Western Standard - August 28, 2026


Canada is heading back toward a 1995-style financial crisis


Episode Stats


Length

34 minutes

Words per minute

154.64

Word count

5,338

Sentence count

345

Harmful content

Misogyny

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

7

sentences flagged


Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Canada's economy is in peril.
00:00:02.660 We are once again careening toward the financial wall we narrowly avoided in 1995.
00:00:08.020 Our sovereignty is now in peril too, as we face a rather belligerent neighbour and looming critical trade negotiations.
00:00:15.620 This time it's personal.
00:00:17.560 The nation's economic missteps have shown up in unaffordable housing, stalled prosperity, and fewer career prospects.
00:00:26.320 Why are we back here again?
00:00:28.240 What risks are we facing and what can we do?
00:00:31.500 This time, these questions are existential.
00:00:34.780 This is a nation of people.
00:00:54.700 Hi, I'm Natalie St. Hilaire.
00:00:56.500 With me is Randy Royer.
00:00:58.500 The problem we face cannot be understated.
00:01:01.500 The economy is at risk, our sovereignty is on the table,
00:01:05.500 and our way of life is hanging on what we do next.
00:01:09.500 Changing direction toward prosperity and security
00:01:12.500 will require a gargantuan effort
00:01:15.500 as we face significant obstacles, both internal and external.
00:01:19.500 But this is a nation that has risen to great challenges over its history.
00:01:24.500 What will we do?
00:01:26.500 okay so we're going to be talking about the canadian economy and i know things got a little
00:01:32.420 intense last episode so i thought i'd bring the kleenex this episode because nothing makes me
00:01:37.780 sadder than thinking about how far in debt this country is and i'm a little bit concerned for
00:01:42.740 both of us actually today but this this might be a tearjerker for other reasons but it might
00:01:48.420 still be a tearjerker yeah i guess okay so um economics like let's make this as thrilling as
00:01:55.860 we can for for the people that are are going to sit through this with us it's very important i
00:02:00.100 think that we understand the economic state of our country right absolutely but how do we want
00:02:04.740 to you know what's the simplest way to understand how important this is well i propose that we kind
00:02:10.820 of do a chronological story about what's happening in canada and uh and talk about where we're at
00:02:16.500 now of course and there's a little bit of uh there's gonna be some comparisons to 1995 to
00:02:21.940 today. But I'm going to try to go a little light on the numbers. But they're all on our website.
00:02:28.420 And so and some references and lots and lots of articles are some great thinkers out there.
00:02:32.980 What we're going to try to do is stay at the 30,000 foot level.
00:02:35.860 How did this all get created? How did we get here? What are the step by step things that happened?
00:02:39.940 So the economic history of Canada is that we had 125 years of what was called national economic
00:02:45.380 policy. And it followed the Big Brother Confederation concept where all of the regions pitched in
00:02:53.860 together, created manufacturing in Ontario and Quebec, and they in turn took care of the other
00:02:59.540 ones. And so there was tariffs and restrictions that stopped things from coming into Canada.
00:03:08.740 For example, the toothpaste, instead of just importing it from the United States,
00:03:14.640 we got it all from Southern Ontario.
00:03:17.400 And so that was 125 years of that.
00:03:20.180 And then in 1990, and before we leave, that was sort of nanny state light.
00:03:29.060 So it was, yeah, it wasn't an excessive nanny state, but it was just sort of light.
00:03:33.740 So just let me understand this.
00:03:35.160 I just want to make sure I get this idea right.
00:03:38.120 What you're saying is that we had sort of a protectionist economy
00:03:42.040 and we were using tariffs to make sure that we were selling goods and services to ourselves in
00:03:48.320 Canada, within Canada. And that wasn't like a free market kind of a thing. So it might have
00:03:54.240 been cheaper to get those things from the United States. We tariffed the United States so that we
00:03:58.760 had to buy internally. And you're calling that nanny state light. Yes. Yes. I'm calling that 0.52
00:04:05.300 nanny state light because what it did was we actually had a national economy and we had closed
00:04:10.280 borders, kind of closed borders, because of tariffs and some restrictions. And the idea was
00:04:16.200 that the entire country would support Ontario and Quebec. The outlying regions would figure out
00:04:20.440 their own economics in the West that was resource-based. And that's how we lasted for 125
