has changed to suit this dystopic reality. 

Canadian media has capitalized on the unliveability of Canada and rebranded this land, a place many have chosen to escape TO over its history, whether as the terminus of the Underground Railroad or the new home for refugees and immigrants, to a place you need to (periodically) escape FROM.

For example, take the Canadian idea of travel. In the 90's, going overseas was a once in a lifetime experience, often a necessity for arts and humanities students after graduation to pay student loans and build a nest egg. In the 2000's, a trip abroad was something you did while young, like a language learning summer in Europe, or else reserved for honeymoons.

Now, Canadians are inundated with the message that a year without a trip to Florida or some Caribbean beach locale is a dreary, mentally-damaging time. From commercials to air miles ads, travel abroad has become an escapable part of the Canadian identity, another consumer cultural bauble we have greedily emulated from our southern neighbors.

CANADA - THE PLACE NOT TO BE

Nowadays, this message of necessary escape is everywhere in the form of ads for Avion credit cards and Aeroplan points. Even buying toilet paper nets you valuable points towards a southern escape, you are constantly told.




screengrab from RWRDS.ca






On a Facebook page for parents I'm in, people complain of not having enough to go to Florida, of kids whining and being driven crazy by them because 'everyone else goes.'

I went to Florida to visit my snowbird brother once, and between the horsefly nets over pools in gated communities, running for groceries so as not to be around long enough for a shooting, and towering progun billboards, it was a surreal, Karfkaesque parody of a vacation.

Yet this is what we Canadians are exhorted to strive for.

'Saving money' in Canada used to mean staying home, and growing and cooking your own food. Now, it is buying the cheaper pre-cooked meals, the cheaper cellphone, getting cash back on credit cards, and shopping at Wallmart. Canadian lifestyle has become firmly entrenched in capitalist supply trains, largely from abroad, and supporting a consumerist, unsustainable way of life.

Canada has become Snowbird Nation. 

SNOWBIRD NATION, LANDLORD LAND

Admittedly, this feeling of wanting to escape Canada, and especially its long winter, has been with us a long time. Anne Murray's hit, Snowbird (1969) set it all out:


Beneath this snowy mantle, cold and clean
The unborn grass lies waiting
For its coat to turn to green
The snowbird sings the song he always sings
And speaks to me of flowers
That will bloom again in spring


As many Canadians are displaced Europeans, this longing for spring is natural. Canada's Inuit and other indigenous groups enjoyed summer, but knew that adapting and thriving in winter was also necessary for survival here. Murray puts her finger on this western malaise:


When I was young
My heart was young then, too
Anything that it would tell me
That's the thing that I would do
But now I feel such emptiness within
For the thing that I want most in life's
The thing that I can't win


As Durkheim warned, "To pursue a goal which is by definition unattainable is to condemn oneself to a state of perpetual unhappiness." The media touted goal of owning your own home, and of traveling to warmer climes as soon as the snow falls, is unsustainable for many Canadians, leading to a gloomy atmosphere of unhappiness. It is, in the words of Anne Murray word, the Canadian "thing that I can't win," and Canadian capitalism has latched onto this feeling of insecurity of displaced Europeans. Durkheim labelled this anomie, and we see now in Canada the same malaises - envy, false capitalist hopes, fraying of community - that he saw in industrial France. The imagery of Murray's song reflects this unfullfillable wish:

Spread your tiny wings and fly away
And take the snow back with you
Where it came from on that day
The one I love forever is untrue
And if I could, you know that I would
Fly away with you


This stanza sounds like an Air Canada ad, with its multiracial couples cavorting on sandy beaches thousands of kilometers away from the snow and ice back home. The 'one I love forever is untrue' could easily apply to Canada itself - a land promising welcome for all, but increasingly only liveable for the landlord class. Murray's next stanza reflects the inevitable result of this subversion of the Canadian social contract:


The breeze along the river seems to say
That he'll only break my heart again
Should I decide to stay

