Capt. Barry Sheehy CD. ——Bio and Archives--November 25, 2025

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Canadian Citizens For Charter Rights and Freedoms

Let’s begin with the first paradox. History teaches that expansive geography, natural beauty, and abundant resources do not by themselves guarantee economic success. Small nations with limited geography and resources such as Great Britain, Japan, and the Netherlands have developed successful economic models proven over time. The absence of resources can often be a source of innovation and creative strategies.

Alternatively, nations with abundant natural resources have often squandered their wealth and opportunity. Look at Argentina and Venezuela for example, both are rich in natural resources and have educated populations, yet both ran their economies into the ground. Runaway inflation, falling living standards, and rising poverty are unmistakable harbingers of such collapses. (Argentina’s new Milei government is getting that country back on track but they must dig themselves out of a very deep hole and recovery will take time.)

How did these rich countries wreck their economies? Poor policies and inept governance, overreliance on the state, excessive taxation, excessive social spending, overregulation of industry and, finally, blatant corruption. Poor governance, when piled layer upon layer, year after year, can shatter even the wealthiest of nations. Canada take note.

Perhaps it’s time we stopped shouting at one another and put aside politics for a moment and instead focus on the numbers which represents a form of harsh truth. Over the last ten years Canada has significantly underperformed relative to the US by every important economic measure. We are getting demonstrably poorer than our southern neighbor by just about every metric. Foreign direct investment has nearly collapsed even as Canada’s own capital has flowed abroad in search of returns. Even the Canada Pension Plan has reduced the percentage of its capital invested in Canada from 24% in 2015 to near 12% in 2024. This represents a breathtaking shift in capital away from Canada and from our own pension trust fund. This parallels a comparable shift in Canadian capital of about a trillion dollars over just ten years…and this against a GDP of about 2.2 trillion dollars. Foreign Direct Investment from abroad has also collapsed at a rate of 60-80 billion dollars a year. These numbers are devastating given the link between investment and productivity. Investments today lead to productivity tomorrow—the two are symbiotic.[1] The only exception to this rule appears to be investments driven by insanely low interest rates (free money) or Government trophy projects like China’s new cities without people.[2]

Canada’s per capita GDP, the surest measure of living standards, has been flat or declining for a decade. The Fraser Institute projects Canada’s average annual growth measured in GDP per capita to be the lowest among 30 OECD countries. [3]

Don’t forget this havoc occurred long before President Trump imposed any additional tariffs on Canada. Let that truth sink in. Meanwhile, the US is growing economically and Canada is not, so the economic gap will only grow.

You can quibble with these economic comparisons, but the bottom line is that Canada is getting poorer every year…and average Canadians are noticing. Food and housing prices are skyrocketing, food bank usage exploding and homelessness heartbreakingly common. These numbers, reflected in cold OECD statistics, play out daily on a human level in households across the country. Young Canadians today cannot hope to own a home in any major urban center in Canada. Unsurprisingly, young voters are the group most dissatisfied with Canada as they bear the brunt of the country’s declining employment and affordability.

Let’s start with hubris. A country that has always been wealthy relative to the rest of the world and where each generation expected to live better than their parents can easily become complacent. Everyone assumes no matter what policy battering is inflicted on the........

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