**🚨 $1 Trillion in investment
— wealthmoose (@wealthmoose) May 18, 2026
fled Canada since 2015. 🇨🇦
And we’re just getting started.
First we chased out the auto industry:
📍 Honda — $15 Billion gone
📍 Ford — $2.3 Billion gone
📍 GM — $2 Billion gone
Now Bill C-22 is chasing out
the tech industry: 💻
📍 Signal —… https://t.co/gIAiTPoQjG pic.twitter.com/2NXBu0NF1t
As prices for just about everything skyrocket and an untold number of Canadians are going deeper into debt trying to keep up, the Fraser Institute’s latest study is a reminder that Canada and the provinces have been hurdling their own roads of indebtedness since the 2008 recession.
In its latest research bulletin on the growing debt burden for Canadians, the public policy organization found that the combined federal and provincial net debt, adjusted for inflation, has nearly doubled from $1.24 trillion in 2007-08 to a projected $2.44 trillion this fiscal year, a growth of 97.7 per cent.
In 2024, the Fraser Institute forecast it to reach $2.2 trillion and last year it was $2.3 trillion.
Most of the $1.2 trillion over the 18-year study period was accrued by Ottawa, projected to have increased $712.7 billion (93.7 per cent) over that time, particularly during its response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In fact, Jake Fuss, the author and the institute’s director of fiscal studies, found that from 2019-20 until this fiscal year, both levels of government are projected to have collectively accumulated $603.7 billion in net debt, an increase of 32.8 per cent.
With the pandemic well in the rearview, Fuss said now is the time for a plan to address government debt.
“A long-term plan to return to balanced budgets is necessary if Canadian governments are going to begin the difficult task of stemming debt accumulation and eventually reducing the debt burden,” he wrote.
The bulletin notes that Ottawa and the provinces “have decisively broken from the era of fiscal prudence” exhibited from the mid-1990s to the late aughts and returned to an era similar to the 1970s to the 1990s, when accumulating debt and increasing deficits “became the norm.”
In comparison, in the 12 years before the study period, federal net debt was reduced by $364.5 billion.
Canada's combined federal-provincial debt costs are almost three times what the federal government currently spends on national defence.
Servicing Canada's ballooning debt now costs $2,000 per citizen, per year.
“Put differently, in the past 18 years, the federal government has accumulated nearly double the amount of debt that it repaid in the mid-1990s to late-2000s,” Fuss explained.
**
Prime Minister Mark Carney’s “sovereign wealth fund” will cost taxpayers $750 million a year in debt interest charges, finance department figures show. The estimate yesterday followed criticism the $25 billion Canada Strong Fund was not a savings account: “It’s actually a debt fund.”
Similar patterns appear among new graduates. Statistics Canada’s analysis of STEM retention shows that graduates in mathematics, computer science, and engineering are less likely to remain in Canada than non STEM graduates, even among Canadian citizens (Retention of STEM Graduates in Canada, 2025). Doctoral graduates and graduates from highly ranked universities have the lowest retention rates, particularly in the first five years after graduation. Mobility rises with skill portability.
International students exhibit slightly improved retention, but the gains are fragile. Students from top institutions and advanced programs still leave at disproportionately higher rates. Canada is educating globally competitive STEM talent in fields where U.S. entry barriers are relatively low—through TN visas and employer sponsorship.
Immigration does not offset these losses. Rather, it intensifies them. The Institute for Canadian Citizenship’s Leaky Bucket 2025 report2 shows that onward migration is highest among immigrants with doctoral degrees, strong earnings potential, and experience in management, ICT, engineering, and science based occupations. Within five years of entering Canada, highly educated immigrants are more than twice as likely to leave as lower skilled immigrants.
So there was a business case for natural gas exports to Germany after all.
Of course, we never thought otherwise. But back in August 2022, with Europe freezing and scrambling after Russia invaded Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came to Canada hat in hand looking for reliable LNG supplies. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau looked him in the eye and delivered his classic line, that there was “never a strong business case” for Canadian LNG exports to Europe. Too expensive, too far, Europe was going green anyway, etc.
Germany shrugged, turned around, and signed a fat long-term deal with Qatar instead.
Fast forward through years of European energy pain, higher emissions from dirtier suppliers, and endless Canadian hand-wringing about projects on the “wrong coast.” Fast forward also past multiple stalled proposals, regulatory delays, and virtue signalling: nothing says moral leadership like lecturing your allies on climate purity while they scramble for alternatives to keep the lights on.
