Canadian Government Beginning to Unravel
[guest post by JVW]
The beleaguered ruling coalition of Liberals and the New Democratic Party in Canada was dealt a blow today by the resignation of Finance Minister Cynthia Freeland. The minister alleges that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had asked her to step aside from the post on Friday in return for an appointment to lead a different ministry, but over the weekend she decided that she would instead leave the coalition government while retaining her seat in Parliament.
Ms. Freeland blasted the Prime Minister in her resignation letter, accusing him of using “costly political gimmicks” to try to paper-over a $60 billion (CAD) budget deficit from this past year, nearly 50% larger than what the government had projected. She also accused the Prime Minister of not taking seriously and preparing for the upcoming Trump Administration’s threatened trade war with Canada, though Mr. Trudeau did scurry down to Mar-a-Lago in the aftermath of the election in an attempt to mend fences.
Dominic LeBlanc, current Public Safety Minister and a long-time crony of Mr. Trudeau’s from their schoolboy days together, has been temporarily appointed to head the Finance Ministry, and will for the time being lead both ministries, at least until the government can get a thorny budget passed through Parliament. This is not sitting well at all with the rest of the coalition, with the NDP’s leader Jagmeet Singh now calling for the Prime Minister to step down. A Liberal back-bencher, Wayne Long, who had led an earlier attempt by rogue members of his party to dump Mr. Trudeau, estimates that the 153 Liberal MPs are divided roughly into thirds, with one-third desiring to dump the PM, one-third staunchly supporting him, and the remainder keeping their powder dry for the time being.
The coalition has been losing support in public polling, and the Conservative Party leadership headed by Pierre Poilievre has been agitating for Prime Minister Trudeau to call for an early election to give Canadians a chance to make their voices heard on a national Carbon Tax which the Conservatives (and even some members of the ruling coalition) have complained is driving up prices to such a degree as to make daily items almost unaffordable for the average Canadian. Every Canadian province is now poorer (by measure of median per capita incomes) than all fifty states of our own union, according to the Fraser Institute. Since Mr. Trudeau became PM nine years ago and brought in a progressive high-tax/high-spending agenda, Canada’s economic growth has significantly lagged our own.
The next federal election in Canada must come no later than October 20, 2025, but increasingly it appears that it will take place much sooner, especially if the Trudeau Government is sunk by a no confidence vote early in the new year. The past fifteen months has been a doozy for the core of the Anglosphere with significant political change in the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States. In the coming year we could see the same in Canada and Australia, both of whom will be holding elections in the first nine months. Whether this is a sign of civic health or dysfunction, I will leave to the reader to determine.
– JVW
Canada deserves better than the Trudeau family.
JVW (709af6) — 12/16/2024 @ 6:06 pmAnd, of course, Germany. Not Anglosphere, but it’s the same wind blowing.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 12/16/2024 @ 6:07 pmGo riddance to the Castreau regime.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/16/2024 @ 6:28 pmGood riddance*.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 12/16/2024 @ 6:29 pmWait. I thought everything in Canada was better!
Simon Jester (c8876d) — 12/17/2024 @ 7:11 amOne of the good things about the parliamentary system is that when things change, they really change. Canada has a history of wiping out parties that failed to lead. One can hope here.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 12/17/2024 @ 8:18 am@5
You mean progressive policies isn’t working in Canada?
Say it ain’t so Simon!?!?
whembly (477db6) — 12/17/2024 @ 8:32 amWhembly, you would not believe the students just know to be true.
It’s not their fault.
Simon Jester (ff9c91) — 12/17/2024 @ 9:45 am@8
Absolutely… they’re just captive audience.
It’s the uber-progressives who runs those institutions.
whembly (477db6) — 12/17/2024 @ 10:57 amSo, Mississippi is better off than Ontario? Say it isn’t so, Trudeau!
norcal (a72384) — 12/17/2024 @ 1:35 pmSo, Mississippi is better off than Ontario? Say it isn’t so, Trudeau!
