At its peak, the share of temporary residents in the population reached 7.6%. This number is slowly dropping as some are granted permanent residency, and the overall number of temporary visa issues, such as student visas, decreases. I won’t be surprised to see more population declines as Canada’s natural growth has been lagging for some time.

Canada has joined the ultra-low fertility classification status. It is a classification given when a country declines below a total fertility rate (TFR) of 1.25. It has been dropping for decades, and is lower than our replacement rate of 2.1.

These numbers are often quoted but what they mean is not understood by most people, so let’s dissect. For the population to grow, a female must have a daughter who will replace her in the next generation. That’s a minimum. According to the biological constant, there will be roughly 105 boys born for every 100 girls. Thus, mathematically, you need more than 2.0 children to ensure 1.0 of them is a female on average.

The “0.1” in the 2.1 is a survival buffer that accounts for infant and child mortality rates, and in Canada’s case, thankfully, it is low. Let’s remember that the girls need to reach motherhood.

The 2.1 replacement level can be considered as the stagnation level for the population. A mathematical status quo. Canada hasn’t been at this number since roughly 1971. We haven’t felt the consequences of this yet, but as the silver wave begins, we will. There is no running away from math.

The substantial increase in life expectancy over the years gave the timeline a skew. Life expectancy increase ‘bought’ us some years. The Baby Boom, which had 8.2M babies born during its years, gave Canada its population momentum for the next decades.

During the baby boom years of the 1950s and 60s Canada’s total fertility rate spiked above 3.0 and even hit 3.9. Families were huge, especially by today’s standards, and that gave us a population bulge. Canada’s population went from just over 12 million people before the Baby Boom to just over 20 million by the end of it. It’s not only a huge percentage increase but also one that distorts every economic and social metric.

Around 1972, Canada started to drop below the replacement rate. That is the year when the first wave of Boomers hit their mid 20s, which is when women started to have kids back then.

Even when the fertility rate started to drop, the sheer number of women who were now having kids has drastically increased. It added to the population pyramid but not enough. Although the Boomer generation was the largest, they themselves had fewer children. Less than the replacement rate, and had only enough to replace about 75% of their own numbers. The Baby Boomers’ kids are having even fewer kids, so far.

This math cascades down. This is what gives us the population pyramid that is wide at the top and narrows down towards the bottom. The Boomer echo is fading, and what gave us a population boom will now turn into a bust as that generation ages out. That bust will be just as rapid as was the boom, and that is the main concern.

The fertility rate across Canada is different from province to province, and that bust will hit some provinces harder and sooner. British Columbia has the lowest fertility rate in the country of just 1.02. British Columbia’s population declined by 41,000 people in 2025. Nova Scotia’s fertility rate isn’t that far behind, at 1.08, being the second lowest in the country.

This should really tell you how much of the unaffordability crisis and infrastructure strain has been caused by the reckless influx of people into Canada. There was nothing ready for it. The solution for better affordability and better services is a population reduction and returning it to organic and sustainable levels.

The Liberal government is planning to cap permanent residency admissions to just under 1% of Canada’s population per year. 380,000 for 2026 and 365,000 for 2027. As things are, Canada’s population will not grow naturally. We are in a pure replacement phase.

There are a few things we need to contemplate, however. Can Canada’s population grow naturally? And why are we trying to keep bloating this country with people artificially? Let’s start with the latter.

Economic stability throughout human history was based on having more people. Families were bigger to work the farm, for example. Then, as means of production and goods evolved, fewer people were required for the same labour, and industrialization created whole new industries and more goods to consume.

All this productivity without a market, aka consumption, is a dead end, and so we became consumption economies in the early 20th century. The Liberals’ excuse for all this mass immigration is to grow Canada’s economy and avoid a recession. They were trying to bring in millions of consumers.

It failed, of course, as any kind of stimulus is still a stimulus, and when we are talking about humans, we have substantial obligations to them, such as services which cost billions. We also need to house them, and we obviously don’t build enough houses for such an increase, and as a consequence, the prices went up and became unaffordable.

To pay for all of the above, you need a robust economy with highly productive jobs, which Canada doesn’t have. The Liberals couldn’t possibly pick a worse time for their immigration policy, under horrible advice and lobbying, which grew the population much faster than the Baby Boom era, with barely any economic offering.

As a result, Canada’s economy turned into a declining productivity, and debt-driven economy. Money needed to be printed to hire for all the services obligations, which is why we have the bloat in the public sector employment surpassing 25% of the total employed in Canada. Hundreds of billions of debt needed to be borrowed to build the bubble housing industry, which grew out of demand that isn’t sustainable.

The biggest problem with this whole endeavour is that it is based on outdated premises. For a country like Canada, consumption should have been the afterthought. We don’t need cheap labour to move things from point A to B, nor do we need the bottom of our output industries to grow. This puts Canada’s economy at further risk as these jobs are the most likely to go obsolete. We are in the midst of an evolution to Industry 4.0.

To turn this around, Canada has no choice but to reduce our population, especially the one that is growing in low-skilled industries, and focus economic transformation to radical automation and hyper productivity. It will reduce inflated costs for Canadians, lower costs for governments, create high-paying jobs, and position our economy to be prepared for the future. There will also be a substantial opportunity to reduce taxes.

Instead of playing catch-up with services that are bankrupting Canada, and inventing new ones because of the economic deterioration, it will allow us to create the conditions and policies that will encourage Canadians to have kids, and more Canadians want to have kids.

According to research by Statistics Canada and the Canadian Social Survey, more young people want to have kids now than in years before. The only slight declines are in Atlantic Provinces and in Quebec.

We will see a decline in Canada’s natural population numbers starting this year and in the next couple of years, with a rapid decrease from 2030 to 2045, particularly in the labour market.

This gives us very little but crucial time to act. We need to promote families and people having kids with policies and campaigns. Use this time to clear red tape from high-productivity industries and get our manufacturing sector growing again, powered by automation. What Canada does in the next few years will dictate our trajectory: replacement and decline or growth.

The Golden Triangle is an area in northwest British Columbia that stretches from roughly Stewart at the southern end to Telegraph Creek and the Stikine River in the north and over to the Alaskan border. It is breathtaking terrain, and the drive into Stewart, which is Canada’s most northerly ice-free port, has one of the most stunning settings. You will lose count of the waterfalls.

The area’s richness was discovered before Canada even became a country with the prospector Alexander “Buck” Choquette adventure up north. Born Taddée Choquette to a family with a rich and important history predating Canada, at 19, he set out to Montreal and then across what is today America.

He missed the California Gold Rush but made his way working up north to the Oregon Territory and Fraser goldfields. While on a trip to Victoria, he met a group of Tlingit First Nations and convinced them to ride in their canoes north to Fort Stikine, which is Wrangell, Alaska today and was Russia’s back then. It was a 1,300 km trip that took weeks to complete. He believed the rivers farther north were richer in gold the further north one went. He was right.

