Saturday, February 03, 2024

Links - 3rd February 2024 (1 - Justin Trudeau)

GOLDSTEIN: Size, cost of civil service out of control under Trudeau government, report finds - "The Trudeau government has increased the size of the federal public service by 37.9%, or almost 100,000 additional employees, since coming to power in 2015...  As of March 31, 2023, the total number of federal employees reached 357,247, the study says, marking the biggest staff increase since 1984... the federal government now has nine employees for every 1,000 Canadians... “Since the Trudeau government came to power, there has been an unprecedented expansion in the size of the bureaucracy,” said study author Gabriel Giguere, public policy analyst at the MEI. “The government seems to have lost control of government growth.”... While part of the increase in the size of the public service was due to the pandemic, the MEI study said, “it is not the primary factor explaining the increase in the number of federal employees. “The rate of growth in the federal workforce was already high in 2019 (the year before the pandemic began) and this has been sustained right through 2023, at a pace unmatched at any point in the preceeding 40 years.” “Given such a large increase in the size of government, one might expect Canadians to see a significant difference in the quantity and quality of federal services, but this has not materialized,” Giguere said. “The growth in the federal workforce under the Trudeau government has broken with the restraint that characterized governments of the previous 40 years.”"

Opinion: Ottawa’s debt interest has nearly doubled in just 2 years - "When interest rates were still historically low in 2021, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland claimed “it would be shortsighted” not to make “investments” and borrow money to pay for new spending. What was really shortsighted, it turns out, was not seeing that interest rates would spike starting just a year later. Since fiscal year 2021-22 federal debt interest has nearly doubled — from $24.5 billion to $46.5 billion . In the fiscal year now coming to a close Ottawa will have spent almost as much on debt interest as on the  Canada Health Transfer ($49.4 billion), which goes to the provinces to help fund health-care services. It will have spent half again as much on interest as on the Canada Child Benefit and national daycare combined ($31.2 billion). It’s a similar story in the provinces. Debt interest costs have grown markedly since 2020, albeit less than they have in Ottawa. This fiscal year the B.C. government is paying more in debt interest ($3.3 billion) than it collects from its provincial carbon tax. Ontario will spend more on interest ($13.4 billion) than on post-secondary education. And Quebec’s interest costs ($9.9 billion) currently exceed everything it gets via the Canada Health Transfer... Unfortunately, only New Brunswick and Alberta plan to run balanced budgets this year even though balance would be well within reach for the other eight provinces."
This left winger told an elderly food delivery driver that he had people voting Conservatives to blame for his inadequate pension, because low taxes means inadequate pensions. He then scoffed when I pointed out that the Liberals were piling on mountains of debt but pensions were still "inadequate". Also it's weird how the Liberals being in power for 8 years still results in pension inadequacy

Federal government consistently spends beyond high spending targets - "If the Trudeau government is notable for planning astonishingly high levels of spending, it’s equally notable for overspending beyond its original plans. At all times—when they first took office in 2015, in the pre-pandemic years, and now—the Liberals have consistently raised their spending targets, then spent more than targeted. Begin at the beginning. Inheriting a projected balanced budget in 2015, the Liberals proceeded to spend federal finances into deficit in the 2015-16 fiscal year (ended March 31, 2016)"
Clearly, it's Harper's fault!

Justin Trudeau says he won't slash government spending - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he doesn't believe in slashing federal spending to please business groups or opposition Conservatives, raising questions about how his Liberal government would meet its own goal to cap annual budget deficits in the coming years... the Business Council of Canada wrote to Trudeau last week to warn that it believes the government's failure to restrain spending — along with policy delays on clean technology tax credits and accelerated reviews of major development projects — is undercutting Canada's economic growth. In that letter, the council argued the government's goal to cap deficits is "just not credible" because of its track record of spending growth. The target, it said, "implies spending cuts of at least $12 billion per year," or increased federal taxes, to attain. Robert Asselin, the Business Council's senior vice-president of policy and a former adviser to Trudeau and former prime minister Paul Martin, said Trudeau's comments Tuesday raise new questions about whether the government is serious about its own fiscal goals. "The government doesn't seem to understand their own target," Asselin said, arguing failure to adhere to it — after the major increases in spending of recent years — would risk signalling to markets that Ottawa can't be relied upon to take debt and deficits seriously. That, in turn, could lead to higher debt payments that gobble up an increasing share of public dollars, he said... the New Democrats are demanding the government pass legislation to create a universal single-payer pharmacare system. The Parliamentary Budget Officer reported last fall that such a program could cost more than $11 billion in the 2024-25 fiscal year alone, depending on how the new spending would be shared with the provinces"
Maybe the plan is to destroy the economy so when the Conservatives take over, they will be blamed

