Robert Barker

Decline is a choice. And on April 28, we all have a choice to make. In 2014, the New York Times called Canada the “home of the world’s most affluent middle class.” No longer is that the case. One measure of this is per-capita GDP. “Canadians are effectively no better off today than they were in 2015, with only a cumulative 2 percent increase since 2015 compared to 17 percent in the United States.” $460 billion in investment has fled south of the border – that is $11,500 for every Canadian. This sounds abstract, but it matters. And in blunt terms, what it means is that while Americans and other countries get richer, we fall behind. We get poorer. Our living standards stagnate and decline. The Lost Liberal Decade gave Canada the worst per capita growth among its economic peers. And this won’t change unless we change. The OECD forecasts that Canada will have the worst GDP per capita growth among all OECD countries through 2060. And to quote Brad Epperly, “we haven’t just experienced economic stagnation. It’s that we’ve matched flat-lining (or even declining) living standards with skyrocketing housing prices. The interrelationship between the two makes the Canadian experience unique, and the need for policy change so imperative.” In the last decade, housing costs have doubled, rising faster in Canada than in any other G7 country. In 2015, it took roughly 39% of median pre-tax household income to afford a home, while today it takes nearly 60%. In Vancouver, you now need to earn $243,300 just to qualify for a mortgage on the average home, while in Toronto, that number is nearly $223,290. And that's on top of saving for the down payment itself. We build fewer homes today than we did in the 1970s, when our population was half the size. We have the fewest homes per capita in the G7. The result? A generation that has been locked out of home ownership. It’s hard to describe how radicalizing and alienating this is to younger Canadians. And just as housing costs have skyrocketed, and wages have stagnated, the government taxes us even higher. The average Canadian family is now paying $10,000 more in taxes than they were a decade ago, and 86% of the middle-class Canadians are paying more in taxes than they did before the Liberals took power. The basics cost more than ever, and we’re taxed even more. Canadians are spending more on taxes than on the basic necessities of life like food, shelter, and clothing combined. For the average family, it consumes almost half of their income. Our economic decline is real. But the decline in the Lost Liberal Decade is not just economic. You see it in our streets. In the last decade, violent crime has skyrocketed by 50 percent, while gun crime is up 116 percent. Gang homicides have soared by 78 percent, and extortion and auto theft are up 357 percent and 46 percent, respectively. Across Canada, tent cities have taken over once safe and family-friendly public spaces. These encampments have become centers for crime, drug abuse, and violence. After the Lost Liberal decade, there are an estimated 1,400 encampments in Ontario alone. Since 2018, homelessness has surged 20%, and chronic homelessness has jumped by 38%. In Toronto, the number of encampments grew from 82 in early 2023 to over 200 in less than a year. And more than 50,000 people have lost their lives to fentanyl since 2015—more Canadians than died in the Second World War. I could go on. But this is the record of a Lost Liberal Decade. It can’t go on like this. We need change, and this is the choice we must make. What another Liberal term would mean is managed decline and continued stagnation. Mark Carney is not offering change. He is the heir to Trudeau. He wants to continue Trudeau's record. He would not reverse our decline; he would manage it. In a sometimes misunderstood (and condensed) passage from Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke said that society is “a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.” It’s up to all of us to build and preserve the legacy we inherit, and it’s our responsibility to continue this partnership and leave it better for those who come after us. For our children and grandchildren, long after we are all gone. This is the choice we must make. Not managed decline, but a future that unleashes Canada’s enormous potential and restores the great Canadian promise. A new Conservative government would bring the change that we desperately need. What would Conservatives do? Go to forachange.ca for a full look. It’s a plan to make life affordable, build homes, make streets safe again, and unleash the Canadian economy. The Conservative plan will build 2.3 million homes over the next five years. It will bring back billions in investment and revenue by unleashing our natural resources so that we can get our clean resources to the rest of the world to help fight climate change and to bring back jobs. It will get immigration back under control. It will reverse disastrous Liberal policies that have made our streets less safe and toughen laws and sentencing to keep the most dangerous criminals behind bars and not quickly out on bail. It will cut taxes so that Canadians keep more money in their pockets. I’m a first-generation Canadian. I wasn’t born here, but I was lucky enough to end up here. I love Canada. I want to see it thrive; I want to make it better; I want to build a country where my children can have a better life than I do. I want to restore Canada’s promise. Canada must be a country where ambition is rewarded and where hard work pays off. A country that builds. A country that rewards risk-takers and innovators. A country that encourages and nurtures strivers. A country where dynamism isn’t stifled and where sclerotic stagnation is not allowed to continue. Vote Conservative. Vote for a better future. Vote for change.