Ahead of the spring economic update, the National Post ran a story that contained thirteen charts that they claim were proof that Justin Trudeau delivered a “lost decade” to the Canadian economy. To absolutely no one’s surprise, the charts were awfully selective in how they presented the data, because everybody has decided that they have a vested interest in creating an image of how much Trudeau “doomed” the country. And to be perfectly fair, Mark Carney himself has engaged in these kinds of rhetorical games, which his insistence on using the “new government” moniker has been nothing more than an effort to disassociate himself with his predecessor.
To wit: yes, we fell behind the US on GDP per capita because we rapidly increased our population while the US didn’t, and that increase staved off an economic downturn post-pandemic, until everyone decided to start scapegoating those same immigrants for provinces under-investing in housing and healthcare capacity. The rise in business insolvencies? Mostly a post-pandemic correction when a lot of businesses that would not have survived did only because of those pandemic supports, and the levels are returning close to the pre-pandemic baseline. The number of self-employed freefalling? Again, this was because of the pandemic because a whole lot of those self-employed got stiffed by the companies they invoiced and they didn’t get paid, so they took salaried jobs. I can’t speak was much to the number of high-value start-ups fleeing Canada other than the fact that many of them specifically set themselves up to sell to American companies because that’s where the money was. Total investment per worker declining? My dudes, corporate Canada decided they don’t care about productivity because they only want to be rent-seekers, so that’s what they do. Climbing cost of living? The chart is without context to demonstrate how we compare internationally given the inflation spike late in the pandemic, where Canada did far better than most of our comparators. Home prices? The chart cuts off at 2015 so it doesn’t show that they also doubled under Harper, but this is mostly a provincial/municipal problem as the federal government has very few levers for the problems of charges and zoning. Public sector rising faster than private sector? What does that include? Does it include provinces? Does it include nurses or teachers? How does it compare to under-investment and cuts in the Harper years? Again, context matters. Federal deficits? Have you seen the state of the world? Healthcare wait times? That’s provincial—how are you trying to pin that on Trudeau? He gave plenty of transfers to provinces that got put on their bottom lines to pay down deficits rather than hiring nurses or expanding capacity. The rise in the violent crime severity index? The piece scapegoats this on immigrants, again without any context for how those figures are way down from historical highs.
It’s shitty journalism, but this is the kind of thing that the we’ve come to expect from the Post, simply in service of a narrative.
Ukraine Dispatch
The attack on Odesa early Monday wound up injuring fourteen, and hit residential buildings and a hotel. A worker at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, still under Russian control, was killed in a drone attack.
