Something Different This Way Comes

Tax incentives assumes logic dictates our decisions. It is wrong in that assumption. Which is why client-facing Financial professionals are all trained in behavior management:we don't want to be held accountable for bad decisions, in a field that is stacked against making good decisions! Our very survival - mind you our success - depends on our ability to help people make good decisions, despite themselves.
I take you behind that curtain to how I have come to understand people think, as observed from the front lines of finance. With a quick visit to the back-rooms where the decisions shaping this system were and continue to be made based on fatally flawed assumptions about how we think.Starting with my experience from where the consequences of those false assumptions unfold.
The significance of building a financial system for and by people, that doesn't consider how people think and decide - is huge. It is an expensive mismatch on pretty much every front. One we need to fix. How to fix it? We get there too.
Find more at www.SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca
Email Heather@HeatherMcLeodWealth to subscribe to my weekly newsletter.
Heather McLeod is the one-woman behind this podcast. Heather McLeod Wealth is her Advice-Only Financial Firm. HeatherMcLeodWealth.ca

It's a hot mess. You need a professional just to steer through it. And it's enemy #1: big, bad taxes. When they should be our shared resource, rooted in our values and reliably reflecting our care for one another. How do we get from here to there? More easily than you might think! I dig into the what and why of our current income tax and retirement financing systems, not just the intention but the impact of what we've got now- and emerge ready to throw out RRSPs, TFSAs and so many other tax-based motivational systems, and make room for simpler, more direct solutions.
Namely' Universal Basic Income. If we all got enough every month to cover our essential needs, how would that change retirement in Canada? It would save it! And it would save us. It would save us 10% of what we currently spend on taxes (the cost of poverty-measures we now spend tax dollars is 13% of our tax spending, the cost of basic or guaranteed basic income making those measures unnecessary is only 3% of our current tax spending!)
Referencing:
The case for Universal Basic Income in Canada: https://www.ubiworks.ca/guaranteed-livable-basic-income
History of Income Tax in Canada: https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/income-tax
History of Pension plans in Canada: https://nupge.ca/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/2024-10-29-Module-2-final.pdf
History of our CPP: https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/780721510639698502/pdf/121375-The-Evolution-of-the-Canadian-Pension-Model-All-Pages-Final-Low-Res-9-10-2018.pdf
History of RRSP https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/en/pub/75-001-x/1990004/article/121-eng.pdf?st=_LtpmXP5
When TFSAs were launched: https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2010/05/harper-government-highlights-tax-free-savings-account-success-canadians.html

If the best you can do, isn't good enough - if the best laid plans and all the services and programs Canada's healthcare system boasts don't add up to what you know you'd need - what do you do?
I reflect on the challenges to providing care, and preparing to possibly need care, right now, here - in the wake of my weeks in frank and vulnerable conversations with Caregivers to people with Dementia.
That's who I was honoured to meet and listen to, all so glad of my Mom's memoir of caring for my Step-Dad, and of the spaces she is creating to share her experience as she travels across Canada right now.
The good news is, the actions you can take that will serve you best should you need care as a person with Dementia, are good things to do even if that is not a part of your future.
The bad news is - they don't come easy!
Referencing:
Dementia Widow: A Memoir About Love, Death, and Survival by Fay Martin (Iguana Books, 2026)
The Green Care Farm Mom that gave Mom her three rules of great Dementia care (and for a great life):
Do with not for
Joy & Purpose every day
Live until you die
The five stages of Alzheimer's disease according to the Alzheimer's Society
Increasing footage per person in Canadian homes: https://www.darrinqualman.com/house-size/
Importance of Social Connection, and current Canadian stats on them: https://horizons.service.canada.ca/en/2023/02/22/exploring-change-in-social-connection/

I came back from a two week road trip west across the roads less travelled in our prairie provinces with my Mom and gathered up a stack of notebooks, manuscripts and books to share with you in this episode. It's a bit of a wild ride!
I talk buffalo, the cost of profit-poor ranching, the encroachment of foreign & industrial ownership of farmland, railway from history to current needs, and a true tale documenting the Canadian way of letting the rich skip out on their profit-losses and leave us tax-payers with the bill.
All brought together by a moment of despair darkening the face of a man I'd just met, that called up from my heart the light of hope for change within our lifetimes. The now is showing it's fragility - the next is knocking.
This episode runs long, but it's a rich one!
referencing:
Betty Carpick June 2022: Being Ancestors on season one, episode 9 of Something Different This Way Comes
Old Man on His Back Ranch, Plains Bison and native prairie c/o Nature Conservancy of Canada
National Farmer's Union report on Farm ownership, Farmer demographics & why both are concerning
Young Agrarians of Canada
Old Man On His Back: Portrait of a Prairie Landscape by Sharon Butala & Courtney Milne (Harper Collins 2002)
Louis Riel: A Comic-Strip Biography by Chester Brown (Drawn and Quarterly 1999)
Shoes Were For Sunday: the unforgettable tale of making do with nothing on Glasgow's streets by Molly Weir (Penguin Books, 1970)
Hunting a Paradigm, An Economist's Quest: The autobiography of a would-be reformer by Alex N. McLeod (1997)
Singing Back the Buffalo, directed by Tasha Hubbard, broadcast on the Nature of Things March 2025
 
