If the latest polling is accurate, Canadian voters on Monday may grant Canada’s Liberal government another four years in power. The party, which has been in power since 2015, was given a new lease of life in the form of former central banker Mark Carney – who has boosted its standing in the opinion polls. But despite the Liberals’ makeover, all Carney represents is the continuity of Justin Trudeau’s appalling legacy. Let’s start with Canada’s economy. From 2015 to 2024, the country’s GDP per capita grew by 1.4 per cent — not per year, but in total — the second-lowest growth rate of any OECD member state. By comparison, even the British economy managed to grow by 5.5 per cent in that period. The OECD projects that Canada will have the slowest economic growth among OECD countries until at least 2060. There is no other way to put it: Canada is no longer one of the richest nations on Earth.
Then there’s immigration. Canada once attracted migrants seeking a better life through a points-based system that was widely admired the world over. Yet, thanks to the Liberals’ open-door immigration policy, that system has since collapsed. An astonishing 82 per cent of new arrivals agreed that Canada has accepted too many immigrants without sufficient infrastructure or housing and 42 per cent said they would even consider leaving the country. Established Canadians feel the same way: levels of emigration have reached their highest recorded level since 1967. On every societal metric, from crime to drug abuse to healthcare, Canada is in a worse state today than when Trudeau started governing in 2015. But to this, Mark Carney has only two responses: I’m not Justin Trudeau and trust me I’m an economist.
Yet the people around Carney, from staffers to ministers, are exactly the same people who under Trudeau’s premiership drove Canada off a cliff. Take Sean Fraser, the former immigration minister who, having destroyed Canada’s immigration system, has decided to run again as a Liberal candidate. Or Marco Mendicino, yet another of Trudeau’s failed ministers, who is now Carney’s chief of staff. There is little evidence that Carney has any idea of how to address the existential issues facing Canada apart from blocking the energy infrastructure which has the potential of saving the country’s economy and continuing to pander to the narrow interests of the Liberal’s ageing voter base. If Canadians elect Carney next week, they may well be voting for the country becoming Argentina without the sunshine. They will not be able to say that they were not warned.
