Tag: relationships

This opinion was written by David Coletto, Oksana Kishchuk, and Eddie Sheppard, and was published by the Toronto Star on October 26, 2025.

If you want to under­stand Canada in 2025, don’t look up, look down. Before focus­ing on ideals like pur­pose, self­expres­sion or “liv­ing your best life,” most Cana­dians are doing something much more basic: try­ing to make ends meet and keep their fam­il­ies steady.

For the past year at Aba­cus Data, we’ve described a national mood that moved from scarcity (“Is there enough?”) to pre­car­ity (“Will we be OK?”).

Pre­car­ity is that uneasy feel­ing that even if you can pay the bills this month, you’re not sure you’ll be able to next month. It shrinks time hori­zons and makes prudence feel like a sur­vival skill. In our latest national sur­vey of 4,501 adults (Oct. 915), we tested where people’s atten­tion really sits. Bor­row­ing from Maslow’s hier­archy of needs, we asked which of five goals best describes what they’re most focused on right now: meet­ing basic needs (food, hous­ing, daily essen­tials); keep­ing the fam­ily safe, healthy and fin­an­cially stable; strength­en­ing rela­tion­ships; feel­ing respec­ted and con­fid­ent; or grow­ing and liv­ing a mean­ing­ful, joy­ful life.

The answers are blunt. Twenty­seven per cent chose basic needs as their top focus. Another thirty­eight per cent named safety, health and fin­an­cial sta­bil­ity. Add those together and two in three Cana­dians are con­cen­trat­ing on the two low­est rungs of Maslow’s lad­der. Belong­ing (eight per cent), esteem (nine per cent) and self­actu­al­iz­a­tion (18 per cent) are still in the mix, but they’re not where most people’s heads are.

This is exactly what pre­car­ity looks like. When life feels unstable, atten­tion nar­rows to focus on sta­bil­ity. People don’t stop want­ing mean­ing or con­nec­tion; but they are just try­ing to get or stay on life’s first base. It’s a reminder that we’re liv­ing in a coun­try more focused on endur­ance than ambi­tion and that has big implic­a­tions for busi­ness, polit­ics, and com­munity life.

In prac­tical terms, pre­car­ity means a young pro­fes­sional delays buy­ing a condo because her job is “temp until fur­ther notice,” or a uni­on­ized worker votes against a tent­at­ive agree­ment that offers a 30 per cent raise because there aren’t suf­fi­cient pro­tec­tions against wor­ries his job might be auto­mated in a few years.

For a retiree, it might mean skip­ping a winter trip or put­ting off a home repair because a fixed income no longer stretches as far as it used to, or the value of their home, which they spent a life­time pay­ing off, will sink in value and the next gro­cery or util­ity hike could upset a care­fully bal­anced budget.

The deeper story isn’t in the num­bers, though; it’s in how life stage shapes per­spect­ive. Younger Cana­dians tend to look up the lad­der, think­ing about growth, learn­ing and pur­pose — but are quickly pushed down when real­ity hits. As people age, atten­tion shifts down­ward.

The push and pull of mort­gages, kids and aging par­ents keep mid­life Cana­dians focused on secur­ity, and by retire­ment, safety clearly dom­in­ates.

For many baby boomers, espe­cially those 60 and over, the focus is less on chas­ing new goals and more on pro­tect­ing their health, sav­ings and a sense of sta­bil­ity. Even with rel­at­ive fin­an­cial com­fort, many feel the fra­gil­ity of fixed incomes and rising costs.

Gender doesn’t change the story much: men and women alike are mostly pre­oc­cu­pied with keep­ing life steady. No mat­ter who you are, the instinct right now is to hold the ground you’ve got.

Income and edu­ca­tion still define how high up the lad­der people can look, but what stands out now is the emo­tional dis­tance between those rungs. Unsur­pris­ingly, for lower­income Cana­dians, life feels close to the edge. Among higher earners, there’s more room to think about growth, learn­ing and con­fid­ence. Edu­ca­tion mir­rors that divide: those with a uni­versity degree are less pre­oc­cu­pied with sur­vival and more inves­ted in pro­gress and pur­pose. These con­trasts aren’t sur­pris­ing, but they remind us that optim­ism often depends on sta­bil­ity — and that a mes­sage about hope or ambi­tion can sound inspir­ing to some and tone­deaf to oth­ers.

