The Trudeau Liberals recently gathered for a cabinet retreat to hit the reset button after a disastrous 2023 that saw the country become more broken than ever before. No big announcements emerged but the Liberals spent time ruminating about the consequences of a Trump presidency: “Mr. Trump represents a certain amount of unpredictability, but we will make sure we’re pulling together and preparing for whatever eventualities,” said Trudeau.Trump is far from assured of the presidency. Since the Second World War, no incumbent has lost an election and the US economy is firing on all cylinders. So, instead of obsessing about Trump and attempting to brand the Conservative party as MAGA supporters, the Liberals should be focusing on finding solutions to a plethora of serious problems the country faces, many of which are a consequence of their own policies and decisions, the cost of living crisis for example, open door immigration and increasing crime just to mention a few examples.Let's start with the affordability crisis. It's getting worse. Inflation hit 3.9% in December. This past year, prices for everything continued to increase; food prices were up by 7.8%, rents by 6.5% and the mortgage interest cost index rose to 28.5%. Food insecurity affects about 7 million Canadians and food bank lines are getting longer. Why? Trudeau’s profligate printing of hundreds of billions during the pandemic, disregard for huge deficits that have now reached $1.2 trillion, and interest payments of $44 billion in 2023, have created structural inflation that once in the economy, is difficult to extricate without a recession. Two economists from the Fraser Institute, Jake Fuss and Jason Clemens stated: “Large increases in spending, taxes and borrowing have not translated into a more robust economy.” "One can thank Trudeau’s policies for our stagnant economy and deteriorating federal finances.”According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD,) Canada has not returned to its pre-pandemic standard of living and is on track to be the worst performing economy among the G7 for the rest of the decade. If things continue as they are the country will experience a lost decade of little economic growth lowering everyone's standard of living.Next, immigration. Historically, immigration has contributed in more ways than one can count. But when immigration is not organized and targeted to the economy's needs and when the economy is not growing, it negatively impacts wealth creation. Economists point to GDP per capita, which has been declining since 2018, to indicate that the economic pie is shrinking. When hundreds of thousands of immigrants come to a country legally, plus the 2.5 million who are here as temporary foreign workers, add in another million international students and a constant flow of those who board a plane saying they are tourists but upon landing claim they are refugees (in 2023, 128,000 claimed asylum) the entire system has been hijacked. In prior years Conservative and Liberal governments imposed visa requirements from countries such as Mexico that generated excessive numbers of refugee claims. The Trudeau government refuses to reduce immigration levels afraid of the consequences from its woke constituency.The National Bank has produced a report identifing Canada as the only country in the western world suffering from a “population trap,” where population growth is outpacing the amount of capital needed to build new housing and investment needed by businesses in new equipment and technology to make them more productive. Instead, businesses are exploiting the excess cheap labour available in the market. Open-door immigration is making Canada poorer and not richer. Canadian immigration numbers need to be reduced until supply and demand can be restored in housing, new infrastructure is built, and the pressure is taken off a fragile healthcare system that barely meets the needs of Canadians.Finally, the surge in criminality. To say the Trudeau Liberals are soft on crime is obviously a hopeless understatement. This is the government that allowed serial killer Paul Bernardo to go from maximum to medium-security prison. Then-public safety minister Marco Mendicino claimed he knew nothing about it. According to Statistics Canada, the murder rate is the highest in 30 years and violent crime keeps increasing. The overall Crime Severity Index has increased by 19% since 2015. But now another crisis has arrived in the form of record-breaking auto thefts, coast to coast. The not-for-profit insurance industry group Equite Association reports Ontario and Quebec auto thefts have jumped by 50% versus the previous year. The surge is so bad, Ottawa police say they can’t cope. "We are finding they are younger people. They are not the heads of this organized crime. They are just being paid to do a job: come in and steal," states Ottawa police chief Eric Stubbs. Police believe that many of the vehicles are rushed to Montreal, "loaded into shipping containers and sent to Africa and the Middle East.”After eight scandal-prone years of Liberals in power, along with support from their leftist NDP partner, the country is broken into Humpty Dumpty-like pieces. The economy is a wreck and entering the middle class will be near impossible for young people unless their parents pass on generational wealth. Can the pieces be put together again? The answer is yes, but it will require a new government with a strong mandate to rein-in out-of-control spending and reduce the number of bureaucrats who have taken over the place. Under Trudeau, the federal civil service has swelled by 40% and billions are spent on consultants.Entrepreneurs and innovators need to become stars again and be incentivized to take risks by reducing taxes and red tape. The growth of the state needs to be stopped in its tracks allowing the free market to unleash its “animal spirits” and this might prevent the country from becoming a banana republic.
