When a national government is led by people who view economic growth and wealth as harmful, is it any wonder that life keeps getting less and less affordable?
We are supposed to believe that Canada’s economy is in a state of ‘recovery.’
The government says inflation is 4.8%, but that wages are also going up.
The government says job creation has been ‘strong’.
The government says all the money they printed and distributed is helping the state ‘look after Canadians.’
In short, we are supposed to think that things are improving.
Yet, let’s take a look at what Canadians are actually saying about the economy and our standard of living.
According to a new Angus Reid poll, 39% of Canadians say they are worse off than a year ago. 44% say things are the same, while just 15% say they are better off.
And pessimism is rising:
“Canadians’ outlook for the future is also more negative than positive. More (29%) believe they will be in a worse position financially in a year than believe they will be better off (23%). This represents an increase of eight points in the last year, climbing to the highest level in 13 years of ARI data. The fewest (38%) since 2010 believe they will be able to hold steady:”
Of note, and in a sign of how the system in Canada is so heavily skewed towards Quebec (a massive net-recipient of transfer payments taken from other provinces), Quebec has “both the highest proportion of population (31%) of any province classified as Thriving and the lowest proportion (19%) who fall under the Struggling category:”
Canadians struggling to feed their families
Where the numbers get really bad however are when we look at the surge in the number of people who say it is difficult to afford to feed their family.
In October of 2021, 45% said it was ‘difficult,’ while 52% said it was ‘easy.’
Now, 57% say it is ‘difficult,’ while 41% say it is ‘easy.’
That’s a huge jump in people struggling to feed their families in a very short amount of time.
Government spin on wage growth demolished
Governments have tried claiming that wage growth is helping to blunt the impact of inflation.
But on the ground, Canadians aren’t seeing that at all.
In fact, a whopping 82% of respondents to the Angus Reid poll say wage growth isn’t enough to compensate for higher prices.
42% say wage growth is “not even close” to making up for higher prices, while 40% say it is “not enough.”
Just 13% say wage growth is “just enough,” while 5% say wage growth is “more than enough” to make up for the higher prices.
When 82% of a country feels wages aren’t keeping up with inflation, it is beyond clear that we are becoming a poorer nation.
Rising interest rates
It is essential to point out that all of this economic struggle is happening at a time when governments are manipulating the economy to a massive degree.
They are printing money like crazy and spreading it around.
Interest rates have been extremely low for a long time.
Government spending is through the roof.
According to those in power, all of those events should be generating a massive boom that makes people better off.
Instead, the opposite is happening.
And there’s a very clear reason for it:
Politicians like Justin Trudeau are hostile to actual production and economic growth.
When a government strangles the energy sector, imposes carbon taxes, and prints a bunch of money with low interest rates, it makes Canada a terrible place for investment.
All investment comes from savings.
In Canada at this moment, the incentive to save has been destroyed, with governments desperate to keep debasing our currency and driving people to spend, as if spending somehow magically generates wealth.
The problem is that virtue-signallers like Justin Trudeau somehow believe that printing money and spending money can replace actual economic activity.
Imagine if the government shut down all economic activity for a month, while depositing $1 million in the bank account of every Canadian.
Would that make us richer?
Of course not.
Without actual production and economic activity, money is meaningless.
If people don’t want to invest in Canada, if more and more Canadians can’t save up to invest, and if people have to devote a higher and higher portion of their earnings to the bare bones necessities, where exactly does the Trudeau government think economic growth will come from?
A government that opposes growth
This is where a lot of people have trouble coming to terms with the situation Canada faces.
Politicians like Justin Trudeau don’t actually want our economy to grow.
If you look at the rhetoric and the policies of the Trudeau government – and other world leaders of his ilk – you can realize how they want to reduce per capita GDP and make people within their countries poorer and poorer.
Climate virtue-signalling policies are explicitly designed to make life more expensive, to make energy costs rise, to make food costs rise, to make transportation costs rise, to make property costs rise.
The more expensive everything is – and the more wages don’t catch up – the less the average person will consume, and reducing consumption is the goal of most climate virtue-signalling government initiatives.
Of course, politicians like Trudeau can’t openly state they are trying to make people poorer, so what they do is impose those policies and then pretend to be innocent bystanders to the results of those policies.
Printing money and driving up inflation is a way to make it seem that rising costs are due to ‘greedy business owners,’ rather than due to the predictable impacts of anti-growth government policies.
Easy to fix
This is also why politicians like to act as if this is all ‘very complicated,’ when the reality is that making life more affordable can be easily done.
Here are a few simple steps the government could take to increase our standard of living.
Cut taxes
Instead of printing more money and giving it out, which devalues each unit of currency, the government should simply take less away from people. That leaves more money in the pockets of Canadians, without that money being devalued in the process.
Eliminate the carbon tax
The carbon tax makes life more expensive and reduces the attractiveness of Canada as a destination for investment. Removing it would bring more money into the country, and leave more money in the pockets of Canadians.
Stop opposing the energy sector
Canada needs to repeal the legislation that has stalled pipeline approvals, and needs to cut back on the regulations that are holding our energy sector down. As we can see around the world – particularly in Europe – there is still a big demand for oil and gas, and those who produce oil and gas not only have increased wealth, but also increased geopolitical power and influence.
Cut government spending
Government spending is out of control, and it’s being financed by money printing and thus generating higher inflation. Government spending needs to be cut, and fiscal discipline restored so our country can get back on a financially sustainable footing.
Reduce immigration levels
Canada is currently embarked on an experiment to rapidly increase our immigration even amid a weakening economy and absurdly distorted housing market.
Suffice it so say, that experiment isn’t going well.
If an economy isn’t growing in terms of productivity, then large population increases will lead to falling per capita GDP, which is what we see in Canada today. And if the housing market is already tight, then adding more and more people (thus more and more competition for housing) makes housing less and less affordable.
Certainly, a reasonable level of immigration 100K – 150K would be important to offset our aging population, but the current levels of close to 500K are not sustainable.
Open everything up
And of course, the most important thing that can be done immediately is to remove all restrictions and open our whole country up. Repeatedly locking down an economy can’t end anyway other than disaster.
Those six steps would begin to generate real economic growth and would turn our country away from the disastrous path we are currently on under the Trudeau government and other statist politicians.
Spencer Fernando
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