NDP should leave Trudeau’s sinking carbon tax ship - "Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems ready to captain the carbon tax down to the polling depths, but New Democrat Leader Jagmeet Singh might want to ask his caucus whether they want to go down with it.  Sixty-two per cent of Canadians don’t want a carbon tax, according to a recent poll from Spark Advocacy.  Singh’s federal NDP poll numbers aren’t faring any better, where they sit under 20 per cent support. Even among private-sector union workers, the NDP trail the Conservatives by 15 points.  Could it be that ordinary Canadians, from young professionals to pipe fitters, don’t support a tax that makes it more expensive to drive to work, stay warm and buy groceries?...  Singh could oppose carbon taxes outright. And he can make that opposition clear early in 2024 before Trudeau cranks up the carbon tax again on April 1...   According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), that carbon tax rate will cost the average family up to $911 a year, even after rebates. Those who think it would be sacrilege for New Democrats to repudiate carbon taxes have forgotten the party’s high-water mark.  “The well documented reality is, the NDP has opposed a carbon tax in the past and continues to do so now,” the NDP said in 2012, when it eclipsed the Liberals to form the Official Opposition.  Here’s what former NDP leader Jack Layton had to say about carbon taxes: “Canada is a cold place and heating your home really isn’t a choice. We shouldn’t punish people, and that’s what a carbon tax does.”  Singh could also oppose the second carbon tax, which Trudeau buried in fuel regulations last year.  The government’s own analysis shows the second carbon tax will “disproportionately impact lower and middle-income households” and “households currently experiencing energy poverty.”"
Garnet Leavoy on X - "NDP has gone from a party working for those in the ditch to working for the rich"
This won't stop the credulous who deny that the NDP is overtaken by modern left-wing politics instead of being a working man's party

Kelly McParland: Liberals may wish they'd stuck with electoral reform - "Federal Liberals took a stab at reform in the early days after their 2015 victory, but retreated when voters didn’t favour their preferred alternative. Looking back, they might wish they’d persevered. Given the current state of the polls, their best hope of holding office beyond the next election might be some power-sharing smorgasboard pitting Liberals, New Democrats, Greens and perhaps an independent or two against the currently popular Conservatives. Addressing his flight from reform just a year after taking office, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau maintained it was no longer necessary because the Liberals were so popular. “Under Mr. Harper, there were so many people unhappy with the government and its approach that they were saying, ‘We need electoral reform in order to no longer have a government we don’t like.’” If the popularity of the government is the criterion by which the need for change is judged, it’s worth noting that 58 per cent of Canadians today say they disapprove of the job Trudeau’s doing. The prime minister is far less popular today than Harper was then: according to an Abacus poll his approval rating stands at 25 per cent, compared to Harper’s 39 per cent a year before the 2015 election (which, it must be noted, he lost). Nonetheless, precedent suggests that abandoning a system under which Canada has thrived for almost 160 years remains a bad idea. If the uncertainty and disruption that often haunts coalition regimes was limited to remote, unimportant states, there might be little need for concern. Unfortunately that’s not the case: Germany has for years been the essential member of the European Union, a stable, prosperous and sensible state that acted as the glue able to hold together the framework of a rickety 27-country political union. Today it’s a mess. Since the retirement of Chancellor Angela Merkel in 2021 the three-party coalition that took her place has stumbled from gaffe to gaffe. A mass protest by farmers brought central Berlin to a standstill Monday. Striking transit drivers last week shut down service for three days. Germany is back to burning coal to get it through the winter, having misguidedly shut down nuclear plants in anticipation of gas supplies from Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Most critically, in November a $90 billion plan to use leftover COVID money to finance an ambitious climate scheme was ruled unconstitutional, killing a scheme that was at the heart of the coalition’s very existence. The ruling left the three-party government — typical of the sort of mish-mash that oftens comes with proportional representation — struggling to justify its continued hold on power... As a rule, Canadian governments fall when voters weary of their accumulated record, not from any single mistake, or because a minor coalition partner senses its chances are better if it jumps ship... The future may be getting too close for comfort for the Liberals. If they start talking about electoral reform again, you’ll know they no longer believe they have a chance of winning without it. Which is another mark against it. Elections don’t exist to reward failing governments by letting them hang onto the power they so badly mishandled when they had it."

