Canada’s economic decline isn’t by accident. Under Trudeau, aggressive green policies have pushed business investment south of the border
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Donald Trump’s bombastic style is hard to stomach, but the need to undo years of waste and corruption is undeniable. Trump’s reforms will speed up an economy that already far outperforms ours.
According to the latest IMF World Economic Outlook data, U.S. GDP per capita this year is $89,678 (in purchasing-power-parity dollars), while ours is $64,566—just 72 per cent of that. In 2015, when the Trudeau government was elected, our per capita output was 81 per cent of the Americans’. According to the IMF’s forecasts, we’ll be below 70 per cent and still trending downward by 2029.
The U.S. president’s continuing rhetoric about making Canada the 51st state is certainly annoying, but his implicit argument that Canada has great, unleashed potential is certainly right.
 Green mandates, rising taxes and anti-business policies are fuelling Canada’s economic decline. |
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Canada’s natural resources are the envy of the world. Alberta and British Columbia have enormous oil and gas reserves. Our mighty rivers provide much of our electricity. The vast Canadian Shield contains enormous mineral wealth. There’s no doubt that, per capita, our resources are superior to those of our American neighbour. And our workforce is at least as well educated. So why the vast productivity gap?
The answer is self-inflicted wounds. And the list of them is long.
The Trudeau government’s green fanaticism—carbon taxes on motor fuels aimed at motivating the switch from internal combustion to electric vehicles, combined with a mandate for clean fuel refining standards—has driven up costs for both private motorists and commercial transporters. EV purchase subsidies and a taxpayer-funded charging network added more economic damage. Farmers faced rising fuel and fertilizer costs. Both small and large businesses were hit by unrecoverable cost increases.
The “no more pipelines” act: Part of the Trudeau government’s broader effort to achieve net-zero emissions, effectively restricting the approval and construction of new oil and gas pipeline projects. The act was introduced in 2019 by then-environment and climate change minister Steven Guilbeault, a former Greenpeace activist who once climbed Toronto’s CN Tower to unfurl a banner that read “Canada and Bush climate killers.” The act was struck down by the Supreme Court in 2023 after an arduous four-year appeal led by the government of Alberta.
Weak business investment per worker: Business investment per worker is a key driver of income and living standards. A study published by the Fraser Institute in 2023 found that it had declined from $18,363 in 2014, the year before the Trudeau government came to power, to $14,687 in 2021. Meanwhile, U.S. investment per worker had risen from $23,333 to $26,751, creating a gap of 82 per cent. The report’s conclusion: “Having investment per worker much lower in Canada tells us that businesses see less opportunity in Canada.”
But where is that Canadian money going? The answer is alarming. In 2023, Canadian businesses moved US$672 billion to the United States while American business investment in Canada fell to US$452 billion—clear evidence that Canadian corporations see the U.S. as a more attractive place to invest.
Canada’s unionized monopolies: The rate of unionization in Canada is 30 per cent—three times that of the U.S. Person-days not worked, a measure of union militancy, skyrocketed from 1.9 million in 2022 to 6.6 million in 2023. Strikes have become more intractable since the Trudeau government introduced laws forbidding temporary replacement workers. In 2024, our two national railways shut down. Then came strikes at the ports of Vancouver and Montreal, disrupting a combined $2 billion a day in shipments. As Christmas approached, Canadians were hit by the Canada Post strike. It’s hard to imagine such a shutdown of the U.S. Postal Service being tolerated.
DEI and corporate governance policies: Adding to our economic impotence are DEI policies that effectively compel businesses to hire by race or gender rather than ability. Piling on environmental and social governance requirements that projects achieve net-zero emissions is a recipe for failure.
Doubling the national debt: Nine years of Liberal rule has not only crippled our economy but also taken the national debt from $626 billion to $1.34 trillion. Only major expenditure cuts can prevent the kind of fiscal crisis Canada faced in the mid-1990s when rising government spending led to a dangerously high debt-to-GDP ratio and what seemed a death spiral of the Canadian dollar.
And the policy of self-harm seems certain to continue. Mark Carney is cut from the same net-zero cloth as Justin Trudeau and has occupied an even higher rung on the eco-extremist global ladder. He founded the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which attempted to impose green vetoes on large institutions’ investments. In his 2021 book Value(s): Building a Better World for All, he envisioned the complete elimination of fossil fuels.
Carney loves our consumer carbon tax but knows voters don’t. His solution? Move it “upstream” to producers—i.e., the farmers, manufacturers and other businesses of every kind that make up our national economic base. Imagine what that would do to our already woefully low GDP per capita.
And what’s his plan for our out-of-control deficit? Accounting sleight of hand. Rather than reduce spending, he’d create a fiscal mirage by separating operating from capital expenditures. If voters fall for that shell game, Canada is heading toward Third World economic status. The only good news is that Trump wouldn’t want us as the 51st state.
Canadians have an important choice to make: re-elect a Liberal government to continue the same impoverishing, socialist, anti-business net-zero path we’ve been on for nine long years. Or elect a Conservative government focused on unleashing the talents and energy of Canadian workers to realize the great potential of our nation.
The answer is obvious.
Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who has been a director of five global corporations.
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