Dear Daily Disaster Diary, July 1 2025

 The great danger is that the state will come to consider the people as its property.”

— Leo Tolstoy

In 2025 Canada, when households are shackled by debt, retirement becomes a fantasy, and homes are leveraged to the hilt just to survive—we are no longer citizens. We are assets on a banker’s spreadsheet.

This quote cuts to the heart of the crisis: when governments enable a system where citizens must mortgage their future just to live in the present, we have ceased to be free.

O Canada in 11 different languages

The Canadian Dream is Dead: Welcome to the Age of Financial Serfdom

By Adaptation-Guide

 

“We’re not building futures anymore. We’re servicing debt.”

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Today’s Canadian dream is no longer a home by the lake or a comfortable retirement at 60. 

It’s to make the next mortgage payment without borrowing to do it. 

Welcome to 2025 in Canada: a nation buried under the polite silence of financial collapse.

Let’s be blunt. Canada is in the midst of a full-blown household debt crisis, a financial iceberg we've been drifting toward for over a decade—and now we're smashing into it. 

With debt-to-disposable income levels near 200%, we top the G7 for household debt. 

We are not getting wealthier. We are borrowing to appear middle class—and we’re running out of credit.

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🧨 What Happened?

1. The Housing Mirage
Canadians piled into the housing market like it was the last lifeboat on the Titanic. 

Now? 3.8 million mortgages—65% of all mortgages in Canada—are set to renew by the end of 2026. That’s not just a number. 

That’s 2.4 million households about to find out what happens when interest rates snap back to reality.

For most, their mortgage will now cost hundreds more per month. At the same time, grocery bills are up 20% since 2020. 

The Bank of Canada won’t call this a crisis. But if you're choosing between fresh vegetables and making your next interest payment, you already know it is.

2. Income Stagnation
Incomes are not keeping up. StatsCan reports household spending is growing faster than disposable income. And why? 

Because people are using credit to stay afloat. It’s not consumer recklessness—it’s consumer survival.

3. The Wealth Illusion
The top 20% of Canadian households control over 68% of financial assets and more than half the real estate. 

For the rest? Net worth isn’t growing. The middle class is shrinking. And there is no parachute on this fall.

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🚨 Retirement Is Now a Joke (And the Joke's On Us)

HOOPP’s recent survey laid it bare: Canadians feel anxious, fearful, depressed about money. 

And they should. The “golden years” have turned radioactive. Most Canadians will not retire comfortably. 

Some will not retire at all. That’s not pessimism—it’s math.

What cost $100 in 2020 now costs $120. But your income didn’t grow 20%, did it?

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🔥 The Quiet Collapse

We are watching a silent generational crisis. 

Not loud and dramatic like a market crash, but slow and soul-crushing. 

Debt servicing has replaced investment. Anxiety has replaced hope. 

Our national policy has been to encourage private debt over public solutions—and now the bill has come due.

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🛠️ What Can Be Done (Yes, There Are Solutions)

Let’s stop pretending this is an individual problem solved by “better budgeting.” This is systemic. And the system needs a hard reset.

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✅ 1. Declare War on Household Debt

Canada must incentivize rapid household deleveraging. Forgive interest on student debt, cap variable mortgage interest, subsidize refinancing for low- and middle-income earners. If we can bail out banks, we can bail out the middle class.

✅ 2. Tax Real Wealth, Not Real Work

It’s time to tax unearned wealth like it matters: capital gains, secondary properties, and the ultra-rich hoarding equity while young families drown. Real estate speculators should not earn more passively than nurses working overtime.

✅ 3. Build Public Housing—Now

Stop feeding the private market. Create non-market, permanently affordable public housing. Austria and Singapore have proven this works. Canada is decades behind.

✅ 4. Universal Retirement Guarantee

Enough with “self-directed” retirement plans that depend on gambling in the stock market. Mandate public retirement income floors indexed to real cost of living, not inflation fantasy numbers.

✅ 5. Implement a National Debt Audit

It’s time for radical transparency. Who holds Canada’s debt? Who profits from Canadians’ suffering? Let’s follow the money. Then regulate lending like the public interest depends on it—because it does.

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🧱 Bottom Line

This isn’t just a financial story. It’s a national emergency wrapped in economic jargon. Canadians are no longer dreaming. They are coping. A once-proud middle class is quietly transforming into a debtor class, working endlessly to pay for yesterday’s survival.

The politicians who promise transformation in four years are playing with fire. We need relief now, not later. If the government doesn’t act boldly—and fast—it won’t just be the Canadian dream that dies.

It’ll be the myth of our stability.

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📢 Call to Action

• Share this post. Get loud. Tell your MP that debt relief and housing justice are emergency issues—not partisan ones.

• Support grassroots housing initiatives. Mutual aid and co-ops are doing what banks and governments refuse to.

• Start local debt resistance groups. Learn from Strike Debt and the Debt Collective. Don’t suffer alone.

