It's no longer just a Canadian complaint. “Canada’s decline into irrelevance” is now recognized by the outside world.
‘Philip Cross: From swaggering to staggering: Canada’s decline into irrelevance’-headline, Financial Post, Jan 31, 2024
No one articulates Canada’s decline better than Cross, a senior fellow at the highly respected Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
“It is remarkable how much attitudes about Canada have shifted, both here and abroad, over the past 10 years. A decade ago, riding the wave of a booming economy, Canada was widely admired for a banking system that had got through the 2008-2009 global financial crisis without government bailouts. Today the country’s global stature is much diminished and Canadians are rapidly losing confidence in their economic prospects. (Financial Post, Jan 31, 2024)
“In the years leading up to 2016 Canadians grew accustomed to global accolades. In a 2003 cover story, The Economist touted the prospects for “cool Canada,” following up in 2006 that Canada’s relative economic performance made it a “superstar” as the “only country running both current-account and budget surpluses.” Steve Poloz, then chief economist at EDC, said in 2005 the stars were aligned for Canadian firms to achieve the “productivity miracle” already realized in the U.S. In 2012, the OECD secretariat forecast Canada’s economic growth would lead the G7 nations over the next 50 years. Our AAA credit rating, stable economy and resource riches prompted the IMF in 2012 to recommend central banks hold more currency reserves in Canadian dollars, leading to headlines about “loonie set to join global currency elite” as a safe haven in turbulent times.”
But all of Canada’s star shine as a nation was back in the days when Stephen Harper was Canadian Prime Minister, where he led the Land of the Maple Leaf for almost ten years years, from February 2006, to November 2015.
Canada started its deep downward trend with the 2015 election of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“On the global stage, in 2016 U.S. President Barack Obama told Parliament: “the world needs more Canada.” (Financial Post)
It was a year before that when Obama sent top members of his campaign team to Ottawa to get Trudeau elected as Canada’s Prime Minister—a move generally ignored by the Canadian media.
“Justin Trudeau is the man Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden said was “so badly needed by the world” back in 2016 while he was still U.S. vice president. (Canada Free Press, Sept. 20, 2019)“Vice President Joe Biden said on Thursday night that the world needs Canada “very, very badly” and that the world will look to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, according to several media outlets.” “The world is going to spend a lot of time looking to you Mr. Prime Minister. Viva la Canada because we need you very, very badly,” Biden said during a Canadian state dinner held in his honor.”(Politico, Dec. 9, 2016)“A Maclean’s article reporting 2011 poll results proclaimed Canada was “on top of the world” and “Canadians have never felt so upbeat about the future.” A year later, Joe O’Connor could claim in this newspaper that “Canada’s got swagger.” This confidence was reinforced when Britain hired Mark Carney in 2012 as the first foreign-born governor of the Bank of England, calling him the “best central banker of his generation.” A stable banking system was not Canada’s only perceived financial advantage. Some analysts predicted Toronto would become a major trading centre for the North American cap-and-trade carbon market. Moody’s Analytics projected Toronto’s financial services industry would employ more people than London’s by 2017. Tiff Macklem, then dean of the Rotman School, wrote an op-ed in 2016 touting Toronto’s “potential to become the leading global fintech hub.” (Financial Post)
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“That was then. Today Canada’s reality is much different than people were expecting before 2015. Its finance sector is known for being “an ATM and safe deposit box for money laundering,” according to Jonathan Manthorpe in his 2019 book, Claws of the Panda. In 2018, The Economist noted that Canada “has long had a reputation as a place to snow-wash money.” Regulation is split between federal and provincial governments and there are almost no restrictions on lawyers involved in laundering. (Financial Post)“Instead of buoyant economic growth, the OECD last year downgraded Canada’s prospects to 2060 to dead last out of 38 nations. In a 2019 feature, The Economist noted that the top Canadian firm on Fortune’s list of the world’s largest companies ranked 241st, concluding that our “economy and business culture will have to become more American.”“Nothing has damaged Canada’s economy and global stature more than the obstacles governments have deployed to hamper our energy industry. In 2011, the late Jim Prentice, then vice-chairman of CIBC, reviewed the slew of Canadian energy projects then underway, from hydro in Labrador to Alberta’s oil sands, and concluded “no one else is bringing on energy projects on the pace and scale of Canada.” Today, by contrast, British Columbia and Quebec are struggling to meet electricity demand, while the oil sands have slashed investment.“The harm from discouraging oil and gas development was fully revealed after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Canada was unable to answer Europe’s desperate need for oil and gas. When German Chancellor Scholz visited Canada to plead for more natural gas, our prime minister claimed there was “no business case” to support LNG exports to Europe.“Meanwhile, since March 2022, American firms have signed now fewer than 57 supply agreements with Europe for 73 million metric tons of LNG annually, according to a recent report in the Wall Street Journal.
“A recent Nanos poll found even fewer Canadians (just 13 per cent) thought our global reputation had improved than were satisfied with the state of our economy (23 per cent). The Wall Street Journal said last year that Canada’s paltry defence spending should disqualify us from G7 membership, while Spain is openly lobbying to take our place. We have become irrelevant to the geopolitics of our natural allies, whether the problem at hand is the growing rivalry between the U.S. on the one hand and Russia and China on the other or the EU’s fixation on rectifying its energy and defence deficits. (Financial Post)“More broadly, Canada has failed in its traditional role of explaining the U.S. to the rest of the world. Though it’s strange to recall, immediately after Donald Trump’s election in 2016, the hope was Trudeau would be the “Trump Whisperer,” establishing Canada as an “indispensable nation,” to quote Maclean’s Scott Gilmore. Instead, we have reverted to our traditional sense of moral superiority over Americans and now parrot the global chorus condemning the direction of U.S. politics. We have a plan for dealing with Trump, the prime minister assures us. Good luck to us with that.”
The days when “the Economist touted the prospects for “cool Canada,” following up in 2006 that Canada’s relative economic performance made it a “superstar” as the “only country running both current-account and budget surpluses” are long gone.
Canadians no longer recognize their country any more—a country that their own prime minister ceded its proud sovereignty over to the globalists in the World Economic Forum (WEF)—without parliamentary debate.
And sadly, neither does the outside world recognize Canada as a relevant country any more.
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Judi McLeod——Bio and Archives
-- Judi McLeod, Founder, Owner and Editor of Canada Free Press, is an award-winning journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in the print and online media. A former Toronto Sun columnist, she also worked for the Kingston Whig Standard. Her work has appeared throughout the ‘Net, including on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