The most ridiculous travel advisory in Canadian history - "Canadians are clearly becoming more frustrated with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. What makes it worse is that his ineffective policies and mediocre leadership have turned Canada into an embarrassment on the international stage... Global Affairs Canada decided to warn the LGBT community against possible discrimination they may face in the United States... they’ve faced real hardship, hatred and violence for having a different sexual orientation. The 1969 Stonewall riots. Gay bathhouse raids. Jail sentences for gross indecency, as the poet Oscar Wilde faced in the late 19th century — or the alternative of chemical castration, as Alan Turing opted for in 1952. Murdered on the streets in North America and different countries around the world. In light of this difficult history, does anyone really believe that most LGBT Canadians will be frightened to go to the U.S. because several states decided against placing gender pronouns on bathroom doors, among other things? The sad thing is, some of you probably do... During a July 11 visit to Calgary’s Baitun Nur Mosque, Trudeau tried to whip up paranoia and division in Canada’s Muslim community by claiming that “people on social media, particularly fuelled by the American right wing, are spreading a lot of untruths about what’s actually in the provincial curriculums.” The PM’s focus was on LGBT content in Alberta schools. That’s a remarkably similar theme to the travel advisory warning, wouldn’t you say? And, before long, they’re likely going to try to blame it all on Poilievre and the Conservatives, who they’ve attempted to link to Trump and the so-called American “far right” without much success."

Trudeau government to spend nearly $10M to support unemployed youth in Iraq - "The announcement was made in Windsor due to its large Iraqi community"

Opinion: Do the Liberals even understand what a conflict of interest is? Does a fish know it’s wet? - The Globe and Mail - "The thing about all these scandals is that they did not seem, for the most part, to stem from a desire for personal gain or a conscious intent to break the rules: Even in the matter of SNC-Lavalin, those involved seemed somehow to have persuaded themselves they were colouring within the lines.  Rather, what appears to have been at work is a kind of vast unawareness, a genuine cluelessness that anyone could find the promiscuous commingling of interests on display – political, personal, business, bureaucratic – objectionable. That does not make it better; if anything, it makes it worse. Crooks at least know what laws they’re breaking.  Certainly it is more intractable. It is the consequence of decades of Liberal hegemony, not only political (since 1891, the federal Liberals have won two elections in every three) but more broadly. Liberals, and liberals, are so dominant in our politics, and in the little worlds that revolve around politics – the bureaucracy, the courts, the universities and, yes, the media – that I think it really is difficult for them to imagine that there exists a world outside their own, except in some vague theoretical sense.  Add in the thousands of activist groups the party has taken care over the years to cultivate with public funds, or the immense archipelago of subsidies to businesses large and small across the country, the whole apparatus of Liberal clientelism, and you have a whole agreeable universe of Liberaldom, a cosmos of comity. A person could spend their whole career inside without ever encountering an unfriendly face.  Thus if they reward or are rewarded by or otherwise are too close to their friends, it is not because they are Their Friends, since as far as they can tell there is no other kind of person. To ask, do Liberals understand conflict of interest, is to ask: Does a fish know it is wet?"

Eric Lombardi on X - "Canada may actually have a lower Real GDP Per Capita by the end of 2024 than in 2015. Even though we nearly doubled the national debt. And the cost of rent and housing has doubled. Truly a lost decade for Canada. It’s not Covid. It’s failed political leadership!"
If you think this has anything to do with Trudeau, you're a conspiracy theorist who's fallen prey to misinformation
Leaders are only responsible for failures when they're not favored by the left