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📚 Sources & Resources

• Statistics Canada: Q1 2025 Financial Flow Accounts

• HOOPP Retirement Survey, 2025

• Bank of Canada Inflation Calculator

• Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions

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This is Adaptation Guide. We don’t sugar-coat collapse. We teach you how to survive it.
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Want to take action? Join the National Debtors Union Slack

Famous Last Words,...June 30 2025

 

"Safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation."

— Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 1955

This chilling line from Churchill captures the grim logic of nuclear deterrence: that peace, paradoxically, may be preserved not by goodwill, but by the shared horror of mutually assured destruction.

Why the nuclear arms race is on again | Mapped Out

💣 Everyone Gets the Bomb: The Twisted Logic of Peace Through Mutual Threat

By: Adaptation-Guide

The dream of a world without nuclear weapons is dead. What remains is the terrifying possibility that global peace may only survive through one thing: the equal ability to threaten unimaginable destruction.

Let that sink in.
Peace might only be possible when everyone is equally capable of annihilation.

The United States ended World War II by incinerating Hiroshima and Nagasaki with atomic bombs. 

Today, nine countries possess nuclear arsenals. That number is expected to rise. And if recent developments are any indication, future nuclear states may include not just rogue regimes—but European democracies too.

The disarmament treaties of the 20th century? Broken.
The nuclear umbrella of the United States? Questionable under populist leadership like Trump’s.
The Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)? 

Crumbling before our eyes.

The Myth of Nuclear Disarmament

In 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons came into force—yet not one nuclear power has signed it. 

The treaty is noble, idealistic, and utterly toothless. It doesn't answer the most crucial questions:

• How do we ensure every bomb is dismantled?

• How do we prevent secret programs from thriving underground?

• Who enforces nuclear honesty in an age of distrust?

No one even knows the exact number of nuclear weapons in existence. What kind of “disarmament” is that?

The NPT: A Paper Wall in a Nuclear Storm

The 1968 NPT allowed five nations—USA, Russia, UK, France, China—to legally possess nuclear weapons. 

The rest of the world? Told to trust these powers and opt out of the game.

Yet India, Pakistan, and Israel never signed on. North Korea walked out. Iran might be millimeters away from a bomb. Saudi Arabia openly suggests that if Iran arms up, so will they.

Nuclear Hypocrisy: A Western Monopoly

Let’s call it what it is: Nuclear apartheid.
The nuclear powers lecture the rest of the world while hoarding the very weapons they claim threaten humanity. They tell others not to join the club—then show up to conflicts with nukes on their belts.

The U.S. protects Europe with a so-called "nuclear umbrella," but Donald Trump labeled NATO allies as freeloaders. Can Europe really count on American defense?

France and Britain have their own arsenals, but they’re limited and dependent. France's force de frappe is built for deterrence under U.S. cover. The UK's Trident missiles require U.S. maintenance. These are not fully sovereign deterrents. They're borrowed power.

Europe's Nuclear Wake-Up Call

Russia can invade Ukraine without serious nuclear repercussions because of one simple fact: They have the bomb, and Ukraine doesn't.

Let that be the wake-up call.

If Ukraine had nukes, would Russia have dared to cross the border?

If Poland, Germany, or Italy had them—would Putin still threaten the EU?

The harsh truth: A world where only a few hold the keys to nuclear hell is more dangerous than a world where every major state has a hand on the trigger.

The Nuclear Domino Effect

South Korea is now openly debating its own nuclear weapons. Japan is quietly reconsidering. The more America withdraws from global leadership, the more others will look to arm themselves.

Why shouldn’t they?

Why should a democratic country stay defenseless while autocratic regimes expand their arsenals?

In a grotesque twist of logic, **the proliferation of nuclear weapons might actually stabilize global tensions—**not because nukes are good, but because they’re equalizers. Autocracies won’t give theirs up. So why should democracies remain vulnerable?

Nuclear Weapons: Humanity’s Mirror

The nuclear weapon is as ambivalent and destructive as the species that created it. Yes, it is monstrous. But its very monstrosity is what keeps monsters at bay.

We imagine a nuclear-free utopia. But utopias require trust—and trust is in short supply. In reality, nuclear weapons have kept wars local. If Ukraine had nuclear weapons, this would not be happening. If every major country had nuclear deterrence, World War III might never come.

Maybe that’s the brutal secret of the last 80 years:
It’s not disarmament that kept the peace. It’s mutual fear.

So here's the controversial truth:

In a world where autocracies arm up and disarmament is a fantasy, universal nuclear deterrence may be the only way left to keep the peace.

It’s dangerous. It’s terrifying.
But it might be the only thing that works.

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Related Sources & Links:

• UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2021)

• NPT Full Text – UN Office for Disarmament Affairs

• Nuclear Threat Initiative - Global Nuclear Arsenal

• The Atlantic: The Death of Arms Control

• BBC: Why countries like South Korea want nukes