Fort Stikine was a former Hudson’s Bay fur trading post that was under the control of Tlingit Chief Shakes, whose daughter Buck married. It was also known as Shakesville before America’s takeover, and became the base for the exploration. Buck with his wife and Stikine men didn’t have to travel far up the river to discover gold. The year was 1861. Buck’s finding wasn’t profitable, but he did open a trading post and moved operations to the British territory after Alaska’s purchase. The news of the discovery, however, set in motion what is the foundation of that whole part of British Columbia today.

Hundreds of prospectors rushed into the region creating waves of gold rushes: the Stikine Gold Rush, Cassiar Gold Rush, and the broader Klondike exploration. Over 150 mines have operated in the area over the last 160 years. Today, over half of the exploration spending in British Columbia is spent in the Triangle.

The Golden Triangle is situated within the Sulphurets Hydrothermal System, and most of its mineralization occurred 220 to 175 million years ago during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic ages. Volcanic activity carried molten rock concentrated with many minerals upwards until they reached air or water. The mineral deposits formed in the Golden Triangle have similar characteristics.

Many discoveries are near surface, with high-grade veins sitting on mountain ridges exposed by glacial retreat. Most of the major deposit discoveries occur within 2km of a stratigraphic contact. Technology such as directional drilling and AI satellite mapping are a game-changer for this area. Exploring below 300 meters is a relatively recent possibility.

Besides technology, what we consider a stunning landscape is extremely hard to operate in, and the recent infrastructure development has made the area much more accessible. The Northwest Transmission line means hauling diesel for drill rigs wasn’t necessary as much anymore, and roads drastically reduced supply chain and overall operational costs. It extended the working season in an alpine environment.

Less than 1% of the Golden Triangle has been mined to date. Mines like the KSM, which is considered the world's largest undeveloped copper-gold porphyry deposit, are just being built. In addition to the extraordinary gold, zinc and silver wealth, it also holds 75% of Canada’s known copper reserves.

There has never been a better time to go at it. The prices for the resources make mining there extremely profitable and all these resources are in high demand which will position Canada as a key player in emerging technologies hardware supply chain. If we can add value added manufacturing on top, Canada will have booming $100B+ yearly industries growing in no time.

What’s brewing here isn’t short term. It isn’t another gold rush. This is a multi-decade, if not a 100 year plus, industrial scale up. Multiple generations of workers will be able to retire of what is happening here and the smaller towns around have a fruitful future ahead of them. We must continue to build infrastructure and power generation to keep the momentum going.

As the timeline moves forward, the internet came and that changed how we get content. In Web 2.0, you couldn’t ask a person for help, so the internet needed a way to find what you are looking for. The information explosion that came with it had to be filtered through so you could actually find what you are looking for. The cold start problem has to be cleared so people are not seeing random content from the internet they have no interest in. Imagine walking into a library and a librarian keeps pulling books out for you that you don’t care about. Not a great user experience, and with the scale of the internet, it is also not reasonable.

To sift through the noise, the system had to know you and your interests. Recommender systems as part of predictive analytics had to be developed to generate the algorithmic curation that is at the heart of the internet. This is a good example of how new tech creates new fields and jobs that never existed before and never even been thought of. Big data, predictive models, became an industry on their own, and you became a cookie.

User behaviour started being a commodity. Surveillance capitalism is born and you can be instantly recognized with device fingerprinting and service-side tracking. Deterministic and probabilistic models create a Single Customer View that follows you around the internet, no matter which device or platform you are using.

Having all the info in the world at your fingertips is extremely underappreciated and empowering. It is also massively expensive to do, but we have it for free. The saying “if you are not paying for the product, you are the product” is a foundation concept of the digital economy, and more or less, we have learned to accept it.

Now we have entered the next phase with the era of AI, and this should restart the conversation of privacy and what chatbots (companies) should collect from you and what they shouldn’t. The reason this is a different time is because it is a totally different tool. People are having conversations with AI chatbots, planning with them, and actually using them to develop things.

The individual responsible for the horrific Tumbler Ridge mass shooting used, according to a report, ChatGPT for scenarios of gun violence. His interaction with ChatGPT raised alarms within the company, and after a discussion, the company decided that it didn’t meet the "imminent and credible risk" threshold, and so they didn’t notify authorities.

In hindsight, it seems to be a grave error, but is it? The time in between wasn’t “imminent” and what would authorities be able to do if it was reported back then? What if ChatGPT also made a mistake in the nature of the discussion with its chatbot and reported in error? Random questions on a scene or script development, for example, that could be very easily mistaken for reality and demand reality in response.

So what is AI chatbots’ role? Should they mind their own business? How can authorities react to what something that can be a predictive model? Who is liable for failure - a chatbot or authority? Watch the movie Minority Report.

It’s clear that we are dealing with new variables we have no clear answers for, but as this technology is in its infancy, the number of these situations will only grow. Solutions and protocols will be needed. A family impacted by the tragedy is suing OpenAI, and it might be one of the most important cases that might start the ball rolling.

The other aspect of this technology utilization is when people actually build things. Be it apps or discovery processes, computations, training models etc. What protection do users have against back-end scraping?

Some businesses and enterprise-tier AIs aren’t used to train models. Many of the free and consumer tiers are set to “improve the model” by default. It is also not clear what ‘flags’ the systems can be set on for discovery just like they do for violent content.

How AI-generated content merges with human authorship for IP, protection and privacy is the deliberation. Will user input parameters that develop output innovations be counted as human inventors? Do the requirements of model training to develop the output have any ownership for the user and not used for a different company’s model?

As with all new things, there are many new scenarios that generate new questions. With such fast moving and impact technology as AI, we need to start thinking of answers sooner than later.

We have been, historically, an extremely reliable trade partner in this sector and are known for high quality products. The Canadian yields are the gold standard of quality for global buyers. We should have complete pride in the work that has and is being done.

As resilient and hard working the farmers are, the industry is at a crossroads nonetheless. The total arable land is down because of urban development – it used to be over 67 million hectares of land just 20 years ago. The number of farms is shrinking because of retirements, consolidation and high entry costs.

It’s not an industry in decline, yet, but it’s an industry that is under utilized and has so much more potential. We also can’t afford for it to decline. I would consider it a national security matter, and with a decrease in farm land and out of control food inflation, you should as well.

We need to emphasize the protection for farmlands, make the industry more accessible for new entrants, and lean heavy into innovation. Innovation in our agriculture industry has been declining for years and taken another recent blow.

Mark Carney’s government announced that three Agriculture Agri-Food Canada research and development centres and four satellite research farms will close. Some of them have been around for decades and played a pivotal role in our industry. Research in this field is a long term game and these facility were doing science where the farmers are. There will be long term consequences here.