It’s complicated, of course. Pretty sure it all refers back to this article which doesn’t QUITE show that.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 12/17/2024 @ 2:48 pmThen there is this:
Canada’s median health-care wait time hits 30 weeks
TO think that Americans sometimes have to wait 48 hours for a pre-auth from their insurer.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 12/17/2024 @ 2:55 pmBefore aca if you needed other then emergency healthcare like cancer treatment or non-emergency surgery and working poor not eligible for medicade in arizona its called access known as inaccessible unless your destitute you mostly died a horrible death. Before medicade hospitals didn’t have to treat you if you couldn’t pay. I went to county hospital where hundreds of people were in line waiting to get in to the ER. Was told people died in line waiting to be seen and ambulances would pick you up if you couldn’t pay. You wonder why little sympathy for CEO. People are still dying from denied care. The rich come here for treatment even dictators the poor have nowhere to go!
asset (5eddcc) — 12/17/2024 @ 9:06 pmHealth care is not a right, asset.
Person A doesn’t have a claim on person B’s wallet because Person A gets sick.
norcal (a72384) — 12/17/2024 @ 9:20 pm@14 Agreed their are no rights only privileges backed up by force and can be taken away at any time. The declaration of independence was enforced at yorktown not on july 4 1776. The emancipation proclamation was enforced at cemetery ridge july 3 1863. The 1964 civil rights bill and voting rights act were forced at the edmund pettis bridge march 7 1965. Gay rights occurred after the stonewall riots june 27 1969.
asset (5eddcc) — 12/17/2024 @ 9:39 pmIt’s complicated, of course. Pretty sure it all refers back to this article which doesn’t QUITE show that.
No, the correct link is the one in my post, which is a few weeks later than the link you provide. It references a study from the Fraser Institute which is a free-market Canadian think tank, and they decided to evaluate the states based upon the median income of each U.S. state and each Canadian province. Not the mean income, which allows high earners to skew the results, but the median income which tells us a lot more about the distribution across the entire state or province. And, as the NRO piece I linked to points out, lefties were previously very fond of using median earnings as the metric a decade back when Canadian provinces fared better in this evaluation.
JVW (709af6) — 12/17/2024 @ 10:22 pmIn 2024, physicians across Canada reported a median wait time of 30.0 weeks between a referral from a GP and receipt of treatment. Up from 27.7 in 2023.
The Canadian health care system is pretty easy to figure out: their government spends the vast majority of their state tax resources on primary care to ensure that all Canadians have a quasi-free (at least that’s how it seems to them) annual check-up with their physician. Because for the overwhelming number of Canadians (just as with Americans) that visit to the primary care physician (or nurse) is their only health care experience each year, it’s small wonder that most Canadians claim to be very happy with the country’s health plans.
But as the article Kevin M linked to pointed out, it’s when a Canadian citizen needs to see a specialist that the system begins to unravel. That’s where you see the long waits, required travel of hundreds of kilometers, or heavily-rationed services (just try getting an MRI in Canada without your general practitioner strongly believing you likely have cancer, or see if you can have a stent put in before you experience a heart attack). This is why so many Canadians pay out-of-pocket to travel to the U.S. for specialist care, and it sounds like after some limited progress in freeing up specialists under Stephen Harper, Canada is back to heavy rationing in the Trudeau years.
JVW (709af6) — 12/17/2024 @ 10:33 pm@16:
Yes, I saw that later. The problem though with all these statistics is that there are so many measures of “median per capita income” that it is hard to compare. Some measure something called “purchasing power parity”, not all use the same currency, some account for taxes (but not benefits), and the date of measurement is important, too. There is also a large difference between “per capita income” and “per capita GDP” but the two are often conflated.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 12/18/2024 @ 7:25 amAlso, “per capita income” is an average (income/people). “Median household income” is different. Google happily confuses all of these.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 12/18/2024 @ 7:28 am