No, Canada's economic malaise isn't all Trump's fault...

We need to stop telling ourselves convenient lies that distort Canada's hard truths.

Fleetwood Mac summed up Canada’s current mood when it comes to economics and political reality way back in 1987, “Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies,” the band sang.

Canadians are comfortable with being told lies and the big one that keeps being repeated is that our economic problems all stem from Donald Trump, his tariffs and our economic uncertainty. We get this lie told to us by our political leaders, our media and by ourselves in coffee shops and bars across the country.

This past weekend, we heard Bob Fife, one of Canada’s most accomplished journalists and well respected by all parties, repeat this lie on CTV’s Question Period.

While Trump’s tariffs are a problem, the reality is, our economic problems go much deeper and are mostly due to self-inflicted wounds. It’s why I cheered on Mark Carney last year saying things like we will think big, act bigger and move at speeds not seen in generations.

If we had followed that mindset, we would be digging ourselves out of the economic hole that we put ourselves in. Unfortunately, Carney’s rhetoric has met reality and we aren’t thinking big, we aren’t acting bigger and we are moving at Ottawa speeds.

Let’s take a look at the facts…

Our unemployment rate is 6.7% according to the Labour Force Survey for February released by Statistics Canada. A year earlier, our unemployment rate was 6.6% and it has been over 6% for two years now.

That isn’t due to Trump, in fact we were headed in the wrong direction long before it became clear that he would win the 2024 American Presidential election. So, the unemployment rate is not his fault, that’s on us.

Now, let’s consider our lacklustre economic growth.

According to Our World in Data, between 2014 and 2024, Canada’s GDP grew by 18.8% which sounds great until you compare us to the Americans who grew their GDP in the same time frame by 28.2%. If you look at the chart below, which is expressed in real international dollars adjusted for inflation.

When we look at GDP per capita things are much worse for Canada. We saw GDP per capita grow by 1.7% between 2014 and 2024 compared to 19.8% growth for the Americans over the same time.

Note in this chart that Canada’s GDP per capita was going down starting in 2022, which was long before Donald Trump was elected and started imposing tariffs.

Our labour productivity is well behind the United States, a trend that also predates Trump’s return to The White House. As for business investment and capital per worker, that is something that has also declined over the past decade which hurts labour productivity further.

Our ability to attract foreign direct investment, a key builder of the Canadian economy, has been middling at best over the same time period.

It may feel good to blame everything on Donald Trump, but it’s not accurate.

It’s simply the kind of sweet little lies that soothes the souls of too many Canadians.

We’d be better off to acknowledge some hard truths and work on fixing them.