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Federal government clearly misstates its economic record

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From the Fraser Institute

By Jock Finlayson

“since 2015 Canada has posted some of the weakest economic growth numbers, measured on a per-person basis, in half a century”

“Denominator blindness” refers to situations where people fail to put what seem to be big numbers into proper context. The affliction is especially common among governments seeking to justify their spending and other policy decisions. In Canada, denominator blindness has become a central feature of the narratives peddled by many politicians.

For example, the Trudeau government’s recent economic update, which includes a forward by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland where she notes that the International Monetary Fund expects Canada to have “the strongest economic growth in the G7 next year.” She also insists her government is fostering economic growth that “creates middle class jobs, raises incomes, and makes middle class communities more prosperous.”

Both claims lack context and misstate the government’s economic record.

Prosperity is measured using both a numerator, typically the amount of output the economy produces in a year, and a denominator, the size of the population. A larger population means the economic pie must be divided into more slices to estimate how much “output” is available to the average resident. With a rapidly expanding population, the economy must generate a lot more output merely to stop the individual pie slices from shrinking.

Minister Freeland is correct that Canada’s economy has been growing, both since the worst of the COVID shock in late-2020/early-2021 and over the period when the Trudeau government has been in power. But she ignores the bigger picture, which shows two important things.

First, since 2015 Canada has posted some of the weakest economic growth numbers, measured on a per-person basis, in half a century. The pattern of feeble economic growth was evident before the onset of COVID.

Second, Canada is among the few advanced economies where output or gross domestic product (GDP) per person in 2023 has still not returned to pre-pandemic levels. In part, this reflects surging population growth, which affects the denominator that helps determine whether economic growth is producing gains in average incomes and living standards. In Canada’s case, modest economic growth combined with a skyrocketing population has resulted in a multi-year decline in per-person income and erosion of overall prosperity. Adjusted for inflation, GDP per person is still 2 per cent lower than in 2019.

Denominator blindness also characterizes recent attempts by the federal, Ontario and Quebec governments to explain why they’re allocating up to $50 billion in subsidies and tax incentives to lure a handful of electric vehicle battery manufacturers to Canada. The politicians making these decisions point to the several thousand jobs the EV manufacturing facilities will support once they are fully operational. But they won’t discuss how this fits within the larger job market.

Total employment in Canada is 20.1 million, with almost 1.8 million jobs in manufacturing. The vast sums being thrown at EV battery manufacturers will have essentially no impact on the aggregate job numbers and barely make a ripple, even in the manufacturing sector. Moreover, not all the promised EV jobs will be “new” positions—many workers attracted to the EV industry will likely be drawn from other businesses, worsening skill shortages that are plaguing Canadian manufacturers.

Perhaps aspiring politicians should be required to study the basic arithmetic of fractions before they run for office.

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Opposition leader Poilievre calling for end of prorogation to deal with Trump’s tariffs

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From Conservative Party Communications

The Hon. Pierre Poilievre, Leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and the Official Opposition, released the following statement on the threat of tariffs from the US:

“Canada is facing a critical challenge. On February 1st we are facing the risk of unjustified 25% tariffs by our largest trading partner that would have damaging consequences across our country. Our American counterparts say they want to stop the illegal flow of drugs and other criminal activity at our border. The Liberal government admits their weak border is a problem. That is why they announced a multibillion-dollar border plan—a plan they cannot fund because they shut down Parliament, preventing MPs and Senators from authorizing the funds.

“We also need retaliatory tariffs, something that requires urgent Parliamentary consideration.

“Yet, Liberals have shut Parliament in the middle of this crisis. Canada has never been so weak, and things have never been so out of control. Liberals are putting themselves and their leadership politics ahead of the country. Freeland and Carney are fighting for power rather than fighting for Canada.

“Common Sense Conservatives are calling for Trudeau to reopen Parliament now to pass new border controls, agree on trade retaliation and prepare a plan to rescue Canada’s weak economy.

“The Prime Minister has the power to ask the Governor General to cut short prorogation and get our Parliament working.

“Open Parliament. Take back control. Put Canada First.”