Spartan Apples where cultivated variety of apples developed in what was called the Federal Agriculture Research Station in 1936 in Summerland, British Columbia. Yukon Gold is a cultivator potato that was developed by the the Agriculture Institute of Canada with the University of Guelph in 1981 after 14 years of research. These are examples of products we all had, contribute a lot of value to our economy and developed by such institutions.

Canada’s Public agricultural R&D spending is the lowest among the top seven OECD agricultural producers. Public funding in R&D, which has one of the highest productivities, has declined by over 15% since 2010. Canada invests less than half of per agricultural GDP percentile into research as what Europe and high income Asian countries do. Private sector outsourced R&D to universities is down 77% over the past five years. The number of enterprises doing R&D has declined by 29% over the last 10 years. US AgriTech startups attracted 22x more investment than Canada’s over the past 5 years.

This decline in R&D and investment innovation directly results in the slow decline in productivity of our farming industry and in sector specific trade deficits such as pesticides and agriculture chemicals which has grown by 159% over the past 10 years.

Becoming innovative and technologically advanced isn’t just an option, it is a necessity. Half the farmers are over 60, and 1/3 of the farming jobs will be automated by 2035. We will need smart operations to take place just to produce the same amounts in the next few years. Drones and autonomous tractors will become a standard as the same level of human power won’t be applicable.

Technology will transform food production from traditional farmlands to enable much more productive greenhouses, and urban farming. Leamington, Ontario known as glass city because it has the largest concentration of greenhouses in North America, is a great example of a place embracing transformation. It has 2,000 acres “under cover” and grows fruits, and vegetables all year round using state of the art facilities with advance climate control, hydroponics, and nutrients – automated.

Labour costs in greenhouses is around 30% of the total expenses. As automation grows and the overall perfection of vertical farming, it will reconfigure the possibilities in the whole food supply chain.

Food will be able to grow much more closer to the plate and local. The type of produce we will be able to grow will be up to choice and not ability. We are basically there now with the intent from policy missing. Local greenhouses will be the local farmers market. Food will be so cheap to grow that local groups will be coming together for self sufficiency and it may even require government subsidy to grow at scale.

We should want the food to be as cheap as possible. This is our energy and health. It is the human foundation leverage to be able to do more. Abundance of nutrients has always been historically transformational for societies. It will also free up substantial resources towards our economy, including human capital.

The reason Canada’s food inflation is out of control is because of taxes, red tape, lack of energy strategy and refusal to have a technological driven focus. The longer we waste time the more it will cost and miss opportunities to develop future industries.

The smart agriculture industry is just around the $4.5B mark, which makes it in its infancy and has a a huge opportunity for growth. AgTech can add tens of billions to Canada’s economy while solving many of the issues we will start having.

To become food independent and not fall behind in the industry, we must start action right away. We have the home turf advantage to develop such crucial innovation and pioneer them for the world. We have willing Universities on the frontlines. Canada needs to become attractive to capital into this sector, and we have everything startups need to innovate in it.

Becoming Agri-Epicenter is low hanging fruit for Canada, let’s not let it wilt away. Federal and Provincial government must take measures, change policies, attract international cooperation. Let’s grow.

The decrease in artificial stimulus that came with the influx of people is starting to unravel, and fundamental issues in the economy are no longer masked. The labour market reflects much of the movement and reorganization that happens.

From December 2024 to December 2025, Canada’s labour force grew by 256.2k people. It grew by 878.8k since December 2023, so last year’s growth has definitely slowed down.

Out of the the labour force growth of 256.2k people, 212.8k found employment. 181.6k people haven’t even entered the labour force last year. Only 128.6k full-time jobs were gained. That is an alarming low number.

Canada is a big country and different regions have different economies. Not all provinces fared the same in 2025. PEI, Nova Socia and Quebec haven’t created a single new full-time job in one year, and actually lost them.

I like to look at how the provinces’ labour force is growing and how relatively their economies can place people into a full-time job. It helps highlight economic mobility part of interprovincial migration and how efficiently the economy is able to grow with the population.

2025 was a brutal year for entrepreneurship as the country lost 32.4k self-employed individuals. This is highly unfortunate as this is the source of organic employment and economic growth. Canada needs to reward risk-taking and remove obstacles that hinder this growth.

The private sector grew by 193.1k jobs and the public sector grew by 52k jobs. For every 4 private-sector jobs created, there is 1 public-sector job. This ratio isn’t sustainable to pay for the public sector, and over 25% of employees in Canada now work for the government. Historically, this is a high ratio, and again, unsustainable.

The over 55 age group didn’t gain a single part-time job in the past 12 months and saw many people leave the labour force. There is a combination here of people retiring but also lesser access to the labour market.

The core age group and youth had a good year in bringing people back into the labour force, even though youth had a hard time finding a full-time job. Labour force growth in the 25-54 age group was healthy, but the youth age group saw a decrease from previous years.

The big problem is that overall population growth in the youth years is stalling, which will translate into fewer people entering the core age labour market in the future. We are starting to see the impact of low birth rates at play. This should be really concerning and means we really have to increase productivity and automation levels in our economy. Out of everything in the past year, this is the most important data point.

The problem Canada has specifically is making things and technical talent-oriented industry growth. Manufacturing only gained 2k jobs, agriculture gained 200 jobs, and construction and professional and technical services lost jobs. 2025 was a disastrous year for industries that Canada should be growing if we want an economic turnaround. Most of the jobs created were in the service industries: education, healthcare, and government.

From 2019 to 2025 the goods-producing sector grew by 221.6 employees, and the services-producing sector grew by 1.736M people. Investment-related industries are growing at a fraction of credit-dependent ones. All focus should be on how we can produce more. Export-related industries also have higher wages.

Average wages grew from $38.05/h to $39.34/h over the 12 months for full-time employees. Agricultural, cultural and recreational industries had their average wages drop. Employees with union coverage make more than those without one.

This is a heartbreaking chart. Most of the employment in the last 12 months was in large companies. Employment in smaller businesses, which are often your local community businesses, has collapsed. That speaks to business closures and lack of replacement by entrepreneurship. Goes hand in hand with the drop in self-employment we saw over the past 12 months.

Most of Canada’s employment is in the sub 100 employee size businesses. When we see these businesses disappear, it not only impacts our neighbourhoods but also an important stepping stone for future generations and the future growth of successful industries. Concentration growth in large conglomerates is never a good thing, especially in a vast country such as Canada.

We must restore the drive for entrepreneurship, investment and production back in Canada. It’s all internal issues and not external. We need policy and cultural changes to make it happen. Time to celebrate creators and risk takers. Support your local business.

Youth giving up on their future is disheartening. It means somewhere along the line, we built more fear than hope into them. More handicaps than ambition and opportunity. It is easy to say to just toughen up and pull yourself up by your bootstraps, but the fact is, they are facing a drastically different world than previous generations, particularly in essentials.