Canada IS heartbreak. If you are middle class, you may scrape together enough for a big backyard as in Canadian Tire barbeque ads, or even a cabin. But if you don't have a space to rent to afford a jaunt to warmer climes, you are not succeeding as Canadian. And the word of this unsustainable congame is spreading, as attests the explosion of YouTube videos explaining 'reasons NOT to come to Canada', both by Canadians and immigrants. Once again, Murray's lyrics foretell this reality:


So, little snowbird
Take me with you when you go
To that land of gentle breezes
Where the peaceful waters flow


"Where the peaceful waters flow" sounds like the name of an all included resort, one of the bland beaches where Canadians consume copious amounts of alcohol while burning their sunlight starved flesh. These are often oases surrounded by nations suffering from waves of crime and poverty themselves, where Canadians can easily become victims if they stray outside the confines of their constructed fantasy vacation.

Murray's plaintive lyrics foresaw a new voice of Canadians - that of the renter left behind as their landlord becomes a snowbird and flies away to warmer climes, without any thought or pity for those who they profit off of.

LANDLORDISM = CLASS WARFARE

Where is this all headed? How will the competing interests of disenfranchised desperate low earner Canadians trapped in snowhell collide with pitiless high earner snowbird landlords?

The confrontation of these opposing forces, and subsequent unraveling of Canadian society, seems to have already started. A married couple in Hamilton, Ontario were gunned down by their landlord on the lawn of the property they rented. Economic violence easily morphed into real violence, and the landlord, in his turn, was killed after a standoff with police, who ironically are the usual agents of economic violence via eviction. Reporting this, Vice put single quotations around the word 'innocent', as if to say, how innocent can deadbeat tenants really be?

But the Canadian dream is also proving an unattainable illusion for landlords as well. In the same province where the landlord killed his tenants, it has been discovered that half of Toronto condomunium investors are losing money on the properties they own. 

How long will the government, and average Canadians, stand still while consumerism pits us against each other for the sake of fantasy?


SOURCES
Landlord kills tenants
https://www.vice.com/en/article/epvz94/hamilton-canadian-landlord-shot-and-killed-two-innocent-tenants-on-their-front-lawn?utm_medium=social&utm_source=vice_facebook&fbclid=IwAR0w8DBtY9DeEYlt2HPthqD6oy9eXZqA8W7Ect-Yt0BFvpQgdPEwZG2Kcqs



Toronto Condo Investors Losing Money
https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/toronto-condo-investors-losing-money-5308153/?fbclid=IwAR3r2fILFYpl9MQVDci5eDbROwjIgXxUjBD_n08Rg5y9-0JTgckSLeLFKZU



Housing Crunch vs 20% Units Down
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/empty-rental-units-stjohns-1.6506618#:~:text=cent%20of%20St.-,John's%20units%20are%20empty,fill%20its%20vacant%20public%20units.

Housing Crisis Unpacked

https://theindependent.ca/commentary/analysis/unpacking-the-housing-crisis-in-st-johns/

Giri & Ninjou At The Japanese University Part II

 Today's guilt trip

Coworker: Bana sensei, do you know all the part timer names? (Knows full well I don't)

Me: Nope

Coworker: Why not?

Me: I haven't been on campus for 2 years

Coworker: But before that

Me: I was busy getting used to this place

Coworker: But you must know their faces...

Me: When do we see faces?

Coworker: What?

Me: Can you see my face?

Coworker: What?

Me: CAN. YOU. SEE. MY. FACE?

Coworker: What?

Me: Do you understand Japanese?

Coworker: What?

Me: We all wear masks so we never see faces anymore.

Coworker: But it is terrible you don't...

Me: (grabbing bags and heading for the door) You need to stop these guilt trips and attacks. This is why the other teacher quit

Ukraine, Personal Responsibility, & Neoliberalism 2.0

Although I agree in principle with all these 'stand with Ukraine' expressions, they all show the failure of nations to deal with the issue. Just as pollution was rebranded an individual responsibility and each of us were expected to buckle down to the three R's while corporate pollution was ignored in favour of economic expansion, so too are we individuals are expected to add a Ukraine flag, stop drinking vodka, and drop 'the' from Ukraine while the nations our taxes prop up twiddle their fingers to keep Russian gas pumping.