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Trump, taunts and trade—Canada’s response is a decade out of date

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From the Fraser Institute

By Ross McKitrick

Canadian federal politicians are floundering in their responses to Donald Trump’s tariff and annexation threats. Unfortunately, they’re stuck in a 2016 mindset, still thinking Trump is a temporary aberration who should be disdained and ignored by the global community. But a lot has changed. Anyone wanting to understand Trump’s current priorities should spend less time looking at trade statistics and more time understanding the details of the lawfare campaigns against him. Canadian officials who had to look up who Kash Patel is, or who don’t know why Nathan Wade’s girlfriend finds herself in legal jeopardy, will find the next four years bewildering.

Three years ago, Trump was on the ropes. His first term had been derailed by phony accusations of Russian collusion and a Ukrainian quid pro quo. After 2020, the Biden Justice Department and numerous Democrat prosecutors devised implausible legal theories to launch multiple criminal cases against him and people who worked in his administration. In summer 2022, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago and leaked to the press rumours of stolen nuclear codes and theft of government secrets. After Trump announced his candidacy in 2022, he was hit by wave after wave of indictments and civil suits strategically filed in deep blue districts. His legal bills soared while his lawyers past and present battled well-funded disbarment campaigns aimed at making it impossible for him to obtain counsel. He was assessed hundreds of millions of dollars in civil penalties and faced life in prison if convicted.

This would have broken many men. But when he was mug-shotted in Georgia on Aug. 24, 2023, his scowl signalled he was not giving in. In the 11 months from that day to his fist pump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump managed to defeat and discredit the lawfare attacks, assemble and lead a highly effective campaign team, knock Joe Biden off the Democratic ticket, run a series of near daily (and sometimes twice daily) rallies, win over top business leaders in Silicon Valley, open up a commanding lead in the polls and not only survive an assassination attempt but turn it into an image of triumph. On election day, he won the popular vote and carried the White House and both Houses of Congress.

It’s Trump’s world now, and Canadians should understand two things about it. First, he feels no loyalty to domestic and multilateral institutions that have governed the world for the past half century. Most of them opposed him last time and many were actively weaponized against him. In his mind, and in the thinking of his supporters, he didn’t just defeat the Democrats, he defeated the Republican establishment, most of Washington including the intelligence agencies, the entire corporate media, the courts, woke corporations, the United Nations and its derivatives, universities and academic authorities, and any foreign governments in league with the World Economic Forum. And it isn’t paranoia; they all had some role in trying to bring him down. Gaining credibility with the new Trump team will require showing how you have also fought against at least some of these groups.

Second, Trump has earned the right to govern in his own style, including saying whatever he wants. He’s a negotiator who likes trash-talking, so get used to it and learn to decode his messages.

When Trump first threatened tariffs, he linked it to two demands: stop the fentanyl going into the United States from Canada and meet our NATO spending targets. We should have done both long ago. In response, Trudeau should have launched an immediate national action plan on military readiness, border security and crackdowns on fentanyl labs. His failure to do so invited escalation. Which, luckily, only consisted of taunts about annexation. Rather than getting whiny and defensive, the best response (in addition to dealing with the border and defence issues) would have been to troll back by saying that Canada would fight any attempt to bring our people under the jurisdiction of the corrupt U.S. Department of Justice, and we will never form a union with a country that refuses to require every state to mandate photo I.D. to vote and has so many election problems as a result.

As to Trump’s complaints about the U.S. trade deficit with Canada, this is a made-in-Washington problem. The U.S. currently imports $4 trillion in goods and services from the rest of the world but only sells $3 trillion back in exports. Trump looks at that and says we’re ripping them off. But that trillion-dollar difference shows up in the U.S. National Income and Product Accounts as the capital account balance. The rest of the world buys that much in U.S. financial instruments each year, including treasury bills that keep Washington functioning. The U.S. savings rate is not high enough to cover the federal government deficit and all the other domestic borrowing needs. So the Americans look to other countries to cover the difference. Canada’s persistent trade surplus with the U.S. ($108 billion in 2023) partly funds that need. Money that goes to buying financial instruments can’t be spent on goods and services.

So the other response to the annexation taunts should be to remind Trump that all the tariffs in the world won’t shrink the trade deficit as long as Congress needs to borrow so much money each year. Eliminate the budget deficit and the trade deficit will disappear, too. And then there will be less money in D.C. to fund lawfare and corruption. Win-win.

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