00:04:27.280 years. Okay, then what changed? Well, then you have the 1980 Quebec referendum and the 1982
00:04:34.260 to constitution. And that's where we went into a hyper nanny state. And there we got into the
00:04:41.540 competition to get the loyalties of French Canada. And so Ontario and Quebec and the national
00:04:53.860 government were basically giving away goodies to try to attract the loyalty and then still had to
00:04:59.780 pay for the Maritimes in their reparations.
00:05:02.220 So so the nanny state took an extra step up.
00:05:07.320 And and here we're talking about the nanny state from an economic perspective.
00:05:11.700 So you're saying even even economically the Constitution in 1982,
00:05:16.900 because a lot of people when they think about the Constitution
00:05:18.940 might think about it from like a rights perspective or even a structural perspective.
00:05:23.940 But what you're saying is the Constitution created economic impact
00:05:28.040 and you're calling that the hyper nanny state.
00:05:31.220 And it meant that areas of the country
00:05:34.040 were paying for other areas of the country.
00:05:36.560 So in 82, it introduced all kinds of concepts
00:05:39.880 and there was two that were important.
00:05:42.160 One was the social side of it
00:05:43.620 because Quebec sort of pioneered the nanny state 0.98
00:05:47.680 for social and social contracts.
00:05:51.540 So you mean like languages, religion?
00:05:55.000 Okay.
00:05:55.980 So they pioneered that.
00:05:56.900 So the federal government picked that up and they also had the financial aspect of the nanny state. 0.61
00:06:03.320 And they're both trying to get the loyalty of French Quebec.
00:06:07.280 But so that's where they started the transfers.
00:06:09.920 That's where they started in the 70s.
00:06:12.320 They had started unemployment insurance that was unequal between provinces.
00:06:17.940 And then the 82 Constitution just solidified all that and then put it into hyperspeed.
00:06:22.880 And one of the things they did by way of example is that they basically started implementing bilingualism requirements across the board.
00:06:33.260 Anything to do with the federal government had to be bilingual.
00:06:36.080 So that meant the bureaucracy had to be bilingual, the judiciary had to be bilingual.
00:06:42.180 So that created a lot of jobs for French Quebec.
00:06:47.500 But was it more expensive? What's the economic impact to Canada of that?
00:06:51.620 Well, when you throw out meritocracy and bring in other requirements, it is invariably expensive.
00:07:02.140 And actually, there's a chart that we'll put on the website that shows that the productivity of the Canadian bureaucracy has been dropping in the last 10, 15 years.
00:07:12.580 Well, that's surprising.
00:07:14.440 Well, they had to go back to the office, I guess.
00:07:16.480 But one story that to me is the example of it was in actually 1995, during the referendum, the second referendum, it looked like, and this story is a story about how the federal bureaucracy had been given away to French Canada.
00:07:39.360 them. And so what happened is in 1995, the referendum was not going well, and it looked
00:07:45.400 like Canada was going to lose. And Chrétien, who was the prime minister at the time, decided he had
00:07:50.240 to create a Canada council in order to save the country. And so a friend of mine was close to
00:07:59.220 Chrétien, and he got appointed to the council. And so I was looking at this and thought, you know,
00:08:05.240 there's certain things that Canada should do. So I called him up and said, I want to have my input
00:08:12.500 into this Canada Council thing, because I think this situation is very dangerous. And so he said,
00:08:16.820 I told him what I was going to propose. And he said, that's all good. That's stuff we should
00:08:20.380 look for. And he said, write it down, give me a two pager, sign it, and I'll bring it to the
00:08:24.680 committee. So I did that. And the questions were things like, how do we, if there is a vote in
00:08:30.500 favor of separation, 50.1. How do we protect national assets? How do we protect the dollar?
00:08:36.940 How do we protect the, you know, what do we do with the bureaucrats that are in Ottawa?
00:08:43.240 You know, things about protecting our national interest. And so I wrote it and I signed it,
00:08:48.920 and knowing Canada, I signed it with my initials, R.B. Royer. Sent it off to him,
00:08:53.620 call him back in a couple of weeks and said, you know, so what's happening this election,
00:08:57.820 this, this referendum getting closed. And he said, well, I gave it to the committee.
00:09:02.140 The committee said, these are exactly the kinds of questions we should be looking at.
00:09:06.940 And so he says, I sent it. And so the committee decided they give it to the bureaucrats and get
