The "LOLCANADA" thread...again

The sad reality is before Justin became PM Canada was a leader and folks were doing well. Now Canada ranks below the poorest US state . We have a deficit that is outrageous and we rank last in the G7 and G20

The sad reality is Carney is never going to fix it and I doubt Pierre could have either . You can argue well our debt to this number is lower than the USA's but they are screwed as well . Take communist BC their Deficit is what we had normally as federal deficit

I'm doing the opposite, a point you continue to ignore. We have done it your way, opened the immigration floodgates and where are we now? We've done nothing but keep housing prices up and bringing in a ridiculous number of immigrants to artificially boost our GDP.

I don't know many (most?) of your domestic policy views - I know Shifty a little better though because he's been around longer. So I'll ask: Do you think the government should spend more money to "do more" to promote children, i.e. policies like expanding CCB or expanding daycare further? You went on a little speech about being a "fiscal conservative" and talking about government being bad at money in response to the bit about the government doing more, so I'm commenting on what typical conservatives act like. If that isn't you, great!

False. If you are talking about deficit as a percentage of GDP. Actually I think we might be BEST in G7 depending on precisely the year, data is messy I can't be assed.

Yet this man gets mad when he's called a typical liberal. Love it.

Is your question some gotcha? ''Trudeau did that, you should love him!''. It's clearly not working.

I don't think the solution is always to just spend more. I don't know how we would ''fix'' an affordability crisis by spending more. I know we didn't fix any of it by importing millions, which was your suggestion.

Again, you love ignoring this, but you can't **** our youth out of jobs + price them out of housing and then wonder why our kids aren't having kids when they're forced to stay with mom and dad till mom and dad die.

I should have put worst in the G7 and G20 on GDP growth not the other stat . No one in his right mind can defend the deficits Justin Trudeau ran up

You talked about deficit. So I responded with actual facts about the deficit. Sorry.

This is all you need to know about the Canadian economy. The garbage the professor has been regurgitating for years iit has been debunked in the last few months.

There's a reason he hand picks metrics and never mentions how much the average Canadian is struggling and no, not only due to what Trump is doing.

Interestingly, GDP per capita INCREASED last two quarters with population decline. As I've explained many times ITT (just lol at me handpicking anything) GDP per capita and immigration are linked as you suggest. So when population increases, GDP per capita does indeed fall, but it isn't quite the measure you talk about of whether the average canadian is struggling. That's because the GDP per capita falling doesn't mean an existing domestic Canadian gets worse off, it means more lower income people at the bottom of the income spectrum come in bringing down the average. Or bringing up the average when they leave as is happening now. As I've said many times, there is no one metric that capture the economy and neither GDP nor GDP-per-capita nor both at the same time is the right measure.

I'll give a stat closer to your point. What worried me in the most recent report was NOT the -0.1% gdp growth. It was lower savings rates despite high net wealth. Basically, you might own a big expensive home and have a paper high net wealth but you aren't saving much in the high cost of goods environment.

Your position, if I understand it, is that the government should "do more" to promote domestic Canadians having kids...right? It was awkwardly phrased so if that isn't your position please say. My question is what does "do more" mean? Because your comments thus far seem to be about how as a fiscal conservative you don't think government should spend more. Ok, so what precisely do you think they should do? I think if you want a pro-natal policy you should explicitly wealth transfer to people who have kids with programs like expanding $10 a day daycare to anyone who needs it.

I'm not ignoring this. I fully agree that high youth unemployment and skyrocketing housing costs (admittedly getting lower now) is a massive generational problem. I just don't think you've correctly diagnosed the principle drivers of this problem. And I don't think that slashing immigration from India and hurting the economy is likely to make a significant difference.

Housing costs getting lower the BC government added two new building code regs that add $30,000 to the cost of a new house both useless requirements.
Housing costs are on the rise across the country
Rentals have decreased minimally in BC
Heck $1800 gets you a basement suite here

There are plenty of metrics that show the average Canadian life is getting worse YoY. It’s not like we don’t see a dozen news articles every day highlighting the struggles of the average Canadian.

You just like posting bs metrics trying to convince the 3/4 people that read this thread that our economy isn’t as ****ed as it is.

