EDITORIAL: Grandma Has $669 Left, and They're Still Telling Her to Tighten Her Belt

The traffic and the tents

The other day I was on the road with my wife and my mother-in-law. Traffic was crawling. And we drove past the encampments.

Tents. Tarps. People living there. Not for a fishing weekend, not for a festival. Living.

And in the cars around us, everybody was looking. Faces pressed to the windows, dismayed, the way you look at an accident. The way you look at a zoo. We stare at people living outside like sideshow curiosities, we click our tongues, we say "that's so sad," the traffic starts moving again, and we forget before the next exit.

I did something I do a lot. I imagined. I imagined that tomorrow, not one more cent comes in. The job goes, the apartment follows, and the only address I have left is a tent between an off-ramp and a ditch.

I was imagining it. They are living it. Not one night. Every night.

We slow down to look. We never stop to help.

12,077

On April 15, 2025, Quebec counted the people living on its streets. The result, published in April 2026: 12,077 people in visible homelessness. That is 1,873 more than in 2022, an increase of about 20% in three years, according to the government itself.

Nearly 80% had spent the night in a temporary shelter. 16% had spent it outside, in an encampment or not.

They were counted on an April night. I'll let you imagine January.

And while 12,077 people were looking for a roof, the Quebec government had managed to push the SAAQ's website from $638,000,000 to roughly $1,100,000,000. One point one billion dollars. For a website.

There is always money for screens. Never for tents.

The chart nobody wants to post

Quebec's federation of tenants' associations, the RCLALQ, did what the government should have done. It went through rental listings city by city, from 2020 to 2024. Here is what happened to the price of an available apartment:

Trois-Rivières: 50%.
Rimouski: 49%.
Sherbrooke: 44%.
Saguenay: 37%.
Quebec City: 33%.
Montreal: 27%.

And inflation, over the same period? 17%.

Seventeen. Remember that number, we'll need it again.

The cost of living went up one floor. Rent took the elevator to the roof.

Trois-Rivières, $816 turned into $1,225

In Trois-Rivières, the average available apartment was listed at around $816 a month in 2020. In 2024: $1,225. That is $409 more a month. $4,908 more a year. For a roof and four walls.

Now read the list again, carefully. Montreal is not at the top. Trois-Rivières is. Rimouski is. Sherbrooke is. These are the people who did the one smart thing they had left: leave the big city to breathe, raise their kids in a town their own size, live on a regional salary.

The bill followed them. All the way down the St. Lawrence.

One clarification, because I won't lie to you: these numbers measure the price of apartments for rent, not the increase paid by tenants who stay put. In other words, it is the price you pay the day you have the bad luck to move. And that is exactly the trap. People stay stuck in apartments that are too small, too far, too run-down, because moving costs up to 50% more.

The refuge became the cage.

It hasn't calmed down

We were promised it would settle. In 2025, average rent in Quebec rose another 10.1%. In a single year. It now stands at $1,232 a month, according to Desjardins.

To pay that without spending more than 30% of your gross income, the threshold every economist recognizes, you need around $49,300 a year if you live alone.

And already at the 2021 census, before the increases of 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, nearly a quarter of Quebec's renter households were putting more than 30% of their income into rent.

This is no longer a crisis. A crisis ends. This is a regime.

The minimum wage loses the race

Since May 1, 2026, Quebec's minimum wage has been $16.60 an hour. Let's do the math nobody does at a press conference. Forty hours a week, fifty-two weeks: $34,528 gross a year.

Average rent over twelve months is $14,784. That eats 42.8% of the gross pay of a full-time minimum-wage worker. Before tax. Before groceries. Before the bus.

It gets worse. Quebec law allows workers who earn tips to be paid $13.30 an hour. A minimum wage below the minimum wage, perfectly legal. The rest depends on the customer's mood and how many tables fill up on a Tuesday night.

The woman who pours your coffee and wishes you a nice day with a smile breaks her back on her feet for eight hours, at an hourly rate the law itself considers too low for everyone except her.

Working full time and being unable to house yourself has a name. It's called a collective bankruptcy.

Four million under $50,000

Now let's look at who earns $49,300. These numbers don't come from a union or a left-wing committee. They come from Quebec's Ministry of Finance, tax year 2023, covering 7,220,000 filers.

