Boxes wait to be filled with provisions at the Daily Bread Food Bank warehouse in Toronto. Last year there were close to three million visits to Toronto food banks—a 50 percent increase compared to the year prior. Photo courtesy Daily Bread Food Bank.

I got laid off. My brother, who had a job at a bread factory, and my kid’s dad, a unionized construction worker, both got laid off the same week. The recession is here.

In part this is because of the spectre of Trump tariffs and also because of the political instability due to the upcoming provincial and federal elections. People like me and my family members who work in the construction and restaurant industries are canaries in the coal mine of the economy. New condo starts have been down for some time, which is an early indicator of a real estate slump—but rents remain high. And January and February are always the slow season, but this seems beyond seasonality.

Every day the algorithm shows me ads for women and young people to get into the trades, many of them touting “stability.” The trades—be they construction trades or cooking trades—are not stable for many of those employed in them. If you make overtime you can make a truly awesome amount of money some weeks. But then in every career there are weeks, months, and sometimes years where you don’t have work.

I’m afraid we are hitting one of those years. Old timers in my union talk about the 1980s which were tough years in the........

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