By Koenig
Canadian police warned the nation’s leadership in a “secret” memo of the possibility of a revolt amid rising prices, conspiracy theories and paranoia, as those younger than 35 are “unlikely” to ever be able to afford a home.
“Economic forecasts for the next five years and beyond are bleak,” a newly unsealed, heavily redacted report from 2022 says.
“The coming period of recession will accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations,” reads the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s “Whole of Government Five-Year Trends for Canada” report.
“For example, many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to buy a place to live.
“The fallout from this decline in living standards will be exacerbated by the fact that the difference between the extremes of wealth is greater now than it has been at any time in several generations,” it continues.
The report says the “damage to the economy and to the social fabric of the nation is ongoing” ever since the COVID pandemic and there is “an established opposition to existing and potential public health measures and other restrictions.”
During the pandemic, house prices skyrocketed in Canada, making it less affordable for families to buy a home.
In 2019, nearly 60% of all families could afford to own at least a condo, but by 2023, that number shrank to just 26%, according to the Royal Bank of Canada.
As this trend continues, the Royal Mounted Police warned that law enforcement “should expect continuing social and political polarization fueled by misinformation campaigns and an increasing mistrust for all democratic institutions.”
“The past seven years have seen marked social and political polarization in the Western world,” the newly released report notes.
“Capitalizing on the rise of political polarization and conspiracy theories have been populists willing to tailor their message to appeal to extremist movements,” the RCMP wrote in a section titled “Paranoid Populism.”
Those populists may be able to increase their influence in the coming years with the help of AI deepfake videos and “big data,” according to the report.
“Access to this data will allow private entities to develop the means to exercise undue influence over individuals and populists at an unprecedented level,” it says.
The report – marked “secret” on the top – also provides a grim picture of the effects of environmental threats.
“Over the course of the next five years, environmental scientists expect that increasingly violent and even concurrent storms, worsening droughts, floods and persistent heat waves all over the globe will reduce global output of a variety of commodities,” it says.
At the same time, it says, “shrinking polar ice caps provide access to untapped raw materials and new paths for transportation,” which is already causing other countries to expand their territorial claims in the area.
“Law enforcement should anticipate that these destructive weather patterns will affect all facets of government including damage to critical infrastructure, increasing pressure to cede Arctic territory and more,” the report notes.
It concludes with a heavily redacted “next steps” section, and includes two other pages that are left blank except for a picture of a globe on the left side of one.
The report was finally made public as the result of an access-to-information request filed by Matt Malone, an assistant law professor and government secrecy researcher at Thompson Rivers University, according to the CBC.
It was designed to look at shifts in the “domestic and international environments that could have a significant effect on the Canadian government and the RCMP,” a spokesperson for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told the outlet.
Data for the report were collected between June and October 2022, just a few months after truckers blocked major bridges into the country in protest of Canada’s COVID restrictions.
It was published for official use in December of that year, and has not been updated since, the police told the CBC.
