There is no way to spin this for the government. Canada’s economic underperformance is reaching crisis levels.
Canadians love to compare ourselves to the United States.
Since the United States is so media-saturated and so open to the world, their problems and failings receive massive amounts of attention.
That leads to Canada comparing itself only to the negative issues in the US, like gun crime, political divisions, and challenges in their healthcare system.
However, by focusing only on the negative, we give ourselves a false sense of superiority and achievement, when the reality is far less favourable to Canada.
And nowhere do we see this more than our living standards.
Canadians have generally taken for granted that we live about as well as people in the US. Many are convinced we are better off on average, and they point to Canada’s lower rates of wealth inequality.
However, if you fall far enough behind another country on a per capita basis, less wealth inequality doesn’t make up the gap.
A poor country may have a more ‘equal’ distribution of wealth than a rich country, but that can still leave almost everyone in the rich country better off than those in the poor country.
That is what we are seeing happen in Canada.
As the chart below shows, the difference in per capita GDP growth in the United States and Canada since just before the pandemic is truly astounding:
As you can see below, our overall GDP growth numbers look good, but this is solely due to a massive influx of newcomers, an influx that is far outpacing the growth of the economy thus leaving us worse off on a per capita basis.
https://twitter.com/josephpolitano/status/1763328573958770715
This is even more astounding considering the truly immense amount of money the government spent during and after the pandemic – nearly doubling Canada’s total federal debt in just a five year period.
Let there be no mistake.
This is a clear indictment of the Liberal government’s economic agenda.
It simply hasn’t worked.
The Liberals made a big bet that carbon taxes, onerous restrictions on the oil & gas sector, massive borrowing, and huge subsidies to companies chosen by the government would lead to economic growth and wealth creation.
They bet that they could move towards eco-radicalism without there being any negative economic consequences.
They lost that bet.
Or more accurately, Canadians lost that bet since we are the ones paying for it.
The only reason our economy is even technically ‘growing’ is that the government has ramped up immigration to absurd levels. This ‘growth’ isn’t based on investment or productivity, it is simply due to there being more people in the country. But that ‘growth’ can’t keep up with the influx, leaving most people worse off.
And many newcomers are realizing it as well:
The Canadian dream has turned into a Trudeaupian nightmare in just 8 years—a dangerous, expensive, divided country from which people are fleeing.
He is not worth the cost & crime and not worth the country we know and love. https://t.co/5lTsWHOG6Y pic.twitter.com/AOqBHFyDXA
— Pierre Poilievre (@PierrePoilievre) March 1, 2024
The Liberals have made a mess of our economy.
They have left us with a much larger debt burden.
They have raised our taxes.
They have made energy more expensive.
Stunningly, they managed to spend so much money without even improving the core functions of the national government, with our military severely underfunded and our justice system broken.
And they have led us to the point in which the United States is racing far ahead.
The average American is now much better off than the average Canadian, and the gap is set to keep growing.
This means that the US will have far more financial resources to address their problems, while Canada will not.
What makes this so appalling is that given how closely the Canadian & US economies are linked, we should be pulled along by their strong productivity growth. But the Liberal government has done such a terrible job managing the economy that even powerful US growth isn’t enough.
There are many reasons the Liberal government needs to be defeated, and our rapidly declining living standards are one of the biggest.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – YouTube