More than half report less than $50,000. 4,034,000 people.

More than one in three report less than $30,000. 2,541,000 people.

One in five reports less than $20,000. 1,467,000 people.

And at the other end of the ladder, the richest fifth of filers report 50.10% of all income in Quebec. The poorest fifth report 3.43%.

Half the cake for a fifth of the table. Crumbs for everyone else, and we call it a healthy economy.

$14,784 in rent on $20,000 of income

Take the one million four hundred sixty-seven thousand people under $20,000. Put them in front of an average rent that costs $14,784 a year.

What's left? Nothing is left. What's left is a roommate at forty, the sister's basement, a room in a stranger's apartment, the car that becomes a bedroom in October.

What's left is the tent between the off-ramp and the ditch.

I'm not saying every one of those filers lives alone. There are students in there, part-timers, couples with two incomes. But there are also widows, separated fathers, single mothers, forty-year-old workers who never caught a break. And for them, the arithmetic doesn't lie.

A people where one in five earns less than $20,000, when the average roof costs $14,784, is not a rich people. It is a people pretending.

Fourteen times in two weeks

You know this one. Maybe it's you.

The bologna sandwich fourteen times in two weeks. The cheapest white bread, the slice of cheese cut in half so it lasts. The mother who says she isn't hungry at supper so the kids get seconds, and who skips one meal out of three without telling anyone, because shame doesn't get said out loud.

The father who gets home from a job that wrecked his back and does the math in his head on whether Hydro can wait two weeks.

These people don't protest. They don't have time. They don't fill the conference rooms of the chambers of commerce. These are the little people, and we made them invisible by asking them, again and again, to be reasonable.

Grinding poverty doesn't scream. It hides. That's why we can pretend it isn't there.

Three million requests a month

Except it leaves tracks. Food Banks of Quebec published its Hunger Count 2025. For the first time in its history, the network is answering more than 3,000,000 requests for food assistance a month.

That is 7% more than in 2024. It is 37% more than in 2022. About 600,000 different people helped every month.

And the detail that should wake the sleepers: in the Granby region, 23% of the people helped have a job. They work. They pay their taxes. And they line up at the food bank counter.

The bologna fourteen times in two weeks is not a columnist's image. It is a waiting line of three million requests a month.

The Quebec that works is lining up to eat.

$669 to finish the month

Now let's talk about the ones we forgot first.

A single senior aged 65 to 74 who lives only on Old Age Security and the Guaranteed Income Supplement receives at most, in the October to December 2026 quarter, $762.50 plus $1,138.90. Total: about $1,901 a month.

Average rent is $1,232.

She has $669 left.

For food. For her pills. For the phone, the bus, winter boots, and the grandson's birthday card, the one she refuses not to send because it is the last piece of dignity she has.

$669. That is the number I want you to keep in mind the next time a man in a suit talks to you about "fiscal discipline."

We asked the old to tighten their belts. They're down to the last hole.

Thirty-five years serving the state

My father was a Quebec civil servant for thirty-five years. Thirty-five years processing files, serving the public, keeping the machine running that everyone loves to hate.

His pension is around $1,900 a month.

Put that in perspective. Basic social assistance for a single person with no health-related constraints is $845 a month. A full-time minimum-wage job is about $2,877 a month, gross.

Thirty-five years of public service, and you end up above welfare, but below a minimum-wage job. That is the reward. That is the "gold-plated civil service pension" some radio hosts describe to you as a scandal.

And he is not alone. Quebec has 1,929,000 tax filers aged 65 and over. According to the Observatoire québécois des inégalités, nearly half of Quebec's seniors live below a livable income.

Nearly half. The generation that built the Manic dams, the CEGEPs and the community health clinics.

They built the country we now refuse them.

The oldest fake news in the country

Now I know what's coming in the comments. I can hear it from here.

"Yeah, but immigrants show up here and get more than our seniors!"

False. And it is one of the oldest pieces of fake news in Canada. The number you see everywhere, $2,470 a month for a refugee, originates in a misreading of a Toronto Star article: a reader confused a one-time settlement allowance with a monthly income. The Canadian Council for Refugees documented it.

