In an explosive press conference, a rattled Chrystia Freeland was left stunned as journalists relentlessly grilled the Liberal finance minister over her government’s jaw-dropping economic failures. Seemingly unprepared for basic questions, a shell-shocked Freeland could only stammer half-baked excuses in response to the blistering interrogation.
The heated press conference quickly went off the rails for Freeland. Faced with blunt questions on inflation and housing unaffordability, she crumbled under pressure – forced into a bombshell admission that the Trudeau government has completely fumbled the economy.
Freeland was stripped of her talking points and confronted with her party’s undeniable incompetence. Her humiliating performance demonstrates that the Liberals are in full panic mode trying to spin their abysmal track record.
But with reporters refusing to back down, Freeland proved utterly incapable of defending the litany of Liberal policy disasters that have brought Canada’s economy to its knees.
In a press conference, reporters cornered Minister Chrystia Freeland over the Liberal government’s dismal economic record, leaving her speechless and defensive.
Despite years of government meetings and promises, Freeland conceded the Trudeau administration has utterly failed to address affordability, housing, and inflation – the very issues that matter most to struggling Canadians.
With an election looming, a panicked Freeland scrambled to reset expectations, blaming global factors for Canada’s severe underperformance. But her excuses ring hollow after years of inaction on domestic policy.
Freeland blamed the global situation, calling it an “incredibly challenging economic period” and referring to it as a “roller coaster” of various economic shocks.
A rattled Freeland knows the public won’t be placated by more rhetoric. Her rare admission of economic mismanagement shows a government finally forced to reckon with its failed leadership.
Her humiliating flop signals that Freeland knows the public is fed up with empty talking points.
With reporters refusing to back down, a shell-shocked Freeland had no choice but to acknowledge the economic calamity under Trudeau’s watch.
The Canadian economy under Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government has been an unmitigated disaster. This was made painfully clear by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland’s recent comments at a Liberal cabinet retreat, where she essentially admitted that the Trudeau government has failed to address the key economic issues facing Canadians.
Yet after years of endless meetings and lofty rhetoric from Trudeau and his ministers, the average Canadian is still struggling under the weight of these economic burdens.
While Trudeau touts aggregate GDP growth, the reality is that GDP per capita – a better measure of economic well-being – has barely budged in Canada over the past decade. From 2012 to 2022, Canada’s GDP per capita grew a meager 4.3%. That’s less than half a percent per year.
Over the same 10-year period, Canada’s southern neighbor and largest trading partner, the United States, saw GDP per capita explode by a massive 47.4%. That’s nearly 10 times more growth per person than Canada managed.
Clearly, Trudeau’s claim that Canada’s economy is thriving doesn’t hold up when examining the figures on a per capita basis. Simply adding more people through rapid immigration doesn’t mean the average Canadian is seeing any improvement in their economic fortunes. In fact, we’re falling further behind our American counterparts with each passing year under Trudeau’s aimless economic stewardship.
For example, Trudeau’s government has issued over 900,000 emergency visas for Ukrainians fleeing war, with over 200,000 arriving already.
This massive influx of new residents in a short period has strained housing availability and social services. Settlement agencies are warning they lack capacity to properly integrate tens of thousands more expected Ukrainians before the visa deadline. Efforts to encourage settlement in affordable smaller towns have had limited success so far.
Trudeau failed to balance this humanitarian need with sensible immigration levels that account for Canada’s limited housing. The result is downward pressure on Canadians’ economic wellbeing and standard of living.
This lackluster GDP per capita growth under the Liberals can be directly linked to Canada’s housing affordability crisis. Trudeau has allowed the market to balloon into a full-fledged housing bubble, with average home prices rising a staggering 43%. This dangerous rise has been fueled by the Liberal’s extremely loose monetary policy, including rock-bottom interest rates.
While existing homeowners may feel wealthier as their home values march higher, this unearned housing wealth does not translate into tangible economic gains for Canada overall. In reality, it has led to a worsening of our economic fundamentals.
