The Liberal party has no business running Canada because it has driven the country’s living standards into the ditch over the past decade. The Liberals managed the economy irresponsibly, overtaxed Canadians and propagated anti-business policies and anti-resource regulations. They vastly increased the number of immigrants entering the country, which contributed to Canada’s health-care and housing crises.

The best evidence of their poor management? In December 2014, Canada’s GDP per capita was $51,025 and America’s was $55,264. By December 2024, Canada’s GDP per capita had only risen to $55,895, while America’s had skyrocketed to $87,081.

The Trudeau team flopped, and now, after a decade of Liberal incompetence, Mark Carney is in charge. He is a technocrat who is committed to the same loony climate-change fanaticism that former prime minister Justin Trudeau and his band of amateurs propagated.

Thus far, Carney has demonstrated an inadequate grasp of the problems facing the nation. Faced with a trade crisis, he didn’t go to Washington or launch talks to remedy the situation but immediately flew to London and Paris to hobnob with European leaders, in order to strengthen trade ties.

Yet a couple of photo ops in Europe are not going to move the dial. Last year, Canada exported roughly $34 billion worth of goods to Europe, which pales in comparison to the over $400 billion worth of goods we sold to the United States.

More significantly, Europe is interested in importing Canadian energy, but Carney is another climate-change zealot who believes fossil fuels should be phased out altogether as soon as possible. Similarly, his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, rejected massive LNG opportunities offered to Canada by Germany, Japan and Greece, and refused to build pipelines linking western oil and gas to Eastern Canada.

The U.S.-Canada trade crisis is also linked to a security crisis. Trudeau’s team never met Canada’s two per cent of GDP NATO commitment, allowed Canada’s military to wither and neglected the Arctic. To “address” this, Carney made a whistle stop in Nunavut, where he talked about increasing Canada’s military footprint, which is, more accurately, an embarrassing toehold considering the vast size and importance of the Arctic.

Canada’s security freeloading is high on U.S. President Donald Trump’s list of grievances and must also be dealt with, but the Liberals would have a lot of ground to make up. Last fall, a parliamentary budget officer report estimated the cost of meeting Canada’s two per cent NATO commitment by 2032:

“Military spending would need to reach $81.9 billion by the 2032-33 fiscal year, nearly double the projected $41-billion expenditure for 2024-25. This increase requires a rapid escalation in expenditures following the conclusion of ONSAF in 2029-30, when spending levels are forecasted to reach only $57.8 billion.”

Carney muses on the campaign trail about the need to “reimagine our economy” because the “old relationship we had with the United States … is over,” but fails to demonstrate that he understands Canada’s economy, or how to develop it.

He needs to understand a few immutable facts: 1. Canada is not a trading nation but a resource-extraction nation with a large auto sector controlled by American car companies that Trump intends to reshore back to the U.S.; 2. Canada cannot grow unless it removes all the needless restrictions on its resource industries; 3. Canada cannot attract needed investment unless its taxes are drastically lowered; 4. Canada is dependant on the U.S. for protection and that bill will likely one day come due; and 5. Canada’s economy is overburdened with taxation, a bloated public sector and regulations that must be dramatically reduced if its businesses are ever to compete and grow, at home or south of the border.

Canada’s trump cards are fossil fuels, uranium, potash, metals and minerals, along with other natural resources, such as forestry and arable farmland. The country is the Saudi Arabia of the Western Hemisphere, but is forced to import oil because the Liberals, environmentalists and and Quebec have blocked cross-country pipelines.

Trudeau also rejected the chance to harness Canada’s gigantic natural gas assets by pipelining them to dozens of proposed LNG projects on its coasts. Many such projects were scrapped because of Liberal opposition. As Canada did nothing, the Americans have cashed in and are now the world’s largest LNG exporter.

Canada has been left behind because of Liberal governance. The country deserves a pro-business party and a team, like Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s, that’s comprised of experienced politicians and business people who get it — not environmental radicals or platitudinous politicians from Ottawa or the civil service who lack credentials or an ounce of entrepreneurial moxie.

Vote Conservative on April 28 to save Canada.