GUNTER: The Trudeau and Macklem Liberals of the BoC appear to be economically illiterate

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It’s not that the Liberals’ record-breaking immigration alone is leading to inflation, unaffordable housing and unemployment. The federal government’s two CO2 taxes are not solely responsible for the rising cost of living. However, the Bank of Canada’s willingness to print money for the Trudeau government’s spending and the bank’s series of interest rate hikes are not the only reasons.

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But when you add it all up, you get an economic crisis the likes of which Canada hasn’t seen since the early 1990s.

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Add to the current inflation-inducing measures the federal mandate that only expensive electric vehicles (EVs) will be available by 2035 and that all electricity must be generated using expensive net-zero methods, and the current unaffordability pain could continue for a decade or more stop .

Most young Canadians who don’t yet own a home have difficulty purchasing one. Soon we may all face the added difficulty of having to afford an electric vehicle. And the cost of a home charging station.

The policies that got us here are largely the work of the Trudeau Liberals and current Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem. Both the government and the governor appear to be economically illiterate.

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On Thursday, Macklem said Canada is not in a recession and is unlikely to enter one. He acknowledged that growth has been slow – under 1% for the year – and that growth is likely to remain slow next year. But he insisted it was not a recession.

Technically that may be true, but with food, housing, fuel and heating prices going through the roof for most families, it feels like a recession for many ordinary people.

Also, I’m tired of Macklem’s predictions. In 2020, he famously said that low interest rates would be with us for a very long time. Then, when the Trudeau government’s massive overspending during the pandemic (which he helped fuel) triggered inflation, Macklem assured Canadians that higher prices would be short-lived – “temporary”.

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He doesn’t have a particularly good track record of looking into the future.

I always hesitate to blame high immigration rates for fear of seeming nativist. I am not anti-immigrant and immigrants do not come to Canada to take “our” jobs. Immigration is not only economically beneficial, it also enhances Canadian culture.

But when you have a country with painfully slow economic growth and high inflation, accepting up to a million new immigrants a year is crazy – for both the immigrants and existing residents.

Canada added 40,000 new jobs in July, which is pretty solid. (Nearly half were in Alberta, the province the Trudeau government loves to hate.)

But we would have had to create 50,000 or more new jobs to keep the employment rate in line with the 100,000 new arrivals we welcomed.

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If you have too many workers (immigrant or not) and not enough jobs, wages will be held down.

If you have too many residents (regardless of where they come from) and too few houses, that will drive up prices.

With the OECD predicting that Canada will have the slowest growth rate of the world’s 38 developed countries in decades, opening the door to new Canadians is foolish.

This is not racism, this is mathematics.

The same goes for Trudeau’s gasoline taxes — not one, but two carbon taxes.

Yes, the price of oil has risen slightly. However, the biggest driver of the increase in gas prices was federal taxes. So Trudeau raises gas taxes, which drives up food and transportation costs, which causes the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates to control inflation, which drives up the prices of everything even further Economy stagnates, which drives up government spending. Relief for people and companies, which is what started the inflationary spiral in the first place.

Does neither the government nor the Bank of Canada understand economics?

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