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Notes -
Canada’s decline
Things are not going well in Canada. The hashtag #Canadaisbroken has been going around for a while, but the scale of the decline remains underdiscussed, especially in our media. Canada’s real GDP per capita is 2.5% lower now than it was in 2019. In the U.S. its 6.0% higher. For decades, Canada has had per capita GDP (adjusted for purchasing power) that was about 80% of the U.S. level, now its 72% and falling. Canada is rapidly becoming a European country in terms of living standards. This understates the problem because in Europe its easier to live on less: cars are not necessary in many places and, crucially, rent is much lower. Canada is in the midst of an unbelievable housing crisis. At current prices and interest rates, the ownership costs of a typical home would consume 60% of the median household's income, the highest ever recorded. I went to the U.S. southwest recently and my overriding impression is how much better off America is than Canada now.
The Liberal government’s response to this has been deficit spending. Their lack of fiscal responsibility was dramatic during Covid, but hidden under the guise of emergency they spent $200+ billion on new entitlements and spending programs which has resulted in Canada running a permanent structural budget deficit. When combined with our provinces (which unlike U.S. states are allowed to borrow) and measured as a % of GDP, the country is running Bush Jr.-tier fiscal deficits without wars. And what are these new programs? Almost all of them are means-tested benefits for behaviours progressives like. A new daycare program aimed at moms working 9-5 jobs (i.e. white collar) that does nothing for SAHMs, a dental care program which is only for families making under 90k (creating a huge marriage penalty and implicit tax rate), a carbon tax rebate which is income redistribution in disguise, replacing the modest but universal child benefit with a generous means tested one, etc. If you put it together, Canada has largely rebuilt our 1970s welfare state but will claw it back from you more than dollar for dollar as you earn more. We variously incentivize poverty and moms to work, stay unmarried and put their kids in daycare. Our taxes are high.
The other big push from our government is immigration. They occasionally frame it as a way to stop inflation, but usually they don’t defend it at all and assume the pro-immigration consensus is unshakable. The levels were shocking last year, but they keep rising. Over just the past 3 months, Canada admitted 430,000 new people. Canada now has an absolute annual level of legal immigration (including temporary migration) of about 1.2 million -- higher than the United States. We get about 500,000 traditional immigrants, but the big change from recent years is about 700,000 net “non-permanent residents” who form a new helot class. Canada now has 2.5 million temporary residents who come to study or work low-paid jobs and it has rapidly transformed the entire country. These people represent 6% of the population, but because they are highly concentrated by age, they are about 20% of adults aged 20-40. I spend time in a small town that is hundreds of kilometers from any major city and nearly every store now employs temporary foreign workers from India. Every worker at McDonalds. Every worker at Tim Hortons. They live 6+ to an apartment and have tightened the rental market pricing locals out. With population growth running at its highest ever pace, homebuilding is unchanged at about 250,000 units creating an incremental housing need of a quarter million units per year. Rent inflation is over 7% compared with approximately 0% month over month in the US.
What the past few years has made plain to me is how deep leftism runs in Canada and how dedicated it is to ignoring the effect of incentives on behaviour: We can just subsidize bad behaviour and punish good behaviour endlessly without actually changing behaviour. In many ways Canada is running on the fumes of vestigial British earnestness, politeness and self discipline which has made this work in the past, but I think we’re rapidly burning up our cultural capital and once its gone, I think we’ll tip into a much worse equilibrium. I have leftist friends whose perspective is: “sure things aren’t great, but would the conservatives do better?” which makes me sad. For most people, even smart people like my friends, seeing the bad consequences of things they support doesn’t move the needle at all in terms of their worldviews. And I didn’t get into spiraling crime and government celebration of the deracination of our traditional culture.
I think part of what is happening is Anglo culture’s seemliness has become our greatest weakness. Its unseemly to ‘punch down’ and blame an avalanche of mostly-poor international students for the rental market, or permissive and ‘anti-racist’ criminal justice policy for a huge increase in crime so we equivocate and people say things like “its so brutal, how sad” while continuing to vote in the same way. There is no transmission from failure in office to electoral results, so we end up with people like Trudeau for three terms. One astute observation I’ve heard about Canadian ‘niceness’ is that its fake: people are very cagey about saying what they think in public about anything controversial. Our entire country is a university campus. Canadians live in a world of feel good pablum as our way of life is destroyed. People rage about it, but there is no honest sensemaking apparatus in Canada – because talking about things plainly is unseemly – so rage is dissipated randomly. Even today, even after its failures, the combined polling share of the LPC-led ruling coalition (i.e. LPC+NDP) is nearly 50%.
