Rusks for the People

“I’m too old to be taken in by any confidence tricks.” —Sir John A. Macdonald

A recent event serves as an emblem of what Canada has become. The statue of Canada’s founding father and first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, was boarded up several years ago in Toronto’s Queen’s Park to protect it against vandals, often associated with Antifa, BLM, and Indigenous activists. Of course, it’s the vandals who should be boarded up, that is, hunted down and jailed. But in Canada, it doesn’t work that way. As the Toronto Sun reports, those who topple and deface historic icons seem to be above prosecution. Indeed, a man “charged with destroying the Sir John A. Macdonald statue in Hamilton a few years back had those charges withdrawn.” The search for the perpetrators in Kingston didn’t go very far and was described as a possible false flag operation, thus absolving the real culprits.

Rather, a certain Daniel Tate, who spray-painted “Free John” on the wooden structure in Queen’s Park, has been remanded on the grounds of mischief, which is to say, vandalism. Tate posted a video explaining that he is concerned about a “coordinated campaign of anti-Canadian forces waging war on Canadian culture and identity,” those who deface the monuments that attest to a country’s history and sacrifices. Tate is to be commended for his courage and patriotism, but what he has not understood is that the most effective way of waging war on Canadian culture and identity is not merely by acts of disrespect but by economic means, that is, by putting the legacy of Sir John into receivership.

What we might call economic vandalism is proceeding with a vengeance. Commentator Chris Nelson at the Western Standard mourns Canada’s “dreadful economic performance,” pointing out that during Justin Trudeau’s decade of disaster, our national per capita GDP was by far the worst performer among the G7 group of countries. Meanwhile, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that Canada is doomed to suffer the lowest GDP growth of the leading 32 global economies.

Similarly, according to the prestigious Fraser Institute, “the economic story of the Trudeau years has been one of dismal growth. Indeed… Trudeau has the worst record of any prime minister in recent history.” Basing his policy on Keynesian economic theory that deficit spending would stimulate aggregate demand and pull the nation out of stagflation, Trudeau boosted government spending to record levels, borrowed heavily, and ran enormous deficits, leading to a statistically insignificant annual growth rate and increasing penury for millions.

Trudeau would have done better to study at the feet of Milton Friedman, perhaps the foremost economist of our time, who writes in Capitalism and Freedom that a business maximizing profits, within the bounds of law and ethical tradition, is the best way to create “social wealth and general prosperity.” Investing in “social causes” (what is now called “stakeholder capitalism”) comes as a byproduct of following prudent business practices, but if it becomes the primary function of corporate management, it is only “hypocritical window dressing.” 

A business has an ethical duty to benefit its shareholders, just as a government is responsible for assuring the freedom, security, and economic opportunity of its citizens. I suspect that Trudeau, an ignoramus of the first magnitude, may never have heard of Friedman, but even if he had he would have scoffed at such modest realism and common sense. Far more important for an economic illiterate like Trudeau, who once racked up a $1,500 bar tab on a single flight, is to borrow, spend, and print. 

The independent not-for-profit news outlet The Hub faults Trudeau for ratcheting up a staggering deficit accumulation (aka negative retained earnings which occurs when a company's total losses over its lifetime exceed its profits) of $600 billion, a net federal debt which doubled during his tenure to $1.35 trillion, and debt service costs in the vicinity of $53.7 billion for 2024-25. A grim job rate was artificially buoyed by excessive public sector employment—approximately one in four Canadians now works for government—to offset “stagnating private-sector employment and a decline in self-employment.”

Everything, without exception, that Trudeau championed and enforced has failed miserably, further enfeebling a sick economy at taxpayer expense. It now appears that Trudeau’s $52.5 billion in various government investments and subsidies across the EV supply chain will sink into the red. It was an unforced error of massive proportions, creating a hole in the economy the size of an asteroid strike. Guelph University economics professor Ross McKitrick comments that “the money is as good as gone. It’s a sunk cost, there’s no getting it back.” The cricket protein processing plant he subsidized to the tune of tens of millions has gone into liquidation. Nobody wants to eat bugs. Trudeau’s useless and harmful COVID ventilators, which cost the country $169.5 million, have been sold “for parts” for as little as $6 per unit. A reverse Midas, whatever he touches turns to scrap metal.

Despite the absurdly exaggerated reports in Trudeau’s favor by such leftist sites as the execrable Toronto Star, the audit doesn’t lie. Neither rampant immigration nor COVID can remotely account for Trudeau’s wretched stewardship, which has left Canada an economic basket case. Trudeau’s ideology, founded on Green-renewable fantasies and carbon emission goals, has butchered sound economic policy. 

As if this weren’t bad enough, we now have the estimable, world-hopping, obscenely wealthy, international banker Mark Carney for our prime minister, a net-zero fanatic who was Trudeau’s advisor for the last five years, and who will make Trudeau’s disaster look like the good ol’ times. Calgary-based management consultant James Albers asks, “Have we truly turned the page — or merely swapped one clown for another?” Carney is merely Trudeau 2.0. The National Citizens Coalition (NCC) accuses Carney’s fledgling Liberal government of repeating the “failed Trudeau-era policies” that have left many Canadians disillusioned. “This is as bad a start as feared for all those who have been denied the Canadian Dream,” the group declared. 

Carney has no intention of tabling a budget this year. The reason is not far to seek. Fiscal transparency translates to bad news for the new government. By dodging a budget, Carney is dodging a bullet. Moreover, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation notes that Carney, according to his election platform, plans to add an extra $225 billion to the debt over the next four years, a capital increase even worse than Trudeau’s. Carney’s administration will continue Trudeau’s catastrophic policies in housing, justice, energy, agriculture, and finance. As for national unity, forgeddaboudit. Carney’s cabinet appointments consist chiefly of former Trudeau ministers who have failed upward, revealing a government completely indifferent to the needs of beleaguered families, the labor market, and remorselessly exploited taxpayers.

Younger working Canadians and aspiring entrepreneurs are now heading to the food banks—Dr. Sylvain Charelebois, the “Food Professor” at Dalhousie University, points to the surge in food bank usage. In the bitter words of podcaster Alexander Brown, “if you’re under-45 and not a member of a dual-income family of lawyers, or those who pay their mortgage through the Bank of Mom and Dad,” you have no future in this country.

The only beneficiaries of the current depressing state of affairs are older folks living on ample pensions, high-earning established professionals, and cosseted public sector workers. Many younger people, who can scarcely pay for groceries, or consider buying a new car, or hope to afford a home of their own, are leaving Canada in increasing numbers, taking their talent and work ethic with them. 

So this is where we are, thanks to three successive terms of a Liberal administration entering on the fourth leg of its journey to social and economic perdition. Eschewing affordability, safety, and national unity, Trudeau and now Carney are the higher defacers du jour, those who have consigned the nation’s founder to a boarded-up political oubliette and spray-painted graffiti on his memory, as they proceed to steer the country he brought into existence into anomie, discord, and bankruptcy. Unfortunately, we cannot act on Sir John’s famous injunction: “When fortune empties her chamber pot on your head, smile and say, We are going to have a summer shower.” Trudeau’s conception of a post-national country with no core identity and Carney’s vision of a net-zero globalist nightmare have emptied a chamber pot on our heads, and it is an atmospheric river.

In due course, everybody will suffer, including the privileged, with the exception of a klatch of well-placed politicians for whom corruption and ignorance have earned them a sinecure in the catacombs of the future.

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