Uh Oh Canada

December 19, 2024

Canada has just joined a growing list of rich democracies that cannot get their political or economic act together. Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is on his way out. The electorate is fed up with financial problems, high taxation, and unscreened immigration. Similar political battles plague two other G7 nations, France and Germany. All three governments sag because they prioritized social engineering and political correctness over enterprise and economic development. Their electorates are divided. Worse, the Europeans live in a dangerous region and wrestle with re-arming, a flood of Ukrainian refugees, and fending off Russian cyberattacks, sabotage, espionage, and political interference. Meanwhile, Canada has one of the world’s most incredible natural resource endowments but has yet to meet its NATO spending commitments and relies on American military protection. It also hasn’t secured its border with the United States, and smuggling has upset Donald Trump. He recently dubbed Trudeau a “governor” and Canada “the 51^st state,” and his ally, Elon Musk, who is a Canadian citizen, called Trudeau “an insufferable tool” who “won’t be in power for much longer.”

Trump tweets an image called “Oh Canada” of him admiring Canada’s vast potential.

The name-calling began after December 2 when Trump announced that he would impose 25% tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico until smuggling ended. Trudeau immediately flew to Mar-A-Lago and explained that such tariffs would sink his country’s economy. That’s when Trump joked that if the tariff would kill Canada’s economy, Canada might as well become the 51st state. He followed that recommendation with online postings suggesting that America already subsidized Canada to “$100 billion a year” – an estimate of U.S. military protection for Canada combined with annual Canadian trade surpluses.

The specter of a shotgun marriage with the United States sent Canadians into a tizzy, but they have only themselves to blame. Canada’s perhaps fatal mistake is that its people voted for Justin Trudeau, a “nepo baby” without credentials to lead their G7 economy. In late 2015, he was sworn in as Prime Minister at 43, even though he only obtained 39.47% of the vote. He had a scant employment record and a brief stint as a drama teacher in a high school but had no financial, administrative, geopolitical, legal, managerial, or domain expertise. He was elected because he was attractive and groomed by his father’s Liberal Party and became a celebrity and Internet candidate. To be blunt, he became the Prime Minister of Canada because of his mother’s looks and his father’s name. He has remained in power without majority approval because he formed a coalition with socialists.

Trudeau, a trust fund kid, overspends with abandon. Between 2015 and 2024, the country will have run ten consecutive deficits and racked up debts of $2.1 trillion by 2026, or larger than its GDP of $1.9 trillion, according to estimates. A 2021 OECD report predicted Canada would have the lowest per capita GDP growth of any advanced economy throughout this decade and between 2030 and 2060. “In other words,” read a commentary from the Business Council of British Columbia, “Canada will be dead last not only for the next decade but also for the three decades after that.”

(By 2023, American incomes were US$73,600 per person, and Canada’s were US$65,800. However, in 2022, Canadian productivity fell to 71% of American levels, and its dollar continued to crumble. As things now stand, Canada doesn’t belong in the G7 because it is ninth in size and falling. South Korea and Australia will overtake Canada regarding economic size and current growth rates in a few years.)

But Canada is an oil giant with a staggering treasure trove of fossil fuels, metals, and minerals. Its Province of Alberta is as asset-rich as Saudi Arabia. In total, the US and Canada have more resources than Russia.

Trump became upset because Canada, like Mexico, had become a backdoor entry for fentanyl and illegal migrants into the United States due to inadequate policing and border monitoring. Trudeau has neglected national security and relied on the United States for military protection. The Arctic has gone undefended, and Trudeau’s immigration department has allowed millions of people into the country without proper screening. Now, they pour into the United States from Canada. Some are dangerous. Crime rates are up, and in September, an illegal from Pakistan was arrested in Quebec and charged with plotting a terrorist attack in New York City. He was a member of an ISIS cell.

Instead of building a military presence, Trudeau cut costs and concentrated on increasing the “inclusivity” and “acceptance” of soldiers, regardless of their backgrounds or gender. In 2024, the Canadian Armed Forces stated in a new dress code document that “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and two-spirited people are among the invisibly different—but should not have to be. Everyone should have the choice of a uniform appropriate to his or her gender identity.” The Code allows “personal choices regarding their appearance” such as piercings, long hair, and tattoos on any part of the body as long as they don’t promote discrimination, racism, sexism, xenophobia, homophobia, explicit sexuality, or ableism. (Prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior).”

Due to these and other “woke” policies, Canada has become a punchline. So is Trudeau’s government. He runs the country with a cabinet of 37 people lacking business, economic, geopolitical, military, or technology expertise. Most were political hacks for years and have concentrated on giving away vast sums of money, attacking the country’s natural resource industries, driving out investment, and imposing a host of half-baked notions gleaned by Trudeau and others from the now-sputtering and discredited Davos World Economic Forum agenda. His finance minister (just pushed out) was without credentials and a journalist. His foreign minister is embarrassingly out of her depth, his defense minister is a former Toronto cop, and his environment minister is a radical, anti-capitalist who used to work for Greenpeace.

He's done very little, contrary to his self-described climate change accomplishments. When he took office, Canada had nothing to be ashamed of regarding environmental protection, but he imposed unnecessarily strict controls over development that have cost jobs and opportunities. He’s not moved the dial in terms of emissions, and his biases and extremism have driven out investment and jobs without justification. His environmental minister once pledged to shut down Alberta’s massive oil industry. The most significant ecological boondoggle is that Canada missed the boat in providing liquefied natural gas to the world to replace high-emissions coal, as the United States has done. Trudeau refused to accept tens of billions in investment dollars from Germany, Japan, and other countries willing to build pipelines and facilities to produce liquefied natural gas to reduce their emissions.

Trudeau’s polling is abysmal, but an election can’t be held until he leaves. The result is political uncertainty and chaos, given Trump’s taunts, party infighting, and Trudeau’s unpopularity. Last week, the popular leader of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, summed up the situation and delivered a damning indictment of Canada’s lost decade thanks to Trudeau’s amateurs. “If you hire clowns, you get a circus…There are real consequences from this clown show.”

That’s an understatement. Canadians now find themselves in an existential crisis of their own creation. America and the world are watching, and Canadians must figure out how to get rid of the Trudeau regime and elect a responsible government. If not, they will be badgered by American tariffs, continue to slide economically, or eventually be forced to join America despite its gun madness and healthcare mess.

NOTE:

In 2013, I wrote a book about the US-Canada relationship with Harper Collins titled “Merger of the Century.” I predict the two countries will eventually merge economically (like the EU) and/or politically (and become one country) by 2100. The book profiled both nation-states, their histories, cultures, economies, dysfunctional political systems, and geopolitical realities and examined various merger models.

I am an American and a Canadian citizen.