Trudeau Brought Woe to Canada

By Matthew Lau

Wednesday, January 08, 2025

 

Justin Trudeau has finally announced that he will resign as Prime Minister of Canada as soon as the Liberal Party elects a replacement leader. The announcement followed his botched firing attempt of his finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, last month, preempted by her resignation on the day she was to deliver the government’s economic statement, throwing Trudeau’s already troubled leadership into further turmoil. Ahead of his resignation, the Liberal Party’s Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic caucuses all called for Trudeau to step down, effectively making his continued leadership impossible.

 

What is Trudeau’s legacy after nine years as prime minister? Ruinous economic policy, worse government services, and widespread social disorder — all of which are worth unpacking in detail.

 

Begin with the economy. Since Trudeau took office and through to the third quarter of 2024 (the latest available data), cumulative real GDP per capita growth in nine years has been 1.7 percent in Canada versus 18.6 percent in the United States. When data for the fourth quarter of 2024 are published, the gap will almost certainly widen: Canada’s real GDP per capita fell for six consecutive quarters as of the third quarter of 2024, and is expected to have fallen again in the year’s final quarter. This means that Canadians, on average, would have 17 percent higher incomes today if Canada’s real GDP per capita growth had tracked with the United States under Trudeau. 

 

Canada’s economic performance under Trudeau is even worse when you examine the details. The component of GDP that drives long-term improvements in living standards and productivity growth is business investment, but business investment in non-residential structures, machinery, equipment, and intellectual property is down 8.2 percent in Canada (again, cumulative real per capita changes) since Trudeau took office. By stark contrast, the United States is up 34.5 percent.

 

Under Trudeau, businesses invested less while the government expanded significantly. From 2015 to 2024, total employment in Canada’s agricultural industry fell 18 percent, but the federal department of agriculture and agri-food headcount increased by 11 percent. Similarly, while total employment in natural resources fell 1 percent, the headcount at the federal department of natural resources increased 39 percent. And so on: While total private-sector employment, including self-employment, rose only about 12 percent, federal public administration employees rose 43 percent. No wonder Canada’s GDP numbers are such a disaster. And, while Trudeau raised taxes, he still managed to double the federal net debt to $1.4 trillion.

 

Next, consider Trudeau’s record on government services. Health-care access has gone down. Trudeau repeatedly boasted his national child-care program, essentially a federal takeover of the child-care sector initiated in 2021 with tens of billions of dollars in new federal spending. But the thing has been a calamity: Child-care access has decreased, especially for the most disadvantaged families. Under Trudeau, the Canadian military is in shambles. Likewise, foreign policy is so disastrous that it was praised by Hamas in December 2023.

 

The recent operational performance of Crown corporations (government-owned corporations), such as Canada Post and Via Rail, and of government offices, such as the passport offices, have been absolutely abysmal. While government services deteriorate, the Trudeau government has poured energy into initiatives that require employers at all federally regulated workplaces to supply free menstrual products in all washrooms — including men’s washrooms — in the name of “washroom equity.” 

 

There is one government service that, unlike child care or the postal service, has become infamous for its new astonishing accessibility: Physician-assisted suicide, which now accounts for about five percent of deaths in Canada. It is offered so widely that even groups that campaigned for its legalization say it has gone too far. A story from 2023 shows the stunning dysfunction of Canadian health care: A woman from British Columbia was told she had cancer, refused cancer treatment in Canada, and was then offered medicalized suicide. She ended up traveling to the U.S. for medical care that saved her life. Another story: A veteran and former Paralympian had been trying to get a wheelchair ramp installed in her home for five years; a government worker offered her physician-assisted suicide instead.

 

Finally, consider the social disorder that Trudeau sparked. There has been a recent explosion in antisemitism across the country, including violent attacks. Police-reported hate crimes (defined as crimes motivated by race, color, religion, etc.) more than tripled from 2015 to 2023, even after accounting for population growth. Through the first nine months of 2024, the Toronto police reported a 40 percent annual increase in hate crimes, driven by a 69 percent increase in hate crimes against Jews. After declining 29 percent from 2006 to 2014, violent crime has since risen by 40 percent.

 

Nine years of Trudeau have clearly made Canada poorer, weaker, less free, and increasingly dysfunctional. He is finally leaving, but continued Liberal Party power until this year’s federal election means Canada’s economic and social-policy storm is not over. Thankfully, “a cleaner, better, stronger land will lie in the sunshine when the storm has cleared,” to quote Sherlock Holmes. The election can’t come soon enough.