From my youth on I was told that there was no shortcut to any worthwhile goal, and that if it was to be achieved, it was up to me. For whatever I wanted to achieve and own, I had to work and groan—save, self-deny, and tighten my belt. In other words, I had to put in patient, hard labour and learn to do without a lot of things so that the house could be bought, the education completed, the rooms furnished, or whatever it was I wanted to achieve. The accepted wisdom used to be that if you can’t afford it and still want it, then you have to work and scrounge until you can.

Not so today, at least not in British Columbia. There, a benevolent—or should I say foolish—government is telling its young citizens, “You can’t afford a house right now? You poor thing! We’re here to help you. We’ll not only carry your mortgage debt, we’ll also give you a down payment so that you can get that mortgage, because everybody is entitled to ‘owe’ a home. Everyone has the right to be burdened with debt in order to acquire things without having to deny themselves or work hard.”

Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender. Proverbs 22:7