When a US Vice-President decides to wade into Canadian politics, most of our politicians reach for the smelling salts. JD Vance did more than that this week. He held up a mirror..'STAGNANT': JD Vance says Canada suffering due to its 'leadership,' immigration.A lot of people here will hate what it shows.On X, Vance shared a chart of GDP per person in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom since 2017. Canada is at the back of the pack. .The US pulls away. The UK edges ahead. We flatline..Vance’s message is blunt. He says no country has leaned harder into the “diversity is our strength, we don’t need a melting pot, we have a salad bowl” model of mass immigration than Canada, and that our living standards have stalled as a result. He points out that we have the highest foreign-born share in the G7, and then he does what our own elites refuse to do — he links that to a real-world outcome of stagnation..Check the facts. Statistics Canada says 23% of people counted in the 2021 census are immigrants or former permanent residents — the highest share since Confederation and the largest among G7 countries.The official government site even boasts about it.Nearly one in four people in this country was born somewhere else, and recent immigrants hit a record 1.3 million between 2016 and 2021..SLOBODIAN: Farmers protest — will Canadians stand with the people who feed them?.Immigration is not the problem by itself. Canada has always needed newcomers. The issue is the speed and size of the intake compared to what our systems can handle. Ottawa invited in record numbers of permanent residents, on top of surging temporary workers and international students, while housing, healthcare, and transit lagged far behind. .Even the federal housing department now admits a shortage of affordable homes is “hurting economic growth” and stopping people from moving to where the jobs are.People feel this every day. Young couples who do everything right and still can’t buy a starter home. Students stacked in basement bedrooms. .EDITORIAL: John Rustad must step down.Parents waiting hours in ER corridors with sick kids. This is what happens when the government treats sky-high immigration targets as a branding exercise instead of a serious planning file.Vance also took a run at our habit of blaming the United States, or whatever villain the CBC serves up, for our own economic mess. .“Your stagnating living standards have nothing to do with Donald Trump,” said Vance. “The fault lies with your leadership, elected by you.”Again, look at the numbers. .OLDCORN: Transgender youth surgery controversy — Getson’s ‘livestock’ comparison wasn’t cruel, it was common sense.A Fraser Institute study on Canada’s public finances found that from 2014 to 2024, total government spending as a share of the economy jumped by about 6.3 percentage points, the biggest increase in the G7. Government debt grew by roughly 25 percentage points of GDP, also the largest rise in the G7. That is not what responsible stewardship looks like..Western Standard readers have been hearing warnings about this for years. In 2023, the Western Standard highlighted a study from the Montreal Economic Institute under the headline, “Study shows Canada a G7 laggard in investment, productivity, and standard of living.”.Study shows Canada a G7 laggard in investment, productivity, and standard of living.The message was simple.We are falling behind on the things that actually raise incomes — investment, productivity, real wealth — even as Ottawa grows the size of the state and the population.Canada now has the highest immigrant share among the G7 countries, yet it is also experiencing the fastest deterioration in government finances within the group. .At the same time, productivity remains weak, and the standard of living has scarcely improved, highlighting a troubling imbalance between population growth and economic performance.That’s not a talking point cooked up in some basement. It’s a scoreboard.In Western Canada, where people actually pull oil, gas, and food out of the ground, there’s not much patience left for lectures from Ottawa about “inclusion” while family budgets are crushed by taxes, energy costs, and rent. .RUBENSTEIN: OneBC leader’s truthful comments drive Métis indigenous delegation from legislature.They see indigenous and non-indigenous workers alike boxed out of opportunity while the federal government pats itself on the back for hitting its immigration “levels plan.”None of this means closing the door. It does mean telling the truth. If we’re going to bring in hundreds of thousands of people a year, we need housing, doctors, clinics, roads, and pipelines to match. .We need immigration levels tied to real-world capacity, not to press releases. And we need to stop pretending that more public debt and a bigger federal footprint are free. They aren’t, the government is spending your money.They show up in slower growth, lower wages, and fewer chances for the next generation..ALBERS: Canada is risking its own collapse by sabotaging the West.Vance’s final line should sting a bit, “The fault lies with your leadership, elected by you.” That’s not an insult. That’s a challenge. Our decline is the sum of choices made in Ottawa and waved through by voters who were told there would be no trade-offs.If we want something better than stagnation, we’ll need to prove him wrong — not with hashtags, but with policy that finally puts Canadians and Canada’s future ahead of ideology.