Investment has been diverted away from productivity-enhancing sectors like manufacturing and towards an unproductive housing sector that now accounts for a staggering 19% of Canada’s GDP.
The end result is that more and more of the average Canadian’s income is now tied up in basic shelter instead of discretionary spending that could stimulate growth.
At the same time, ballooning mortgage debt burdens have left Canadian households financially vulnerable. The average Canadian now owes a staggering $1.85 for every dollar of disposable income thanks to skyrocketing mortgage debt under the Liberals’ watch.
This is what Freeland means when she talks about Canadians experiencing “economic whiplash.” But make no mistake, these are wounds that have been entirely self-inflicted by the Trudeau government’s short-sighted policies.
Other countries like the US have not seen the same drastic rise in housing unaffordability. Under the Liberals, Canada’s economy has become dangerously dependent on ever-rising home prices to spur consumer spending.
It’s a precarious situation, and the OECD has already warned that Canada will finish dead last among advanced economies in terms of GDP per capita growth over the coming decades thanks to this housing addiction.
The unfortunate truth is that Justin Trudeau has no real plan to correct course and steer Canada’s economy back towards broad-based growth. While he’s happy to jet around the world parading his image as a progressive global leader, Trudeau has utterly failed when it comes to enacting sensible domestic economic policies. After 8 years as Prime Minister, he’s proven himself incapable of addressing the housing affordability crisis, controlling inflation, or improving productivity and competitiveness.
Trying to save face, the Trudeau government recently announced a two-year cap on new foreign student visas in an attempt to curb the housing crisis. However, this move comes far too late and is unlikely to provide much relief for Canadians struggling with housing unaffordability.
Foreign student enrollment in Canada has nearly tripled over the past decade, shooting up from around 300,000 to nearly 1 million. This massive influx of new residents arriving each year has intensified the shortage of rental housing in cities across Canada. The Trudeau government ignored pleas from housing advocates for years to limit student visas, allowing the problem to balloon out of control.
Now, with an election looming and Canadians fed up with skyrocketing rents, Trudeau is finally forced to act. But the proposed two-year cap will still allow over 350,000 new student visas to be issued in 2024. That’s barely a reduction from the previous years. This half-measure shows the Trudeau government is still unwilling to make the hard choices needed to substantially improve housing affordability.
Reducing student visas to pre-pandemic levels of around 200,000 per year would have been a much more meaningful policy. But Trudeau opted for the typical Liberal approach of incremental baby steps in hopes of pacifying angry voters. After ignoring the housing crisis for so long, a short two-year pause in runaway foreign student growth is far too little, too late.
The Trudeau government has repeatedly proven themselves reactive rather than proactive when it comes to the concerns of average Canadians. On issue after issue, from housing to inflation, Trudeau waits until a crisis reaches the boiling point before taking minimal actions. A truly responsible government would have implemented measures to ease competition in the rental market years ago. Instead, the Liberals allowed the problem to metastasize to the point where today’s marginal policy shifts won’t move the needle.
Canadians are rightly fed up. It’s bad enough that under Trudeau, our standard of living has stagnated while Americans saw massive economic gains. But now, with inflation raging at a 40-year high and the Bank of Canada aggressively hiking rates to contain it, Canada’s economy risks sliding into a serious recession.
Make no mistake, we are witnessing the consequences of Trudeau’s failed economic leadership play out in real time. The so-called “economic roller coaster” that Canadians are strapped onto is moving decisively downhill, and Trudeau and his ministers have no idea how to apply the brakes. After endless “discussions” and zero meaningful actions from the Liberals on housing or inflation, Canada’s economy is in true freefall.
The ramblings of Chrystia Freeland and the rest of Trudeau’s cabinet paint a clear picture of a government that is intellectually bankrupt when it comes to the economy.
Their own Deputy PM has now publicly confessed that after years of ignoring obvious problems, the Liberals have managed to steer Canada’s economy into a catastrophic state. A change in direction is desperately needed, but with Trudeau clinging stubbornly to power, the track ahead only leads to further pain for Canadian households.