Welcome to neoliberalism 2.0.

Giri & Ninjou at the Japanese University

People often ask me what it's like being the only foreign prof at a J university. Normally, it is like anywhere else.

It's when the chips are down you see the differences.

Recently my uni went back to face to face but I refused due to my wife's health issues and my son's developmental issues. Basically, I haven't the energy to be a double careworker at home and ride the plague trains.

The response has been split along giri (obligation to work) and ninjou (intense humanity and empathy) lines.

When I made the announcement, my usually sunny supervisor called me irresponsible and terrible, and threateningly hinted at problems because the other profs didn't know what was happening. The dean noted I had gotten fat and told me to work more, then relented and told me to take care.

In response, I sent a mass email to everyone explaining exactly the pressures I was under, and got some sympathetic emails telling me they understood and to take care of myself.

Just now, an older prof I ran into shook my hand, hugged me, and wept openly.

So, these are the extremes you get here.

Life in Japan in the Time of Corona (Or why rona will be big in Japan for a while yet)

I just went to a new little soba (buckwheat noodle) shop in my neighborhood here outside of Kyoto and had a tasty and cheap bowl of nishin (Pacific herring) noodles with a green apple sour cocktail to wash it down. Only after ordering did I notice that the master (chef & owner) had his mask hanging off his chin as he cooked, bustled about the open kitchen, and breathed all over my food.

I would not have gone in had I noticed him first.

Which got to me thinking, why would a small business owner struggling under safety restrictions engage in such self-destructive behaviour? To step back further, why is a supposedly law-abiding society like Japan having such a hard time shaking off Corona?

(Warning - This article contains a lot of anecdotal evidence, but that doesn't mean it is totally invalid, just needing clarification & confirmation.)

1 It's a class (and hierarchy) thing

Who do I mostly see drooping masks over their chin here? A LOT of construction and service workers. In other words, blue collar workers at the low end of the socio-economic spectrum. People who have little to lose. I remember Bourdieu commenting on how lower class people engage in self-destructive behaviour more on average because they have little to lose. Japanese laborers seem to be embodying this trend.

On the other hand, I also see bosses and managers mask drooping as they command about bowing and masked underlings. It could be the rules don't apply to them when in a position of power at the top of the hierarchy.

Not that a virus cares about these things...

2 It's a social thing

Japanese are inherently social, but their sociablity is often outsourced to a paying contact - the girl at the snack bar, the master at the noodle shop. As I ate my soba, a local woman at the counter talked up a storm with the waitress. Many Japanese talk less with their family than coworkers or shop staff, so shutting down eating and drinking establishments is anathema to their social identity.

So stay at home orders feel like social suicide to many Japanese. No wonder they went on with the Olympics, and hordes of maskless young people throng in McDs and parks, and push up the daily Corona stats...

3 It's a macho manchild thing

Predominantly, the maskless faces I see in the streets are male. Ian Buruma's A Japanese Mirror adroitly dissects the Japanese male psyche, which is split between the swaggering machismo of the samurai (a la Yukio Mishima) and the co-dependence of a spoiled son from a hahmono, or suffering mother tragedy story, which were big in the 1950's. That was when Japan needed armies of manchildren to do what they were told and staff its companies and rebuild the nation.

Now, no one is telling them what to do, so their masks hang low...

4 It's a technocratic thing

Now that Japan is estimated to be 50% vaccinated, I am seeing older people loosening their masks. I live on the Tokaido, the old road between Kyoto and Yedo, and many of the largely senior citizen hikers that trudge past my house reliving the old glory days of the samurai have dropped masks altogether as they chat amiably as they walk.

This implies that we may see a rise in vaccinated people being infected. Time to watch those numbers...

