Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge.
Canada’s standard of living is on track for its worst decline in 40 years, according to a new study by Canada’s Fraser Institute.
The study compared the three worst periods of decline in Canada in the last 40 years—1989, 2008, and today. They found that unlike the previous recessions, Canada is not recovering this time. Something broke.
In fact, according to the Financial Post, since 2019, Canada’s had the worst growth out of 50 developed economies.
On the ground, that means inflation-adjusted Canadian wages have been flat since 2016.
So, yes, something broke.
And it’s nowhere near over: Canada’s per-person real gross domestic product is still falling, and with a looming U.S. recession—the U.S. takes 75% of Canada’s exports—Canada could crash again before it ever recovered.
In previous videos I’ve talked about the disaster that is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Canada. In short, incomes are West Virginia level, house prices are Los Angeles level, and Canadian taxes are halfway to the Soviet Union.
It’s not rare for a middle-class family in Canada to pay half their income in taxes.
Meanwhile, since the COVID-19 pandemic, Canada’s official food inflation is up 25% and energy is up 30%— partly thanks to a carbon tax.
And keep in mind, the sales tax in most Canadian provinces is 13% to 15% on everything you buy. Canadians post TikToks about trying to stretch a loaf of rye bread through the week or selling off their possessions to afford groceries.
The cost of living is hitting harder with time. Canadian bankruptcy filings jumped 40% last year, while the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce reports nearly half of Canadians have zero emergency savings. Statistics Canada reports the country’s violent crime rate is up 40% since 2014.
An Ipsos poll found 7 in 10 Canadians agree that “Canada is broken”—rising to 8 in 10 of
those between ages 18 and 34. The Angus Reid Institute found fully 42% of Canadians are considering moving to another country.
This is all a shock because it happened so fast. It’s night and day from the last crisis in 2008, which Canada weathered much better than America.
What changed? Trudeau. Specifically, his campaign to convert Canada from a mixed economy like the U.S. into a government-dominated economy like the sick men of the European Union.
Under Trudeau, business investment plunged by a third while government spending nearly doubled to almost half of GDP.
Government workers in Canada are growing almost four times faster than the private sector, and 1 in 3 Canadians now work for the government, raking in 30% more in salary and benefits than the taxpayers they lord over. Another 1.7 million Canadians—roughly 1 in 10 households—are on welfare.
Of course, that makes it very difficult to win an election in Canada on a small-government platform: You’re up against the government-provided livelihoods of 40% of voters.
Meaning, you’ve got to win some 80% of everybody else.
Near-term, things will get worse because Canadians are stuck with Trudeau through the next election in 2025.
Conservative Pierre Poilievre is ahead in the polls for now, but Canada’s government-funded media is doing everything they can to destroy him, so the lead’s already narrowing.
That means more inflation, more decline, more mass migration, and rising crime in what was once a paradise.
Read the full article with charts and all the gory details at profstonge.com.
We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal.