Promises of capitalism and their lived economic experiences are diverging. Go to school, get an education and get a good job turned into debt that many can’t shake off and a job market that barely pays. If the job hasn’t been taken by a LMIA/TFW to begin with, and many places don’t want to train young people anymore.

Many jobs used to have a welcoming entry position that would help train and upskill workers; bakery, warehouses, plants, etc. Today, many entry-level jobs already require some kind of cost to entry in the form of education. This is called the Education Inflation, and it particularly impacted men.

Part of it is because the demographics within industries have been transforming. Instead of entering manufacturing and resource industries, more men are entering the service industries. A high school education isn’t good enough to start a career; the assembly line is gone due to innovation and the relatively shrinking manufacturing industry in Canada.

The earnings of core-aged men in Canada over the past 40 years highlight what should be an alarm and complications. The bottom 10% of earners make less than the bottom 10% did 40 years ago, while living in a much more expensive world. The 50th percentile has barely seen an increase in real wages in 40 years. Any progress the middle class had has been swallowed by inflation.

The other alarming part is the gaps between the 50th, 90th and 99th percentile which keep increasing. This speaks to the difficulty in social and economic mobility and the lack of participation in the country’s economic success. This is exactly what causes political and social tensions.

The days of one middle-class salary affording a house and raising a family are long gone. Today’s youth spend a bigger share of their salary on rent than previous generations. That means that it takes much longer to save towards housing at the expense of other savings like retirement or a family. The ones who do buy a house do so at a much older age on average than before.

Between 1976 and 1981 (census years), with 1981 being a particularly strong year for home ownership; 41% of Canadians under 35 owned a home. A home meant an actual detached home. That average house cost in today’s dollars was around $260,000, and it took 5 years to save for a down payment. Both stats have grown by 3x to today. Vancouver and Toronto have some of the oldest first-time home buyers in the world.

The interesting part is that between the pandemic years and 2023, the homeownership of under-35-year-olds jumped with the support of their parents, and the attraction of the low interest rates that the Bank of Canada touted will stay low for a long time. Median net worth of a homeowner under 35 is 10x that of their peers who rent. It is becoming classism.

Previous generation homeownership makes the kids twice as likely to own a home as the kids whose parents didn’t own a home. With the current generation less likely to own a home, this creates a snowballing effect into the future that will drastically impact prosperity and stability. RCMP even put it as a warning in a report to the federal government. Reminds me of a slogan: “You will own nothing and be happy.”

Home ownership – the primary wealth accumulation vehicle and defined benefit pension plans, which have been declining for decades, together make up the majority of the net worth of older generations. In fact, the highest median net worth in the 55 to 64 age group has both assets. These options are all but gone for most young people, so telling them to pull up their straps isn’t exactly fair.

Young people are responding to economic conditions, whether we like it or not. Capitalism no longer commands the automatic allegiance of younger generations. It is our duty as society to address this and not let the sentiment grow but also because we want them to fundamentally have a better life.

Capitalism is a belief in hyper-individualism, but when practicality doesn’t materialize, the natural correction is collectivism. Young people, who are more connected than ever, find each other and organize, looking for other systems than the one they perceive as having failed them. Disenfranchisement is the response, and it will be taken advantage of.

The new Mayor of New York City Zohran Mamdani, who ran on probably the most explicitly socialist platform that anyone has run on in years, said this in his inauguration: “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

Zohran tapped into that sentiment unapologetically and with full commitment. Others will as well. This is what we are against. It doesn’t take long to destroy things and we must respond. That response, however, must enrich the upcoming generation in every sense of the word and have them meaningfully participate. They will one way or another as they will soon be the biggest voting demographic.

As enriching as it is, it will only take us so far, and we really need to build on what we have. We cannot discuss national strategy without manufacturing leading the way, and Canada’s manufacturing sector has been declining for decades.

In the 1960s, manufacturing was over 20% of Canada’s GDP. It is now around 10% but is responsible for over $350B of our exports. Since 2005, per-capita manufacturing output has contracted by 30%, the US has seen 10% growth for comparison.

We could easily have a sustainable, positive trade balance with the world, driving our economy, if we had a robust manufacturing sector. The decline in its share of GDP isn’t the only warning sign. The sector hasn’t increased in productivity in over a decade, which speaks to the lack of investment and innovation in it. Simply, Canada’s manufacturing sector is becoming obsolete.

A productive manufacturing sector enhances Canada’s ability to withstand trade tensions, tariffs, geopolitical issues, and global supply chain disruptions. It is a matter of national security. This persistent productivity gap and falling behind our peers also reduces our global competitiveness. Currently, Canada is the only major economy with a manufacturing sector in contraction.

Our new BC Ferries are made in China, a huge part of our LNG plants are made overseas and are assembled together in Canada, our military isn’t self-sufficient, etc. We are missing out on billions of dollars. We used to make things, and we need nothing short of a renaissance in our manufacturing sector.

Upgrading raw materials adds diversification to the natural resources value chain, helping reduce the volatility that comes with commodity prices. Our natural resources and unlimited low-cost energy potential give us the world-leading leverage that puts us in the most advantageous position for reshoring production. Especially compared to Europe.

This will add a welcoming degree of resilience to our economy and job security. The ripple effect will be wide from academia, and research to secondary support and innovation companies. Manufacturing anchors industrial clusters, and a robust industry breathes life into new industries that Canada so desperately needs to participate in.

Canada’s return to manufacturing must be in the form of Industry 4.0 and serve as an engine of innovation. IIOT, robotics, sensors, and AI will be an integral part of new manufacturing, unleashing our productivity. Blue-collar to new-collar.

The only ceilings Canada has holding us back from prosperity and massive success are the ceilings we create for ourselves. This is one of them. Time to break through it.

From 2011 to 2021, the latest 10-year census data, the number of Canadians who are renting has grown by 22%. Over the same period, home ownership has only grown by 8%. In other words, renting is increasing almost three times faster than home ownership. 33.1% of Canadians are living in rented accommodations.

Over 40% of homes built between 2016 and 2021 are occupied by renters. In Quebec 61.3% of new homes are rented. Since 2016, 40.4% of new dwellings are rented. That is the 2nd highest percentage since the 1960s.

Young people are leading the rental growth with 80% of 25-29 year olds rent, 60% of 30-34 year olds and around 50% of 35-39 olds. Home ownership is fading away from the next generation and has been declining since the Boomer generation.

Based on demographics, home ownership has been slowly declining in Canada for decades. The problem is getting so big that we are just now noticing it at a policy and public discourse level.

The median age of a renter in Canada is 32, and is getting older. In the more expensive areas in Canada, like Vancouver or Toronto, the median age of a renter is over 34. 12% are with children. This should tell you that having children for people who rent is a much harder consideration, and really not a surprise. This is, and general unaffordability is a primary driver for the decline in Canadians having kids. So if we want Canadians to have kids then they need to feel secure about their housing situation first.

