According to a report released today, Canada’s gross domestic product has shrunk in January by 0.1 percent, despite economists previously projecting a 0.1 percent growth rate in that month.
Driven by a drop in oil production and a decline in real estate activity, this surprising drop in GDP could mark the beginning of an extraordinarily poor economic year for Canada.
Even though economists were already predicting 2018 to be a year of much slower growth, they still thought the slowdown would be delayed for at least for a few more months.
I’d argue that many of our current structural problems which have caused this anemic growth can be traced back to poorly managed federal matters.
One of the driving forces behind this slowdown is the 3.6% decrease in oil sands activity and production.
The ever-increasing red tape, the constant delays in pipeline construction, the introduction of a carbon tax explicitly directed at the industry, combined with the overall hostile attitude of the Liberal government towards anything to do oil or gas, have resulted in a sizable decrease in production and investment in this important sector.
Spending in Alberta’s oil and gas industry is expected to drop 12% this year with the oilsands taking the brunt of the decline, as their investments will plummet by 20% to $10.2B.
And what is the overall government response to this?
The adoption of a “money fixes everything” and distraction policy platform, where vast sums of money are continuously being thrown around on completely pointless projects, to win back “social” voters, while the economy continues to falter.
An example of this would be the $35 million spent to “de-radicalize” ISIS fighters and terrorists.
An analysis of the document by Conservative MP Michelle Rempel found that there were $0 being spent to prevent terrorism or to de-radicalize terrorists.
Instead, over half the costs were going toward paying bureaucrats’ salaries and the remainder includes spending on self-promotion, as well as other useless things.
Going deeper we can see that the Liberals seem to only address issues on the surface level and do nothing to aid the underlying causes of the problem.
For example, they chose to provide a $200 million program targeted at removing systemic barriers to racism and gender discrimination, and provided grants for female CEO’s but did nothing to actually help the environment many of those individuals face.
A woman will still be disadvantaged due to childbirth, and female CEO’s, once in the position, will face the same unfavourable competitive environment as their male counterparts.
As Dr. Jordan Peterson pointed out in his recent interview with the Toronto Sun, Trudeau is unable to come up with any policy solutions outside of his own narrow political ideology. As proof of this, he cited the presence of the textbook radical leftist words like equity, diversity, inclusivity, white privilege and systemic racism in the 2018 budget.
All of Trudeau’s solutions to these complicated and dicey social issues will only lead to greater tensions between the different races and genders (note the Cultural Marxism at work) and will just create more problems while continuing to waste more taxpayer money on “fixing” them.
With their reckless spending of your taxpayer dollars the Liberals fail to see the “big picture” and in turn spend millions or billions of dollars on an issue to no avail, as they failed to address the underlying causes because they were so quick to spend.
In their rush to try and “solve” the many apparent social problems that we supposedly have here in Canada, the Liberals have forgotten to take care of the engine of our prosperity and freedom, namely, the economy.
As the old saying goes, “a rising tide lifts all ships.” The best plan for ensuring that all Canadians can live a decent and comfortable life is to make sure that Canada has well-managed finances and the pro-business environment needed for them to find a job.
As is so often the case for many left of centre parties around the globe, the very people they are aiming to help are often the ones who are hurt the most by their own policies.
As this Liberal government spends more and more of its time figuring out whether you’d like to be called Mr. or Mrs. or if you’re offended by the term “mankind,” they are neglecting to implement policies that will actually help Canadians.
What do you think? let us know below!
*This article was edited with the help of Lucas Holtvluwer and Samuell Blackett.
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