Episode
As Canadians go hungry, is it time for ‘oil for food’?
- Published
- May 25, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 6858
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Summary
95% of Canadians are feeling financial pressure. 52% of the average household's income now goes to shelter. And 47% say the country is on the right track, the highest figure since 2017. Jim Csek and Iain Burns try to make sense of a country where the numbers tell completely different stories depending on which ones you look at. The gap between how Canadians feel about their own lives and how they feel about the country's direction is not a contradiction. It is a portrait of a population that has learned to separate the government's narrative from their own reality. Housing is consuming more than half of household income. One in 10 Canadians is using credit cards to cover monthly expenses. And cabinet won't disclose the budget for a Governor General swearing-in ceremony while promising $60 billion in spending cuts. Today on The Really Big Show:►A survey finds 95% of Canadians are feeling financial pressure from rising food, housing, utility and gas costs, with 91% saying they have no control over their situation, 49% cutting back on essentials and 10% relying on credit cards to cover monthly expenses►A federal housing department memo calculated shelter costs now consume 52% of the average Canadian household's annual income, up from 38% a decade ago, with middle income families increasingly unable to buy homes and pushing rental demand higher►Abacus Data finds 47% of Canadians say the country is on the right track, the highest figure since 2017, with 76% saying the rest of the world is heading in the wrong direction and 80% saying the same about the United States specifically►Newfoundland's independent review panel declares the new Churchill Falls MOU with Hydro-Québec "not in the public interest," saying it echoes the terms of the 1969 contract widely consider…