Yesterday, however, Energy Minister Tim Hodgson stood up in Vancouver and proudly announced Canada’s first major long-term LNG deal with Germany: up to 1 million tonnes per year from the indigenous-owned Ksi Lisims project on BC’s northwest coast, with deliveries starting in the early 2030s for up to 20 years.
The buyer? Securing Energy for Europe, which is to be served by a floating LNG facility on Nisga’a lands, powered by hydroelectricity from BC Hydro.
**
In March, the Carney government announced a relaxation of rules for the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program in rural Canada. At the request of any premier, the allowable share of low-wage TFWs in rural workforces can be increased from 10% to 15%. So far, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia have opted in.
It is notable that most provinces have not chosen to avail themselves of the federal government’s offer to boost TFW numbers. The Canadian public’s support for immigration restriction shows few signs of cooling, and provincial governments are to some extent behaving accordingly.
The business lobby has emerged as the only voice in support of the Carney government’s loosening of foreign labour rules. Restaurants Canada – the national foodservice lobby – is sounding the alarm bells over “labour shortages” in the restaurant sector, and is “calling on all provincial governments to sign on to the temporary cap increase for temporary foreign workers in rural regions”. Restaurants Canada is often blunt in its immigration advocacy, in one case circulating a document titled “Foreign Labour Is Essential To Canada’s Foodservice Industry”.
The idea that Canada is experiencing such a dire shortage of workers that we need to import people to cook and bus tables in restaurants flies in the face of all available evidence. In April, youth unemployment in particular rose to 14.3%. A recent study by the Fraser Institute found that last year 437,000 people in Canada aged 15-24 looked for a job but could not find one. This figure is up 57% since 2022.
The study explains that “the rate at which youth unemployment climbed after 2022 has no historical precedent when Canada’s economy is growing: for teenagers, the increase in unemployment exceeded that during recessions starting in 1981, 1990, and 2008”. Further, “the surge of youth unemployment is specific to Canada: while unemployment for Canada’s youths was at a level associated with recession, the US rate remained close to historic lows”.
The statistical evidence backs up the anecdotal evidence. Increasingly, Canadian youth are reporting that finding a simple summer job is next to impossible. In one recent case, 5,000 young Canadians lined up at a Calgary job fair, with one young man saying he has sent 100 applications and not heard back.
**
Your grocery list this week probably didn’t include “luxury Normandy butter cups” or beef tenderloin, and you probably opted for the $25 bottle of red wine instead the one more than twice the price, but the Canadian Taxpayers Federation wants you to know that “Prime Minister Mark Carney and his entourage” are enjoying such luxuries when they fly internationally.
The advocacy group dug into House of Commons order paper questions and learned that just shy of $200,000 was spent feeding Carney and government officials who accompanied him on just three out-of-country flights in 2025.
Franco Terrazzano, the CTF’s federal director, contended that’s more than an average Canadian family will spend to feed themselves for a decade.
“When the government is paying more than a billion dollars a week to cover interest charges on the debt, it’s time to stop irresponsible overspending on luxuries like gourmet in-flight dining,” he said in a press release.
According to the latest Canada Food Price Report, the average family of four is expected to spend $17,571.79 on food this year, which, over ten years, is roughly $180,000.
**
According to a Food Banks Canada report, food banks across the country recorded nearly 2.2 million visits in March of last year.
“That’s double the monthly usage recorded just six years ago,” the report said. “It took decades to reach one million visits in a month, and it has now taken half a decade to double that.”
**
According to the latest Canadian Association of Regulated Importers (CARI) figures released May 23, Canada has already imported more than 52.2 million kilograms of chicken so far this year under WTO, CUSMA, and CPTPP commitments combined. Nearly 23.8 million kilograms came directly from the United States under CUSMA alone.
And yet, wholesale chicken prices in Canada continue to surge.
Over the past year, Canada imported roughly 200 to 215 million kilograms of chicken overall, enough for approximately 1.3 to 1.4 billion meals. About 60% came from the United States. Most Canadians likely have no idea how often they may already be consuming imported chicken in nuggets, deli meats, frozen meals, restaurant sandwiches, soups, and prepared foods.
Under supply management, Canadians were promised something very different: Stable supply, mostly domestic production, and predictable prices.
Instead, Canada now faces one of the tightest chicken markets in decades.
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