00:09:12.380 them to do the work on it and research all this. Another couple of weeks go by and I phone them
00:09:17.980 up again and say, well, what's happened? He says, well, bureaucrats looked at it and they have one
00:09:22.380 question. And I said, well, that's kind of interesting. There's a lot of detailed points
00:09:26.700 there, what was the one question? They said they wanted to know your ethnicity. They said they
00:09:31.980 couldn't believe that someone with a French last name Royer, Royer, they couldn't believe that
00:09:40.380 someone of the French ethnicity would have such a strong letter in support of the nation. And
00:09:49.420 they wanted to know if I spoke French, which I said yes, but they couldn't believe that someone
00:09:56.060 from Bastion, Quebec, in their view, would write such a letter. And I was shocked. And my friend
00:10:03.820 said, you need to understand Ottawa, that Ottawa at that time was so inundated with French separatists,
00:10:13.020 even in the federal government. And what they were doing is just trying to figure out how they
00:10:16.940 can get as much as possible from the federal government. And they said, even on the Committee
00:10:21.660 to save canada although all the bureaucrats are separatists and so wow well that's a wake-up call
00:10:29.900 it was incredible it did it was a surprise but um you know that that's a this that story is about how
00:10:40.540 two sides one is how far canada went to appease quebec and the other is what peril we put ourselves
00:10:47.580 it. What peril did we put ourselves in? Well, if we had lost the referendum, I think that we would
00:10:55.020 have lost any discussions afterwards because the politicians only have so much power and the
00:11:00.860 bureaucracy had been given away to French Canada. Now, I'm told that the bureaucracy is not that
00:11:06.300 way anymore. I'm told that they're not inundated with French separatists. So this is a story from
00:11:12.300 yesterday. I don't think it's an issue today. Certainly a very interesting part of our history.
00:11:16.780 Yeah. So then we go to the 1980s. And I promise I won't cry at this part of it.
00:11:26.780 Okay, not yet.
00:11:27.780 Well, that's in the 90s.
00:11:29.780 Okay, okay.
00:11:30.780 At least the 2015s.
00:11:31.780 We'll be ready for the 90s.
00:11:33.780 Yeah, in 2015, I'm going to hit this pretty hard probably.
00:11:35.780 Okay. I'll try not to go down with you.
00:11:39.780 So in the early 90s, that's when we hit NAFTA. And NAFTA was in retrospect,
00:11:45.780 retrospect an error. They can only consider it to be an error. And what we did was we surrendered
00:11:52.120 our economy into a much larger economy and had no political strength to protect ourselves. We had
00:12:00.220 no political input. Kind of like Alberta and the rest of the country? It feels sometimes like that
00:12:07.840 here. Yeah, it does feel like that, but this is worse because what turned out, it was worse in
00:12:15.120 context that the United States is a very much self-contained nation state and they take care
00:12:20.640 of themselves. And if it doesn't work out for them, they're going to change the rules.
00:12:25.760 And so the NAFTA was a collective error. The entire country made a mistake.
00:12:34.400 But then after softwood lumber disputes, when it became clear that the United States was not
00:12:39.520 going to be constrained by any agreements or any laws. And then Keystone Pipeline, where they
00:12:47.120 canceled it completely against our agreements. The political elite should have said, this is a
00:12:52.640 problem. The United States is not going to pay attention to the agreements. I kind of think
00:12:56.880 Ottawa has been, at least they've paid attention to the agreements, but they've been pretty heavy
00:13:02.400 handed over the years too. So what happened then was that Ontario, the economy became a mess because
00:13:12.800 under NAFTA, it had to restructure. So we talked about that toothpaste that used to come from
00:13:16.880 Southern Alberta or Southern Ontario, that now just came up from the States and the plant in Ontario,
00:13:23.200 it shut down. The tomatoes, the toothpaste, Kellogg's cornflakes, the list goes on and on
00:13:31.120 on about the things that Ontario had to restructure. It was a huge difficulty.
00:13:36.160 And what happened was their economy went down. Quebec had already gone down. And so they couldn't
00:13:42.320 afford to do the big brother relationship anymore. So they couldn't afford to pay for Canada.
00:13:48.720 On the flip side, resources had become more powerful because of the oil embargo.
00:13:54.960 Alberta all of a sudden had this money. And Ontario said, well, we can't afford to pay
00:13:59.840 for confederation anymore guess what alberta you get to and so then all those transfers really
00:14:06.240 wrapped up in the 80s and 90s and they could do it because of the 82 constitution okay take us
