COLUMN: Think Again – Liberals have made Canada worse off

It looks like we are off to the races. Newly minted Prime Minister Mark Carney called an election for April 28.

No doubt Carney is hoping to take advantage of a surge in the polls. Now that Justin Trudeau is gone, the Liberals have regained much of their previous support. While there isn’t exactly a wave of “Carneymania” sweeping the country, Carney is certainly more popular than Trudeau was.

Carney is also benefitting from the economic chaos caused by U.S. President Donald Trump’s on-again off-again tariffs. His experience in finance, first as Bank of Canada governor and later as Bank of England governor, gives him a certain amount of credibility on this issue.

In addition, Carney is doing everything he can to distance himself from Trudeau’s record. From scrapping the planned capital gains tax increase to lowering the consumer carbon tax rate to zero, Carney wants to make it look like he is different from Trudeau.

However, Carney was an integral part of Trudeau’s time in office. Not only did Carney serve as an official economic advisor to Trudeau for several years, but he also publicly supported the carbon tax and pushed for even more burdensome environmental regulations. There’s a reason why Carney received endorsements from most of Trudeau’s cabinet ministers during the recent leadership race.

Thus, rather than think of Carney as a new prime minister, it makes far more sense to ask whether the Liberals deserve a fourth term in office. As you decide how to mark your ballot, there’s one overriding question to keep in the back of your mind.

Is our country better off now than it was ten years ago when the Liberals took office? To put it another way, have the Liberals strengthened Canada over the last ten years, or have they weakened it?

Let’s look at some raw numbers. In 2015, the total national debt was $612 billion. Today, it stands at more than $1.4 trillion. Simply put, the Liberals more than doubled the total debt. As a result, our country spends more than $54 billion annually on public debt charges.

In 2015, the average national house price was $413,000. Today, the average house price is $722,000. Owning a home is now little more than a pipe dream for many Canadians.

The Liberals also broke Canada’s immigration system. By allowing an unsustainably large number of immigrants into the country during their time in office, the Liberals managed to destroy Canada’s cross-party pro-immigration consensus. It will take many years to fix the damage done by the Liberals.

In addition, we are extra vulnerable to Trump’s tariffs because the Liberals did everything they could to kneecap Canada’s natural resource sector. They blocked new pipelines, imposed burdensome environmental regulations, and capped production. By landlocking our oil, the Liberals made our country dependent on the United States, since that country became our only feasible export market.

Finally, the Liberals have made our country less safe than it was before. Crime rates are up, thanks largely to the Liberal government’s catch-and-release approach to violent criminals. We need a government that takes public safety seriously, not one that imposes soft-on-crime policies on Canadians.

Mark Carney might claim that he leads a fresh new government, but the facts speak for themselves. Canada is worse off than it was ten years ago. The last thing we need is to give the same Liberals yet another term in office.

If you, like me, want something different, vote for Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives. The Liberals had their chance, and they blew it. Don’t let them damage our country any further.

Michael Zwaagstra is a high school teacher and deputy mayor of Steinbach. He can be reached at mzwaagstra@shaw.ca.