This chart should wake up every Canadian. It clearly visualizes our declining economic trajectory, but to correct it, we must understand what's causing it.Let's start with the chart. University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe added up real economic growth in selected economies from Q1 2025 to Q1 2026, using the OECD's own data. The United States grew 2.7%. Australia grew 2.5%. The OECD and the G7 averaged 1.7%. Britain, the European Union, and even Mexico — every line moved up. Every line but one. Over that year, Canada's economy shrank slightly, the only country on the chart to fall behind.Tombe's own explanation points mostly to the trade war Washington launched in 2025 and to how heavily Canada depends on the American market, an exposure few of those peers share to the same degree. But his sobering conclusion is clear: even as growth returns to normal, Canada settles onto what he calls a permanently lower path, an economy stuck below the track it was on, with a gap that does not close by itself..But a chart alone doesn't tell us why, and tariffs are only part of the story. I am not an economist, nor an academic, but it is pretty clear that when you look under the hood, at least five policy choices over the past decade stand out. Here they are, in plain English.1. We grew the population faster than prosperityOver the past decade, Canada's population grew by more than 16%, faster than any other G7 country. By mid-last year, Statistics Canada counted 41.65 million of us. The economy did grow overall, and Ottawa liked to point to that number. But growth driven by adding people is not the same as growth that makes people better off. What matters for a family's standard of living is output per person, and as economists at The Hub have documented, that went sideways for years while record immigration hid it from view.2. Our workers don't have the toolsA worker produces more and earns more when backed by modern machinery, equipment, and technology. But business investment per Canadian worker has fallen badly behind our competition. According to the Fraser Institute, a Canadian worker now gets roughly half the new investment capital an American worker gets. When workers have less equipment and technology to work with, productivity suffers, and paycheques lag. The Bank of Canada has called weak productivity an emergency, saying in 2024 it was time to "break the glass" on the problem..3. We made it too hard to build anythingEndless regulatory delays, constant policy uncertainty, especially around energy and housing, and barriers to trade between our own provinces have raised the cost of building anything in this country. The IMF put it bluntly this year: Canada can grow faster by unlocking its own market. Ask anyone who has tried to get a pipeline, a mine, or even an apartment building approved in the last ten years. Money is mobile. When investors are told a project will take a decade of reviews with no guarantee of approval, that money goes somewhere else. Our resource sector, a pillar of Canadian prosperity for generations, has felt that chill the most.4. We invited millions in and didn't build the housingImmigration surged while home construction lagged far behind. CMHC has documented the housing shortage and how much building would have to rise to restore affordability by 2030. The result was exactly what anyone who has taken Economics 101 (I did — but a long time ago!) would predict: prices and rents exploded. That did two kinds of damage. It locked ordinary families' savings into real estate instead of productive businesses or investment, and it made it harder for people to move to where the good jobs are. A country that cannot house its workers makes growth that much harder.5. Government crowded out the private sectorYears of persistent federal deficits, a steadily climbing national debt, and higher taxes all pull in the same direction. When government borrows heavily, it can compete with businesses for the available capital. When it taxes success, it can weaken the incentive to risk money on growth. Put cheap, abundant labour on one side and expensive capital and regulatory risk on the other, and businesses can draw the rational conclusion: hire more people rather than invest in machines and technology. That is how an economy settles into slow growth without anyone ever announcing it.None of the five causes are mysterious. Each is a policy choice, and policy choices can be reversed. Cut the barriers to building. Let investors know Canada is open for business again. Simplify and stabilize the regulatory environment. Bring immigration in line with the homes and infrastructure we actually have. Stop treating the private sector as a bottomless source of tax revenue. Countries do not wake up one morning to find themselves poor. They drift there, one bad decision at a time. As I wrote in these pages recently, Cuba, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe were not always bywords for failure. They got there the same way, by punishing production and rewarding politics. But none of it changes until we admit what that lonely red line is telling us. Before we can correct this economic trajectory, we must understand what is causing it. Now we do. My greatest concern for Alberta is that, by all indications, this federal Liberal government is doubling down on those policies, with full support from the voters who put them in power.