Renting used to be a stepping stone to ownership, but because of soaring rent costs, long-term renting is surging and becoming the new norm. The average renter is spending 38.6% of their income on rent and debt payments. 15% of renters spend more than half of their income on rent. The average renter’s credit score is declining, and that is because more renters are squeezed to take on debt just to survive after paying for rent.

This puts renters in the worst financial position as a demographic, on average, in Canada. Credit card and auto loan payments arrears are growing faster in renters. This means a bigger and growing percentage of Canadians have the inability to grow wealth and have declining or negative saving rates.

The housing crisis fueled by mass immigration, was one of the worst policies for Canadians’ financial health. It separated the country into 2 classes: homeowners whose net worth and savings went up and driven by the scarcity of housing, and the people who were on the other side of the coin and got a double-digit increase in shelter costs every year for a number of years.

This artificial short-term boost put Canada’s overall economy at risk as it decreased discretionary spending. Discretionary spending is a key part of GDP’s total economic output. It drives consumer demand, supports local businesses thus employment, etc. This is in part why we see so many small businesses struggle, and employment in the private sector isn’t as robust. The hiring and wage growth in the public sector is masking serious issues.

As we know, compounding is one of the most important aspects of wealth growth, which means time is a key component in wealth growth, next to the saving rate. The years record Canadians couldn’t save will further create divergence in financial stability amongst Canadians.

The other big hurdle facing renters in entering homeownership that isn’t talked about is home choices. Over the last couple of decades, dwelling construction has moved definitively from single-detached to multi-unit.

This multi-unit dwelling boom is a bad knee-jerk reaction to another bad policy. We are creating scarcity, again, in one housing option and lately have been making it even worse with the blanket upzoning policies that reward developers with taxpayer dollars for taking down beautiful single detached lots and shoving as many dwellings into it as possible with zero consideration to anything else.

Often, multi-unit dwellings such as condos or townhouses come with condo fees, and that additional hard cost shrinks how much in mortgage people can take on. This leads to further erosion of homeownership affordability and when Canadians can actually afford a home it is a much less of a home than any generation beforehand.

I also have to point out that the transition to multi-unit homeownership vs detached homeownership puts it at a higher risk. Unlike with detached single homeownership, which comes with land and much more flexibility, a multi-unit dwelling has less flexibility, shorter life span and is dependent on everyone else, with a guaranteed increase in condo fees.

All of the above has led to the average age of first-time home buyers (and home buyers in general) to climb up, and that has a societal transformational impact. As people take longer to save for a home, they save less for retirement. As they are older when they buy a home, it takes them into the later years to pay it off, and this impacts the having kids dilemma, again.

There is some good news on the horizon with house prices starting to drop because of the slowdown in mass immigration, and credit exhaustion, which leads to fewer buyers. Rent prices are also coming down with less demand and a substantial increase in rental-focused construction.

We need to remove ideological short-term thinking from our neighbourhood development and multi-unit focus and start building single detached homes again to give Canadians an option that promotes family growth, and not turn that into a class.

Canada needs to develop more economically viable locations to live in to help reduce concentration into a handful of cities that drive inefficient demand. Regional and rural economic growth is such low-hanging fruit in Canada, and being the 2nd largest country in the world, it only makes sense to use what we have.

We need to restore the flow of capital from developers and bondholders back to Canadians’ pockets and our local economies.

It is imperative to re-focus on economically sound policies that promote long-term housing affordability for Canadians to build our society on, and not price Canadians out of Canada.

I won’t get into some of the financial ratios in Budget 2025 of Canada’s financials comparison with the other countries, because I could write a whole article just on that, but it is important to point out that the quoted net debt to GDP ratio of 13.3% is wrong. The Federal government uses pension assets (CPP, QPP) as part of that calculation. Excluding that, the ratio is around 46.1% as of Q2. Then there is the provincial debt.

The 2024 Fall Economic Statement had Canada’s Real GDP projected at around 2% for 2025 and above that in 2026. Now, this budget revises it down by half to just over 1% growth. They also stated that the risk to growth and inflation has increased. Inflation has definitely been accelerating over the last couple of readings. Not sure how they don’t think that spending over $500B won’t have an impact on that or on our dollar.

The budget aims to reduce the costs of day-to-day government operations and to turn these savings, plus additional borrowing, into capital investments, where it believes it can achieve a multiplier effect. In general, it is a good move as operational costs should be minimal, but the question is whether the “investment” spending will generate sufficient ROI to make drastic changes.

It is important to note that the ROI on investment will vary depending on other factors that hinder it, such as red tape. To get the multiplier effect, the capital still needs the private sector to substantially increase investment in Canada. The plan is $280B over 5 years on new infrastructure projects, which is $450B on cash basis.

Deficits:

• 2025/26: $78B

• 2026/27: $65B

• 2027/28: $64B

• 2028/29: $58B

• 2029/30: $57B

That’s an additional $322 billion in deficit spending with no plan for a return to balanced budgets. The operations side is aimed to be balanced with revenues by 2028-29; everything above that is pure debt. They think they can generate $500B in additional private investment over the next 5 years. It is very doable, without red tape.

The government will find operational savings by launching an Office of Digital Transformation that will digitize, adopt AI and innovate government operations so they are not as personnel-intensive. They are planning to shrink the federal bureaucracy by about 40,000 people from its peak over the next 4 years, which will be part of the $60B in savings under its Comprehensive Expenditure Review.

This will give a boost to Canadian tech companies if the federal government will source Canadian as they promised, and I hope they can avoid ArriveCan type of scandals in the process. I will expect some things to get broken along the way, as government operations are years behind the times, and there will be friction to get them up to speed. This is a necessary step regardless if we want a move towards efficient government operations.

Canada’s economy desperately needs to manufacture things again, build things again, and develop new export capabilities. There is a lot of blame going on in regards to our economy on Donald Trump’s tariffs, China’s tariffs, etc. And they are definitely having an impact, but the reality is that our exports haven’t been growing in years. We can’t export more if we don’t have more things to export and a way to export them to new markets.

Based on private sector forecasting, Nominal GDP is now projected to be lower than the Fall Economic Statement of 2024 by $40B on average every single year from 2025 to 2029. The Budget 2025 correctly points out that low productivity is one of the pain points of the economy and standard of living.

Business investment has been flat for a decade, and investment in machinery in particular has declined by 50% over that time. This is something I’ve worked on and have been raising the alarm about, and I am happy this is being noticed and is being addressed. We can’t grow productivity and economy without being investable. They assume $480B in growth just from this aspect.

Navigating red tape on how to actually build anything in Canada is a major choke point for investment. Federal regulatory burden has increased by over 37% since 2006 and our business investment would have been 9% higher without that increase. Even though the government knew the data they did nothing about it. The Building Canada Act and Major Projects Office will try to fix the bed they made.

