It's Just Money

Just a reminder:

Justin Trudeau says a Liberal government won't balance the books for three straight years but will double spending on infrastructure to jump-start economic growth.

The Liberal fiscal plan would see "a modest short-term deficit" of less than $10 billion for each of the first three years  and then a balanced budget by the 2019-2020 fiscal year.

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Canada posted a deficit of C$11.80 billion ($8.74 billion) in the fiscal year that ended in March, down from a shortfall of C$16.69 billion in the previous fiscal year. 

The finance ministry said the data “are not the final results for the fiscal year as a whole”, adding these would be published later once additional information such as accrual of tax revenues became available.

Anyway:

Canada’s population is growing by 1.2%.

Population growth in the US is 0.7%.

If we subtract Canada’s population growth from our GDP growth, we get -0.8%. It’s negative.

Meanwhile, if we subtract US population growth from their economic growth, we get 2.4%.

So – in real terms – the only terms that matter for real people since it’s what impacts our standard of living, the United States is getting richer, and Canada is getting poorer.


It’s really quite simple. If our income per person was just staying steady, then Canada should have grown by 1.2%. The rate of population growth and a stable income should give us a baseline GDP growth rate of 1.2%. That’s the minimum it should be.

Anything less means the standard of living and relative income of the average Canadian is declining, which also means our economy is getting worse.

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Canada has fallen three spots in the world economic competitiveness ranking.

The ranking – which is compiled by IMD – shows Canada in 13th place in 2019, down from 10th place in 2018.

Qatar, Luxembourg, and Ireland are now ahead of Canada.

Canada is only one spot above China – a centrally-run Communist State.


The top spot is held by Singapore, which jumped from third to first, followed by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region – which stayed in second, and the United States in third – a drop of two spots from 2018.

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s carbon tax, which he has imposed on four provinces, increasingly looks as if it was written on the back of a napkin.

A case in point is the chaotic and unfair way it has been imposed on small and medium-sized business enterprises (SMEs) in Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and New Brunswick.

“On environmental policy, small businesses appear to be an afterthought for this government,” Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Business (CFIB), said in a statement Thursday.

He was responding to an announcement by Environment and Climate Change Minister Catherine McKenna of two rebate programs ostensibly designed to help SMEs cope with the increased costs they face because of carbon taxes.

While McKenna announced a $1.4 billion, five-year program to help SMEs retrofit their businesses to make them more energy efficient, and to buy energy efficient equipment, Kelly condemned it as “too little, too late” and “a drop in the bucket.” ...

With the election less than five months away, these rebates won’t even start until the Trudeau government passes its budget implementation bill, and issues regulations on the specifics of how the rebates will work.