Canada deserves all this. The rod of consequences is a very effective teacher for those on whom the voice of reason has no effect. Canada decided as a country to subsidize shitty behaviour by taking from the productive class and did not listen when they were told this would lead to fewer productive people (relative to the counterfactual) and more shitty behaviour and proceeded with their misguided idea regardless.
Now they are eating the consequences of their beliefs as they have fewer productive people (lower real GDP per capita) as well as more shitty behaviour (no citation needed) and I have nothing to say other than "You deserve it" and a sincere wish they get it given to them good and hard.
Was it the country, the nation or the government that made this decision?
In Britain voters have consistently demanded lower immigration for 20 years and governments (on both sides) have consistently ignored them and raised immigration, or refused to enforce borders. Australia has proven that it is possible to reduce illegal immigration to zero for island countries (if this was ever in doubt). Governments have the power to prevent these things, it's not difficult. They choose not to prevent illegal immigration, they choose not to set quotas on legal migration - the people tend to be pretty happy with such notions.
I don't know if the Canadian people ever got a clear choice, I suspect not if the British didn't.
Voters in Britain apparently considered it to not be a sufficiently important issue to vote for a different party over. There is a clear enough choice: you can continue voting for the parties that made it clear in word and deed that they want more immigration, or you can vote for literally any other parties, or you can start your own.
What are they supposed to do when their major parties both say 'oh we'll lower immigration' and then raise it? They voted for Brexit, many thinking this would finally reduce immigration and it still didn't.
https://twitter.com/t848m0/status/1560662923101347840
When the major parties, NGO blob, big companies and the bulk of the media have a consensus to increase immigration it's difficult to start new parties and move against them, let alone to actually get into govt and implement policies.
You seem to be painting a picture where the problem is basically that voters are too stupid (to see through lies and avoid repeatedly being fooled, or pay attention when the proponents of Brexit make it clear that they aren't actually against immigration) and helpless (to build their own institutions and political parties, or even "just" start a revolution) to get their preferences satisfied. At that point, it's hard to even invoke something like a social contract for why politicians should heed voter interests in this matter, since a contract implies a deal which implies some sort of mutual benefit and evidently there is no detriment to politicians from defecting; and all that you can appeal to is some sort of slave-morality pity or obligation towards their inferiors. Wolves and lambs can never be of one mind, etc.
They're not stupid, they (rightfully) get apathetic about the prospect of achieving change through electoral politics when they face a myriad of manufactured legal/political constraints to achieving their goals. This leads to much less trust in the government and less national cohesion. On the whole, the Brexit campaign was associated with future immigration reduction, this is the broad essence of what was communicated. It's very hard to argue against this:
That the Brexiteers didn't formally promise to reduce immigration afterwards does not remove from the fact that the referendum was about reduction of immigration as far as voters were concerned. And putting communications to one side, Brexit was a necessary prerequisite to preventing immigration, EU had freedom of movement.
They'll have lots of fun with a population that instinctively resists their policies and distrusts their leaders. I'm eager to see how they fill the ranks of the grossly understrength British Army in this climate. Do they think people are going to make any sacrifices for their country, when it is not their country?
Politicians aren't wolves, they're fat cats who rely on the increasingly grudging consent of the governed. Haven't you read the hundred million articles complaining about the decline of democratic ideology, trust in government, populism, political radicalism, misinformation, conspiracy theories? This has severe longterm consequences for the sustainability of the system, it induces fragility.
If you are being lied to repeatedly, but still continue believing what you are told, that seems like a pretty canonical indicator of insufficient brainpower, informally known as stupidity. Your subsequent quote also further confirms that Brexit voters voted for Brexit because they expected it to lead to a reduction in immigration. If being able to predict the consequences of your actions is not a measure of intelligence, then what is?
I mean, the first half of your post, put in the context of everything that happened before Brexit (and I'm sure that any attentive participant of the political system can show me a long list of instances of the electorate being deceived since the dawn of democracy), seems to suggest that the population is actually quite credulous and trusting of their leaders despite everything. At the moment Labour seems to be leading in polls, but I'm sure that if they get elected and screw up in some way power will revert to the Tories. Clearly there is no sufficient distrust to make people do something as drastic as vote third or rather fourth party, or do anything else that would reveal a preference for not continuing in the same way and deferring to the same leaders. I doubt politicians will lose many nights of sleep over people saying in TV interviews that they don't trust them and will resist their policies, as long as those people reliably keep paying their taxes, spinning in the hamster wheel, obeying the laws and voting for them.
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I mean, if there's a secret amount of people who's #1 view is cut immigration, then just like w/ UKIP, an anti-immigration party should be able to run and effect politics the same way UKIP got moderate globalist David Cameron to OK a Brexit referendum.
The UK is a different animal than the US when it comes to minor parties.
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