The main benefit of the doubt is being given by a compliant media. That will continue, as journalists know which side their bread is buttered on, but Canadians will see continued decay in quality of life. The true hope for the Liberals is to make enough new citizens who have no knowledge of pre-2015 Canada. And to stay focused on the boomers, who have no knowledge of 2026 Canada.
Eventually, Canadians are going to stop believing that all our problems are caused by uncontrollable outside forces and start putting the blame where it belongs - on bad government here at home. Inflation, capital flight, stalled infrastructure, falling productivity and a devalued dollar are all homegrown problems and all we have to deal with them is The Carney running up the debt and flooding the zone with immigrants. As for Trump's tariffs, Carney isn't to blame for them but neither has he fixed them as he so famously promised to. We can only hope that the country wakes up in October and Poilievre gets back in the saddle and musters up an effective opposition.
You can easily verify this yourself but here are some numbers. Canada's federal budgetary deficit is projected to hover around $50 billion to $72 billion for the broader 2025–2026 and 2026–2027 fiscal periods according to the Federal Spring Economic update and Canada plans to welcome 380,000 new permanent residents in 2026, according to the official Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada levels plan.
To me, that sounds like running up the debt and flooding the zone with immigrants but, of course, that’s JMO.
And the brilliant architect to Canada's gutting of a functioning and popular immigration system the envy of the world is richly reward by Carney with the plum posting of Ambassador to the US, our very own Mister Wiseman of the Century Initiative (100 million in Canada by 2100) empowered under Trudeau Junior's dedicated desire to turn Canada into a dysfunctional post national state. A job well done, eh? That this genius level policy broke our healthcare system and made the ability to meet housing needs all but impossible, rendered home ownership out of reach for most young people and kept pressure on wages down for those entering the job market, while generously allowing Canadian taxpayers the privilege of funding all kinds of freebies and programs to illegal aliens is a glorious crowning achievement to just how much 'progress' a country can experience and still earn the confidence of its electorate. Canadians should be so proud of inheriting a perfectly good country and leaving such a legacy of stewardship into.... well, this. I still say give it all to the natives and let's see what real stewards of the land will build with this balance sheet once every homeowner is taxed out of their equity to pay interest on the debt.
You make all sorts of logical leaps. Here's why the effort is misleading:
1) The Century Initiative has been discredited. Show the rest of us evidence of Mark Carney's p-r-e-s-e-n-t pursuit of that goal.
2) The surge of immigration did NOT "break" our healthcare system, nor did it undermine housing policy in this country. In fact, successive provincial governments across the country have been working hard to do these things for the past three decades (with the complicity of successive federal goveernments.
3) No "illegal aliens" were admitted to Canada. The use of the term betrays your real goal, which is to "other" irregular migrants and, indeed, all migrants to Canada.
4) Your use of the term "natives" also betrays your true colours.
Well done. Your inadvertent transparency WRT to your deep-seated prejudices has given the rest of us much greater understanding of where the positions you advocate would end up taking the rest of us.
Discredited now, yes. And I never said Carney was pursing this gaol; I said he rewarded its architect. True.
Canada's population through immigration grew by about 20% over the past 10 years. By coincidence, I guess, the number of Canadians without a doctor grew by the same. Sure, we can argue whether the term 'break' is accurate but the system itself is described to me by emergency room doctors I know as "broken."
Housing starts since 2015 have been well under 10% (the best year). You see the problem with 20% immigration.
Of course illegal aliens were not 'admitted' to Canada. That would make them legal. But we do have over 5 million visas expiring just this year and we do spend public dollars for housing, healthcare, and until recently welfare on 'temporary' visa holders. And the deportation rate runs at less than 1% for expired visas. I call them illegal. What do you call them?
I'm all for legal immigration and grew up in a Canada that was multicultural but focused on integration. This program worked. I grew up next door and throughout my neighbourhood with first generation Canadians... emphasis on 'Canadian' by way of integration. That path is no longer official policy. Don't pretend raising the issue of what it costs all of us when integration is not the policy is really some kind of cover for being xenophobic. That's not true and it is the worst possible reading of what I said and then compounds your error by adding another layer of bullshit presumptions on top of that. This is a common tactic of progressives: to vilify the person who raises some legitimate concerns rather than deal with the merit of the criticisms themselves. You're better than that.
if you did not wish me or others to read that into your remarks, then you should have worded them differently.
Nonetheless, I apologize for the offence my harsh remarks caused.
For the record, I consider myself centrist in the Canadian context, and certainly do not see myself as fitting the US epithet / definition of 'progressive', as you would have it.
Also, for the record, I was a trenchant critic of the Trudeau government, for all sorts of reasons, including its embrace of the Century Initiative, as well as its failure to move more quickly to undo all the damage done to the CAF since the end of the Cold War.
On the issue of immigration, multiculturalism and integration, I think we need to be wary of being too self-congratulatory on this score.
I recall well the casual and widespread use of terms like "chink", "nigger" and "neech" (a derogatory word for indigenous person) in Alberta, where I was born and grew up, during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
I also observe that the last of the notorious residential schools did not close until the early 1990s.
Yes, they are down from the half million a year mark where they were before but 380,000 new immigrants a year is still far too high under the circumstances. The decline in the population of working age adults in Canada is a problem but it isn't solved by bringing in large numbers of people who are not employable because they are children or seniors and/or they lack job skills including vital ones like language. And I'm only talking about legal immigration. No one even knows how many are here illegally as rejected asylum seekers or on expired visas. Deportation orders, when they happen at all, are rarely actually executed.