Trudeau's progressive agenda has been tried and found wanting - "On a number of big-picture issues—economic stagnation, global isolation, national attenuation, and urban disorder—the government’s ideological agenda has failed according to its own terms. The promise of progressivism has run into the powerful headwinds of reality.   The Trudeau government’s overemphasis on equity isn’t a new path to economic growth. Its feminist foreign policy isn’t a substitute for hard power. Disproportionately targeting the country’s richest province isn’t a source of national unity. Decriminalizing drugs and generally adopting a sociological view of criminality isn’t how we secure safe communities. We’ve witnessed the full unfolding of progressive ideas into public policy and Canadians are generally dissatisfied.  The disappointment was on display this past November in Montreal where leading progressive thinkers and politicians from around the world convened to assess the state of their global political movement. The conference’s message and mood were understandably less assured than in previous years.  The Global Progress Action Summit, which drew high-profile figures such as current British Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and his predecessor Tony Blair, former Obama Administration national security adviser Ben Rhodes, former British and Canadian central banker Mark Carney, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, has in past years seen progressives come to Canada in search of ideas and inspiration. This time however felt different. The conference was marked by a tacit sense that the vision of a new, durable political consensus has failed to materialize. Progressive aspirations have instead been met by a powerful combination of uncompromising facts and mounting public opposition.   Canada has been at the centre of progressive politics for nearly a decade. One may even argue that it has served as a laboratory for the experimentation of progressive ideas in practice. Due to a combination of ideological and institutional factors, the Trudeau government has been the fullest expression of progressives’ ambitions to translate their ideas and values into a governing agenda... He was seen by many as the “progressive heir” to Barack Obama who publicly endorsed him in his two subsequent election campaigns.   Prime Minister Trudeau was well positioned to go far beyond President Obama’s more constrained progressive agenda. Canada is generally more left–wing than the United States, so he started with a political centre of gravity tilted in his favour. He also had a large parliamentary majority, so he faced far fewer institutional constraints to pass and implement his policy priorities. And after nearly a decade of Conservative government, Canadians wanted change and the then-43-year-old prime minister was keen to give it to them... our current political moment has striking similarities to the early 1980s. The prime minister’s father then led a government that was animated by its own ideological ambitions. He was cool, smart, and determined to do things differently. Progressivism appeared to be on the ascendancy.   Yet its manifestly poor outcomes—including Canada’s isolation around the world, rising threats to national unity, the onset of a national malaise, and a sustained period of economic stagnation—had the opposite effect. They eventually ushered in a conservative policy revolution led by Progressive Conservative Prime Minister Brian Mulroney which included free trade, privatization, and comprehensive tax reform.   As we enter 2024, one gets the sense that we may be on the cusp of another rightward shift."
Of course, we still have left wingers calling the Liberals conservative or centrist. But left wing policies keep leading to failure, and left wingers keep claiming the problem is they are not left wing enough

Trump is more popular among Canadians than Trudeau - "Canadian young people seem to like Trump even more than their U.S. equivalents... The Spark Advocacy results would seem to jibe with a growing body of evidence that young Canadians are stampeding toward the Conservatives... The usual explanation for this is economic... Canadian young people may well be leaning to Trump for the same reason the former president still commands immense cult status in the United States: a generalized lack of trust in the establishment.   On this point, a March poll from the Angus Reid Institute may provide some insight.  Canadians were asked some general impressions about the state of the country, and on virtually every point young people emerged as the demographic most likely to say that Canada was unsafe, unprosperous and had a broken governmental system."

Terence Corcoran: It's time for the abdication of King Trudeau II - "Through more than eight years since Justin Trudeau named his first Liberal cabinet on Nov. 4, 2015, Canada’s economic and social trajectory has been steadily downward, a trend that was entirely predictable.  I can say this … because I predicted it... In 2015, 30 cabinet ministers were appointed, each handed a detailed “ mandate letter ” filled with broad instructions and micro directives personally signed by the Monarch. Over the years followup directives were given to ministers in a cabinet that now holds 39 members, each now attempting to carry out hundreds of top-down dictated policies, ranging from $1-trillion national industrial strategies to nit-picking interventions.  The average mandate letter lists about 10 specific instructions to each minister, which means the King has concocted somewhere between 300 and 400 detailed directives on how to run the Canadian economy. A typical example is this nonsensical 2021 letter instructing the housing minister   to “require landlords to disclose in their tax filings the rent they receive pre- and post-renovation and to pay a proportional surtax if the increase in rent is excessive... Fraser is new to the royal circle of central planners driving the Liberal economic machine, a troika of ministers who believe that they, rather than individual and corporate participants in a market, can successfully marshal government power to achieve social and economic goals:  Steven Guilbeault, François-Philippe Champagne and Jonathan Wilkinson. As minister of environment and climate change, Steven Guilbeault’s royal mandate letter includes more than 50 bullet-point directives, including: “Work with industry, labour and other stakeholders to develop a regulated sales mandate that at least 50 per cent of all new light duty vehicle sales be zero emissions vehicles in 2030 as an interim step toward achieving Canada’s mandatory target of 100 per cent by 2035.” In recognition of his role in driving Canada downhill, Guilbeault was  named 2023 Policy-maker of the Year — by Heather Exner-Pirot at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute — for his “ruthless, reckless and damaging” central planning activities. In 2023 alone, Guilbeault has “advanced four sector-destroying policies, as part of the government’s much derided ‘pancake’ approach to climate policy: stacking increasingly suffocating and incompatible regulations on Canadian industry.”

