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An updated version has now been published on Substack
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This study was originally commissioned Winter 2023–2024 for an Indigenous economic development corporation in Northern British Columbia. It has been modified here for a broader audience navigating the structural economic transition underway. A 2026 update is in development.
Inquiries can be directed to [email protected].
Over 12 weeks, this project used primary and secondary research methods — current and future state analysis, PESTLE analysis, market scanning, and ten expert interviews — to map the economic landscape of a region whose fortunes have historically been tied to industrial extraction: shipping, forestry, mining, oil and gas. The researchers identified 52 specific economic development opportunities and conducted a pathways alignment analysis across 28 dimensions and 10 post-capitalist economic frameworks.
The findings, while specific to Northern BC's North Coast, are macro-economic and international in origin. At a high level, the research found:
The study's central argument: we have entered a period of structural creative destruction comparable in scale to the transition from feudalism to capitalism. The assumptions that governed wealth creation for the past 80 years are being fundamentally disrupted. Organizations, communities, and individuals that recognize this and reposition accordingly will be better placed to create durable prosperity. Those that don't will be increasingly exposed.
The research identified three macro-economic disruptions that are international in scope and origin. Taken together — and especially in combination — they represent serious threats to the existing socio-economic order and significant opportunities for those positioned to respond.
"The Paindemic" is shorthand for the intersecting crises negatively impacting human and environmental wellbeing — what the study calls "capitalism's psycho-spiritual externalities." These are the hidden costs of economic activity that are not borne by the producers who benefit, but by broader society and the natural world.
Within the Paindemic, the research documented multiple nested and interconnected phenomena:
The Loneliness Epidemic. In 2023, the World Health Organization declared loneliness a global health concern. The U.S. Surgeon General released a landmark advisory finding that social disconnection can be as damaging to individual and population health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. This is not a soft concern — loneliness has measurable economic consequences, with more-connected communities enjoying greater levels of prosperity than socially fragmented ones.
The Mental Health and Addiction Crisis. In British Columbia alone, the Coroner's Service reported 2,511 illicit drug deaths in 2023. In the United States, 112,000 overdose deaths nationally eclipsed every previous drug epidemic on record. This crisis disproportionately impacts Indigenous peoples, who died at six times the rate of non-Indigenous people in the first half of 2023. The Centre for Addiction and Mental Health states that Canada is in the grips of a mental health crisis that "ruins health, threatens lives and hurts economies." Half of all Canadians will have a mental illness by the time they reach 40. Nearly 500,000 Canadians are absent from work every week due to mental health issues, costing the economy an estimated $51 billion per year.
Workplace Stress and Disengagement. The Mental Health Commission of Canada found that workplace stress is the primary cause of mental health concerns among Canadians, and Statistics Canada identified it as the leading cause of stress among the working-aged population. The anti-work movement — better understood as a reaction to burnout and a demand for different conditions than as an outright rejection of work — grew 224% between October 2021 and 2024, as measured by the r/antiwork subreddit.