00:14:11.840 back to 2000 i won't rush us between 2000 and between between those years that was basically
00:14:18.000 the chretien martin years and harper and um chretien martin actually run a surplus and because
00:14:25.280 that was because of what happened in 1995 and i gotta go back to that in those years they ran a
00:14:31.360 surplus uh it was they were pretty fair to the country uh and uh and and jean christian was
00:14:37.920 was very fair you see it now that you know they're the ones that come out and and try to keep the
00:14:43.600 country together and try to try to get our economy back on the on the straight and narrow again so
00:14:48.960 i remember a time when canada's budget was balanced the economist even said we were cool
00:14:53.840 Cool. The Economist? The Economist. The magazine? Yes, the magazine. Yeah. Well, they have, you know, cool. That's a matter of opinion.
00:15:02.260 Picture of a moose with some answers. Sure. Sure. At least it wasn't Trudeau. Okay. So. That didn't happen until later. I know. Okay. But 1995. So what happened in 95 to lead to 2015? What's the connection there? Because.
00:15:15.380 So what happened in 95 was we hit the financial wall.
00:15:18.860 So what they did, what Christian and Martin did was they cut back the bureaucracy, they reduced spending, but mostly they downloaded the expenses onto the provinces.
00:15:33.080 And so the way to look at it is, you know, the financial debt capacity covered was bare for the federal government, but there is capacity in the provinces and there is capacity in the cities and the individuals.
00:15:48.340 And capacity to do what? Capacity to tax?
00:15:51.460 No, to take on financial responsibilities.
00:15:54.540 So a combination.
00:15:56.580 Oh, to pay for things.
00:15:57.140 Take on debt, pay for things.
00:15:59.180 Yeah, exactly.
00:15:59.780 Okay.
00:15:59.980 Yeah. And so the federal government was maxed out. Their cupboard was bare. And so what they did was they downloaded a lot of expenses onto the provinces and did all the, they changed the transfers and whatnot. And then what happened was the provinces, and this is where it affects you and I and everybody out there. The provinces very quickly downloaded it onto the cities. And so that was all that happened in 95, 96. And then 97, the provinces
00:16:29.700 allow the cities to put development charges onto housing.
00:16:35.240 And you know about this because you were developing hotels.
00:16:38.860 You're sort of in this industry.
00:16:40.820 Yeah, I was developing it.
00:16:41.560 And I think, is this just one example of how these taxes and expenses flowed through,
00:16:49.920 or is this the only one?
00:16:51.640 This was a momentous change because this was our 30-year death cycle.
00:16:58.460 this was the response. So it was a momentous change. And what happened was when we changed it,
00:17:04.800 it got worse. So in 97, they allowed the cities to put on these, they're called development
00:17:11.040 charges, DCCs. And so right now, so it just got worse and worse and worse. And now in Ontario,
00:17:18.340 in Toronto and Vancouver, the DCCs alone, so there's a whole raft of taxes and charges and
00:17:25.820 city charges, there's off-sites, there's this, there's that. But just one alone is $145,000
00:17:33.460 per residential unit in a multifamily complex. So are you saying that when I buy a home,
00:17:42.460 and it's multifamily complex, so what would be the typical price of a home in one of those?
00:17:48.680 Call it a million dollars. So a million dollar home, you're saying $150,000 of that is just
00:17:55.800 taxes and fees. So the government's taking 15% right off the top. But I as consumer, I'm not
00:18:04.080 aware of that. No, you wouldn't be. So it's a charge to the developer and it's from the city.
00:18:09.400 And they justified it by saying that the development pays for development. So that's
00:18:14.580 how they rationalize it. But the truth is, is it just goes into general coffers in the city.
00:18:18.500 And then I, when I buy a home, that's a new home, pay GST on the whole thing.
00:18:25.800 the whole thing so so they're making money and hst in ontario and bc for apsd and bc so they're
00:18:32.360 making money two ways well that's there's a whole bunch more there's also you know in british
00:18:39.000 columbia there's also excess taxes on concrete there's uh like i said off-site charges there's
00:18:45.480 parks contribution the list goes on and on and on and so what i'm identifying is on a million dollar
00:18:51.800 home, they added the charges of $145,000 upfront. And so the way that developers look at it is they
00:19:00.760 look at all their costs, the hard costs of the guys working in the field and hammering the nails
00:19:07.160 and building the place, all those costs, and then all the city costs and the land costs.