The amazing thing about immigrant children is that they will grow up and become working age adults. If a child comes to Canada at age 10 and then enters the work force at 18, and stays in Canada for the rest of their life until retirement at 65, then they spent 8 years as a child dependent and then 57 years as a working adult. Seems to me that's a pretty good ratio for the Canadian economy.
Given that Canada has an aging population and a low birth rate, families with young children are one of the best types of immigrants we could want for our country. In terms of contributions to the economy and Canadian society, you get both the efforts and contributions of the parents and then their children as well. On top of that, children brought to Canada when young and raised here for most of their lives generally adapt more easily to Canadian life and culture than adults who spent most of their lives in another country and are entirely acculturated to a different place.
We should want immigrants who will settle in Canada and build their lives here permanently. Families with children are ideal for this purpose: Parents want to put down roots and build stable and safe lives for their children.
Yes, children grow up. Who knew? You are describing the ideal immigration scenario where new immigrants assimilate, the grandparents are not a drain on the healthcare system and the parents are immediately employable and raise their children well to integrate into the host society - the old American style melting pot. Unfortunately, official multiculturalism discourages all of the above leaving us with parallel societies with their own values, customs and languages that can become a burden on the host society. And I'm talking only about legal immigration where the incoming people are supposed to be vetted to ensure they will be contributing citizens. That this has largely become a fiction in recent years has only made things worse.
People trotted out that "parallel societies" line about the Ukrainians, about the Chinese and Japanese, in fact about every group of immigrants that has ever come to Canada since 1867. In every case, every group of immigrants integrates into the broader society, both shaping and influencing society and also being shaped and influenced themselves.
Integration of immigrants into the mainstream of society is a generational project. It doesn't happen instantly, and it can't. I'm a Canadian adult, and I assume you are too. If something horrible happened to Canada, a war or famine or plague, which obliged us to flee abroad to, let's say, Japan, it's not like either of us can just stop being Canadian. We'd learn the language and the laws of the new country we're living in, we'd do our best to integrate and to build a new life for ourselves and our families, but we'd always be Canadians, with our own Canadian habits and beliefs and culture.
We can't realistically expect any different from any immigrant who comes to Canada. What we should demand is not total cultural assimilation, which is both unjust, unrealistic, and largely unnecessary. An immigrant is not going to stop loving soccer and start loving hockey just because they're now in Canada. What we should realistically expect is that immigrants learn our languages, follow our laws, respect other Canadians, and work to the best of their ability to build a life and contribute. My experience with immigrants in Canada that I know is that the vast majority of them do so and are very happy to do so. Immigrants often appreciate Canada much more deeply than Canadians born here do, I have found. I think this has something to do with fleeing countries with terrible problems or terrible circumstances, and being able to properly appreciate everything good about Canada.
But, let's return to the scenario of one of us being forced by circumstances to migrate. Our children raised in a new society would be partly Canadian and partly Japanese (or wherever takes us in). The grandchildren would be more Japanese than Canadian. The great grandchildren almost entirely Japanese, and perhaps would know little of Canada other than whatever family stories they remember. That's always how integration and cultural change works: It takes generations to happen.
When the Ukrainians settled in Canada, they built whole Ukrainian towns and villages, Ukrainian churches, they dressed and acted like Ukrainians, and they largely spoke Ukrainian among themselves. A hundred years later, Ukrainian Canadians still have some memory of their ancestry and their traditions, many still eat cabbage rolls and pierogi or attend Ukrainian churches, but largely they're as Canadian as anyone else. A Ukrainian Canadian is a different culture than a Ukrainian from Ukraine.
There's never been any one definition of "Canadian" anyways. There's English and French Canadians, Europeans and Indigenous, Ukrainians and Germans and Scandinavians, Chinese and Japanese and Koreans, people from every part of Africa and Asia and Oceania. People from all over the world become Canadians, and Canada is better for it.
This anti-immigrant crap we've gotten ourselves wound up on is the most counterproductive nonsense for our country I can imagine. It's totally contrary to both the whole Canadian historical experience and tradition, and to our current national interest. It's also counterproductive to the project of integrating immigrants. Prejudice and chauvinism from the host society against immigrants makes them more likely to withdraw into their own communities, not more likely to want to integrate.
There is no country on Earth that has been more immigrant friendly than Canada but that is changing as immigration has switched from largely European to African, Middle Eastern and Asian. This isn't a minor change and there are limits to assimilation, especially when it is discouraged by government policy and the numbers are so much higher than ever in the past. We should be teaching children in the official languages of our country, not in their native tongues but that's just one example among many. It has become standard practice to label as prejudiced, chauvinist, bigoted and racist anyone who is critical of the mess our immigration system has become in recent years whether they are any of those things or not. This assures that many won't speak up. That the system has worked well in the past is no predictor of the future when so many of the fundamentals that made it work have been discarded in favour of a post-national pipe dream.
Carney and his acolytes have an agenda which relies on complacency and creating some myth that he’s our best option. Unfortunately that agenda when it starts to manifest itself in more open ways may lead to a betrayal of Canada and far too much government and far too little real world investment and productive employment. Complacency is an excellent word to describe the sheep like mentality of so many Canadians who have come to believe that big brother will look after them.
I am neither a journalist nor a political pundit. I am not a political scientist or a pollster.
I cannot explain why more Canadians are not shocked at two statistical facts: firstly, that the productive population is shrinking, as more productive, intelligent Canadians leave the Country each year.
“No, overall more people are still arriving in Canada than are leaving, meaning Canada's total overall migration net flow remains positive. However, emigration of Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and temporary workers has hit record highs due to cost-of-living pressures, housing costs, and tightening immigration policies.”
Secondly, that in the last six fiscal quarters, more businesses have exited or shuttered their doors, than have opened or set up shop.
