On his third attempt, Captain James T. Kirk of the starship Enterprise passed the Kobayashi Maru holodeck “no-win” training exercise by reprogramming it. He was subsequently commended for original thinking. Whether or not this was Starfleet’s way of saying that reprogramming was an option because it was not expressly forbidden, only the film’s writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman know for sure.

Fiction or no, that part of Star Trek lore resonates in 2015, especially the part about original thinking. The 6 crew members onboard the International Space Station may be excused if they haven’t had time to contemplate how sub-US$50 crude oil will impact on them and their families. But the rest of the people on planet Earth won’t have that luxury.

For Canadians, the world started to change on July 1, 2014. On that day, the Loonie closed at 94 cents. It started changing a lot faster when the Bank of Canada lowered its interest rate to 0.75% on January 21, 2015. We’ll soon be paying a lot more for our morning orange juice, and a lot of other things, courtesy of a 78.5-cent dollar as of February 1, 2015. The interest rate could fall to 0.5% as early as March. Barclays Bank has downgraded its stock ratings for the Bank of Montreal, Royal Bank and TD Bank, noting that “consumer borrowing, the main profit driver for Canada’s banks, will likely slow even more than previously expected”.

Much of the reason will be stories like Target Canada’s abrupt closing of its 133 retail outlets and the 17,600 Canadians who were let go as a result. That doesn’t include Target’s suppliers. SONY Canada is closing its retail stores. Alberta now faces the prospect of recession. Oil companies are cutting back on capital expenditures and hiring. CIBC will be laying off 500 employees because of slower than expected profit growth.

The Kobayashi Maru scenario left little room for “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. For the moment, Canada looks like an oil-based, one-trick pony. Canadians will have their say about whom they blame and what should be done about it on October 19th—or sooner.

We keep hearing that a lower dollar will be good for Canadian manufacturers and exporters. But in the meantime, we have to play the cards we’ve been dealt. That will call for out-of-the box thinking by Canadians looking to become re-employed and those hoping to land that first job.

What is broken and needs to be fixed is the notion that we can or should rely on governments at any level to do our thinking and planning for us. Most have shown that they can barely think for themselves. We’re going to have to develop our own versions of Kirk’s Kobayashi Maru, because without them, not all choices having to do with postsecondary education will be the right choices. There is nothing on the horizon to suggest that conventional thinking will mean that there will be more than enough good, secure, full-time work to go around.

As Jean-Luc Picard, captain of a later Enterprise, would have put it: “Make it so.”