00:19:12.600 And what they do is they mark it up by 20% and say, can I sell that in the market? And so what
00:19:18.360 they did was they took the $145,000, they pay it up front and they carry it for two years during
00:19:25.560 the two-year construction process. So that adds a bunch of money, that adds another $20,000.
00:19:31.800 And then they add their 20, then they have to pay GST on it and possibly HST. So that adds another
00:19:40.360 $20,000. And then they add their required profit in order for them to get involved. That's another
00:19:48.360 $30,000. So that $145,000 turns into a cost of housing of about $250,000, a quarter of a million
00:20:00.120 dollar unit. So 25% of a new house is taxes and fees. Okay. So I can see how that's led to a
00:20:09.400 housing crisis and sort of like inflation of cost of living at a very basic way for people.
00:20:14.480 How does that relate to 2015, what happened going forward?
00:20:20.400 So in 2015, this all happened after 2015.
00:20:24.920 Okay.
00:20:25.240 So what happened when the government changed direction, 0.76
00:20:30.100 we went into what I would call a hyper nanny state and a nanny state culture.
00:20:38.660 So bureaucracies rose at the provincial level, they rose at the federal level,
00:20:42.940 they rose at the city level.
00:20:44.480 And just to finish off the story about the housing is that what happened was that in that period of where we had zero interest rates or effectively zero interest rates, instead, the people who are selling the homes, they said, well, don't focus on the cost of the home, focus on how much your monthly carry is.
00:21:04.420 And so the market got kind of duped into disregarding the fact that all these taxes had been added.
00:21:10.780 And just to end the housing issue, and this affects all of us, the housing cost, and it
00:21:18.600 was driven up, I think, substantially by government, the nanny state of the government.
00:21:25.800 One thing, if the government actually wanted to solve the housing crisis, outlaw all these
00:21:31.420 fees.
00:21:32.420 In fact, if we get a chance to write the constitution, get rid of all these fees, you'd be amazed
00:21:38.940 how much the housing costs come down and so that's it we could shrink a couple of bureaucracies by
00:21:44.540 the sounds of things well that's another part that we need okay so i just want to get this
00:21:48.620 clear in my head what you're saying is that particular housing i'm going to call it a housing
00:21:52.460 scam uh started in 2015. uh no that started in 97 but it got really um it really got ramped up in
00:22:02.780 sort of 20 uh 2015 that's when it really got wrapped up that's when we we were led to have
00:22:09.820 this nanny state culture throughout throughout the you know the entire governance and that's
00:22:15.340 that's when the bureaucracy started galloping ahead and that's when the uh bureaucracy started
00:22:21.740 to grow yeah yeah the bureaucracy had been cut back in 97 it's it sort of shallowed out for a
00:22:28.300 a while. And in 2015, it started to rise. And so you mentioned the productivity of our bureaucracy
00:22:34.140 is currently falling. What are some of the other fallouts from the 2015 shift into total
00:22:44.380 nanny state? Well, people refer to the period of 2015 to 2025 as the 10 lost years. And what that
00:22:53.500 was, was politically the Trudeau government focused our attention on social issues. So,
00:23:01.760 and there was a complication that the Trudeau government had to address. And that was that
00:23:11.240 under, and this goes back to the Harper years. In the Harper years, he allowed the Western economy
00:23:17.140 to gallop ahead. And what it did was it pushed up the Canadian dollar. You know, we actually became
00:23:22.940 a petrodollar for a while. And so our dollar went up to $1.10, it was great. But what happened was
00:23:29.820 that caused unemployment in the East, because their productivity had gone down. And so when
00:23:37.180 the Canadian dollar went up, their employment got worse. So their employment numbers. So what
00:23:42.780 happened is everybody got mad in the East, the electorate that counted, everybody got mad at
00:23:48.140 Harper and said, we got to get rid of this guy. And they brought in Trudeau. Trudeau said, well,
00:23:52.860 I'm not going to make that mistake again. And I actually call it the teeter totter relationship
00:23:58.220 of our Canadian economy. When the West does well, because of the Canadian dollar,
00:24:04.140 West does well, the dollar goes up, the economy in Eastern Canada goes down. And then when the West
00:24:12.220 does poorly, the resources do poorly, the Canadian dollar goes down, and the economy in the East
00:24:17.020 goes up. What Trudeau did was he engaged a lot of people with social issues and he engaged them
