On this blog, we got something WRONG. The Liberals ran out of patience with Justin Trudeau, and we assumed at the time that this would lead to the downfall of the Federal Liberal Party. We were wrong about this. Mark Carney replaced Trudeau, and unlike Trudeau, at least for now, Mark Carney, to his financially illiterate base, gives the appearance of someone who knows what he’s doing.
The floor crossing among Liberals themselves—they don’t seem to care. The idea, for them, is that this is all part of “the game,” and the Conservatives are only mad because they’re not the beneficiaries of floor crossings.
But when you look at these polls, which to be fair try to mirror Canada’s unfair democracy, which is basically all about Ontario, Quebec, and Atlantic Canada—which, by the way, has ZERO economic growth—and even though I suspect foul play, I’ve also observed the mostly OLD STOCK Canadian voters in Quebec and Atlantic Canada. Talking to many of them is like taking a trip back in time to the 1990s.
For those of us who are financially literate, we ignore how financially ILLITERATE most OLD STOCK Canadians are. In the mind of a financially illiterate person, politics and finances are the same thing: all we need is a “strong leader who can FORCE those greedy capitalists to lower prices and give us stuff we don’t want to work for ourselves, and Canada will be great like it was in the 1990s and early 2000s.”
That’s what these people are imagining, and I’d argue it’s too late to change them. Old stock Canadians like to blame immigrants for everything, but it’s actually the old stock Canadians fueling the destruction of Canada.
When most people think of old stock Canadians, Alberta comes to mind, but Alberta ATTRACTS Canada’s best and brightest, and in modern times that’s NOT always the old stock Canadian population. Meaning that Alberta, which is MAJORITY CONSERVATIVE, is actually less white than Quebec and Atlantic Canada.
So, the real choke point appears to be Ontario. If you’re in Quebec, for example, Conservatism can’t really happen. French is a DEAD language in the Americas; English and Spanish are the dominant languages, and if you look at a lot of Spanish-speaking countries, they’re ABANDONING communism and socialism.
Where communism and socialism are on the decline, CAPITAL follows. In regards to Canada being a resource-rich nation, it’s not abnormal for a resource-rich nation to have a problem attracting capital—the continent of Africa comes to mind. There’s only so much the government can tax before the capital it makes from natural resources gets WASTED in government initiatives.
Mark Carney is running perpetual deficits. He clearly has no plans to balance the budget EVER. Carney, based on the numbers, is using DEBT to finance his Net Zero/ESG scheme that cannot survive without government subsidies.
Canada, similar to the U.K., is awash in price controls, which, if you understand finance, creates SHORTAGES of things. For example, rent controls create shortages of housing, minimum wages create shortages of employment, and supply management is basically forced subsidization of what would otherwise be a DEAD dairy, poultry, and egg industry in Canada.
Once you accept the polling data for what it is, the conclusion you must come to is why socialist countries DISSOLVE into dictatorships or totalitarian regimes. Socrates’ warning about democracy revolved around low-IQ people being given the power to determine who leads the country.
Socrates, in his comparison, used a candy shop salesman vs. a doctor having an election. The results would always favor the candy shop salesman if the voters didn’t understand the details of what a politician or “leader” was advocating.
Why learn financial intelligence if you don’t have to? Those of us who understand economists know that most economists are trained not in economic reality; instead, they’re trained on economic THEORY. However, if you’re a lower-IQ voter, you’ll hear “Mark Carney, former governor of Canada, former CEO of Brookfield,” and conclude, well, he must know what he’s doing, he looks the part, and he’s promising cradle-to-grave welfare—win.
Or even: “I’m a Liberal, progressive, leftist—no matter how bad the policy is, I’d rather go down with the ship than vote Conservative.” These types of voters destroy countries all the time. In the case of Canada, as we’ve been reporting, the resilience of the Canadian dollar in the foreign exchange markets is interesting to observe.
Obviously, domestically, the Canadian dollar has lost most of its DOMESTIC purchasing power, so as a foreign investor you’re getting a lot less bang for your buck investing in Canada. However, Canada’s bond market is getting more risky, but this risk is what’s keeping investors’ attention.
Canada is one of those countries where, if you’re an international investor, you’re saying to yourself: how stupid are these people? They’re sitting on an energy gold mine, yet the numbers are trending downward. Things have to reverse soon.
Understanding this, if you look at things from the outside as an insider, this is a frog-boiling-slowly scenario, primarily because of international investors who are looking at Alberta—the only economic engine of Canada—attracting investment, while the rest of the country looks like a basket case, which, by the way, does include Saskatchewan.
Yes, Saskatchewan is doing better than most Canadian provinces, but not much better. Saskatchewan is awash with price control mechanisms. It’s an easier economic fix than, say, Quebec, but it’s no Alberta.
So all of this economic buffoonery comes across to an investor as “interestingly risky,” meaning that for as long as Mark Carney can save face, he may remain popular. That aside, long term, for Canada as a whole, this is NOT a good thing.
As one of the writers mentioned in a prior post, Alberta will need to structurally change its reliance on Ottawa to have a serious chance of autonomy. Alberta is in a position in which, if it rid itself of federal services, it could literally start BULLYING Ottawa and tell Ottawa to enforce its own laws.
As you’re seeing with the United States, the use of FORCE is expensive. Donald Trump’s war with Iran is already in the trillions, because ENFORCEMENT is expensive. In Quebec, for example, they’ve been bullying Ottawa for years, and Ottawa can’t do anything because it’s running a deficit, and doing something may trigger Quebecers openly ignoring the authority of Ottawa. Canada is a very big country—for example, a flight from Ottawa to Calgary is 4 hours.
For some context, a flight from Ottawa to Cuba is 4 hours. Good luck enforcing federal laws if Albertans simply tell you, “we’re not following your orders anymore,” and “oh, by the way, we’re not leaving because we don’t have to leave to have autonomy.”
The problem when you’re running a deficit and dependent on IMPORTS is that you’re not really in a good negotiation position. It’s all FAIRY DUST—your hope is that Canadians are too dumb to see how powerless you really are.