Justin Trudeau, like Donald Trump, gets attention for wrong reasons

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In 2015 and 2016, Canadians and Americans both elected an incompetent celebrity who lacked the credentials to govern. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former U.S. president Donald Trump both reduced the status of their respective countries on the world stage. But Trudeau has also damaged Canada’s economy, housing market and health-care system, while increasing taxes and racking up huge amounts of debt, earning him derision from experts and pundits on both sides of the border.

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“Canada is also one of the few advanced countries that has not recovered its pre-pandemic level of per capita GDP. Longer-term, the OECD projects that Canada will rank dead last amongst OECD members in real GDP per capita growth out until 2060. This underscores that without fundamental changes to our approach to productivity and growth, Canada’s standard-of-living challenges will persist well into the future,” wrote Toronto-Dominion Bank economist Marc Ercolao last summer.

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Recently, American satirist Bill Maher, a Democrat and self-described fan of Canada and Canadians, weighed in, showing how the United States is vastly outperforming its northern neighbour. Unemployment is 3.8 per cent in the U.S, and 6.1 per cent in Canada; and 14 of the 15 most polluted cities in North America are in Canada. “Last year, Canada added 1.3 million people, which is a lot in one year — the equivalent of the U.S. adding 11-million migrants in one year. And now, they’re experiencing a housing crisis even worse than ours,” he said.

What’s frustrating is that under decent management, Canada could be as successful as Norway and Australia. Both those countries successfully develop resources, provide generous social benefits and enjoy international stature. Instead, Trudeau has driven out foreign investment, sabotaged resource development, reneged on our NATO commitments and made Canada about as influential as Liechtenstein.

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Electing ill-equipped candidates, such as Trump and Trudeau, gives democracies a bad name. Trudeau was initially elected because of his last name. He had no track record, but was chosen because of his star power. Likewise, Donald Trump was elected because he starred in a fake reality show, “The Apprentice,” which depicted him as a self-made tycoon with impeccable judgment. But the facts were that he inherited wealth, drove many of his operations into bankruptcy and now faces multiple criminal and civil charges.

Trudeau’s latest budget increases the country’s already high taxes because his government has mismanaged the country’s finances. A prime example is the ArriveCan app. Costs so far have totalled an estimated $60 million for an app that was supposed to cost a mere $80,000, due to procurement blunders and sheer incompetence. And yet, not one minister has been held accountable.

Opposition to the current government is now widespread. One reader sarcastically wrote to me of the latest budget: “If I were a software engineer living in California, I would just love to hop on a plane and work here and get taxed to the hilt, where making money is an embarrassment and trying to buy a house is like winning the lottery. If you get shares in the company you only pay 50 per cent more tax in capital gains than in the U.S.… Sounds great to me.”

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Unfortunately, Trudeau and his NDP sidekick, Jagmeet Singh, aren’t finished. These tax-and-spend twins plan to continue virtue signalling, ignoring economic realities and will force our children and grandchildren to move elsewhere for good jobs and opportunities.

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