The Trudeau Liberals recently gathered for a cabinet retreat to hit the reset button after a disastrous 2023 that saw the country become more broken than ever before. No big announcements emerged but the Liberals spent time ruminating about the consequences of a Trump presidency: “Mr. Trump represents a certain amount of unpredictability, but we will make sure we’re pulling together and preparing for whatever eventualities,” said Trudeau.Trump is far from assured of the presidency. Since the Second World War, no incumbent has lost an election and the US economy is firing on all cylinders. So, instead of obsessing about Trump and attempting to brand the Conservative party as MAGA supporters, the Liberals should be focusing on finding solutions to a plethora of serious problems the country faces, many of which are a consequence of their own policies and decisions, the cost of living crisis for example, open door immigration and increasing crime just to mention a few examples.Let's start with the affordability crisis. It's getting worse. Inflation hit 3.9% in December. This past year, prices for everything continued to increase; food prices were up by 7.8%, rents by 6.5% and the mortgage interest cost index rose to 28.5%. Food insecurity affects about 7 million Canadians and food bank lines are getting longer. Why? Trudeau’s profligate printing of hundreds of billions during the pandemic, disregard for huge deficits that have now reached $1.2 trillion, and interest payments of $44 billion in 2023, have created structural inflation that once in the economy, is difficult to extricate without a recession. Two economists from the Fraser Institute, Jake Fuss and Jason Clemens stated: “Large increases in spending, taxes and borrowing have not translated into a more robust economy.” "One can thank Trudeau’s policies for our stagnant economy and deteriorating federal finances.”According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD,) Canada has not returned to its pre-pandemic standard of living and is on track to be the worst performing economy among the G7 for the rest of the decade. If things continue as they are the country will experience a lost decade of little economic growth lowering everyone's standard of living.Next, immigration. Historically, immigration has contributed in more ways than one can count. But when immigration is not organized and targeted to the economy's needs and when the economy is not growing, it negatively impacts wealth creation. Economists point to GDP per capita, which has been declining since 2018, to indicate that the economic pie is shrinking. When hundreds of thousands of immigrants come to a country legally, plus the 2.5 million who are here as temporary foreign workers, add in another million international students and a constant flow of those who board a plane saying they are tourists but upon landing claim they are refugees (in 2023, 128,000 claimed asylum) the entire system has been hijacked. In prior years Conservative and Liberal governments imposed visa requirements from countries such as Mexico that generated excessive numbers of refugee claims. The Trudeau government refuses to reduce immigration levels afraid of the consequences from its woke constituency.The National Bank has produced a report identifing Canada as the only country in the western world suffering from a “population trap,” where population growth is outpacing the amount of capital needed to build new housing and investment needed by businesses in new equipment and technology to make them more productive. Instead, businesses are exploiting the excess cheap labour available in the market. Open-door immigration is making Canada poorer and not richer. Canadian immigration numbers need to be reduced until supply and demand can be restored in housing, new infrastructure is built, and the pressure is taken off a fragile healthcare system that barely meets the needs of Canadians.Finally, the surge in criminality. To say the Trudeau Liberals are soft on crime is obviously a hopeless understatement. This is the government that allowed serial killer Paul Bernardo to go from maximum to medium-security prison. Then-public safety minister Marco Mendicino claimed he knew nothing about it. According to Statistics Canada, the murder rate is the highest in 30 years and violent crime keeps increasing. The overall Crime Severity Index has increased by 19% since 2015. But now another crisis has arrived in the form of record-breaking auto thefts, coast to coast. The not-for-profit insurance industry group Equite Association reports Ontario and Quebec auto thefts have jumped by 50% versus the previous year. The surge is so bad, Ottawa police say they can’t cope. "We are finding they are younger people. They are not the heads of this organized crime. They are just being paid to do a job: come in and steal," states Ottawa police chief Eric Stubbs. Police believe that many of the vehicles are rushed to Montreal, "loaded into shipping containers and sent to Africa and the Middle East.”After eight scandal-prone years of Liberals in power, along with support from their leftist NDP partner, the country is broken into Humpty Dumpty-like pieces. The economy is a wreck and entering the middle class will be near impossible for young people unless their parents pass on generational wealth. Can the pieces be put together again? The answer is yes, but it will require a new government with a strong mandate to rein-in out-of-control spending and reduce the number of bureaucrats who have taken over the place. Under Trudeau, the federal civil service has swelled by 40% and billions are spent on consultants.Entrepreneurs and innovators need to become stars again and be incentivized to take risks by reducing taxes and red tape. The growth of the state needs to be stopped in its tracks allowing the free market to unleash its “animal spirits” and this might prevent the country from becoming a banana republic.
