This week’s fiscal update confirmed much of what we already knew about the state of the Canadian economy: Everything is bad, and it’s going to get worse. Economic growth (which has already been in a per-capita recession for months) is slowing to a crawl. Debt is set to soar. And the unemployed will likely see their ranks swell by the hundreds of thousands.
Monday
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Here’s how you usually destroy an economy: War, famine, conquest and mass-death — the four horsemen, basically. Ecological disaster is also popular; the economy of Saint Vincent and the Grenadine, for one, carries the notable handicap of being constantly blown up by volcanos.
But for the life of me, I can’t remember any of these events preceding my own turn towards ignominy and stagnation. One day, you’re leading the OECD in per-capita GDP growth. The next, you have a productivity rate lower than Alabama and a Subway sandwich now costs $20. I would like to ask someone if we lost a war and are now paying reparations to an enemy I forgot about, but I’m scared I’ll look stupid.
Tuesday
We’ve all had that one friend: Handsome, charming, good job … and yet for the life of him he can’t hold down a good relationship. Some latent flaw — fear of commitment, control issues, a gambling addiction — keeps plunging him right back into bachelorhood.
Have I become that guy? I mean, here I am: Everybody’s dream economy. Oceans of oil. Hectares of lumber. Millions of the world’s educated and upwardly mobile banging at the gates to be let in. You’d think this would be enough to at least build an affordable house or two, but you’d be wrong.
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Wednesday
There’s nothing sadder than witnessing a fading superstar trying desperately to grasp that one last moment in the limelight. The aging rocker still railing against the establishment at age 80. The former beauty queen who’s now more Botox than flesh.
But I’ll admit it: I paid $30 billion I don’t have to subsidize a bunch of unsustainable electric vehicle factories. You try getting up each morning and looking in the mirror to see only a debt-ridden petrostate with a few grocery oligopolies thrown in for colour. Just give me my moment of pretending to be a “green energy superpower.” Tell me I did a good job fighting “environmental racism.”
Thursday
There are times I have fleeting glimpses of what seems to have come before. Large resource projects built to budget on short timelines. Whole sectors thriving without even a thought to government subsidy or support. Home completions topping more than 200,000 per year. Were these hallucinations, or are they scattered images from a past that none of us remembers? I know that *somebody* drilled the wells, cleared the farms, built the factories and founded the services that sustain me — but was it me?
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Friday
In my darker moments, I think of the bison. About 30 million of them roamed the U.S. and Canadian plains as recently as the 1840s. And within 50 years, the species is driven to the edge of extinction. The moral being that there is no abundance so overwhelming — no wealth so total — that it can’t be dismantled with only a single generation of reckless mismanagement.
I only hope that, like the bison, they’ll be able to stop us before we completely go off the cliff. Perhaps one day, surviving remnants of the Canadian economy can be preserved in national parks and slowly reintroduced into the wild. Our grandchildren may not know affordability or home ownership, but with luck they will be able to visit these things on ranches.
OTTAWA – The parliamentary budget officer says the federal government likely failed to keep its deficit below its promised $40 billion cap in the last fiscal year.
However the PBO also projects in its latest economic and fiscal outlook today that weak economic growth this year will begin to rebound in 2025.
The budget watchdog estimates in its report that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland pledged a year ago to keep the deficit capped at $40 billion and in her spring budget said the deficit for 2023-24 stayed in line with that promise.
The final tally of the last year’s deficit will be confirmed when the government publishes its annual public accounts report this fall.
The PBO says economic growth will remain tepid this year but will rebound in 2025 as the Bank of Canada’s interest rate cuts stimulate spending and business investment.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 17, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says the level of food insecurity increased in 2022 as inflation hit peak levels.
In a report using data from the Canadian community health survey, the agency says 15.6 per cent of households experienced some level of food insecurity in 2022 after being relatively stable from 2017 to 2021.
The reading was up from 9.6 per cent in 2017 and 11.6 per cent in 2018.
Statistics Canada says the prevalence of household food insecurity was slightly lower and stable during the pandemic years as it fell to 8.5 per cent in the fall of 2020 and 9.1 per cent in 2021.
In addition to an increase in the prevalence of food insecurity in 2022, the agency says there was an increase in the severity as more households reported moderate or severe food insecurity.
It also noted an increase in the number of Canadians living in moderately or severely food insecure households was also seen in the Canadian income survey data collected in the first half of 2023.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct 16, 2024.
OTTAWA – Statistics Canada says manufacturing sales in August fell to their lowest level since January 2022 as sales in the primary metal and petroleum and coal product subsectors fell.
The agency says manufacturing sales fell 1.3 per cent to $69.4 billion in August, after rising 1.1 per cent in July.
The drop came as sales in the primary metal subsector dropped 6.4 per cent to $5.3 billion in August, on lower prices and lower volumes.
Sales in the petroleum and coal product subsector fell 3.7 per cent to $7.8 billion in August on lower prices.
Meanwhile, sales of aerospace products and parts rose 7.3 per cent to $2.7 billion in August and wood product sales increased 3.8 per cent to $3.1 billion.
Overall manufacturing sales in constant dollars fell 0.8 per cent in August.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2024.
