JimJRock

A regular guy. Opinions are my own and don't care if you agree. Pronoun free and never, ever woke.

[L. Wayne Mathison @WayneMathison]

Canada’s economy is not healthy. It is being propped up by population growth, government spending and political spin.

The number that matters is not total GDP. It is GDP per person, real income per person and how much your paycheque actually buys.

Between 2015 and the end of 2025, real disposable income per person grew by less than 4 per cent in total. That is a lost decade.

Productivity is the bigger disaster. Trevor Tombe estimates that if Canada had simply kept pace with the United States over the past ten years, our economy would now be roughly $600 billion larger every year.

That missing wealth shows up everywhere:

Lower wages.

Weaker investment.

Higher taxes.

Larger deficits.

Fewer businesses.

Less purchasing power.

Canada did this to itself.

We blocked pipelines, slowed mines, delayed infrastructure, raised taxes, buried projects in regulation and relied on mass immigration to make total GDP look better than the lived reality.

I also believe Canada entered a technical recession. Real GDP contracted in the fourth quarter of 2025 and again in the first quarter of 2026 on an annualized basis.

Economists can debate definitions. Canadians are living the result.

Unemployment has risen. Purchasing power has weakened. Housing is unaffordable. Business investment is poor. GDP per person has fallen. Millions of Canadians feel poorer because they are poorer.

Canada now produces only about 70 per cent as much per person as the United States. Even with strong reforms, it could take decades to recover the ground lost since 2014.

At the same time, we must pay for an aging population, rising healthcare costs and much higher defence spending.

That means hard choices.

We need lower taxes on investment, faster project approvals, more resource development, serious spending restraint, healthcare reform and a realistic trade strategy centred on the United States.

We also need an honest debate about benefits paid to wealthy seniors while younger Canadians face impossible housing costs, higher taxes and mounting public debt.

I say that as a senior.

Canada’s problem is not a lack of resources, talent or opportunity.

It is bad policy.

That should make us angry, but it should also give us hope.

What politicians broke through bad decisions can be repaired through better ones.

The first step is to stop pretending aggregate GDP growth means Canadians are getting ahead.

They are not.

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@GadSaad He's a stain that marked the beginning of the end of the Canada we once loved.

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@Wanita1 @PierrePoilievre What is he saying here that isn't the truth? Be specific please

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@ToewsWenda @PierrePoilievre The facts show that those 60% of Canadians don't have a clue about the economy obviously. Nice try at deflection though.

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@JohnPeate5 @PierrePoilievre Wanting pedos to face real justice is fascism now? Another Liberal proving the you're the real pedo protectors. Your children must be so proud

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@thesovereignceo And Liberal voters still defend him. Mass stupidity

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@Jeriantheman @RKotzma @d_frost_d_vrc @fordnation Where has it been proven? Liberal logic...believe everything the lefties insinuate even when there's no proof. Keep repeating louder while stomping your feet

[Vesper @vesperdigital]

Thatcher exposed every Liberal playbook on earth in 60 seconds!

"The state has no source of money other than the money people earn themselves. It can spend more only by borrowing your savings or taxing you more."

It's almost as if she learned this while facing communists!
🙃

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@ABDanielleSmith Who is paying for it? I'm betting the taxpayers are.

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@ENWINUtilities The power is also out Riverside Drive West at McKay

[Jasmin Laine @JasminLaine]

Let’s say your boss hired a consultant to make sure the company you work for absolutely crushed the next quarter.

But the company was kind of in the hole. You, being the loyal employee you are, had even gone so far as to work extra hours without pay, and avoided taking vacation days just so you could do your part for a job you love—naturally, you and your colleagues raised some concern about spending more money on a new consultant with similar ideas as the last one.

Your boss promised you all, “this is the guy”… and to convince you of his certainty, said “we’re going to build at speeds not seen in generations.”, “we’ll be a super power”. “You’re all going to get bonuses once this plan works.”.

365 days pass… and the results are worse than you could have expected. So bad, that thousands of your colleagues have chosen to leave the company for better opportunity with a different one.

The business is now in double the debt it was before his employment.

The promise of revenue by the consultant, turned out to be “not worth the paper they’re written on”.

And worse, you find out that he actually only answered the phone calls by your panicked boss once every five days. The rest of the time, he was off using the private jet, flying around the world and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in inflight catering on almost every trip.

When you checked with accounting, you discovered that instead of actually build significant wealth for the company, he had re-labeled all sorts of expense categories… replaced your colleagues with low skilled and low wage workers, claiming the company was thriving because of all this new employment and demand, and insulted your biggest customer so badly that they no longer want to do business with you.