Earlier in the year Mark Carney instructed his Ministers to find red tape to eliminate, and they found 500 improvement points to reduce regulatory red tape in just 90 days. Which makes you wonder what they have been doing for the past 10 years.

The Major Projects Office, which isn’t needed unless duplicate roles will be terminated from elsewhere, will help identify Canada’s national interest projects, which we can all identify without that office, and the projects that have been identified so far have already started a while ago. The MPO will get $213.8 million over 5 years to make it a single point for approvals and financing.

The thing that is the hardest to navigate in building projects that no one wants to talk about is First Nation issues. In the Ring of Fire area, Ontario has been negotiating to build a road for 20 years. The Indigenous Loan Guarantee Program has been doubled to $10B to give them money for equity for new projects to get things going. There is a word for that, but now it is business as usual in Canada.

Productivity Super-Deduction is being introduced to offer aggressive tax incentives and write-offs at accelerated times. Immediate expensing of manufacturing machinery and equipment, ZE vehicles, clean/conservation energy equipment, computers, patents, and R&D expenses. I completely support all of this. These are among the most important points in the entire budget to attract private-sector investment.

Canada’s marginal effective tax rate (METR) will drop by 2%. Enhancements to the SR&ED program will help increase R&D investments and especially when the program is now extended to eligible Canadian public corporations. Processing time is being cut in half from 180 days to 90 for expenditure reviews, thank goodness.

The Liberals are launching Build Canada Homes with $25B to attract private investment to expand housing supply. They claim a 50% reduction in building times, a reduction of costs by 20% and emissions by 20%. This policy isn’t needed at all. It essentially aims to subsidize building modular home construction. Builders that will qualify for it will get their projects subsidized vs builders who won’t, making it all seem unfair. It’s a stimulus to a newer industry, and should be viewed as such.

This new housing strategy is pulled back from previous promises and continues to use stats that they already failed to achieve.

Reducing immigration numbers is the best way to reduce housing costs. Getting municipalities to reduce development fees and time, which is where the main costs for the industry are, is the other key. None of that costs money to taxpayers. However, they think that this $25B program will yield a total investment of $130B. The question to ask then is, what will happen to the overall market?

Housing starts are averaging 277,000 units per month over most of 2025 so far, which are strong numbers. The real estate market has already shown a strong pullback from record purchase and rent prices. If the Liberals cut immigration as they promised, this will help reduce the artificial stimulus. We need the markets to self-correct.

The immigration plan proposed under the Budget 2025 is a bit of smoke and mirrors. It is doing a good job in reducing temporary residents, especially student visas, down to 150,000, which will have a significant impact on real estate in certain areas and sham colleges. The focus moves to economic migrants, which is just as easy to scam, and these numbers will increase.

The unemployment rate is only projected to decline to 6% by 2029. The labour pain Canada is facing is a multi-year one. We don’t need more economic migration. Removing these down to the most unique STEM positions is what will help clean out our labour market and increase investment in innovation instead of relying on cheap foreign labour.

Permanent resident admission will be higher than what was even in Justin Trudeau’s revamped plan in the upcoming years. They also want to jump the line and convert some refugees and work permit holders to permanent residents, which doesn’t reflect in their projections. But none of these numbers will be accurate if the chain-citizenship Bill C3 is passed anyway.

The cornerstone of this budget that is undertalked about is the Climate Competitiveness Strategy. Mark Carney, who has been architecting global carbon tax based trade before becoming Prime Minister, campaigned on the industrial tax. They just didn’t have the political or mechanistic opportunity to implement it yet. Even though the majority of the world’s economies and trade don’t care for this, Carney is pushing this because Europe is implementing it, and thinks it will make us more competitive.

Canada’s energy and oil and gas production is already more environmental than the average and our industrial competitors, giving us already an edge as a choice for these countries, he claims, asking for a ‘greener’ choice. But that’s not good enough because they view carbon capture as an industry that allows us for resources expansion even though it is not economically viable otherwise.

Net zero by 20250, which will be led by the industrial carbon tax, which the federal government will try to harmonize across Canada. The claim that the Oil and Gas Emissions Cap will “no longer be required” isn’t a commitment to get rid of it; they just mean no new production will happen without carbon capture and storage investment alongside it. Alberta Oil Sands Pathways Plus projects essentially does that.

Clean Energy, Clean Technology Manufacturing, Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage (CCUS) tax credits are a massive bet in the budget to attract investment into Canada.

Natural Resources Canada will create a $2B Critical Minerals Sovereign Fund, which will make strategic investments in critical minerals projects and companies. This is similar to what Donald Trump has been doing in the US recently. I am not against this and would argue there is a strategic case for it, and that it makes a stronger financial case for an ownership position than just giving out capital at a cost. However, it won’t be all equity stakes.

The budget has a good focus on critical minerals project development it is just too small. It needs to be much greater, as these are long-term projects and will position us in a unique global power spot. This area, and supporting it with infrastructure, is where most of the new spending should be focused, but unfortunately, it isn’t. This is an incredible opportunity to develop rural communities as a byproduct, which will further reduce demand for housing in major areas.

Canada signed the 2% of GDP investment in military investment commitment and the NATO Defence Investment Pledge that will reach 5% by 2035. This new capital coming into our Canadian Armed Forces is critically needed as for years it has been neglected, mismanaged and as a result, not only are our men and women in uniform suffering, but also half of Canada’s already ill-equipped military isn’t functional.

$81.8B over 5 years on a cash basis will be invested in the Canadian Armed Forces capabilities. Some of it is going towards recruiting and salaries, some of it towards modernization, but not enough of it is going towards hardware and actual operation capabilities.

Nonetheless, this new capital injection into such a niche sector will help develop specialized talent and new tech companies. Investing in this ‘complex’ yields new growth that isn’t possible otherwise, and it is well needed.

There are other great niche-focused initiatives in this Budget 2025 like changes to the banking industry that will help fintech and consumers, harbours, and things like Artist’s Resale Right.

The problem with this budget is that with all these talks of crisis, it doesn’t take massive and pivotal enough steps to make drastic changes and huge leaps for the record debt Canadians will be left with. They are only estimating around $3B in growth from corporate tax revenues over the next 5 years…on apparently $1T of total investment. Some of the yields and costs don’t align.

The initiatives here often take a turn right before maximizing impact; we are not getting rid of red tape and pain points fast enough or permanently to really welcome and unleash investment. Some of the measures that should be permanent are temporary. Unlike the previous budgets, at least this budget finally addresses actual developmental needs, and I think it will achieve that.

We really need to move away from the creation of bureaucratic agencies and committees to generate change. Just get things done without wasting that time and money. It would have been nice just to have a window-friendly structure for industries and small businesses to deal with that doesn’t require so many touch points with the government.