00:24:26.860 to help restrain the Western economy. And this is where the Kleenex really comes in.
00:24:32.540 And so he engaged the environmentalists and said that we have to stop oil production. And he also
00:24:39.820 had an advance of Indigenous rights that were mandated by the court, but the way that the
00:24:45.500 federal government dealt with them was it really put a clamp on forestry industry and the oil and
00:24:51.660 gas industry because of negotiations had to go through. And instead of guiding those negotiations,
00:24:57.420 which a government that was worried about the economy and worried about the economy in Western 0.56
00:25:01.420 Canada would have done, what they did was they just said, they gave the Indigenous the right
00:25:06.860 to say no on anything. And what's interesting is that in the coal mine, the metallurgical coal mine 0.96
00:25:16.220 that was proposed in the Crowsnest Pass area, the Pekingese said that they wanted the coal mine
00:25:23.660 because they wanted the employment. The federal government's perspective and their regulations are
00:25:30.860 the Indigenous don't have the right to say yes, they only have the right to say no.
00:25:34.860 And so what Trudeau did in these lost years was he engaged the bureaucracy, the environmentalists, 0.93
00:25:41.820 and the Indigenous to all band together to try to stop the Western economy from galloping ahead. 0.57
00:25:47.820 And that was all to promote a lower Canadian dollar and to promote employment in the East so
00:25:54.700 that he continued to get elected. It's funny that you're talking about this. I actually wrote a
00:25:58.380 paper in university about Dutch oil disease, which is exactly what you're talking about.
00:26:02.300 And I just wanted to add that the reason that the Canadian dollar being high is a problem is because that increases the cost of our exports.
00:26:12.100 So then our exports become more expensive and people buy from elsewhere, which crashes the economy in places where they're manufacturing goods.
00:26:20.800 So there's that natural tension in Canada, for sure.
00:26:24.620 Well, Italy did this for years before they entered the euro.
00:26:27.980 They used the lira, and they just allowed the lira to depreciate, depreciate, depreciate.
00:26:34.020 I mean, it was also me, 10,000 euros was $5 or something.
00:26:38.920 And they did that because they didn't address productivity.
00:26:43.280 Frankly, I view it as lazy that instead of actually supporting productivity
00:26:48.140 and having the high currency, buy German technology to improve robotics and all that stuff.
00:26:55.220 Instead of doing that, they took the easy way out and said, look, we just strangle Western Canada.
00:27:00.700 Then that'll be fine. We'll keep employment strong.
00:27:03.200 It was lazy. And that's why we had 10 years of lost economics.
00:27:08.780 Well, yeah, that's why it might be why our GDP, our productivity is so low right now.
00:27:14.180 So what is going on right now?
00:27:16.100 An example is that for every dollar invested in the U.S., there's only 55 cents invested in Canada to improve productivity.
00:27:26.720 So we don't have a lot of motivation to actually increase our productivity.
00:27:31.100 Well, it's not just motivation. It's that we're not getting the investment.
00:27:35.460 And so that's from tax to the max strategy, from government interference.
00:27:40.540 And one thing that Trudeau did was he increased the bureaucracy.
00:27:42.940 the Broxy wanted to have a say in everything, so it became more and more contracted.
00:27:47.740 More expensive, takes more time to do things, so less people want to do things here.
00:27:53.260 But to address the question about, are we hitting the wall financially? I've got some
00:28:00.140 quick numbers, and this is all on the website, that in 1995, our GDP of the provinces,
00:28:07.660 the debt of the provinces and the federal government to GDP was 93%.
00:28:14.460 Now it is 104%.
00:28:17.820 So we're actually worse than 1995.
00:28:21.420 Add in the household debt, and this goes to the point about what happened with housing.
00:28:25.920 In 1995, the household debt per GDP was 58%.
00:28:33.020 So the amount of money that we owed, the collective amount of money that we owed to credit to lenders was 58% of GDP.
00:28:42.020 Now it's 100%. So we've gotten significantly worse.
00:28:46.020 And that's an example of how the debt requirement kind of emptied out our cupboard of debt capacity.
00:28:54.020 The total combined debt in 95 was 151% of GDP. Now it's 204%.
00:29:01.020 4%. So we are careening at that wall even faster. We're doing worse than in 95.
00:29:07.580 Yep. Yep. And then our wealth creation has stalled between 2014 and 2024. And that's just
00:29:14.860 happened to be the numbers I could get. Canada increased its wealth by 3.2%. In all those years,