A one-time allowance, turned into a monthly salary by a copy-paste, and shared millions of times by people who never check anything but are always sure of everything.

A lie that flatters our anger travels faster than a truth that disturbs it.

What they actually receive

Here is the reality, category by category.

The economic immigrant, the majority, receives no special cheque on arrival. He arrives with his own funds, works, and pays his taxes.

The privately sponsored refugee receives no government assistance during the sponsorship period. The sponsors pay.

The asylum seeker, in Quebec, can apply for last-resort financial assistance. The same social assistance as any Quebecer in trouble. Not one dollar more. For a single person: $845 a month.

The government-assisted refugee receives support pegged to the social assistance rate, for one year at most. And most resettled refugees must repay their plane ticket and their medical exam. They start their life here in debt.

So do the math yourself. Single asylum seeker: $845. Grandma at her maximum benefits: $1,901. The immigrant does not receive more than our seniors. He receives less than half.

And while you glare at the family in the next building, the real safe is being emptied quietly through the front door.

They taught you to watch your neighbour. Never the one cashing the rent.

The same tune since 1996

For thirty years they've been singing us the same song. Tighten your belt. Make sacrifices. Be patient. Everything will be fine.

And I'll be honest to the end, because a sovereigntist who lies about his own camp doesn't deserve to be believed on anything else. In 1996, it was a Parti Québécois government that launched the race to a zero deficit. We sang the tune too.

Then Jean Charest arrived in 2003 with his "re-engineering of the state." Philippe Couillard followed with his "budgetary rigour." And the CAQ promised us managers, business people, accountants who would finally run Quebec like a company.

Thirty years. Four parties. One recipe. And the little people tightening their belts while the suits loosen theirs at the restaurant.

Thirty years of tightened belts, and we wonder why the people are short of breath.

One point one billion for a website

Let's talk about those managers.

SAAQclic: a project budgeted at $638,000,000 that ended up at around $1,100,000,000, with a public inquiry writing in black and white that the SAAQ misled the government.

Northvolt: $470,000,000 in public money gone, and a minister admitting we will never see the government's $270,000,000 again.

And those same people kept explaining that we couldn't afford to raise social assistance, build social housing, or keep homeless shelters open through the winter.

For a website, they find a billion. For a grandmother, they find an excuse.

Falardeau at the Queen Elizabeth

I won't make the dead speak. Pierre Falardeau can no longer answer, and I refuse to put words in his mouth.

But I remember what he filmed. In one of his most cutting short films, he turned his camera on the Beaver Club dinner at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Montreal's elite, celebrating the fur trade era in grand style, feasting under the chandeliers and playing conquerors.

That film hasn't aged a day. The setting changed, that's all. Today, the guests no longer celebrate the fur trade. They wear tailored suits, they talk about "productivity" on the radio, and they explain that if you can't get ahead, you didn't "invest" enough.

Invest with what, my friend? With the $669 grandma has left?

The banquet goes on. Only the menu and the costumes changed.

Elvis Gratton still votes

Falardeau invented another character, and he hasn't aged either. Elvis Gratton. The little Quebecer who dreams of being American, who admires the rich, who defends the people crushing him, and who votes against himself thinking that one day it will be his turn.

On October 5, 2026, we sent 39 Liberals to the National Assembly as the official opposition (40 on election night, before the judicial recount in Vachon). And 19 Conservatives, from a party that drew under 2% of the vote in 2018 and promised to trim $47,000,000,000 from public finances in a single mandate.

Forty-seven billion in cuts. In a Quebec where 12,077 people are on the street, where 3,000,000 food assistance requests are made every month, and where grandma finishes the month with $669.

We didn't dare give a majority to the people talking about building. The Parti Québécois governs as a minority, with 60 seats. We were afraid. Not of the rich. Of ourselves.

Elvis Gratton never left. He just changed ballots.

Two hundred bucks versus a billion

About twenty years ago, all of Quebec laughed at Les Bougon, a TV comedy about a family that gamed the system, cheated welfare and lived on schemes. We laughed, and we were scandalized. The welfare cheats, the freeloaders, the shame.

But the show had a subtext a lot of people missed. The Bougons cheated like the rich. Small-time. With two-hundred-dollar schemes.

