Reflecting on the Challenges and Accomplishments of 2024

The holiday season is upon us. It’s a time of the year where most of us take some time to reach out and celebrate with family, friends, and neighbors. It’s also a time to remind ourselves where we’ve been, what’s been accomplished, and what work still needs to be done. At a time of social and political uncertainty, it’s vital that we take stock of what’s happening in our communities, in our country, and around the world.

If you ask any Canadian what their biggest concern coming out of the back of 2024 is, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who wouldn’t talk about the economy. But for most people, when they talk about the economy, they aren’t talking about Bay Street stock portfolios. They are talking about their pocketbooks and jobs. About their paycheques and the costs of essentials like food, home heating and cell phone bills. This has been the major concern of people throughout the last several years, and rightly so. Inflation has taken a bite out of people’s spending power, and particularly in terms of food and shelter costs. The Food Price Report estimates that costs on food items will rise by three to five percent compared to 2024, while general inflation on other goods will rise by one to two percent. Housing prices, meanwhile, is expected to reach peaks similar to those in 2022. Couple this with last week’s large rate cut from the Bank of Canada and the unexpected, ridiculous but real threats of tariffs from the US President-elect, people have a right to be concerned about the costs of essentials and the economy. Should those tariffs take effect, most Canadians and Americans would be hard-pressed to think of a single issue that may be more impactful in 2025.

When we talk about the economy, workers have continued to step up in force in 2024, attempting to negotiate higher wages so they can compete with inflation. In the face of rising costs, both public and private sector workers have been organizing. According to Statistics Canada, work stoppages across the country have tripled in the past three years, with no sense that the trend is slowing down. Its not just postal workers, who, at present, are being forced back to work by the so-called Labour Minister. Air Canada pilots, WestJet mechanics, port and rail workers, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) workers, LCBO workers, and many more have all engaged in some form of workplace action or have been locked out while demanding better wages and workplace supports. For many, it may be inconvenient, but workers seem to have found their labour footing once again in the face of growing financial inequality between the richest CEOs and everyone else. Gains made by unionized workers also have the knock-on effect of improving wages and working conditions for non-unionized workers as well.

The impact of climate change has also been top of mind in 2024 given the devastation caused by wildfires, with the beautiful Alberta resort town of Jasper evacuated and devastated in the middle of summer. 25,000 people had to be vacated, and a firefighter, Morgan Kitchen, lost his life. When all was said and done, according to the Insurance Board of Canada, the wildfire caused $880M in insured losses, the ninth costliest disaster in Canadian history. But when taken as a whole, all of the costliest natural disasters in our history, aside from the 1998 ice storm, have happened since 2005.

These matters signal the importance of working to give Canadians a break. While it’s clear the Federal government has little interest in actually tackling many of these issues head-on, New Democrats pushed to ensure Canadians can get a bit of a financial break. These include an expanding dental care program that’s already been access by over a million Canadians, and the framework for a federal pharmacare program that will soon provide Canadians with no cost diabetes medication and free contraceptives. Also included is a GST Holiday rebate at a time when people are feeling the pinch on their pocketbooks, although, to be clear, its important to remove the GST from essentials like phone and home heating bills, less so on non-essential items like video games. It would also help people more if we removed the GST on essentials permanently, not just for a few months. But it also includes the continued push for public, low-cost child care and the incoming National School Lunch Program, because we know how food insecurity impacts children’s ability learn and grow.

Anti-scab legislation was also passed, and while this doesn’t stop the Labour minister from undemocratically imposing binding arbitration, it does prevent federally-regulated businesses from hiring replacement workers, giving workers more bargaining power. And we know the climate crisis is continuing to be a huge problem for people and communities. In the short term, we pushed to secure increased tax breaks for volunteer firefighters and search and rescue personnel, doubling the tax credit from $3,000 to $6,000.

There is always more work to be done, and while we take stock of where we are and where we are headed in 2025, let’s please remind ourselves of the good we can do by taking care of each other. Please take the time to have a safe and happy holidays.