Mind­set plays a role too. People who believe the coun­try is head­ing in the right dir­ec­tion are more focused on con­nec­tion, belong­ing and con­fid­ence. Those who think we’re on the wrong track are look­ing down, focused on the essen­tials. It’s a telling pat­tern. In an age of pre­car­ity, even con­fid­ence has become a scarce resource.

Iden­tity and back­ground still shape how Cana­dians see their place on the lad­der. Many new­comers and racial­ized Cana­dians, des­pite facing bar­ri­ers, are more likely to talk about growth and belong­ing than just get­ting by. Some of that reflects age and geo­graphy — they’re younger, more urban and often chas­ing oppor­tun­ity rather than defend­ing it — but it also hints at optim­ism. The idea of Canada as a place to build and become something bet­ter still res­on­ates, even as oth­ers worry the sys­tem is slip­ping. Where many long­time res­id­ents feel anxious about los­ing ground, new­comers are often focused on gain­ing it.

Polit­ics, too, reveals where people’s atten­tion rests. Con­ser­vat­ives and Lib­er­als tend to cluster around safety: steady jobs, stable fam­il­ies, pre­dict­able futures. New Demo­crats and Greens, whose sup­port­ers are younger and more likely to rent, lean toward the basics: afford­ab­il­ity, hous­ing and day­today sur­vival. Each party is, in its own way, speak­ing to a dif­fer­ent rung of the national hier­archy, one reason polit­ical debate often feels like par­al­lel con­ver­sa­tions about entirely dif­fer­ent needs.

A few caveats keep us hon­est. First, this shows what’s most on people’s minds right now — it doesn’t neces­sar­ily mean they’re strug­gling or going without. Choos­ing “safety” doesn’t mean your fam­ily is unsafe; it means that, right now, safety is what you’re think­ing about. A house­hold in the top bracket can still feel pre­cari­ous and plan defens­ively.

Second, our Maslow map­ping is a lens, not a law. Human motiv­a­tion is messier than a tidy pyr­amid. People chase mean­ing while jug­gling bills and nur­ture rela­tion­ships while updat­ing resumés.

Finally, per­cep­tion is its own real­ity when it comes to beha­viour. Whether the wobble is fin­an­cial, social or emo­tional, feel­ing pre­cari­ous changes how people work, shop, vote and plan.

So, what should lead­ers draw from this?

If you man­age people, earn the right to talk about pur­pose by deliv­er­ing solid ground first: pay that keeps up, pre­dict­able sched­ules, bene­fits that cover the gaps, espe­cially health and men­tal health, and man­agers who respect people’s time.

If you sell to ser­vices or things, design for value and pre­dict­ab­il­ity; com­munity and status will mat­ter again, but right now products that reduce risk and remove fric­tion win.

If you’re seek­ing office, build a coali­tion around secur­ity that enables aspir­a­tion: steady hous­ing sup­ply, work­ing health care, depend­able infra­struc­ture and relief from price whip­lash paired with a cred­ible path up the lad­der through skills, innov­a­tion and cli­mate action.

In the end, this isn’t a story about a coun­try that has given up on mean­ing; it’s a coun­try that has learned to keep one hand on the guard­rail.

The hier­archy hasn’t dis­ap­peared. People still want con­nec­tion, respect and growth, but the order of oper­a­tions has changed. And here’s the uncom­fort­able truth: pre­car­ity and uncer­tainty may be our default for the fore­see­able future.

Maybe we adapt and get bet­ter at decid­ing under con­stant uncer­tainty.

Maybe we grow numb to the wobble and lower our expect­a­tions. We don’t know.

What we do know, as poll­sters who ask thou­sands of Cana­dians hun­dreds of ques­tions every week is this: mind­set is already reshap­ing pri­or­it­ies like how people work, what they buy and the policies they’ll accept.

Lead­ers who take that ser­i­ously, who reduce volat­il­ity where they can, reas­sure anxious minds and hearts, and speak hon­estly about the risks where they can’t, will earn trust. Until the ground feels steady again, the smartest prom­ise isn’t a moon shot. It’s the steady hand that makes tomor­row feel pos­sible.