As the Spectator recently reported, over the last ten years, Canada has had the most persistently slow growth of any major economy — the worst in the nation’s history since the Great Depression. Between 2016 and 2022, Philip Cross, a senior fellow at the Fraser Institute, noted in May, “real per capita GDP rose 11.7 percent in the US, but only 2.8 percent in Canada.”
Coming from a country that may soon choose to be led by either a cognitively challenged second-rate codger or a vengeful lunatic, one would like to look north, to Canada, for some inspiration.
This is an idea many Canadians no doubt find inspiring. A decade ago, The Globe and Mail published an essay that made the case that Canada was a better role model than the U.S. due to its approach of “mutual accommodation” — what the late Quebec premier Robert Bourassa called “one of the world’s rare and privileged countries in terms of peace, justice, liberty and standard of living.”
Canada, as my wife’s late uncle Morris, a product of the Montreal ghetto, always said, was always “a good country” where politics were polite, the poor were taken care of, and immigration accepted as part of the national civil mission. But sadly, from this vantage point, the great north seems to be suffering many of the same maladies, and sometimes worse, than the awful giant to the south.
Perhaps most surprising is how poorly Canada is doing economically. A country rich in resources and people nevertheless has become a perpetual laggard in terms of economic growth. TD Economics recently found that Canada’s economy, once roughly equal to the U.S., has slipped behind not only the U.S., but most other advanced countries. The increasingly unpopular Trudeau may try to blame the public’s sour mood on Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, but somehow it may have to do more with reality than right-wing fearmongering.
For the rest of this column: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/joel-kotkin-trudeaus-green-jihad-holding-canada-back