It sells strong in the country of the sunny ways of Justin Trudeau.
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In a speech to his caucus, he presented his government as offering a positive vision for the future, with positive solutions for Canadians. Everything to draw a contrast against what he describes as the rage and anger fueled by his conservative opponent.
Faced with Pierre Poilievre who accuses him of being responsible for all the ills that afflict “broken Canada”, Justin Trudeau does not have much choice to offer positive rhetoric.
It’s his trademark. Except that it hides an unremarkable reality that is likely to catch up with it.
Dunce
The Trudeau government has “invested” hundreds of billions to take care of Canadians and help those who want to join the middle class, he likes to repeat.
However, in doing so, he continued to ignore the biggest problem weighing on the Canadian economy: its low productivity.
All of this may sound very technical and boring, but it is productivity that ensures economic growth. And it is this growth that finances our social safety net and our quality of life.
However, in a large study published last spring, the OECD concluded that, among developed economies, Canada has the worst prospect for per capita growth not only by 2030, but also by 2060.
The problem is not new, but what is absurd is how little the Liberals paid attention to it.
Indeed, it is more popular to offer subsidized child care from coast to coast, credits for housing and to rely on mass immigration to solve all the problems.
However, the billions spent on these social policies do not have the same leverage effect on our collective wealth as if they were invested in a coherent economic policy.
The wall
Has the Trudeau government woke up? This is what his offensive in favor of strategic minerals so that Canada becomes a leader in the energy transition suggests.
The Biden administration has committed nearly $400 billion to this as part of its Inflation Reduction Act.
How to accost that? Borrow ? Still ? And how much when you think that it will also be necessary to spend tens of billions in health? And military spending in the face of the war in Ukraine?
If the Liberals had shown restraint, Canada would have some leeway.
But there isn’t. Worse, the former Deputy Minister of Finance and former Governor of the Bank of Canada, David Dodge, recently concluded that he is playing with fire.
On the one hand, he criticizes the Trudeau government for having largely underestimated the cost of its ambitions. On the other hand, it clearly establishes that the weight of the accumulated debt places Canada in a precarious situation.
The finance minister’s response? Chrystia Freeland disagrees with these conclusions, nothing more.
The problem is that they were issued by Canada’s ultimate public finance guru, the senior civil servant who helped Paul Martin balance the budget!