Trudeau Failed in Economic Governance

When Justin Trudeau said “the budget will balance itself”, it told me everything I needed to know about “the man in charge” of Canada’s future prosperity.

“Working Harder for Less: More People But Less Capital Is No Recipe For Prosperity”

A new study from the C.D. Howe Institute under the name above reveals an alarming trend that became even more severe after Trudeau’s Liberals replaced Harper’s Conservatives in Ottawa.

Prime Minister Harper, with a Masters degree in Economics, knew a thing or two about policies to strengthen national prosperity. Trudeau, with a background as a Drama teacher, has given us plenty of drama at the expense of national prosperity.

Study in brief: (copied from the linked article)

• Business investment in Canada has been so weak since 2015 that capital per worker has been falling – part of an ominous pattern of stagnating productivity and living standards.

• A longstanding gap between investment per available worker in Canada compared to the United States and other OECD countries narrowed from the late 1990s through the early 2010s, but has since widened to a chasm. In 2023, Canadian workers will likely receive only 65 cents of new capital for every dollar received by their counterparts in the OECD as a whole, and 58 cents for every dollar received by their counterparts in the United States.

• Productivity and investment are mutually reinforcing. Productivity growth creates opportunities and competitive threats that spur businesses to invest. Investment increases productivity by equipping workers with better tools. Investment per worker that is lower in Canada than abroad tells us that businesses see less opportunity in Canada, and prefigures weaker growth in Canadian earnings and living standards than elsewhere.

• If pro-growth policies cannot boost business investment enough to raise capital per worker and increase productivity, higher immigration may accelerate Canada’s evolution to an economy producing labour-intensive goods and services, with low productivity and low living standards.

“Trudeau gives Canada first cabinet with equal number of men and women”

The Guardian’s article of 4 November 2015 sporting the title above gave me (I was a Professional Recruiter for 36 years) the heebee-jeebies when I first saw the article. Placing gender parity over subject matter expertise to assemble a corporate board of directors would get the Chairman of the Board fired, but when Justin justified it “because it’s 2015”, I knew that Canada was in trouble.

This is not to suggest that women don’t exist with the requisite expertise. However, when you only have a pool of elected Liberal MPs that is less than 200 candidates from which to select, and when the complexity of national issues that the Liberal cabinet members were expected to address, selection criteria is critical. Gender would be low on my priority list as a key criterion.

My Professional Opinion

I have interviewed over 10,000 job candidates over many years for a wide range of corporate and government clients who expected me to introduce them to the most qualified candidates for each search assignment they assigned to me.

I recall saying to my wife in 2015 that Justin Trudeau was not even qualified to be a dog catcher (no offence intended to dogs or dog catchers) let alone Prime Minister. His choice of a cabinet based on gender equity was a rookie mistake which simply reinforced that opinion.

Today, with 8 years of experience as PM, it will be interesting to see in the next election how the voting public will grade his performance. For drama, he gets an A+. For national governance, an F.