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Will someone please offer Prime Minister Justin Trudeau a job? Preferably, a nice sinecure at an NGO in another country that’s subsidized by Liberal donors.
The Canadian electorate — and now even his NDP sidekick Jagmeet Singh — are fed up with him. Earlier this month, Singh pulled out of a deal to prop up the Liberals, then ensured their political survival by pledging not to support a non-confidence motion that, if passed, would trigger an election. Bloc Leader Yves-François Blanchet said the same.
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“New Democrats came to Ottawa to get stuff done, to work for people, to fight for people, not to play Pierre Poilievre‘s games,” Singh said. “We’re not going to let Pierre Poilievre tell us what to do.”
An election must be held a year from now by law, but Trudeau’s departure cannot come soon enough. He won’t resign, despite terrible polls, because he doesn’t have any career prospects. It now appears that he will make a deal with the separatists to stay in power.
The Trudeau years from 2015 to 2024 will be known as Canada’s “lost years.” Trudeau’s policies have unnecessarily bruised the country’s main wealth generator: resource production. His immigration policies have been hare-brained and contributed to the housing affordability problem and the crisis in health care.
Then there’s the “alarming state of federal finances,” as described by Fraser Institute analysts Jake Fuss and Grady Munro in April.
“The Trudeau government tabled its 2024 budget earlier this month and the contents of the fiscal plan laid bare the alarming state of federal finances. Both spending and debt per person are at or near record highs and prospects for the future don’t appear any brighter,” they wrote.
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The Trudeau government estimates that program spending will reach $483 billion by 2024/25 and hit $542 billion by 2028/29 — an increase of 18.4 per cent from this year’s level, according to the Fraser Institute.
“Prime Minister Trudeau has already recorded the five highest levels of federal program spending per person (adjusted for inflation) in Canadian history from 2018 to 2022. Projections for spending in the 2024 budget assert the prime minister is now on track to have the eight highest years of per-person spending on record by the end of the 2025/26 fiscal year,” wrote Fuss and Munro.
“Per-person federal spending is expected to equal $11,901 this year. To put this into perspective, this is significantly more than Ottawa spent during the global financial crisis in 2008 or either world war. It’s also about 28 per cent higher than the full final year of Stephen Harper’s time as prime minister, meaning the size of the federal government has expanded by more than one quarter in a decade.”
Accompanying this ruinous spree are dramatic increases in government debt. “Between 2015 and 2024, Ottawa is expected to run 10 consecutive deficits, with total gross debt set to reach $2.1 trillion within the next 12 months,” they wrote. “By the end of the current fiscal year, each Canadian will be burdened with $12,769 more in total federal debt (adjusted for inflation) than they were in 2014/15.”
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Trudeau’s track record in other areas is also abysmal. The country’s military has been degraded, our influence internationally has diminished and high taxes plague businesses and civil society. It’s little wonder that Trudeau’s face was not featured on Liberal election signs in Montreal before the recent by-election, which the Grits lost.
It’s enough already.
“Polls have the Liberals down by some 20 points to the Conservatives, and as much as two-thirds say Mr. Trudeau should resign. Now in his ninth year as PM, he pledges to stay,” wrote the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.
“This has been the Trudeau experience: pain for Canada’s middle class so the prime minister can virtue-signal on the world stage. Productivity has declined under Mr. Trudeau, opening a 30 per cent gap with the U.S., and Canada’s GDP per capita now trails America’s by more than $20,000.”
“Sunny ways” has not translated into sunny days. Canadians want change in Ottawa. Trudeau won’t resign until he can move on. So can someone please find him a job?
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