Today, when a single mother gets $200 too much on her welfare cheque, the state claws back every cent. When a public project overruns by roughly $462,000,000, it's called a "cost overrun," we hold a public inquiry, and the bill stays with the public.

The real Bougons don't live in public housing. They sit on boards of directors.

The small landlord is not the enemy

And I'll be fair, because anger without fairness is just noise.

The guy who owns a duplex in Trois-Rivières and lives downstairs is not my enemy. Interest rates went up. Insurance went up. Municipal taxes went up. Some of them are barely getting by, just like their tenants.

But when, in Trois-Rivières, the price of an available apartment rises 50% while the cost of living rises 17%, almost three times faster, that's no longer a cost being passed on. It's a harvest. And the harvest is reaped from the pockets of those who have the least.

You can understand the landlord without forgiving the system.

Section G is your pitchfork

Anger doesn't pay the rent. So here is a weapon, a real one.

When you sign a lease in Quebec, look at Section G. The landlord is required to write in it the lowest rent paid in the previous 12 months. If you're paying more than that, you have 10 days after signing to ask the Tribunal administratif du logement to set your rent. If the landlord left the section blank, you have 2 months.

Most people don't know this. And that's why it works, on their side.

Section G is your pitchfork. Use it.

Your local housing committee

Above all, don't stay alone. There is a housing committee or tenants' association in almost every region of Quebec. Their federation produced the numbers at the top of this piece.

These people know the Tribunal, the deadlines, the recourses. They've seen a thousand cases like yours. And a landlord who knows his tenant has backup doesn't play the same way.

A tenant alone is prey. A thousand tenants together are leverage.

Twenty-six years already

We think the year 2000 was yesterday. The millennium bug, the fireworks, the new century. Well, wake up. It's 2026. The year 2000 was twenty-six years ago. 2050 is twenty-four years away.

We are closer to 2050 than to 2000.

And for that quarter century, we were told the same promise. Leave it to the market. Cut taxes at the top. The wealth will trickle down.

Twenty-six years waiting for it to trickle. And down here, what did we get? Rents at $1,232. Food banks at 3,000,000 requests a month. Tents along the highways. And seniors at $669.

It never trickled down. It only went up.

Gathering the pieces

The poet Gaston Miron wrote of "l'homme rapaillé," the man gathered back together. The Quebecer who picks up the pieces of himself, scattered by centuries of submission, and puts himself back together as someone standing upright.

That's where we are. We have to gather ourselves. The seniors, the tenants, the tipped workers, the civil servants on $1,900, the mothers living on bologna, the refugees on $845, and everyone who looks at the encampments through their car window telling themselves it could never happen to them.

Because it can. A job that goes, a rent that follows, and you're on the other side of the glass.

So I'll ask you, you who read this far. How much longer will you accept being told to tighten your belt by people who have never had to punch a new hole in their own?

And the next time you drive past the encampments, will you just slow down?

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

I do not claim the cold objectivity of traditional journalism, which stops at reporting facts. I claim analytical clarity, rigorous interpretation and a deep understanding of the complex issues that concern us all. My role is to give meaning to the facts, to place them in their historical and strategic context, and to offer a critical reading of events.

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This text keeps the basic distinction between verified facts and interpretive analysis. The rule never changes: a factual claim is published only when a verifiable source supports it, and the sources this article actually used are listed under Sources, never here.

Primary source families used by the publication, when the story has them: official statements from governments and international institutions, public statements by political leaders, reports from intergovernmental organisations, dispatches from recognised international news agencies.

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When an article cites statistical, economic or geopolitical data, it comes from the institutions that produce it (intergovernmental organisations, central banks, national statistics offices), and the exact institution is named under Sources.

Nature of the analysis

The analyses, interpretations and perspectives in the analytical sections of this article are a critical, contextual synthesis based on the information available, the trends observed and the expert comments cited in the sources consulted.

My role is to interpret these facts, to set them in the context of today's geopolitical and economic dynamics, and to give them a coherent meaning within the larger story of the changes shaping our time. These analyses reflect expertise built through continuous observation of international affairs and an understanding of the strategic mechanisms that drive global actors.

This article describes a documented state of affairs on its publication date, not a prediction: later developments may shift its outlook. No update is promised in advance; when an article is corrected or completed, the change is dated in the text.