The well-being of Canada’s social fabric is ignored, and the main tax cuts are for yachts and jets. Initiatives can’t be all welfare-dependent. We needed structural changes here to help reduce the burden of taxes on Canadians and invest in organic population growth.

The end results of this budget will be $1.8T in net debt at the federal level and $76.1B in costs just to carry our debt, which will cost more than we will spend on health transfers.

Mark Carney asked our future generations to prepare to sacrifice for this budget, but nothing is assuring here for future generations except that a hope at a job if the gamble works out. We are not building generation wealth but trying to avoid a collapse.

Once our mindsets pivot from survival to the fact that we should be and can be the richest country on earth, so will our policies. For that, we need unapologetic ambition. Budget 2025 isn’t it.

At the federal level, Canadians are represented by Members of Parliament, Senators, and then there are Supreme Court Justices. How they are decided on, and how many people they represent is different across Canada depending on your location.

Senators

The Senate of Canada is the upper house of Canada’s bicameral Parliament. It is modelled after the British House of Lords, and established as part of the Constitution Act. It went from the initial 72 seats to today’s 105 seats.

Senators in Canada are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister. They must be minimum 30 years old, retire from the Senate at 75 and reside in the Province they are appointed to represent. In 1929, it was ruled that women were “persons” eligible for appointment, and Cairine Wilson took a seat as Canada’s first woman appointed to the Senate in 1930.

The Senate is divided into 4 regional divisions: Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes and the Western Provinces. Each Division gets 24 seats. Newfoundland and Labrador gets 6 seats, and each of the Territories gets 1 seat. I hope you are now starting to see the problem.

Western Canada gets 24/105 Seats, which is ~22% while having ~32% of the population, and generating over 1/3 of Canada’s GDP. Alberta, which has 10x the GDP of N&L, has the same number of Senate Seats representing its interests.

The Senate’s job is to review Bills before they are passed, and provide a “sober second thought”. Yet 100 out of the 105 Senators are selected by Justin Trudeau, and there is no accountability, as they are not elected. An inherent bias is readily apparent to anyone paying attention to Canadian politics. This needs to change. Senators must be elected like anyone else who has a direct impact on the legislation of laws in Canada.

Members of Parliament

MPs are elected representatives in the House of Commons - the lower house of Canada’s bicameral Parliament. It is modelled after the British House of Commons of representation by population, where seats are allocated by proportionality while attempting to balance federalism. At least the intention sounds nice.

The number of seats in the HoC grew from 181 in 1867 to 343 in the last election. There is a redistribution every 10 years based on census. The seat allocation has a constitutional formula, and then a redrawing of boundaries by a commission under the Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act.

Each province is guaranteed at least as many MPs as they have senators. No province can have less seats in the House of Commons than it had in the 43rd Parliament. Quebec can’t have fewer than 78 seats under a newer grandfather clause.

The number of MPs we had in the 2025 election increased by 5 and now represent as follows:

Right away you can tell that some MPs need way less votes to get in and represent a much smaller population than others. Looking at the above chart, from a political strategy point, it is pretty clear where and to whom you have to pander to try and get a majority government. There are 232 Seats to be captured before you even go West of the Ontario border. Manitoba and Saskatchewan are almost irrelevant, and so is rural Alberta. In a country the size of Canada, regional differences are just so big and overlooked for the sake of votes elsewhere.

It also gives us a system where more votes don’t necessarily mean more representation in government. In the 2015 election, over half of the votes went to Candidates who did not win. In the 2021 election, the Bloc Québécois, a provincial Party, won 32 seats with 1.3M votes while the NDP won 25 seats with 3M votes. PPC got over twice the votes of the Greens and didn’t get a seat, while they got 3. In the last election Bloc won 22 seats with 1.2M votes, which is a 10-seat difference with around 80k fewer votes than the previous election.

It’s a mess. Balancing history with such vast population and economic interest differences is hard but completely unfair to people whose votes are not worth as much, or even worse, maybe voted against local important issues across the country just to secure a vote.

The Supreme Court of Canada

The Constitution Act, 1867, defined Canada’s current judicial system, instructing to create the General Court of Appeal for Canada which led to the creation of the Supreme Court of Canada. Initially, the Court consisted of six justices, with more added in 1927 and again in 1949 to reach a total of 9 justices, which is what we still have today.

Supreme Court justices are appointed by the Governor General on the advice of the Prime Minister, with no fixed term and a mandatory retirement at the age of 75. Just like the Senate. In 2016, an Independent Advisory Board for the Supreme Court of Canada Judicial Appointments was formed to provide more transparency. Qualifications include a minimum of 10 years’ standing at the bar, and now, a DEI component.

The Supreme Court Act requires that 3 judges be appointed from Quebec. 3 are usually from Ontario, 2 from Western Provinces or Territories and one from Atlantic Canada. Historically, many of them had public office and political roles as well. Besides all the obvious, this also risks a pro-federal tilt over provincial powers.

So we have a country where the majority of one of the legislative bodies was appointed by one politician - and probably the worst one in Canada’s history, votes don’t necessarily get you who the majority of people voted for and for many others, their vote can be overlooked and with a selected Supreme Court judges that can override legislative majorities all while 2 out of the 3 most import structures of the government have lifetime tenure.

No one in their right mind would structure such a system from scratch right now and pretend this is the best we can do to pretend we are a democracy. This is the legacy of essentially stacking history, heritage, and independence on top of one another into a wobbly tower of federalism while adding new provinces over time and trying to figure out how that works. It just may not work at all.

At a minimum, we need Supreme Court Justices and Senators to be elected and have term limits. We can’t have anyone who has an impact on our laws be selected by politicians and stay there for life. It is completely irrational and undemocratic.

Changes to the election/representation in the House of Commons are probably the most difficult thing. People won’t like to give up power, and won’t like the results of what they get if they do. Part of the solution here is to have an elected Senate that will actually give a sober second thought to legislation.

Changes to Canada are needed. Canadians need more accountability, more power as voters and while we are overhauling things, we need to move towards the absolutism and protection that the US Constitution and Bill of Rights offer, as an example. This will bring Canadians more fundamental Rights, and individual liberty.

The changes are needed because it is the right thing to do, as a democracy.

Canada has lost over $250B in projects that have been red-taped into the ground or scared out of the country. Billions more in opportunities and sector developing capital don’t even look into Canada anymore, while record investment capital is flowing out of Canada.

As a solution to get something going, Carney is set to print billions of dollars in more deficit spending, which he calls an investment, to help invigorate some life into our industrial sectors. The problem is that this is the most inefficient and expensive way of doing it.

Canada’s general government debt is at a record high $3.85T as of Q2 2025, marking a new record high of 129.42% of GDP. Net central government debt has reached $1.4T, also a record. The interest on just the federal debt is now over double what it was just 10 years ago. We are paying more in interest than we collect from GST and more than we pay out in health transfers. Adding any more debt to this is just reckless and should be the last option.

