1997 Canada nostalgia stops being fun right about when the budget comes out. You pull up Paul Martin’s federal budget from that year and he is talking about balance and support for students and families. The date says 29 years ago. You could have sworn it said this morning.

What does it feel like to go looking for the past and find the present instead? The grocery receipt for a family of four was $119 a week. Right now two people are budgeting $600 a month and calling that a win if they can manage it. The Bre-X gold fraud had a Calgary office down the street from a radio school, one founder fell out of a helicopter, and a student put his last few thousand dollars into the stock on the way down because he was sure the fraud story was the fake part. He had to get a job.

There have been five-year programs to end homelessness and ten-year programs to bring down house prices for as long as there have been microphones to announce them. The year changes. The promises do not. The only number on this whole timeline that actually moved is the one on the grocery receipt.

Topics: 1997 Canada nostalgia, Bre-X scandal, grocery prices Canada, Canadian federal budget, throwback Thursday

Originally aired on2026-03-05