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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has resigned, a sign of yet more changing of the times as the Prime Minister since 2015 marks the end of an decade of Liberal Party rule of Canada, and possibly yet another political dynasty scalp Donald Trump may claim. While Trudeau's critics and issues go far beyond Trump, the internal-party revolt since the US 2024 election will put another person on the podium right as Donald Trump assumes office, part of a broader realignment in the West as governments including Germany, France, and others have seen falls- several deliberate- to re-roll priorities and mandates in (temporal) alignment with the change in the US presidency. (Canada's 2025 election, much like Germany's, is/was scheduled for October. Canada's parliament is suspended until 24 March where a new PM will (hopefully) be chosen.)
Broadly associated with the more progressive-woke politics, Trudeau's liberals are expected to face a shellacking, though whether that's as part of Canada's experience of the anti-incumbant wave of the last decade, a backlash to progressive politics, or Trudeau's own personal contribution. (Last year, 49% of respondents in a Canadian survey characterized the PM as 'Arrogant,' which is often just the first and more polite words in some lists.)
A (much) longer political obituary can be read here for those who are curious. Regardless of one's views of the man, the sun will continue to rise, the earth rotate, and life will go on.
But we may never get another world leader on camera in blackface.
Canada was the great laboratory of democracy that we needed. Trudeau's political obituary will be written with one word: immigration.
Trudeau's nearly 10 year reign witnessed the largest transformation in Canadian history since European settlement: the replacement of a largely European population with a multicultural blend of cultures from around the world.
This has had disastrous and likely permanent consequences. While leftists might have cheered the new, vibrant additions to the nation's food and street culture, even right-leaning Canadians were generally pro-immigration. The consensus was that Canada's points-based admissions system would lead to incredible economic gains if nothing else. We now know that that is false. Canada's economy has been stagnant over the last 10 years while the US economy has soared. In fact, on a per-capita level Canada's economy has been in a recession now for over 6 quarters.
Canada's population has increased by large amounts since 2015. The country now groans under an influx of millions of new immigrants. Since Trudeau took office, Canada's population has increased from less than 36 million to over 41 million. Nearly 100% of the gain has been as a result of immigration. Housing prices have soared, making owning a home an unreachable dream for almost all young people. Rents for apartments have seen similar increases. Wages, on the other hand have stagnated, and remain at levels far below those of the US. Far from the fever dream of immigrants doing useful labor such as building new housing, the new arrivals are competing aggressively for the same sort of high wage sinecures and government benefits that native-born Canadians previously thought they were entitled to. The frog is being boiled much too quickly, and people are noticing.
Mass immigration is now proven a failed policy. It remains to be seen whether it is possible for Canada to recover. I fear it might not be. With the Conservatives in charge, things will get bad less quickly, but it will take years for the consequences of the Trudeau years to be fully felt.
There's a disconnect here no? If you are using a points based admission system to get the best qualified immigrants, they aren't going to be building houses. For that you want low skilled immigration (or work visas). You can't expect to only get the highest quality immigrants AND that they will do construction.
Yes, I know. And yet somehow, "we need immigrants to build houses and take care of all our old people" seems to be the normie pro-immigration stance.
It didn't work for Canada, it didn't work for Australia, Germany, France, the UK, the US, etc... It never works.
In any case, high-skill immigration, like low-skill immigration, is fraught with challenges and is generally negative sum, unless the immigrants are truly elite. I think Musk's "15,000/year" is a pretty good ballpark estimate. But for countries already choking on surplus college educated baristas, adding even more midwit college grads is only going to make everyone poorer.
I'm pretty sure the US DOES have immigrants building houses and taking care of old people.
Those immigrants will themselves need houses and taking care of. When you run the numbers, you’ll see that immigration has a trivial effect on median age. Are we really willing to permanently change the demographics of the country to buy ourselves 6 months of additional elder care runway?
I don't think the demographics of the United States are sacrosanct. We should be a lot more selective than we are, and we should be far less accommodating of foreign cultures and put more pressure to assimilate, but demographics (meaning race) per se I don't care about. As an HBD believer I figure being more selective means there will be racial effects, which I'm fine with.
As for elder care, it's actually possible another 6 years would be sufficient (as the Boomers are reduced) to avoid problems, also.
I think we largely agree, but I just want to note that for once I am the bigger black pill. I think I should get some sort of badge.
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