Right that’s my point. Doing more to make having kids more attractive. I’m happy for my tax dollars to go to pro-natal policies, that doesn’t really change my answer to your question.

I don’t know how to fix an affordability crisis. If I did, you and I wouldn’t be talking right now.

I don’t think more spending fixes that either. I think anyone considering a kid nowadays isn’t just concerned with cost of daycare, they’re more concerned with their mortgage, rent or grocery bill.

The good thing is. It’s not my job to figure this out, I pay a lot of taxes that should pay for the politicians to figure this one out.

Immigration is a key driver of youth unemployment. You’re just completely unwilling to admit the affects of immigration on this because it negates everything you’ve ever said about this topic. Which tbh is funny because that report that just came out basically highlighting this strikes me as something someone like you would read.

Do what more specifically? I keep asking you what the "more" you want the government to do is, and we got a couple rounds of you telling us that you are a fiscal conservative and government spending money isn't good. Circling back, the original point was that I support policies to support parents, but I don't have any realistic sense that doing this will dramatically change the fundamental underlying dynamic which is that in western first world democracies domestic populations are significantly far beneath replacement level and countries rely on immigration just to keep stagnant populations.

Money is fungible. Subsidized daycare is about the most effective way to reduce costs of working families with kids, and has many spillover benefits like less career disruption for women and increased labour participation rates etc. It's not the only option, but if you are against this option it begs the question of what you want to "do more".

Youth unemployment is highly multifactorial though. The claim isn't that immigration has zero effect, but it is at most one driver among many. And quite a bit of the immigration sector that is most controversial like temporary foreign workers has limited effect on youth unemployment in how it is structured and the types of jobs performed under it etc. I believe that if you had your solution and you slashed Indian immigration by 80% that this would have pretty immediate negative consequences on the GDP, Canadian economy would suffer and likely be worse off for youth than before. We want a really strong vibrant economy, that's the goal. I get that it sounds super easy that if you immigrate one less person that is one more youth who is employed, but unfortunately it doesn't work anywhere near as simple as that.

I'm not quite sure you understood the previous post. I gave precisely such an example - declining savings rate - as an indicator of worsening life for average Canadians. The point was that GDP-per-capita is NOT a good indicator for this in a case of changing immigration levels, it is too noisy. Part of the challenge with you is that I sometimes push back against your hyperbolically sky is falling takes to be like no no, the economy is not as you describe, which isn't the same thing as me saying it is all rosy and perfect. I'm just saying your rhetoric doesn't match reality.

Speaking of unemployment, if this chart doesn’t convince you that blaming it mostly on immigration isn’t close to the full narrative I don’t know what will: https://x.com/mikalskuterud/status/20625...

the birth rate problem is a super complicated thing with no one definite answer. but sayings its not possible is a very defeatist attitude. for all we know someone has already fixed it with a blend of different solutions and we need 10 years of data to confirm it. not trying to fix the biggest problem of society because its hard is silly. Developed countries all over the world are trying to solve this. The solution shouldn't be to import undeveloped country at some point every country should be developed

Let's be honest you can share all the metrics you want people will judge the economy on affordability as it effects them. $200 to fill the tank this week, groceries are a fortune ,food banks can't keep up , 30 year old kids still living at home .
This isn't a cost of living item but add in a healthcare system that is brutal and I feel for the younger generation

I feel I have answered this question more than once now. I don't know what ''do more'' exactly entails because I think fixing an affordability crisis is very difficult and I'm certainly not smart enough to figure that one out.

Bulgaria figured out a way to have their people make more babies, unfortunately for them they faced issues and people still left but they did manage to bring their birthrate up.

Never really sure why you do this. Western first world countries all face the same problem, so what? They're all trying to fix it too. Western first world countries all also face the same issues with immigration. Perhaps immigration isn't the answer? It's not like we can't look at Canada, Scandinavian countries, France, Spain, Italy, Australia, The Uk and conclude mass-immigration is doing the opposite of what we want from it.

I'm not sure what you want me to answer here. I've said I'm obviously for this. Affordable daycare is huge, it's just a small piece of the entire puzzle. People can not afford to live right now. Giving them affordable daycare is great, it doesn't address the fact that a box of diapers is $20 more expensive than 7 years ago when I had my first kid or the fact that formula has doubled in cost. We're talking about an affordability crisis in a country that has seen cost of living outpace wages.

