I've never really thought we had something resembling a safety net, just a variety of social services that are theoretically available, but only to varying degrees and mostly not in rural areas, which seems to be one of the defining schisms of the last century whether it's suburban -> normal urban or rural -> urban.
On one hand, I guess your tragic situation is exactly what I'd expect private home insurance to cover, aside from burglary and other natural disasters, but on the other it's becoming an annual occurrence anywhere west of Calgary, and like many other tragedies, massive holes are being exposed in the artificially scarce and super inflated stock of available housing in any given area; living in a town in a national park is somewhat exceptional on every front, but having literally no backup plan if a whole town disappears is revealing of comically inept levels of government. I know some Lytton residents! are also basically camping, waiting on help from the province that may never come.
That is to say, some parts of our social service systems and economy work—or at least aren't horribly broken—if and only if nothing unexpected happens or we don't grow or shrink population wise or culturally at all. There's basically no margin.
One could say things would be better with more money, but that's just a matter of degree, it's not like GDP going up would automatically prevent displacement or create more doctors, it would just give individuals a bit more leverage potentially when something bad happens. We desperately require better feedback loops tied into the bedrock of our society, better incentives.
The problem isn't the non-existence of a social safety net per se, the problem is our taxation rate is as high as countries with a functional social safety net, but we don't actually receive those services.
Both the US and European models are valid IMO. But in Canada we get the worst of both.
Americans on average make nearly 60% more than Canadians right now, not including the massive difference in taxation (you hit like 40% total tax rate at like $70k USD in Canada).
Keep in mind when you google Canadian tax rates, you see the federal rate. The provincial rate is another 10-15% on top, plus sales taxes which can total over 10%.
On one hand, I guess your tragic situation is exactly what I'd expect private home insurance to cover, aside from burglary and other natural disasters, but on the other it's becoming an annual occurrence anywhere west of Calgary, and like many other tragedies, massive holes are being exposed in the artificially scarce and super inflated stock of available housing in any given area; living in a town in a national park is somewhat exceptional on every front, but having literally no backup plan if a whole town disappears is revealing of comically inept levels of government. I know some Lytton residents! are also basically camping, waiting on help from the province that may never come.
That is to say, some parts of our social service systems and economy work—or at least aren't horribly broken—if and only if nothing unexpected happens or we don't grow or shrink population wise or culturally at all. There's basically no margin.
One could say things would be better with more money, but that's just a matter of degree, it's not like GDP going up would automatically prevent displacement or create more doctors, it would just give individuals a bit more leverage potentially when something bad happens. We desperately require better feedback loops tied into the bedrock of our society, better incentives.