A CNBC anchor said this week that Canadians deserve a better standard of living, and that it should not be going backwards over a ten year stretch. Here are the numbers underneath it. OECD long-run projections put Canada's real GDP per capita growth at about 0.7% a year from 2020 to 2030. That is the slowest of all 38 member countries, tied with Italy. It is roughly 46% below the OECD average and about 42% behind the United States. The projection for the thirty years after that is 0.8%. Nobody voted for that. There was no bill, no vote, no announcement. It happened slowly enough that no single year was ever the story. Debasement runs on exactly that clock. Invisible by the year, obvious by the decade. You can't fix a trend line that long by being angry at it. You can hold part of your savings in something that does not quietly shrink while you sleep, and you can hold it yourself.