Canada’s Economy Is Crumbling
By Spencer Fernando, Exclusive to the National Citizens Coalition

History is littered with those who thought they could ignore fundamental economic principles and magically avoid the consequences.
It never works.
Reality can be evaded for a short while, but it always reasserts itself.
This is why –- in the long-run -– humanity tends to get wiser and more logical. We have more history to look at, we’ve learned more lessons, and we slowly but surely narrow down what works and what doesn’t.
Ideally, we would learn those lessons the easy way.
Unfortunately, that’s not usually how it goes.
We often put off the moment of reckoning as long as we can, leaving us with no alternative but to learn things the hard way.
And that’s the position Canada finds itself in.
From the start of their time in office, the Liberals appealed to a group of Canadians on the basis of how they wished the world worked.
Many Canadians understandably wanted to live in a world where governments could be extremely generous with immigration, could restrict so-called ‘dirty’ energy, could spend vast sums of taxpayer dollars on the ‘green revolution,’ could single-handedly save the planet by imposing taxes on our fellow citizens, and could also enjoy rapidly rising living standards.
It would indeed be easier if we lived in such a consequence-free world.
But we don’t.
And so, each year under the Liberal Government has been a year in which the gap between wish-based economic policies and economic reality has widened.
That gap expanded like an ever-growing debt.
And now, we’re paying for it.
The latest labour force survey indicates the extent to which Canada’s current economic approach is simply unsustainable.
In just one month, the unemployment rate rose to 6.8%, the highest level since January of 2017 (excluding the unemployment spike during the pandemic).
Making matters worse, out of the 51,000 jobs created in November (a number that doesn’t come close to keeping up with population growth), 45,000 of those jobs were in the public sector.
These weak job numbers come on the heels of yet another drop in Canada’s per capita GDP, which has now declined six consecutive quarters.
Thus, it’s unsurprising to see former Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz declare Canada is in recession, as we here at the NCC proclaimed months ago:
“I would say we’re in a recession, I wouldn’t even call it a technical one,” said Poloz, now special adviser to Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP, during a webinar on Tuesday. “A technical one is a superficial definition that you have two quarters of negative growth in a row, and we haven’t had that, but the reason is because we’ve been swamped with new immigrants who buy the basics in life, and that boosts our consumption enough.”
As each new piece of data comes in, we can see the full extent of the disastrous situation facing our country.
We now simultaneously have unsustainable population growth, a declining standard of living, massive debt burdens, a weakening Canadian Dollar, a stricken private sector, a bloated public sector, collapsing investment, all within a trade-dependent economy under threat of massive tariffs.
While the tariffs are not the direct responsibility of the Liberal Government, everything else is.
The Liberal government chose to ignore economic reality. They chose to follow in the footsteps of those who thought they ‘knew better’ and were certain that ‘this time is different,’ only to end up in the same place as the pretenders of the past: Desperately trying to evade blame for the economic damage they’ve done.
It’s time for Canadians of all political stripes to come together and push for an election as soon as possible. Canadians shouldn’t be subjected to another year of this. Let’s move on from this lost decade and start getting our country back on track.
Spencer Fernando is one of the most popular and prolific political voices in Canada. He is a writer and campaign fellow for the National Citizens Coalition. Join the mailing list to receive his exclusive weekly columns in your inbox.
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