00:29:20.820 in 10 years, we increased it by 3.2%. The US increased it by 20%. So we're falling behind.
00:29:29.500 And then the last thing is what happened in the previous five years, GDP growth before 1995
00:29:37.100 averaged about 1.2%. And now we've been running around 1.6%. So not a lot better. We're actually
00:29:45.180 we're projected by the OECD to be the lowest increase in productivity and lowest
00:29:52.620 growth in the economy of any of the 37 nations that report to the OECD.
00:29:56.940 Time for the Kleenex.
00:29:59.440 Time for the Kleenex.
00:30:00.440 Yeah.
00:30:01.440 Okay.
00:30:02.440 So what did we do wrong?
00:30:04.940 The population of the bureaucracy grew by 900,000 people across Canada, and now it's
00:30:13.820 4.5 million people are employed in the public sector, which is over 20% of the population.
00:30:25.020 And I think the most egregious thing that the federal government did is it didn't listen
00:30:29.400 to Alberta in those years.
00:30:31.800 Alberta said, we need to diversify our markets.
00:30:35.420 We need to work together and actually have a free trade.
00:30:40.660 And we need to lean into our natural resources.
00:30:43.300 Those were all things that the Alberta government and the people of Alberta said, and the feds,
00:30:49.520 this two nation policy completely disregarded us and disregarded us okay so i i think what i'm
00:30:58.480 getting from you know the last few episodes because we've gone all the way from character
00:31:03.360 you know into social contract we talked about the constitution and those are sort of foundational
00:31:08.640 things whether they're explicit like the constitution or implicit like social contracts
00:31:14.320 and but but at the end of the day these foundations actually what you're saying are
00:31:20.720 translating into real economic issues that are startlingly bad yes that is absolutely correct
00:31:28.080 okay so what's the what what do you think the future of all this is like where are we going
00:31:33.360 well i think i've got about four or five comments about this the first thing is that the separatists
00:31:39.760 both in Quebec and Alberta need to recognize that this is a problem that they need to address.
00:31:45.040 It's because the nanny state is right across Canada. It's as much in Alberta as it is anywhere
00:31:50.480 else, although we have a development, you know, we have a slightly different social contract.
00:31:55.520 That's first thing. The second thing is that we need to break the resistance. In the Trudeau,
00:32:00.960 those 10 last years, we created all these things that will stop us from developing our resources
00:32:08.000 and changing our economy, investing in productivity, all of that stuff.
00:32:15.520 There is a resistance that's been created and we need to break it.
00:32:21.120 The third thing is that we need to respect the fundamental reasons that people have those issues.
00:32:31.680 And so we need to incorporate those things. And a good example of that is the MOU between Alberta
00:32:37.360 in Ottawa, where we said, yes, we will create a pipeline, but we will also reduce the greenhouse
00:32:43.440 gases that are created from that. So that's a perfect example of how we can find compromises
00:32:49.840 to develop our economy, but at the same time, take care of issues.
00:32:54.960 The fourth one is that there's some things that only the people can solve. And one is that only
00:33:03.920 we can break this nanny state. The politicians can't. They're subject to it. It's only the
00:33:09.200 people that can do it. The second thing is that we can actually, if we were to draw up the
00:33:15.280 constitution, we can restrict bureaucracy. We can restrict the governments from going overboard.
00:33:22.000 When we can get rid of the impediments, like I said about housing, we can just say no more
00:33:27.680 development charges. We can get rid of that, whereas politicians can't.
00:33:32.160 Yeah, well, I can't say I can't wait, but I will be here for it.
00:33:39.000 Okay, thank you.
00:33:40.560 Thanks, Annie.
00:33:41.640 Canada's in financial distress.
00:33:43.940 We can save ourselves, but it requires all of Canada to accept responsibility
00:33:47.860 and to step back from our vast array of entitlements.
00:33:51.920 Punishing the successful provinces by draining their economies
00:33:54.840 is an international anomaly we can no longer afford.
00:33:59.500 Everyone must strive to contribute more to national prosperity.
00:34:04.060 Ongoing financial transfers from Alberta and the West only serve to prop up inefficiency, lack of productivity, and inequality.
00:34:13.240 Next episode, we will explore these transfers.
00:34:16.220 You will be shocked.
00:34:17.940 Explore it all in the next episode of A Nation of People.
00:34:21.160 See you then.
00:34:28.560 Stay or should I go now?