Never claimed it's not. Most problems in life are multi-faceted.

Right, this has got to be the 20th time you've said this. This will be the 20th time I've said this. We did it your way, we flooded the country with immigrants, we took in 2 million PRs since 2021? Millions more arriving on temporary visas during that time and did our economy become really strong and vibrant?

Exactly.

Also to be precise. If we did what I wanted and we didn't allow international students to work off-campus or allow TFWs to work for big fast food/grocery chains, youth unemployment rate would plummet. Go ahead, tell me I'm wrong.

Only someone as dishonest as you would wave away the affects of immigration on youth unemployment.

Exactly and these same countries who imported millions, are still facing the same issues. Canada is just uniquely terrible because we did mass-immigration with 0 economic growth even though the professor keeps telling us mass-immigration will lead to economic growth.

Exactly. If you pay attention, it's not hard to figure out why people aren't having kids. Yet somehow the solution is always import more and continue to add strain on already maxed out infrastructures.

Maybe more "realistic" than "defeatist"? From what I see, declining fertility rates is a huge problem across most developed countries, and I haven't really seen success stories that significantly change it. For example, countries like Korea and Japan are doing a HUGE amount of pro-natal stuff because they are in such bad shape and it seems to barely be moving the needle. I'm not claiming we shouldn't do anything - in fact I think we SHOULD do more to support people with children in Canada - but I think we should be realistic/defeatist that this is just something we largely have to expect going forward.

You are wrong - it wouldn't make much of a difference. I ran some back of the envelop math to try to scale this - many grains of salt and all that.

International students are about a quarter of all students, working out to ~10% of the total domestic 15-24 "youth" age bucket. Of those about 46% work. Of those they are capped at 20 hours a week so in "full time equivalents" this works out to ~3% of the total pool available for "youth unemployment" being full time equivalent international students. Or if you don't like FTEs and want to compare to people who actually have jobs not just job seekers it works out to 1.4% of all T4 employees. It's just not large enough to massively change the needle. Indeed, rural unemployment is generally substantially higher than urban unemployment (where the big universities etc are) which demonstrates how this isn't primarily driven by international students. We actually have a recent test case - new study permits absolutely plummeted 2024-2025 due to Liberals massively slashing incoming students but youth unemployment summer 2025 was the worst since 2009 (ignoring 2020). Further, job vacancies remain high - actually from that longitudinal employment graph I posted earlier I saw a stat that we have higher job vacancies today than 10 years ago. Finally you can slice this sector by sector, some sectors are amenable to student work and some are not and when you look at youth unemployment it appears to be broad spectrum and aligned with the general unemployment rate as opposed to localized substantially worse in international-student friendly sectors. TFW is much smaller in the relevant sectors to the point it's barely relevant.

So when I look at things like the above, I just really struggle to see it as the dominant factor affecting youth unemployment. And of course there are many, many other negatives to the predictable consequences of policies that would result in substantially less international students which would have their own cascading negative effects so even if the "positive" you hope for on youth unemployment was what you hoped, it's not clear even then it would be net positive.

To be clear - I'm not claiming no effect of course, I think the effect is still very real particularly from the 2021 ish through to 2024 period. I'm arguing an upperbound on how bad it is. For instance I think the Liberals are mostly doing what you want them to. Like new study permits went from 292k down to 115k 2024 to 2025. It IS being slashed, and actually I worry that they are overcorrecting to the post 2021 changes.

Sorry for going deep on one part of your post and not the rest - hopefully focusing on quality over quantity is more productive, but let me know if there is a detail you really wanted me to focus on:/

No no much appreciated. Going to fact check this.

Lets not forget what else came out yesterday that the deficit is expected to be way higher than the liberals project as per the PBO . Hard to believe with all that extra oil revenue coming in

That's not great. But I'm also not particularly worried. I've got a neo-Keynesian bent, so governments spending more during times of economic turmoil is reasonable. Carney is pretty clear in his approach which is NOT to take the deficit to zero. Instead it is tightening the government of a lot of bloat while at the same time doing a LOT of expensive investments - even the military spending alone is just so much higher. When you get flat or declining growth due to Trump etc, that will lower government revenues, so it makes it even more dramatic.