“Yes, more businesses in Canada have closed than opened for six consecutive quarters. According to a report by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), this sustained period of business exits outpacing new entries marks a prolonged "entrepreneurial drought" that began in early 2024.”
I appreciate the discussion of the results of the polls and the context behind the numbers.
“….but for now he remains seen as adult in the room who can manage Trump and help Canada survive and thrive in the new world order he argued Canada must adapt to at Davos.”
As Jen Gerson has pointed out, how is it that a leader who somehow cannot muster the courage to expend political capital by risking a Toronto seat in a by-election, be trusted to herd the middle power mediocrities together in a fight against the evil hegemons?
What progress has the great economic savant made on the files he was assumed to be most qualified to handle?
I was assured not that long ago that Prime Minister Carney is “the man you want in a crisis. I am an expert of crisis management?”
Now, we are being prepared to lower our expectation. Soften up the rubes for the next con.
We tried it their way, and their way doesn’t work.
That's a fair question, but so is the corollary - when there are important things to worry about, why would a leader with a slim majority take a political risk for something relatively unimportant like the Toronto Island airport?
Well, the way I would express it is that the Toronto airport is small potatoes compared to rebuilding Canada's military, building new pipelines from Alberta both west to the Pacific and East to Ontario, and reorienting our economy towards greater trade with Europe and Asia.
So I think a fair answer is, you gotta get the political capital to do the big stuff, and make whatever compromises you need to make on the small stuff.
The obvious counterpoint is that Canada does a bad job on all of this small stuff. The airport is no big deal by itself, but as a stand-in for a large number of worthwhile projects that Canada struggles to even start, let alone finish, and especially let alone finish on time and on budget... and you know, fair point we need to start doing better on all of that stuff. Once again though, any individual project isn't the point, it's getting the process and governance in a place where projects get done better. Which matters more, the airport, or getting a new process for environmental reviews that really works the way we need it to?
Now, the Carney government has talked a big game on making it easier to get things done, and this is a really big important thing for the future of Canada. The jury is still very much out on whether they accomplish anything. But I would say that's the measuring stick I care about: does it get easier to build in Canada? And not so much any particular project.
He has failed to get the big deal he was elected to get for us - and has now pivoted to "why do we even need a deal?" and "we can't trust Trump anyway, so why bother?"
....which would have made a GREAT campaign platform, but make for a lousy follow up to "I am the ONLY person who can get a deal with Trump"
Also...
NOT ONE house has been built by the new housing agency he said would build 500,000 houses per year.
NOT ONE project has been approved by his new "fast-track" approval body.
How long do you think we can keep pretending that "the jury is still very much out"....?
I don’t think Carney promised, nor did his supporters vote for him on the expectation of a deal.
Separately, reorganizing the way our entire country works around projects is more akin to gardening than one big announcement. I don’t know what anyone expected but if it was that you could just press a button or through sheer power of will move us to a better place, that was never going to happen. It will take years because much of the solution is a lot of little things. Some legislative, some regulatory, and some personnel.
So yes, as far as I’m concerned the jury is still out and will be for several years.
Selective memory is a very important skill for those who wish to rationalize support for this government.
I see you've mastered this skill.
How many Mark Carney quotes do you want which show him clearly promising that he would get a deal with Trump, that he was uniquely qualified to get a deal with Trump - or even (not making this up) promising us that he would soon have a deal finalized (by LAST summer)....?
Would dozens of those quotes change your mind?
Would hundreds....?
As for "the impossibility of building stuff that quick" allow me to remind you that just a year ago, Germany built a brand new never-before-discussed LNG port in just 200 days. The UAE decided to build a new pipeline this past May, and it is already halfway built.
Building at speeds not seen in generations IS actually do-able, IF you actually want to build stuff. The Canadian benchmark here is the original TransMountain pipeline, which was built (using 1950s technology) in just 30 months - from concept to completion.
The current pipeline plan under Carney is still stuck at the MOU phase, has not yet been even provisionally approved, and EVEN IF it clears all the remaining hurdles (a VERY big "if") is not due to BEGIN construction until September 2027 (which will be more than 30 months after Carney made this promise).
...but one thing I'm relatively sure of - is that when Carney decides to go to the polls again, even if he has demonstrably to that point accomplished NONE of what he had clearly promised last time he ran, you will eagerly ignore the lack of results and believe whatever he promises to do next (which will ALSO never happen).
Yep. Extension after extension… AKA the death of a thousand cuts. Ask any Canadian gun owner. (Paper cuts seem to be the Civil Service’s preferred torture instrument)
I think the zeitgeist may turn really quickly if and when the economy changes significantly. It's not like Mark Carney is some exciting political phenomenon besides being seen as a capable manager, and I don't think we're in the kind of times where a capable manager will necessarily cut it. You need to inherit something fairly well managed for that. If you're inheriting a situation that actually requires significant change, I think you need someone more dynamic in order to actually do well.
But a lot of people do seem to think they can indeed just check out and let the CEO handle it. And as long as the effects aren't really being felt by that many people just yet, maybe that works politically. If and when it becomes clear that it won't actually cut it, and more people do start really feeling those effects, I imagine opinion could turn shockingly quickly. To the point where I may even find myself going, geez, people, he was never that great and he's really not that bad. We just need much better.
It's easy to have enormous faith in competent management while everything still feels at least somewhat manageable. I suspect we'll learn a lot more about both Carney and the true depth of his public support when it doesn't.
I keep wondering what will happen if the 3rd quarter of this year actually also shows a contraction in our economy, like the first two quarters did.
No matter how slight that contraction might be, it would certainly prove to be hugely inconvenient for the whole "we're in capable hands" narrative.