How-Tos: organize meaty community-building conversation spaces:
World Cafe
Learning For Sustainability resource library

We have been hurt, trapped in psychopathic systems of which we are also agents. To heal we first need to diagnose, then treat these traumas,and better manage the hurtful among us.
Seven stories this week!And an honouring of the wisdom of the Anishnaabe's Seven Grandfather Teachings pointing the way to healing and homes worthy of our beautiful hearts.
Find more at www.SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca
Email Heather@HeatherMcLeodWealth to subscribe to her weekly newsletter.
Heather McLeod is the one-woman behind this podcast. Heather McLeod Wealth is her Advice-Only Financial Firm. HeatherMcLeodWealth.ca
 
Referencing:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/401368611_Psychopathic_Leadership_in_Large_Corporations_and_Its_Measurable_Harm_to_Societies
https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-031-51650-4_149-1
https://www.ontariometisfacts.com/?msclkid=002963439d141c9bb89e09e605bd9be6
https://www.7generations.org/seven-grandfather-teachings/
https://www.knowhistory.ca/news/the-number-of-the-dead-was-so-great-metis-accounts-of-the-1870-smallpox-epidemic-on-the-prairies/
https://mnoc.ca/english/who-we-are/metis-history/

5.10 Economies of Scale
The cost of disappearing neighbourhood bakeries, and the economic innovations that fall outside our current measures of succes and therefore are significantly undervalued in our trade & commerce focused culture. The power of hope and conversation in sowing the seeds of change. With a detour to the difficulties of baking bread in a brick oven, and a tip of the hat to the cost of fueling a fire.
 
Something Different This Way Comes is produced by Heather McLeod Wealth.Heather McLeod is the one-woman everything behind this podcastContact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me
 
This episode references:
Slow Morocco's article on Ferrans
Tamarack Institute's free webinars on Community Wealth Building
Victoria Forum brought policy-makers, researchers and practitioners together August 2026

Breaking Bread: Building personal connections from neighbourly neighbours to life-long friends. Restoring the options we lost in the suburban sprawling decades: communal eating and living would mitigate our loneliness, affordability and food security crises.
My bright future looks like my Grandpa's fondest memories of his young adulthood!
Visit SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca for more
Heather McLeod is this show's one woman everything. Contact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me

5.8 Social Balance Sheet
Canadian Community Development & Impact Finance organizations across Canada are asking to fill the holes in our current economic system with the funding, legislation, policies and tools we need to finance communities when and how they need financing.
An opportunity to make every neighbourhood wealthier and healthier.
How these investments compare to the more familiar and established bank and public market options. And how they relate to our relationship with the place where we live, our neighbourhoods and local circles.
Both have a part to play in restoring this balance sheet to the black! The wealth and health benefits will be both social and economic!
Referencing:
https://bigthink.com/business/how-6-points-of-connection-can-repair-our-shared-trust/
Social Capital Partners
Tapestry capital
Weave Fund
https://coalitionforcommunitycapital.ca/
https://solarbonds.ca/about-us/
 
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Heather McLeod is this show's one woman everything. Contact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me

Investment in our actual land: farm, urban and park - that take years, and cost a lot - but benefit generations with greater resilience to extreme weather, greater security of our food and shelter and health plus effective defence against tariffs and other international market risks...
Smart investments - that fall outside our current financial systems.
How to fix that and diversify Canada's Financial systems to better reflect our full economy, better serve us through this poly-crisis and set us up to flourish.
It starts with our relationship to this land, our home, and the farming sector.
Colonial-rooted as Canada's food & financial systems are, it will be hard to heal and better manage them, to shift from Colonial Insecurities to Native Stewardship. But it is work we can and need to do - urgently.
Referencing:
Sleepy G Farm in Pass Lake, Ontario
Regenerative Food Systems Investment Canada 2026
The value of Natural Services in Canada today. The slide up at the conference said Trillions - but maybe it was not Canada but North America or in Stock-Market Traded Companies or some other metric. I found this after recording.
 
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Heather McLeod is this show's one woman everything. Contact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me

The market correction I foresee and welcome, how to ensure your investment portfolio is ready to ride it out, and what we need to build in Canada in order to have the diversified financial systems that we need to make it through this poly-crisis, and flourish. With a tribute to the value of corner stores and garbage collection!
Referencing:
Financial Planning Canada's Standards Council projection assumption guide for 2025
Utopia for Realists by Rutger Bregman
Purpose Construction in Winnipeg
Social Capital Partner's June 2026 report Strategies & Democratic Practices to Build Community Wealth
Canadian Coalition for Community Capital tool-box to help you add your voice to those telling the Federal Government to invest in this coming budget in National Financial Systems to support local, regional and National economies (not just endeavours meeting Global needs)
Co-Operatives c/o Federal website & c/o Co-Operatives & Mutuals of Canada
Visit SomethingDifferentThisWayComes.ca for more
Heather McLeod is this show's one woman everything. Contact her at SomethingDifferentThisWayComes@proton.me