As He Pushes Canada Towards Developing World Living Standards, Will Justin Trudeau Bring Developing World Corruption As Well?

By Spencer Fernando, Exclusive to the National Citizens Coalition

Institutions matter.

There are many countries that – on paper – should be incredibly wealthy. 

Iran and Venezuela come to mind, as countries with significant energy resources and easy access to world markets.

Unfortunately for the Iranian and Venezuelan people, they have long been subjected to ideologically extreme and incompetent leadership who have stolen and squandered much of their potential wealth.

Iran’s government has long been more concerned with funding terrorists, threatening Israel, and pursuing nuclear weapons than they have been with more ‘mundane’ things like building up their economy, expanding rights and freedoms, building up civil society, and forming beneficial alliances.

Venezuela’s government gave the world one of the best demonstrations of how a socialist state can turn even the most favourable of circumstances into absolute disaster. Through a mix of corruption, rampant overspending, nationalizations, centralization of power, and rank incompetence, Venezuela’s socialist leaders managed to destroy the economy of what was once South America’s wealthiest country. At one point, despite possessing the world’s largest proven reserves of oil (nearly double what Canada possesses), Venezuela was a net oil importer (ironically from Iran in many cases). The economy collapsed so thoroughly that malnutrition swept the country, and people were even breaking into zoos to eat animals at some of the lowest points.

I mention this because it is essential for Canadians to understand that poor governance and ideological extremism could destroy everything Canadians have built throughout the history of our country. Many Canadians understandably think that the country is simply too big, too wealthy, too resource-rich, and too connected to the United States to ever really fall into abject collapse. This gives many people a sense of complacency regarding the health of our institutions and the quality of our leadership.

Unfortunately, there are no guarantees in this world. A country is only as strong as its institutions and the willingness of the people to protect those institutions.

Corruption, incompetence, and extremism can bring down even the most successful nation.

An inflection point

On paper, Canada should be one of the wealthiest nations in the world on a per capita basis. We have a well-educated population. We have nearly endless natural resources. We have incredible amounts of space. We have a military and economic alliance with the world’s foremost power. We are further ensconced in a defensive alliance featuring many of the world’s largest and most advanced economies.

We have a wide range of well-developed industries in various parts of the country.

We have institutions that have stood the test of time and enabled our country to achieve significant levels of prosperity and internal peace.

Our immigration system has enabled us to largely pick and choose the best of the best from around the world, all without facing the challenge of a large border with an unstable region (having a border with the U.S. is much easier than having a border with Mexico).

All of this is to say that a government would have to work incredibly hard to start pushing our nation into ‘developing’ world status.

Yet, that is what the Liberals appear determined to do.

Canada’s standard of living is now in decline. Crime is surging, overdose deaths are rising, homeless encampments are more and more widespread, housing is less and less affordable, and the cost of living is rising much faster than most Canadians can handle. Despite a massive surge in government spending and the expansion of the bureaucracy, service quality is getting worse. The government seeks to control avenues of free expression while demonizing dissent. Population increases have become unsustainable. Institutions are shredding credibility and becoming increasingly partisan. An extremist environment minister is fracturing national unity while bending the knee to Communist China.

In short, Canada is facing a growing set of problems more akin to what we see in developing countries than developed ones.

And now – as reported by the National Post – the Trudeau government may be adding ‘developing world corruption’ to Canada’s list of challenges:

“At least six current superior court justices may have paid to meet with the prime minister or the deputy prime minister at Liberal Party fundraisers shortly before being appointed.

These findings come in the wake of an earlier analysis by the National Post and the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF), which found that over three times as many Liberal party donors have been appointed to judicial office than Conservative donors since 2016.

The IJF and the Post matched the names and cities of federally appointed judges from the government’s Orders in Council database against fundraiser attendance lists from Elections Canada’s Regulated Fundraising Events Registry (covering 2019 to the present) and historical event records posted on the Liberal party’s website. All federal fundraisers with tickets over $200 and featuring a party leader, cabinet minister, or leadership contestant must be reported to Elections Canada.”

There is no better way to further erode trust in an already teetering justice system than to have that system become explicitly partisan in nature.

Combine this with the fact the Ethics Commissioner role remains vacant and there is still no inquiry into China’s interference in our democratic institutions, and Canada feels more and more like a banana republic with each passing day.

Sadly, this is no surprise. 

Justin Trudeau has long made many not-so-subtle hints that he has disdain for the Western world, Western institutions, and core Western ideas like freedom of speech, limited government, and capitalism.

Early on in his time as Prime Minister, Trudeau sought to push Canada closer into the orbit of Communist China, advocated rapprochement with Russia, and showed strange deference towards Iran. Meanwhile, he sought to distance Canada from our core civilizational allies like the United States and the United Kingdom. Trudeau only somewhat backed down on that once world events and public opinion made it untenable, but his evident disdain for Western values is still there. 

And so, with a Prime Minister who elevates authoritarian developing nations above free developed nations, it’s no wonder that our nation increasingly resembles the former.

Canada is now at an inflection point.

With Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives promising a return to the previous Canadian consensus of fiscal responsibility, respect for each of Canada’s key regional industries, and closer relationships with our traditional Western allies, Canadians will have to decide whether we want to remain part of Justin Trudeau’s experiment in turning Canada into a developing nation, or whether we want to get back to the kind of governance that helped build our prosperity in the first place.

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