in World News The Canadian Sickness
by David Solway
According to a heavily redacted RCMP report delivered to the federal government, and quoted in the National Post, “Canada may descend into civil unrest once citizens realize the hopelessness of their economic situation.” Entitled Whole-of-Government Five-Year Trends for Canada, the report warns the government that “many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live,” and that “The coming period of recession will … accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations.” Economic forecasts, we learn, “for the next five years and beyond are bleak.”
The prognosis is indeed bleak, as a majority of Canadians have known for the last several years. Living standards will tank, household debt will skyrocket, inflation will eat away at retirement savings, a significant recession is looming—though it is, in fact, already here—along with stagflation. As the independent media and news outlet The Hub writes in a seminal exposé, “Although the timing of the next federal election is unknown, it seems increasingly clear that the ballot question will be about whether voters believe that ‘Canada is broken.’” New polling finds that the answer is yes, identifying “various factors, including the cost of living (particularly food and fuel), housing, health care, immigration, and the prime minister himself, behind these gloomy public sentiments.”
GDP per capita has been stagnant for six years, actually declining for the past six quarters. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s progressivism, involving large-scale deficits, astronomical public debt, a larger and more intrusive state, an undermanned and toothless military, a punishing and unnecessary carbon tax set to increase exponentially, a growing focus on identity politics and rampaging crime in the streets means that, as The Hub puts it, “We’re effectively facing a lost decade.”
The RCMP report is merely walking on well-trodden ground. It offers no data that is not already self-evident and that has not been the subject of innumerable articles, essays, editorials and books. The real problem with the report, aside from its redundancy, is that it is etiologically flawed, citing the risibly wrong reasons for the sickness from which the nation is suffering—in effect, it fawningly recycles the government’s evasive talking points. As retired judge and senior fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy Brian Giesbrecht says, “the RCMP appears to be more like the servants of the Trudeau Liberals than a serious national police force.”