Not to mention all the vitriol the media spewed at Poilievre for having the sheer gall of pointing out that two quarters in a row of negative growth IS a recession.
Not saying this will happen, but IF it does, I will be paying very close attention to how our media covers it.
Spot on. I think we have faith in Carney because there are no other options. We're on something of a national Titanic, and Carney is the only lifeboat available. I don't envy him that. He is the only adult in the room....there are none in the American one. And no, we can't make concessions to them for reasons outlined by Matt and Jen several times. Time to find out what we're dealing with. I expect a 60-day extension is coming. If it doesn't, we'll cross that bridge together. The ocean is getting rougher....maybe we're Forrest in the hurricane.
When I look at Carney’s reputation I feel like Will Ferrell. Am I taking crazy pills? He hasn’t actually done anything yet!
His first budget was basically a big spending, big handout budget with some noise about investments and dodgy corporate accounting. Compare that to the Chrétien Martin budgets. It’s nothing monumental or memorable.
It’s basically the same on tariffs. Trying to thread the needle and not choose a negotiated agreement or a trade war.
At some point he’ll have to actually lead and make some hard choices.
I have some trouble with the statement "Canadians remain deeply conflicted about the economy and their own financial circumstances." I'd use another word, worried, or unsure, or frustrated, but not so mch conflicted. We know where the factors are that worry us and each of us has their own reasons.
Thank you for this. It will be interesting to say what polls taken in late September might indicate.
Question: You listed a number of different challenges for the federal government, all of which are pressing. I was surprised that you did NOT mention the rehabilitation and expansion of the Canadian military.
I've been giving Carney the benefit of the doubt based on the understanding that engaging in public negotiations with the Trump administration quickly degrades into a pissing match with an 80 year old man who uses social media like a teenage mean girl. Trump's condo marketer lens on the world also means that he can be placated with superficial "wins" so long as nobody points out that he either made no gains or even lost on substance. That's how we got the USMCA - essentially still NAFTA, "the worst trade deal ever", but suddenly palatable to Trump because *he* negotiated it and therefore it must be great, renamed so that Trump can brag that now the US comes first!
However, this is all hypothetical. Schrödinger's cat remains both alive and dead only until you open the box and observe it. Perhaps Carney's plan is to keep the box closed with ongoing negotiations until after the November elections, when Trump becomes a true lame duck and likely terminally distracted with domestic political problems. That's not a bad plan, although it's risky because Trump's tariffs could come into effect for some time. If we see a deal, the waveforms are going to collapse and Carney will be judged based on what he's accomplished. I suspect he's risking a near-fatal expenditure of political capital for any significant concessions, in what's going to be an evanescent deal with a capricious and untrustworthy US administration.
Only I can wait to begin negotiating until after Trump loses some power ... hopefully ... if it happens ...eventually.
You'd have voted for that last Spring, ....right?
....I guess those of you who voted for this charlatan (and the charlatan before him) just have a much higher tolerance for being blatantly lied to than I do.
I didn't vote for the Liberals last spring. I voted for the Conservatives, deciding I'd rather see them take a shot at governing despite presenting no detail on how they'd actually achieve their agenda rather than take the risk of another 4 years of Trudeau Liberal government if the caucus steamrolled an inexperienced Mark Carney. So far, Carney has exceeded my low expectations and Poilievre has failed to meet the low bar I'd set for him.
And if you don't think rope-a-dope is a good strategy, ask George Foreman about how his fight with Muhammad Ali went.
Will he just become a lame duck though, or will he become an even more feral duck who executive-orders everything into ruin? For all the offence people take to him, unfortunately very little of it seems to manifest as meaningful opposition that I could see actually stopping him if he goes that kind of crazy.
Fair point - there's a risk that Trump continues to attack Canada anyway. If the Democrats take even the House in November, Trump's definitely a lame duck in the traditional sense. He'd have no chance of passing legislation, and lacks the authority to spend money without appropriation. However, he'd still have a fair bit of executive power that he could use to bash Canada, and there's no guarantee that the Democrats would be interested in stopping him.
Never mind what concerns Canadians, our Liberal government sure doesn’t. Almost everything they do increases costs, housing starts are down, but never fear Mark Miller is determined that more companies must speak French.
The calm before the big storm. “Big Plans” is all a lot of people have. Every year I hear them,while they lounge,BarBQ and stare at the water. Sept comes around,people feel that cool breeze on their cheek and frantically try to get something,anything done. “Christmas is coming!! Paint the house! Build a deck! Oh,I need a new furnace!!” ect. Same old,same old. Panic,frantic phoning,texting. “What do you mean you’re busy?” Sigh
Try and? 'And' is a conjunction joining words (or clauses) together because they have a relationship. 'Try access' has no relationship so it makes no sense to be linked this way. The verb 'try' must be followed by where the action is directed: to. One tries to... one does not try and (unless the 'try' can stand alone, followed by a comma). Ever.
The main benefit of the doubt is being given by a compliant media. That will continue, as journalists know which side their bread is buttered on, but Canadians will see continued decay in quality of life. The true hope for the Liberals is to make enough new citizens who have no knowledge of pre-2015 Canada. And to stay focused on the boomers, who have no knowledge of 2026 Canada.
Eventually, Canadians are going to stop believing that all our problems are caused by uncontrollable outside forces and start putting the blame where it belongs - on bad government here at home. Inflation, capital flight, stalled infrastructure, falling productivity and a devalued dollar are all homegrown problems and all we have to deal with them is The Carney running up the debt and flooding the zone with immigrants. As for Trump's tariffs, Carney isn't to blame for them but neither has he fixed them as he so famously promised to. We can only hope that the country wakes up in October and Poilievre gets back in the saddle and musters up an effective opposition.
