The Hicklib Polarity Shift

Role Reversal

Something strange has been happening lately.

I haven’t traveled for a while, but I still communicate with friends across the country (most of whom live in cities like Toronto, Montreal, or Calgary), and there’s a noticeable polarity shift going on. Everyone is thinking and saying the same thing: something along the lines of “things cannot continue.”

Before I start making grandiose claims, I want to say this is highly anecdotal, and cannot be absolute. There are still plenty of left-leaning urbanites, and right-leaning ruralites, but I’m highlighting an observation.

Canada, as you all know, receives somewhere between 1.2 to potentially 4 million foreigners a year through its various programs. In 2022 and 2023, immigration was responsible for 95% of all population growth. The government doesn’t know how many are coming and has admitted they lost count.

Now, I’m a city boy, from an old lower-middle-class blue-collar family with some history of military service. We’ve lived in the city for the last four generations. I’m one of those guys who LOVES the HUSTLE and BUSTLE of the BIG CITY. I’m not intimidated by seeing more than four people in a grocery store, I don’t mind self-checkouts, because I hate standing behind people in line, slack-jawed and drooling as they stare at the debit machine while it screams at them to remove their card. I’m glad to not have to drive 45 minutes to an hour to go to work. I don’t have a heart attack when I hear ambulance or police sirens—matter of fact, they put me to sleep. I’ve always enjoyed dive bars, taking the metro, and I find comfort in the sight and sound of the red and green stoplights shimmering off the soft pools of water on the concrete ground. There is something going on, though.

This environment is not what it used to be. Something many hadn’t anticipated, myself included. No matter what I say (much of which used to be considered extremely controversial) to people about foreigners, no matter how outlandish it is, it seems to be affecting city folk less and less. This includes all of the old heresies of dismissing our national mythology; that “diversity is our strength,” “we are a cultural mosaic,” and “Canada is a post-national state.” When you question or oppose these things, many say nothing now, or they’re curious to learn more.

More and more ethnic Canadians will not push back when I say, “there are too many foreigners.” Three to five years ago, this was sacred. Fifteen years ago, it was utterly untouchable. I’ve thought this way since before political consciousness, but I was alone for a long time, and in a fringe. My upbringing was unique. When I talk to Canadians and say, “they’re taking our jobs,” I see their ears perk up. A look of sadness, but recognition. No South Park reference to mock the destitute, old worker whose family was wiped out when the company outsourced. No laughing and jeering about losing a Walmart, Tim’s, or security job to a foreigner with more hours and less pay. If I say something to the effect of “they have to go back” in a dry and funny way, just to test the attitude, I see them silently nodding their heads.

It’s not just them; even recent immigrants don’t want more immigrants in Canada, as this has been affecting the quality of life of those who arrived even a short two or three years ago. I asked one Indian colleague I trained why he didn’t want to move to Toronto. It was a bigger city after all. Much greater opportunity. He looked at me and said, “too many Indians, saar.” I couldn’t believe it. This shift is happening because it’s true. It’s observable and empirical. In Canadian cities, where it is hitting everyone the hardest. The wage suppression, the inability of Generation Z to get entry-level unskilled labour jobs in retail, fast food, etc. The cost of living, the average home cost being $703,000. Now it’s affecting even the lower-middle-class professions like accounting, communications, middle management, the lower end of the IT sector or other jobs that require associate degrees. The trades, once a bastion of ethnic Canadians, dominated by ethnic Canadians or indigenous men, increasingly have foreign labourers and civic engineers never seen before. Usually from Central or South America, the Arabian Peninsula, or India. This cohort is new to Canada.