I went out for beers under the ancient Sanjo Bridge in Kyoto the other day, and talking with a fellow professor who teaches at Kyoto University, we concluded Japan is only half way through the Corona epidemic. In short, we expected the epidemic to last 2 more years, even though we were sure we'd be sent back to classrooms long before that.

By the way, the soba was worth it. I'm fully vaccinated, I just hope I didn't bring home a side order of master's rona breath for my unvaccinated child.

Outsourcing Privacy Invasion: Japan's neoliberal ID check app

Here is an example of Japanese style neoliberalism. Tokyo has introduced an app for scanning the mandated ID cards of foreign residents.

With this move, the state retreats from its former duties (ie checking foreigner status, regulating employment) while foisting the responsibility for these on businesses and individuals with the warning "Business owners who employ illegals can be held liable."

The state also abrogates its duty to protect foreigner rights by making the employers do the checking and thus them commit any invasion of privacy.

Insidious and insipid at the same time.

Capitalism As A Flight To Nowhere

Have you seen the news? Flights to nowhere are selling out in minutes. Shops are selling airplane food. People (with jobs, homes, and money) are breathing sighs of relief that air travel is resuming because of the ‘tough’ year they have had. https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-plane-food-sold-in-shops-and-flights-to-nowhere-airlines-try-to-stem-pandemic-losses-12115035

 

More than ever before, we are at home with our family, and connected online 24-7, yet still desiring for escape. But what exactly are we escaping from, and to where?

 

Not since Durkheim’s groundbreaking work on how social disconnection leads to depression and suicide have we seen a clear indicator of how this phenomenon works. We are connected to each other, but disconnected from consumption, from sidewalk cafes, clothes stores, and bars. We can’t travel to exotic locales, or go see the shows. We are cut off from our goal – endless, mindless consumption, and the culture industry that takes our mind off it. And it is killing us. As Durkheim stated, “One does not advance when one walks toward no goal, or - which is the same thing - when his goal is infinity.” 

 

COVID & DEPRESSION

Under Covid, we see what Durkheim would describe as a “general state of extreme depression and exaggerated sadness, causing the patient no longer to realize sanely the bonds which connect him with people and things about him. Pleasures no longer attract.” Indeed, this is the very definition of Durkheim’s ‘Melancholy suicide’, in other words, an ennui towards the daily pleasures of family, work, hobbies, and health, and a craving for the hyped pleasures of consumption, particularly through travel.

 

SOCIAL BELIEFS

Neoliberal capitalism has programmed us to desire the same thing: the status signifying brand, the high paying job, and the package tour to blow off steam from the effort required in acquiring these. This is the ideology of the times, the religion of what Foucault called homo economicus – man defined by his economic relations. According to Durkheim, “It is society which, fashioning us in its image, fills us with religious, political and moral beliefs that control our actions.” We are flailing and failing during the Covid crisis precisely because of how our society is constructed. Look at the utter failure of hyper capitalist US society to deal with the crisis, then the ‘surprising’ success of African and Asian nations, which realize the importance of traditional social bonds for stability and individual happiness.

https://www.france24.com/en/africa/20201008-africa-a-coronavirus-success-story

 

MASS PRODUCED PEOPLE & THEIR PLEASURES

Durkheim also noted, “Social man...is the masterpiece of existence.” But homo economicus is not a series of masterpieces, each unique in his or her own right. Instead, we are mass produced knock offs, infinite variations on the same product, modded and kitted out in ways that simulate individuality, freedom, but which are just different coloured chains of consumption. Make no wonder that we feel unfulfilled and lonely, despite having access to the internet’s Cave of Wonders.

 

In the early days of the Covid-19 crisis, media outlets sagely opined that the crisis would be a time to find a new normal, one that fulfills individuals while allowing a new relation with nature. Looking at the return of the airline industry, with the pump priming action of flights to nowhere, I fear that we are willingly slipping back into chains that bound us, and refusing the lesson on what is important in life that Corona is trying to teach us.