QUOTE
The Carney running up the debt and flooding the zone with immigrants...
END QUOTE
Provide independent and corroborated evidence, please.
As for Poilievre, the only favour he could do for Conservatives in Canada would be to give up the job.
You can easily verify this yourself but here are some numbers. Canada's federal budgetary deficit is projected to hover around $50 billion to $72 billion for the broader 2025–2026 and 2026–2027 fiscal periods according to the Federal Spring Economic update and Canada plans to welcome 380,000 new permanent residents in 2026, according to the official Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada levels plan.
To me, that sounds like running up the debt and flooding the zone with immigrants but, of course, that’s JMO.
And the brilliant architect to Canada's gutting of a functioning and popular immigration system the envy of the world is richly reward by Carney with the plum posting of Ambassador to the US, our very own Mister Wiseman of the Century Initiative (100 million in Canada by 2100) empowered under Trudeau Junior's dedicated desire to turn Canada into a dysfunctional post national state. A job well done, eh? That this genius level policy broke our healthcare system and made the ability to meet housing needs all but impossible, rendered home ownership out of reach for most young people and kept pressure on wages down for those entering the job market, while generously allowing Canadian taxpayers the privilege of funding all kinds of freebies and programs to illegal aliens is a glorious crowning achievement to just how much 'progress' a country can experience and still earn the confidence of its electorate. Canadians should be so proud of inheriting a perfectly good country and leaving such a legacy of stewardship into.... well, this. I still say give it all to the natives and let's see what real stewards of the land will build with this balance sheet once every homeowner is taxed out of their equity to pay interest on the debt.
You make all sorts of logical leaps. Here's why the effort is misleading:
1) The Century Initiative has been discredited. Show the rest of us evidence of Mark Carney's p-r-e-s-e-n-t pursuit of that goal.
2) The surge of immigration did NOT "break" our healthcare system, nor did it undermine housing policy in this country. In fact, successive provincial governments across the country have been working hard to do these things for the past three decades (with the complicity of successive federal goveernments.
3) No "illegal aliens" were admitted to Canada. The use of the term betrays your real goal, which is to "other" irregular migrants and, indeed, all migrants to Canada.
4) Your use of the term "natives" also betrays your true colours.
Well done. Your inadvertent transparency WRT to your deep-seated prejudices has given the rest of us much greater understanding of where the positions you advocate would end up taking the rest of us.
Discredited now, yes. And I never said Carney was pursing this gaol; I said he rewarded its architect. True.
Canada's population through immigration grew by about 20% over the past 10 years. By coincidence, I guess, the number of Canadians without a doctor grew by the same. Sure, we can argue whether the term 'break' is accurate but the system itself is described to me by emergency room doctors I know as "broken."
Housing starts since 2015 have been well under 10% (the best year). You see the problem with 20% immigration.
Of course illegal aliens were not 'admitted' to Canada. That would make them legal. But we do have over 5 million visas expiring just this year and we do spend public dollars for housing, healthcare, and until recently welfare on 'temporary' visa holders. And the deportation rate runs at less than 1% for expired visas. I call them illegal. What do you call them?
I'm all for legal immigration and grew up in a Canada that was multicultural but focused on integration. This program worked. I grew up next door and throughout my neighbourhood with first generation Canadians... emphasis on 'Canadian' by way of integration. That path is no longer official policy. Don't pretend raising the issue of what it costs all of us when integration is not the policy is really some kind of cover for being xenophobic. That's not true and it is the worst possible reading of what I said and then compounds your error by adding another layer of bullshit presumptions on top of that. This is a common tactic of progressives: to vilify the person who raises some legitimate concerns rather than deal with the merit of the criticisms themselves. You're better than that.
if you did not wish me or others to read that into your remarks, then you should have worded them differently.
Nonetheless, I apologize for the offence my harsh remarks caused.
For the record, I consider myself centrist in the Canadian context, and certainly do not see myself as fitting the US epithet / definition of 'progressive', as you would have it.
Also, for the record, I was a trenchant critic of the Trudeau government, for all sorts of reasons, including its embrace of the Century Initiative, as well as its failure to move more quickly to undo all the damage done to the CAF since the end of the Cold War.
On the issue of immigration, multiculturalism and integration, I think we need to be wary of being too self-congratulatory on this score.
I recall well the casual and widespread use of terms like "chink", "nigger" and "neech" (a derogatory word for indigenous person) in Alberta, where I was born and grew up, during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.
I also observe that the last of the notorious residential schools did not close until the early 1990s.
"Flooding the zone with immigrants".
Immigration numbers are down. The Canadian population is, in fact, currently declining on net.
Yes, they are down from the half million a year mark where they were before but 380,000 new immigrants a year is still far too high under the circumstances. The decline in the population of working age adults in Canada is a problem but it isn't solved by bringing in large numbers of people who are not employable because they are children or seniors and/or they lack job skills including vital ones like language. And I'm only talking about legal immigration. No one even knows how many are here illegally as rejected asylum seekers or on expired visas. Deportation orders, when they happen at all, are rarely actually executed.
The amazing thing about immigrant children is that they will grow up and become working age adults. If a child comes to Canada at age 10 and then enters the work force at 18, and stays in Canada for the rest of their life until retirement at 65, then they spent 8 years as a child dependent and then 57 years as a working adult. Seems to me that's a pretty good ratio for the Canadian economy.
Given that Canada has an aging population and a low birth rate, families with young children are one of the best types of immigrants we could want for our country. In terms of contributions to the economy and Canadian society, you get both the efforts and contributions of the parents and then their children as well. On top of that, children brought to Canada when young and raised here for most of their lives generally adapt more easily to Canadian life and culture than adults who spent most of their lives in another country and are entirely acculturated to a different place.