Trudeau erasing Canadian history to achieve his post-national vision - "Many Canadians now appreciate the full context of Justin Trudeau’s comment back in 2015, when he surmised that Canada would become the “first post-national state.” Having just become Prime Minister of the country, Trudeau stated in that often-quoted New York Times interview, “There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada” when it comes to our national identity.    Perhaps Trudeau was off-side to say that in 2015, however, as a result of his systematic approach through the last eight years, PM Trudeau and his political operatives have effectively been erasing Canadian history to achieve his post-national vision...   “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” – George Orwell  From 2015 through to today, the overarching narrative of the Trudeau government is a woke progressivism that projects western culture as a hierarchy of power, one of oppressors and the oppressed. This woke world view is guilt-based, where success is achieved through force, and authority is undeserving.   In the last eight years, Canadians have been re-educated to understand our country is founded on genocide, theft, racism and oppression. It is therefore inappropriate, indeed unacceptable, to honour our forefathers’ achievements and their mores, traditions, and identifying symbols.   And in reconciling the darkness of our country’s past, the Trudeau government has set about to enlighten Canadians with a corrected record of cultural and societal legacies, one in which generations of “settlers” have no legitimate right to their accomplishments and should only harbour shame for past faults. The Trudeau government’s purposeful revisionism of the country’s history has been unabated. There are many recent instances to cite. For example, on the eve of King Charles III’s coronation, the government issued a media statement that the image of the royal crown was to be redrawn with the cross and fleur-de-lys removed from Canada’s heraldry, replaced with a stylized snowflake and maple leaves. Canadians were also informed that there would be no further reference to the “United Kingdom” and “Defender of the Faith” in the title of our Canadian monarchy.   Similarly, this spring the government unilaterally announced it had redesigned the Canadian passport. The documentation was to be stripped of the historical images of the Fathers of Confederation, the Vimy Ridge memorial, the Famous Five, Champlain, the Northwest Mounted Police, the Stanley Cup, the Bluenose, and the Houses of Parliament. Even the most celebrated person in recent history – the beloved Terry Fox — was erased from the passport. In place of these iconic Canadianna images, the passport is to feature watermark pictures of a narwhale, Canada goose, a squirrel eating a nut, a man raking leaves, maple syrup, a barn, etc.   In the last few years Canadians have witnessed a series of acts that are cancelling recognition of our country’s history within the public forum. There has been a rash of statutes defaced and toppled – from Sir John A Macdonald to Egerton Ryerson to Queen Victoria. Some statues – like those at Queen’s Park and at the National Capital’s airport – have been quietly removed and put into storage for “safe keeping.” Canada’s first Prime Minister has had his name erased from schools, roads, and even at the aforementioned Ottawa airport.   John A Macdonald has also been taken from the country’s currency. Recall a few years ago the government announced it was redesigning the country’s bills and that the first alteration was to remove PM Macdonald, replaced by…. (Can you tell me who is now on the $10 bill – without looking? Okay, now look. Who is she?)   In 2019, the federal cabinet issued a directive to review and revise more than 2,100 historic plaques and monuments nationwide to address concerns of the Canadian legacies of “colonialism, patriarchy and racism.” Parks Canada oversaw revisions that “address conflict and controversy” and “power dynamics”; “confront the legacy of colonialism and its impact on Indigenous peoples”; stress “inclusiveness”; and focus on “diversity of race, class, gender, sexuality, ability and religion.”   In this same period, Canada’s chief archivist purged more than 7,000 webpages on the Library and Archives Canada website, including those referencing PM Macdonald, Egerton Ryerson, and the War of 1812. It was explained that this was done to correct the government’s account of the country’s history, expunging documents “outdated and redundant” or that “may offend people.”   On a related matter, perhaps the greatest affront to the country and its people is the Trudeau government’s intent to amend the Citizenship Act so that new Canadians will be permitted to swear their oath of allegiance online with a tick of a box. To add insult, as Blacklock’s Reporter reveals, upon completing the form on the government website immigrants will be mailed a memento maple leaf pin – made in China... Contrary to PM Trudeau’s contention that Canada has no national identity, Dr. Milke identifies the core essence of Canada is found in our regard for individual rights and freedoms, the worth of the individual, rule of law, capitalism, and democratic government.   In an insightful True North interview on the Andrew Lawton Show, Dr. Milke observed, “The point about history in a liberal democracy is that you build on the sacrifices and successes of the past, you don’t deny the wrong things that have happened in the past…. To take a simplistic view of history is to miss the full breadth and depth of human beings, and their age and ours.”   As Milke, Bowler and many others will argue, a people’s national identity is forged in the country’s history and with its peoples’ traditions and mores. No doubt, this is the very reason why the Trudeau government goes to such a great length to erase Canadian history and denigrate the country’s past accomplishments.   Bowler summarizes this idea succinctly, “A person without roots, without a memory, without a story can be easily influenced and cause no trouble to the authorities. A nation without a common history in which citizens can take pride cannot long survive.”"

