Ding Dong Trudeau is Gone

 After twelve long years, Justin Trudeau has finally stepped down but the damage he has done to the Canadian economy will linger on for years. Right now, Canada is in a prolonged economic stagnation. According to Stats Canada, real GDP is presently at the 2017 level.






With unemployment at 6.8%, the situation is looking pretty dire. Youth unemployment, aggravated by recent minimum wage hikes, is at 13.9% as of Nov. 2024. Further compounding the problem of lackluster growth is the expansion of public sector employment over the last decade. Public sector employment increased 1% in November, a total of 45,000 positions, accounting for virtually all of the 51,000 increase in jobs. And incase you are wondering how jobs and unemployment can increase simultaneously, it is because the population of Canada is growing by approximately 80,000 people a month.

The rapid growth in Federal bureaucracy - an increase of 40% over the last decade - has only been surpassed by our unsustainable levels of debt.



While apologists for the Trudeau regime may stress that our net levels of debt are actually relatively low compared to G7 peers, this line of argument is disingenuous. We do not pay interest on our net debt, and debt servicing charges are at $46.5 billion for 2023/2024 and $54.1 billion for 2024-2025. Furthermore, net debt implies that the CPP pension fund will be raided and crown corporations privatized in order to pay off the debt. While we here at Canadian Libertarian would welcome these policies, we do not hear anyone from the establishment political parties suggesting this approach.







Debt servicing charges, along with relentless increases in government spending such as the newly minted Pharmacare and Dentalcare programs, are responsible for the massive 62 billion dollar deficit. That giant sucking sound you hear is the black hole which has become the Canadian treasury.

Meanwhile, ordinary Canadians are struggling in the midst of an affordability crisis. Decades of policies designed to keep housing prices high have done just that. Home ownership is no longer the Canadian dream, as more and more people are having difficulty just making the rent. And despite - or more likely, because - of the tens of billions of dollars that the Trudeau government has thrown at this problem, housing is more unaffordable than ever before. And with the Bank of Canada inflationary interest rate cuts, except to see substantial cost of living increases in the coming years.

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