We should want immigrants who will settle in Canada and build their lives here permanently. Families with children are ideal for this purpose: Parents want to put down roots and build stable and safe lives for their children.
Yes, children grow up. Who knew? You are describing the ideal immigration scenario where new immigrants assimilate, the grandparents are not a drain on the healthcare system and the parents are immediately employable and raise their children well to integrate into the host society - the old American style melting pot. Unfortunately, official multiculturalism discourages all of the above leaving us with parallel societies with their own values, customs and languages that can become a burden on the host society. And I'm talking only about legal immigration where the incoming people are supposed to be vetted to ensure they will be contributing citizens. That this has largely become a fiction in recent years has only made things worse.
People trotted out that "parallel societies" line about the Ukrainians, about the Chinese and Japanese, in fact about every group of immigrants that has ever come to Canada since 1867. In every case, every group of immigrants integrates into the broader society, both shaping and influencing society and also being shaped and influenced themselves.
Integration of immigrants into the mainstream of society is a generational project. It doesn't happen instantly, and it can't. I'm a Canadian adult, and I assume you are too. If something horrible happened to Canada, a war or famine or plague, which obliged us to flee abroad to, let's say, Japan, it's not like either of us can just stop being Canadian. We'd learn the language and the laws of the new country we're living in, we'd do our best to integrate and to build a new life for ourselves and our families, but we'd always be Canadians, with our own Canadian habits and beliefs and culture.
We can't realistically expect any different from any immigrant who comes to Canada. What we should demand is not total cultural assimilation, which is both unjust, unrealistic, and largely unnecessary. An immigrant is not going to stop loving soccer and start loving hockey just because they're now in Canada. What we should realistically expect is that immigrants learn our languages, follow our laws, respect other Canadians, and work to the best of their ability to build a life and contribute. My experience with immigrants in Canada that I know is that the vast majority of them do so and are very happy to do so. Immigrants often appreciate Canada much more deeply than Canadians born here do, I have found. I think this has something to do with fleeing countries with terrible problems or terrible circumstances, and being able to properly appreciate everything good about Canada.
But, let's return to the scenario of one of us being forced by circumstances to migrate. Our children raised in a new society would be partly Canadian and partly Japanese (or wherever takes us in). The grandchildren would be more Japanese than Canadian. The great grandchildren almost entirely Japanese, and perhaps would know little of Canada other than whatever family stories they remember. That's always how integration and cultural change works: It takes generations to happen.
When the Ukrainians settled in Canada, they built whole Ukrainian towns and villages, Ukrainian churches, they dressed and acted like Ukrainians, and they largely spoke Ukrainian among themselves. A hundred years later, Ukrainian Canadians still have some memory of their ancestry and their traditions, many still eat cabbage rolls and pierogi or attend Ukrainian churches, but largely they're as Canadian as anyone else. A Ukrainian Canadian is a different culture than a Ukrainian from Ukraine.
There's never been any one definition of "Canadian" anyways. There's English and French Canadians, Europeans and Indigenous, Ukrainians and Germans and Scandinavians, Chinese and Japanese and Koreans, people from every part of Africa and Asia and Oceania. People from all over the world become Canadians, and Canada is better for it.
This anti-immigrant crap we've gotten ourselves wound up on is the most counterproductive nonsense for our country I can imagine. It's totally contrary to both the whole Canadian historical experience and tradition, and to our current national interest. It's also counterproductive to the project of integrating immigrants. Prejudice and chauvinism from the host society against immigrants makes them more likely to withdraw into their own communities, not more likely to want to integrate.
There is no country on Earth that has been more immigrant friendly than Canada but that is changing as immigration has switched from largely European to African, Middle Eastern and Asian. This isn't a minor change and there are limits to assimilation, especially when it is discouraged by government policy and the numbers are so much higher than ever in the past. We should be teaching children in the official languages of our country, not in their native tongues but that's just one example among many. It has become standard practice to label as prejudiced, chauvinist, bigoted and racist anyone who is critical of the mess our immigration system has become in recent years whether they are any of those things or not. This assures that many won't speak up. That the system has worked well in the past is no predictor of the future when so many of the fundamentals that made it work have been discarded in favour of a post-national pipe dream.
As with all such things, time will tell.
Carney and his acolytes have an agenda which relies on complacency and creating some myth that he’s our best option. Unfortunately that agenda when it starts to manifest itself in more open ways may lead to a betrayal of Canada and far too much government and far too little real world investment and productive employment. Complacency is an excellent word to describe the sheep like mentality of so many Canadians who have come to believe that big brother will look after them.
I am neither a journalist nor a political pundit. I am not a political scientist or a pollster.
I cannot explain why more Canadians are not shocked at two statistical facts: firstly, that the productive population is shrinking, as more productive, intelligent Canadians leave the Country each year.
“No, overall more people are still arriving in Canada than are leaving, meaning Canada's total overall migration net flow remains positive. However, emigration of Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and temporary workers has hit record highs due to cost-of-living pressures, housing costs, and tightening immigration policies.”
Secondly, that in the last six fiscal quarters, more businesses have exited or shuttered their doors, than have opened or set up shop.
“Yes, more businesses in Canada have closed than opened for six consecutive quarters. According to a report by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), this sustained period of business exits outpacing new entries marks a prolonged "entrepreneurial drought" that began in early 2024.”
Shhh. We don't want to pop the fictional bubble world of today's misnamed 'patriotic' Canadians. We have a country to dismantle.
Anything but the collapse of the self-constructed “Imaginarium”
The population needs to shrink, but through remigration, not emigration.
