Canada’s Lost Decade

We have known for decades that Donald Trump is a school yard variety bully. He never attempted to hide this. I don't think he's entirely joking about annexing Canada, Greenland and all, but I do think the 25th amendment would be invoked on the grounds of mental unfitness before he ever makes good on such a threat. What this week's new crisis hammers home though is the dangerously weak position Canada finds itself thanks to a decade being led by deeply unserious people.

The idea that Canada can be disrespected without consequence is not new. From the spats with Duterte and MBS to the India trip that the prime minister chose to turn into a costume party, we've projected a deeply unserious image to the world for years now. Then there's declarations like “the budget will balance itself”, “let the bankers worry about the economy” and other peaches. There's also the duplicity and inconsistency of Canada's foreign policy after the October 7th terror attack where the prime minister was literally thanked by the terror group Hamas.

Most damaging of all however, is what has actually happened here at home that has turned us from an example to a cautionary tale in nine short years. First of all, we have seen a decade of deep erosion in our sense of Canadianness. We've taken the perfectly respectable idea that we must critically examine our history and its key figures to the dangerous extreme where many Canadians feel nothing but shame in the origin story of our nation. To be clear, we should be ashamed of the residential schools and the enfants de Duplessis aspects of our history, but if that extends to a lack of pride in having built a great nation here in the great white north, we have a problem.

Furthermore, when we have no core sense of culture, no foundational myth, no core identity, we stop being a nation and become a loose rabble pretending to be one. One of the most damaging ideas to come out of the last decade is this idea of a “post-national state”. Now we are seeing what that looks like in two ways. One: a lot of Canadian citizens can't tell you what Canadian culture looks like, ie: what traditions and ideas bind this nation together. Two: we are seeing foreign conflicts along with foreign hatreds being imported into our streets. For example, I don't recall 1930's style antisemitic hate marches harassing local businesses and residential neighborhoods. That's a very recent phenomenon, and largely an imported one, because a post-national state has no set of core values, cultural ethos to which newcomers must align. Before, it was understood that coming to Canada meant becoming a Canadian in the fullest sense of the word, and it didn't even require abandoning the language and traditions of the old country, simply embracing the values and cultural traditions of the new one. But if the prime minister himself says Canada has “no core identity”, then what is there for newcomers to Canada to embrace and adapt to?

To make matters worse, Canada has not only become culturally rudderless, but also economically so. Today, Canadians are staring down the weakest loonies since the turn of the millennium, declining living standards, declining productivity, declining birth rates, and anemic GDP growth which is artificially being sustained by unsustainable levels of immigration relative to our housing supply, and ability to build new housing. What is growing in Canada? Well, federal budget deficits are, to the tune of $62B for last fiscal year, and more to come. Also growing is the amount of time young people need to save up for a starter home, the amount of mortgage delinquency cases, and the average debt of a Canadian household. ($72K as of Sep. 2024) We literally have the bulk of a whole generation effectively priced out of the housing market and not earning enough to offset the rising cost of living in spite of strong educational credentials and in spite of the stereotypes, an impressive work ethic in a lot of cases. No wonder we also have a brain drain issue.

We also lack the proper means to assert our sovereignty and have for decades. We've effectively outsourced our national defense to NATO and the US. To boot, we don't even honor our financial commitment to NATO because national defense is not seen as a paramount issue. And just today, we had our public safety minister say "You don't need to assert your sovereignty when you're a sovereign state.”. This is simply unacceptable. Sovereignty on paper means nothing without the will and means to defend it in fact. The last few years should have already taught us that. For example, Israel and Ukraine are both sovereign states, formally recognized by the international community, but that only means something because both nations have shown the means and the desire to defend it. That used to be Canada. We were the Prussia of North America, the feared stormtroopers that forced the Germans out of Vimy Ridge, the liberators of the Netherlands. Today, we have maintenance issues with equipment sent for a training mission in Latvia.

The decade between 2015 and 2025 will be remembered as Canada's lost decade, a decade where our sense of nationhood has been deeply shaken and where political machinations matter more than presenting a united front against a clear economic and political crisis. We've had a government take us from a standard of living comparable to the US to a place most young people have given up on ever owning a home. Then there's the homeless encampments springing up all over the country, a private sector that is failing to keep up in terms of growth and innovation. There's also the overwhelming tax burden. And finally, there's the deteriorating social cohesion, from violent antisemitic riots on campus to worsening violent crime in major cities.

And yet, amidst all of this, Canadians have not lost the desire to work hard, and succeed. What we need is to become Canada again, with a sense of core identity that unites us, with policies that reflect what made us one of the most desirable countries to start a new life in, with a sense of economic and social direction. Here, Trump has unwittingly handed us an opportunity. With yesterday's ill thought out presser, I think he's awoken the sense of national pride that was dormant and beaten down for nine long years. We do have pride, and we do have a sense of identity. It's time to be a nation once again while we still can.