When you brought this up to your boss, who you’ve worked for your entire career and thought you had a good relationship with, he called you the problem. A traitor and said you were spewing misinformation.

You showed him all your evidence, and he told you to “get the F#%> out. Pack your bags and leave if you’re going to be so negative and talk down the company like that.”

That’s basically Canada right now.

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@ABDanielleSmith Trudeau's former advisor Trevor Tombe has you selling out your constituents. I used to think you actually wanted to get things done right. Now I see you're just a sellout like Doug Ford kissing Liberal butt.

[L. Wayne Mathison @WayneMathison]

Canada Is Outside the Room

Mexico is already moving to protect its interests with Washington.

Canada appears to be standing outside the room, issuing polished statements while the future of our most important trade relationship grows more uncertain.

That matters because businesses do not invest billions when the rules may change every year. Auto plants, steel mills, agricultural processors, and manufacturers need stability. They need to know the terms will still exist five or ten years from now.

Instead, Ottawa keeps talking about “diversifying trade” as though geography no longer matters.

Canada cannot replace the United States with a few trade missions to Europe and Asia. The American market is next door. It buys more from us than any other country. Our supply chains, energy exports, manufacturing base, and millions of Canadian jobs depend on that relationship.

A competent government does not complain about the American president or wait for a friendlier one. It deals with whoever Americans elect, builds leverage, and gets Canada a workable deal.

Mexico seems to understand that.

Canada looks like it brought talking points to a negotiation.

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@CTVWindsor Maybe have the police actually enforce these bylaws especially in the west end. Every year we see people shooting them off from their hands, walking down the middle of the street. Saw one who shot their's at a car. Cops nowhere. Do your jobs!

[James E. Thorne @DrJStrategy]

Canada: Crying Over Spilt Milk in a Self‑Inflicted Stagnation

Canada’s elite have spent a quarter‑century turning a rich, opportunity‑dense economy into a slow‑growth, over‑levered cul‑de‑sac, and they still insist nothing is structurally wrong. There is no sense crying over spilt milk about past mistakes when the architects of this stagnation are still in charge and still in denial.

Canada did not just drift into secular stagnation; it embraced a kind of virtue socialism and an industrial policy anchored on climate change targets rather than productive capacity, competitiveness, or growth. An economy built on world‑class natural resources, strategic geography, and human capital has been deliberately downgraded into a housing‑addicted, low‑productivity balance sheet recession risk, and the people who did it still show up on panels calling this “resilience.”

For years, Canada’s comparative advantages in energy, resources, and industrial capacity were something to apologize for, regulate to death, or tax into oblivion, while policy and capital chased the illusion that you could mortgage and virtue‑signal your way to prosperity. The result is a country flirting with a liquidity trap, where even lower rates may barely move a real economy suffocated by over‑priced assets, under‑built productive capital, and households too damaged to borrow again.

The real scandal is not that Canada faces secular stagnation; it is that the elite engineered it, denied it, wrapped it in climate rhetoric, and now blame external shocks while the data scream that this is a made‑in‑Canada crisis.

To be clear, Canada’s problems are not the result of President Trump!

If Canada’s elite will not finally admit that decades of attacking its own strengths, worshipping its own bubbles, and treating industrial policy as a morality play have left the country one downturn away from a full balance sheet recession, then they are not guardians of the national interest, they are custodians of decline, and at this point, there really is no sense crying over spilt milk, only over the refusal to fix the mess they made.

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@KirkLubimov I work in the Steel industry and she is full of 💩

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@MichelleLA1981 I work in the Steel industry and she is full of 💩

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@LichTamara Our justice system failed once again with the malicious prosecution of you. The political corruption involved was disgusting. Not surprising coming from the Liberal government though.

[JimJRock @Jimjrock69]

@yonkojohn Nah. We have too many useful idiots in this country that believe everything the Libs and their media tell them. Can't fix stupid

[L. Wayne Mathison @WayneMathison]

Canada did not need a technocrat explaining why decline is complicated.

It needed a government willing to reverse the incentives that created over a decade of decline.

Housing is broken. Energy is expensive. Inflation is sticky. Young grads are locked out. Productivity is weak.

Carney offers managed decline with better vocabulary: more plans, panels, programs, and elite confidence.

Poilievre is pointing at the machinery itself.

Cut taxes. Build homes. Approve projects. Expand Canadian energy. Reward work. Reduce waste. Let investment come back.

No, it will not fix everything overnight.

But it would be a serious change in the right direction.

Ordinary people do not live inside policy papers.

They live inside rent payments, grocery bills, fuel costs, job applications, and mortgage renewals.

That is why Poilievre is the better fit for this moment.