I misspoke; the population is growing in net terms, but productive Canadians and permanent residents are leaving.
So we’ve determined Jen is the only one who gets free time at the cottage and goes to the dark places?
I appreciate the discussion of the results of the polls and the context behind the numbers.
“….but for now he remains seen as adult in the room who can manage Trump and help Canada survive and thrive in the new world order he argued Canada must adapt to at Davos.”
As Jen Gerson has pointed out, how is it that a leader who somehow cannot muster the courage to expend political capital by risking a Toronto seat in a by-election, be trusted to herd the middle power mediocrities together in a fight against the evil hegemons?
What progress has the great economic savant made on the files he was assumed to be most qualified to handle?
I was assured not that long ago that Prime Minister Carney is “the man you want in a crisis. I am an expert of crisis management?”
Now, we are being prepared to lower our expectation. Soften up the rubes for the next con.
We tried it their way, and their way doesn’t work.
That's a fair question, but so is the corollary - when there are important things to worry about, why would a leader with a slim majority take a political risk for something relatively unimportant like the Toronto Island airport?
Fair comment, Mikey.
But I was told we are-or were- facing an existential crisis, and that to face this crisis, we hired the best man to face that crisis.
“I am the one you hire in a crisis.” “I am an experienced crisis management expert.”
“We are going to build at speeds we haven’t seen in generations.”
How is that consistent with spiking the Toronto airport project?
Well, the way I would express it is that the Toronto airport is small potatoes compared to rebuilding Canada's military, building new pipelines from Alberta both west to the Pacific and East to Ontario, and reorienting our economy towards greater trade with Europe and Asia.
So I think a fair answer is, you gotta get the political capital to do the big stuff, and make whatever compromises you need to make on the small stuff.
The obvious counterpoint is that Canada does a bad job on all of this small stuff. The airport is no big deal by itself, but as a stand-in for a large number of worthwhile projects that Canada struggles to even start, let alone finish, and especially let alone finish on time and on budget... and you know, fair point we need to start doing better on all of that stuff. Once again though, any individual project isn't the point, it's getting the process and governance in a place where projects get done better. Which matters more, the airport, or getting a new process for environmental reviews that really works the way we need it to?
Now, the Carney government has talked a big game on making it easier to get things done, and this is a really big important thing for the future of Canada. The jury is still very much out on whether they accomplish anything. But I would say that's the measuring stick I care about: does it get easier to build in Canada? And not so much any particular project.
We're 18 months in.
He has failed to get the big deal he was elected to get for us - and has now pivoted to "why do we even need a deal?" and "we can't trust Trump anyway, so why bother?"
....which would have made a GREAT campaign platform, but make for a lousy follow up to "I am the ONLY person who can get a deal with Trump"
Also...
NOT ONE house has been built by the new housing agency he said would build 500,000 houses per year.
NOT ONE project has been approved by his new "fast-track" approval body.
How long do you think we can keep pretending that "the jury is still very much out"....?
As long as media subsidies last.
I don’t think Carney promised, nor did his supporters vote for him on the expectation of a deal.
Separately, reorganizing the way our entire country works around projects is more akin to gardening than one big announcement. I don’t know what anyone expected but if it was that you could just press a button or through sheer power of will move us to a better place, that was never going to happen. It will take years because much of the solution is a lot of little things. Some legislative, some regulatory, and some personnel.
So yes, as far as I’m concerned the jury is still out and will be for several years.
Selective memory is a very important skill for those who wish to rationalize support for this government.
I see you've mastered this skill.
How many Mark Carney quotes do you want which show him clearly promising that he would get a deal with Trump, that he was uniquely qualified to get a deal with Trump - or even (not making this up) promising us that he would soon have a deal finalized (by LAST summer)....?
Would dozens of those quotes change your mind?
Would hundreds....?
As for "the impossibility of building stuff that quick" allow me to remind you that just a year ago, Germany built a brand new never-before-discussed LNG port in just 200 days. The UAE decided to build a new pipeline this past May, and it is already halfway built.
Building at speeds not seen in generations IS actually do-able, IF you actually want to build stuff. The Canadian benchmark here is the original TransMountain pipeline, which was built (using 1950s technology) in just 30 months - from concept to completion.
The current pipeline plan under Carney is still stuck at the MOU phase, has not yet been even provisionally approved, and EVEN IF it clears all the remaining hurdles (a VERY big "if") is not due to BEGIN construction until September 2027 (which will be more than 30 months after Carney made this promise).
...but one thing I'm relatively sure of - is that when Carney decides to go to the polls again, even if he has demonstrably to that point accomplished NONE of what he had clearly promised last time he ran, you will eagerly ignore the lack of results and believe whatever he promises to do next (which will ALSO never happen).
Rinse and repeat.
Yep. Extension after extension… AKA the death of a thousand cuts. Ask any Canadian gun owner. (Paper cuts seem to be the Civil Service’s preferred torture instrument)
I think the zeitgeist may turn really quickly if and when the economy changes significantly. It's not like Mark Carney is some exciting political phenomenon besides being seen as a capable manager, and I don't think we're in the kind of times where a capable manager will necessarily cut it. You need to inherit something fairly well managed for that. If you're inheriting a situation that actually requires significant change, I think you need someone more dynamic in order to actually do well.
But a lot of people do seem to think they can indeed just check out and let the CEO handle it. And as long as the effects aren't really being felt by that many people just yet, maybe that works politically. If and when it becomes clear that it won't actually cut it, and more people do start really feeling those effects, I imagine opinion could turn shockingly quickly. To the point where I may even find myself going, geez, people, he was never that great and he's really not that bad. We just need much better.