Trudeau’s Christmas Gifts to Canadians: Unaffordable Housing, Inaccessible Health Care, Out-of-Control Immigration and Sagging Productivity - "Government-sector job growth dwarfs private-sector job growth across Canada, found that governments added far more employees than the private sector in all ten provinces between February 2020 and June 2023 – a period spanning from just before the pandemic set in, across the hard times of Covid-19, and onward for a year after it faded. During this time, the number of government jobs increasing by 11.8 percent compared to just 3.3 percent in the private sector – a whopping total of 446,000 government bureaucrats added... Canada’s immigration policy should be (but isn’t) considering two stark realities: a serious housing shortage/price crunch and a disintegrating health care system. Both situations – it’s no exaggeration to call them crises – are getting worse every day. While some housing markets are plagued by chronically slow construction, a lack of home building isn’t the main culprit. Last year actually saw a new national record set for housing starts at 320,000 units. Yet even that is far less than what’s needed to house our surging population...  “Historically high immigration levels will push up demand and drive up housing prices and rental rates across the country.”  While this seems to have all escaped the notice of Trudeau, even some of Canada’s elite are starting to catch on. Last week Tiff Macklem, the hapless Bank of Canada governor whose dithering helped heighten Canada’s pandemic-induced inflation to crisis levels, noted in a speech at Toronto’s Royal York Hotel that, “Canada’s housing supply has not kept up with growth in our population, and higher rates of immigration are widening the gap.”... more than 17,000 Canadians died while waiting for surgery or diagnostic scans in a one-year period straddling 2022-2023. Second Street’s figure is based on a series of Freedom of Information requests. It was an increase of 64 percent since 2018 and a five-year high. Because many provincial health authorities provide incomplete data, Second Street believes the true figure is actually much worse: nearly 31,400 preventable deaths. The deceased victims had waited as long as 11 years for treatment... And yet, incomprehensibly, the Trudeau government decided 2022 was the time to bring in nearly 1.1 million newcomers, and vowed to continue immigration flows at similar rates for years. And, as I pointed out near the end of this recent article, the published immigration figure is on top of 550,000 student visas and 600,000 work permits for temporary foreign and “international mobility” workers. Many of these workers are semi-skilled or completely unskilled and go straight to work in fast food or other low-paid services. How could any sane government follow such a foreseeably disastrous path?... Now, our unprecedented housing crisis has resulted in even job-holding and fully functional Canadians camping long-term in vehicles and tents. Fellow citizens are suffering and dying on health care waiting lists while being forbidden to access private care by federal legislation (and some provincial policies), with Canada’s courts often siding with government when challenged. And yet the Trudeau government has reconfirmed an immigration goal of half a million permanent residents with no lessening of non-resident immigrants that together will add another 1 million-plus newcomers in 2024... Adding to these self-inflicted wounds, our country now faces economic stagnation... “Longer term, the OECD projects that Canada will rank dead last amongst OECD members in real GDP per capita. Without fundamental changes, Canada’s standard-of-living challenges will persist well into the future.”... A report last year from the CD Howe Institute, Decapitalization: Weak Business Investment Threatens Canadian Prosperity, points out that the invested capital per worker, key to a country’s ability to produce goods and services, “has been weak since 2015” – the year the Trudeau government came into office. “Before 2015, Canadian business had been closing a long-standing gap with the U.S.,” the report states, before warning, “Since 2015, the gap has become a chasm.” The report’s ominous conclusion: “Having investment per worker much lower in Canada than abroad tells us that businesses see less opportunity in Canada and prefigures weaker earnings and living standards.” The stark reality is that those millions of hopeful immigrants entering Canada will find a country not only unable to provide health care and housing for its citizens and temporary residents, but also with a diminishing overall standard of living. And a national government that doesn’t seem to care."
If you ruin the country when you're in power, when you lose the election as you know you will, you can blame the new government to try to get back into power

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