What specific reforms are you referring to as the cause of loneliness in Canada? Why do you name two foreign politicians and no Canadian politicians? I presume you're upset with Brian Mulroney, but it's still unclear exactly why.

The picture painted by the article seems very comparable to the picture painted in many other countries. It picks out church and community as a mitigating factor. The common factor has been the destruction, intentionally or otherwise, of other group resources that gave friendship and interaction. Those have been mostly replaced by individuals acting individually, without the community and interaction benefit. Isolation is a very unsurprising consequence, even if it was unintended.

I name the two I did as they, famously, started the neoliberal revolution that the world has been trying the last few decades. That came a few years later to Canada as Trudeau was in power in the early 80s.

I'm no sociologist, but I suspect changes in the nature of work had a more sizable effect on loneliness. Nothing fuels teamwork like a shared experience of adversity, which makes sense considering how humans used to live in small bands where they had to toil together to solve life or death problems.

But there isn't a whole lot of that anymore - unless Trump goes to war with China and starts WWIII :(

As a counterpoint, the communist countries were extremely communal, and they were terrible for everyone involved (except for people running things).

This "captalism or communism" false dichotomy is really preventing society from considering useful alternatives. There are plenty of other systems we could develop.

I know people that lived under communism, and what you describe is false. The leaders were incentivized to spread distrust of neighbor to keep power. My friends who grew up that way remember the fear of neighbors that would turn you into the police.

Canada, the USA, UK, and others were not communist in the fifties and sixties, but did have many community group amenities that have mostly been lost in the 80s and beyond. Sharing stuff in groups is not communist or even require people be in communes. Communism generally had little to share anyway.

I'm not sure how that is a counterpoint other than attempted wordplay.

Too communal approach and you're looking at ossified society with no innovation and no efficiency - communism (socialism really) demonstrated it. My UK friend told me that UK was already heading somewhat dangerously in that direction right before Thatcher stepped in - it saw little economic growth, unions blocking entire industries etc. I don't know the full brunt of the situation back then, but it looks like people were tired enough to try a different approach, and elected Thatcher.

The seventies was indeed chaos on many levels. Know why? The 1973 oil crisis. Most everything else of the dysfunctional, high inflation seventies stemmed from that. I remember once getting 15% on a savings account! Below inflation, of course.

Too much union power, and their political aspiration aggravated that rather than caused it. As the economy faltered they continued to seek above inflation pay rises driving inflation higher. Strikes could have one industry supporting another via sympathetic strikes. Until the oil crisis and rest of the seventies it hadn't mattered much, and no one much cared that some union had elected an extremist. The chaos that led to Thatcher and Reagan being necessary came from 73.

None of this related in the slightest to the many community, but not communist, town clubs, amenities, work social clubs, social care and countless other things that died or deformed in the reforms. Which helped push to the little or no community we see today. Thatcher once said something like "there's no such thing as society, just individuals".

Which is why I think the early changes were helpful, especially putting some constraint on unions, but not neutering them completely. The other 30 odd years of going in the same direction have been as damaging as those long fixed seventies problems, so I haven't been especially surprised at the global crises of mental health, loneliness and isolation we've ended up with.