It's easy to have enormous faith in competent management while everything still feels at least somewhat manageable. I suspect we'll learn a lot more about both Carney and the true depth of his public support when it doesn't.
I keep wondering what will happen if the 3rd quarter of this year actually also shows a contraction in our economy, like the first two quarters did.
No matter how slight that contraction might be, it would certainly prove to be hugely inconvenient for the whole "we're in capable hands" narrative.
Not to mention all the vitriol the media spewed at Poilievre for having the sheer gall of pointing out that two quarters in a row of negative growth IS a recession.
Not saying this will happen, but IF it does, I will be paying very close attention to how our media covers it.
Now that Carney has decided to fight we're going to see just how tough he is (as well as Jen and Matt and Wab and Doug and all the boomer retirees).
(I feel like I'm in a landing craft about to hit the beach at Dieppe.)
Spot on. I think we have faith in Carney because there are no other options. We're on something of a national Titanic, and Carney is the only lifeboat available. I don't envy him that. He is the only adult in the room....there are none in the American one. And no, we can't make concessions to them for reasons outlined by Matt and Jen several times. Time to find out what we're dealing with. I expect a 60-day extension is coming. If it doesn't, we'll cross that bridge together. The ocean is getting rougher....maybe we're Forrest in the hurricane.
When I look at Carney’s reputation I feel like Will Ferrell. Am I taking crazy pills? He hasn’t actually done anything yet!
His first budget was basically a big spending, big handout budget with some noise about investments and dodgy corporate accounting. Compare that to the Chrétien Martin budgets. It’s nothing monumental or memorable.
It’s basically the same on tariffs. Trying to thread the needle and not choose a negotiated agreement or a trade war.
At some point he’ll have to actually lead and make some hard choices.
I have some trouble with the statement "Canadians remain deeply conflicted about the economy and their own financial circumstances." I'd use another word, worried, or unsure, or frustrated, but not so mch conflicted. We know where the factors are that worry us and each of us has their own reasons.
Thank you for this. It will be interesting to say what polls taken in late September might indicate.
Question: You listed a number of different challenges for the federal government, all of which are pressing. I was surprised that you did NOT mention the rehabilitation and expansion of the Canadian military.
Carney can walk on water.. it's true... just ask anyone in central and eastern Canada.
I've been giving Carney the benefit of the doubt based on the understanding that engaging in public negotiations with the Trump administration quickly degrades into a pissing match with an 80 year old man who uses social media like a teenage mean girl. Trump's condo marketer lens on the world also means that he can be placated with superficial "wins" so long as nobody points out that he either made no gains or even lost on substance. That's how we got the USMCA - essentially still NAFTA, "the worst trade deal ever", but suddenly palatable to Trump because *he* negotiated it and therefore it must be great, renamed so that Trump can brag that now the US comes first!
However, this is all hypothetical. Schrödinger's cat remains both alive and dead only until you open the box and observe it. Perhaps Carney's plan is to keep the box closed with ongoing negotiations until after the November elections, when Trump becomes a true lame duck and likely terminally distracted with domestic political problems. That's not a bad plan, although it's risky because Trump's tariffs could come into effect for some time. If we see a deal, the waveforms are going to collapse and Carney will be judged based on what he's accomplished. I suspect he's risking a near-fatal expenditure of political capital for any significant concessions, in what's going to be an evanescent deal with a capricious and untrustworthy US administration.
That would have been a great campaign promise.
Only I can wait to begin negotiating until after Trump loses some power ... hopefully ... if it happens ...eventually.
You'd have voted for that last Spring, ....right?
....I guess those of you who voted for this charlatan (and the charlatan before him) just have a much higher tolerance for being blatantly lied to than I do.
I didn't vote for the Liberals last spring. I voted for the Conservatives, deciding I'd rather see them take a shot at governing despite presenting no detail on how they'd actually achieve their agenda rather than take the risk of another 4 years of Trudeau Liberal government if the caucus steamrolled an inexperienced Mark Carney. So far, Carney has exceeded my low expectations and Poilievre has failed to meet the low bar I'd set for him.
And if you don't think rope-a-dope is a good strategy, ask George Foreman about how his fight with Muhammad Ali went.
Will he just become a lame duck though, or will he become an even more feral duck who executive-orders everything into ruin? For all the offence people take to him, unfortunately very little of it seems to manifest as meaningful opposition that I could see actually stopping him if he goes that kind of crazy.
Fair point - there's a risk that Trump continues to attack Canada anyway. If the Democrats take even the House in November, Trump's definitely a lame duck in the traditional sense. He'd have no chance of passing legislation, and lacks the authority to spend money without appropriation. However, he'd still have a fair bit of executive power that he could use to bash Canada, and there's no guarantee that the Democrats would be interested in stopping him.
Never mind what concerns Canadians, our Liberal government sure doesn’t. Almost everything they do increases costs, housing starts are down, but never fear Mark Miller is determined that more companies must speak French.
The calm before the big storm. “Big Plans” is all a lot of people have. Every year I hear them,while they lounge,BarBQ and stare at the water. Sept comes around,people feel that cool breeze on their cheek and frantically try to get something,anything done. “Christmas is coming!! Paint the house! Build a deck! Oh,I need a new furnace!!” ect. Same old,same old. Panic,frantic phoning,texting. “What do you mean you’re busy?” Sigh
"will try and access capital."
Try and? 'And' is a conjunction joining words (or clauses) together because they have a relationship. 'Try access' has no relationship so it makes no sense to be linked this way. The verb 'try' must be followed by where the action is directed: to. One tries to... one does not try and (unless the 'try' can stand alone, followed by a comma). Ever.
Good grief.
Wow
Sorry... it just drives me nuts to see articulate and well educated writers make this repeated mistake.