Phantom liberty

It's never been a better time in Canada to be on the government dole. It's never been a worse time to be anywhere else.

A brewing and cynically orchestrated constitutional crisis.

A ‘Progressive Conservative’ government sky-rocketing its own debt by $140 billion in six years.

The paper-shredder coming out when investigators come calling, golden parachutes for non-democratic flunkies, and unearned eulogies for destructive redistributionists.

New revelations on the outright government invention of some imagined Jan. 6th, to justify Charter abuse.

A sacrificial Liberal lamb on the tacit continuation of mass immigration, who appears unable to rub sentences together.

Confirmation of an era deemed the worst for Canada’s economic growth since the Great Depression.

And a PM already wheels-up after two days in the House, and having worked a matter of weeks over six months — during the supposed Greatest Threat That Canada Has Ever Kno- "Hold on a second, the President sent me another meme."

If you’re short on home equity, stable six-figure employment, a bollard in your driveway to prevent the routine car-theft, or don’t have a sleepy TFW security guard — armed with the combined stopping-power of a walkie-talkie and a flashlight — patrolling your backyard, these are indeed interesting moments on what occasionally feels like the not-so-good side of the Berlin Wall.

For all that quickly-departing and hopelessly hollow “break us so he can own us,” and “existential threats to democracy,” and now claims of hope for renewal — ask a professional of the non-government-relations-and-entrenched-interest variety how this is going, and you’ll get a frank assessment that this is still decline, only, perhaps arguably slower; as if that is something to celebrate.

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The latest episode of ‘Not “Sorry”’ on Juno News, and one of three appearances in the pages of the Toronto Sun last week.

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In a damning Fraser Institute report released today, the policy think-tank’s latest study, Canada’s “Ugly” Growth Experience, 2020–2024: Why GDP per Capita Declined while the Overall Economy Grew, paints a particularly bleak picture of quality-of-life in Canada, in spite of the professional class deferral to “but there was some growth!”

By now, we of course know the important differentiation between per-capita and productivity — and pure growth for growth’s sake.

In 2021, OECD projections placed Canada at the bottom of its member nations in terms of per-person GDP growth — but Canada’s performance thus far has fallen below even those grim benchmarks. (Bryan Passifiume, Toronto Sun.)

We also know that this unique dynamic is owed to a matter of self-sabotage, and biomass. Investment into Canada has stalled — and until or unless the Carney Liberals get serious about cutting red tape or removing anti-resource legislation, why wouldn’t it — at the same time the government allowed for and continues to welcome, at present, a near five-million on expiring and temporary visas, with millions in that cohort unlikely to leave willingly.

The very cost of who we are has been made cheap, while the price to invest in our present and future is as costly as ever. That is a doom-loop in dire need of breaking. And we don’t get there with more excuses.

If nothing else, the party line, or insider rebuke of criticism of a failing status quo helps explain why Canadian governments continue to do wrong, and why they don’t appear to listen to more protein-rich advisory; instead preferring empty-calorie, booze-obsessed cheap stunts, and a deference to the retail-political.

In a recent wide-ranging and bread-breaking chat between the founders of Project Ontario (to which I am a contributor), and a defender of the Ford record and a former senior-level employee at Queen’s Park, the reticence to embrace some of the values of the Common Sense Revolution, the maligning of policy recommendation as “radical,” appears more to do with radical in relation to risk of a polling swing — that victory and perceived incrementalism are more important than reform, that criticism can only be kept inside the tent, despite key members of the Ford camp repeatedly reaching outside — and into Liberal media — during the federal campaign.

When even this cursed iteration of the Globe Opinion section is making the joke about Ford running for Bonnie Crombie’s now-vacant seat in the visitor’s gallery, it’s hard to shake the sense that as unemployment grows, our economies sputter, decision-makers all but give up on the housing crisis, the public sector swells and private sector wastes away, and government’s pile up millstone-level debts cynically repackaged as “investment,” that the only ‘Hire Canadian’ we’re involved in, the only jobs we’re protecting, belong to those along for the increasingly-big-government ride.

If the lesson here is that broader principles are antiquated, a hinderance, self-righteous, holier-than-thou, and incongruous with the realities of the modern political landscape, that’s going to be a tough sell for the growing number on the outside looking in.

I don’t buy that as a good enough excuse. Do you?

Alexander Brown is the Director of the National Citizens Coalition, a host and op-ed columnist with Juno News, a contributor to Project Ontario, and a guest columnist in publications such as The Hub.

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