There is no shortage of money out there looking to invest, including Canadian’s money. What Canada needs to do is become investable. The focus should be to attract organic capital, stop losing it, and cut red tape.

Just from January to July 2025, over $80B left Canada for international securities. We are at a record high for how much Canadian money is choosing to invest outside of Canada. This should be the alarming part to politicians. The total sum is just a little smaller than our GDP.

Overwhelmingly, Canadians are choosing to invest in the US. There are more opportunities as far as choices, and less red tape. A business friendly environment will always attract more capital as it cuts ROI time and risk.

Turning this capital around should be the number one priority. If we can become attractive to capital and offer investors options on where to invest, we can have a substantial inflow of capital.

Bringing back just 10% of our own money back and stopping the bleed of half of the money that leaves Canada will generate a 10% to GDP equivalent boost to Canada’s economy without any new debt printed. This is huge.

We need to get out of the way of CapEx investment, open markets for industries and competition, and generate new industries to attract the largest amount of capital possible. None of this can be replaced with subsidies to create long term growth with printing more debt. Our economy needs to thrive - and it can be, because we have a fruitful ecosystem that people want to be a part of. More debt and taxes doesn’t create that.

Our social groups were key to our lineage’s survival. The cognitive demands that stem from the complexity of socialization have begun to evolve our brains, requiring more advanced intellectual formulation and capacity.

The cooperation with others has given us a more predictable and richer diet. The overworked and energy-demanding brain was able to get the nutrients it needed for growth from the increase in animal proteins and fats. Our intellectual capacity always was and always will be energy dependent.

We, as humans, have always judged our evolution by intelligence. What were the previous civilizations capable of doing and when? When did we start to plan, communicate, develop, and pass on knowledge? The question is, how will our future look, civilization-wise?

We went from pointing and gestures to sounds and drawing, and even invented language as a means to transfer knowledge. Each one transferred knowledge at a greater speed and to more people. Writing and reading, which our brain still hasn’t specifically evolved for, solved the problem of transmitting and recording knowledge without direct contact.

Over the last 40 years, with the advent of computers and the internet, humans have largely overcome the previously underappreciated challenge of decentralizing knowledge and learning to everyone. Anyone born today has access to a greater amount of accumulated knowledge than anyone else born before them in human history.

In the past, we developed tools to leverage our abilities; now we are developing tools to leverage our knowledge from which new possibilities will emerge. Access and the automatic storage of knowledge are solved; using it and growing it are the next challenges, and perhaps a race for survival.

We are at a pivotal moment where we are outsourcing our intelligence. The next stage of inventiveness comes from speed and storage. Our peak intelligence is data center scale and chip technology dependent. Reliable and ever-growing electrical generation is today’s equivalent of animal fats and proteins required for our intellectual growth.

The differentiation between countries and what they will achieve will be computationally dependent. Countries that lead the intelligence revolution will dictate the trajectory of entire industries worldwide. Countries that will be left behind will experience obsolescence.

Human history and survival were dependent on the invention of tools to outcompete others. Societies perished and went extinct because they were unable to adapt to the general-purpose technological revolutions.

Fire, the wheel, bronze to iron, gunpowder, maritime navigation, printing press, steam engine, and so forth. Each one generated greater advantages and power while taking down those who couldn’t adapt. Hittites, Mycenaeans, and the Ottoman Empire are examples. Progress is disruptive in every sense of the word.

Industrialization took centuries to unfold. Artificial Intelligence has a less forgiving adoption curve than previous revolutions. Besides moving much faster, it also has an incredibly high barrier to entry and demands extensive infrastructure. However, it is the decisive technological moment of our age.

Countries that can’t innovate and get in the way of their own progress will be outgunned by countries that will innovate and push for computation at scale at all costs. The perceived brutality that other countries, like China, are willing to execute to be a frontrunner for tomorrow can’t be outcompeted with virtue signaling in the West.

Nations that fail to secure access to large-scale computational resources will suffer a knowledge deficit. AI and quantum computing will drive GDP growth through manufacturing efficiencies, automation, increased speed, and new scientific discoveries.

Productivity enhancement will disproportionately accrue to nations that embed machine learning, robotics, and predictive analytics into core industries. Onshoring back industries will be an advantage as low-cost labour will become irrelevant facing low-cost automated robotic manufacturing.

Global production networks will be disrupted, devastating countries whose key advantage is cheap human labour. Including internal inefficient human labour. That’s why I think the overall tariff war is a waste of time, and besides that, it is missing key targets for actual tipping of the scales.

Dependence on foreign technologies will create subservience to the intelligence ‘haves’ who will generate even more disruptive technologies, giving them disproportionate power. We are seeing modern glimpses of this with Donald Trump able to get other countries to drop bad policies facing America’s companies. This is a new form of dominance over sovereignty that will require no bullets.

Monopolizing AI advancement is, should be, a moral dilemma between competitive advancement and future instability. The world will have to decide how this concentration of power can be shared with others before it becomes too powerful.

The hope is that absolute power won’t corrupt, this time, and collaborative governance will take place. Even the haves countries will have the risk of economic exclusion internally in the same way the analog have-not societies, which will be impacted by multipliers for inequality.

Just like the untouched tribes of today, Sentinelese, Mashco Piro, and Yanomami, are being somewhat protected and not acted upon, our morality will have to be extended to the societies that more or less will join their ranks.

Each country individually will have to make strategic decisions on how to best evolve with this technological disruption; schooling, immigration, etc, and collectively before too many join the sands of time. Disruption is coming, and we better be ready.

It is located 550 km north of Thunder Bay, spanning an area of 5,000 square kilometers, which is approximately eight times the size of Toronto. It might be one of the largest mineral reserves in Ontario. That area of the Canadian Shield is under-discovered and turns out not to be just a mosquito-infested swamp, as assumed for years.

It first popped up on the radar when DeBeers discovered deposits of copper and zinc while searching for diamonds, but didn’t make much of it and moved on. In 2007 Norton Resources led by Richard Nemis, and co-discoverers John Harvey, Donald Hoy, Neil Novak, and Mac Watson announced their discovery, and everyone took notice. The rush was on, and the area was overrun with prospectors.

The Ring of Fire is remote and has no rail or roads to it, which is part of the problem. The closest road to it is around 300km away, and ice roads are only good for about 2 months a year. It requires significant and sufficient infrastructure built just to get to it, and of course, to get the material out. As per typical Canadian fashion, we are still thinking about it and doing consultations.

The Ring of Fire is part of the James Bay Lowlands and is the traditional territory of several First Nations. Some of the First Nations in the area are fly-in only, and many of them still live off the land. The region is home to 30,000 Indigenous people and one of Ontario’s largest populations of Indigenous peoples.

The region has never had large-scale industrial development, with the land being undisturbed and cared for by Indigenous people. The land isn’t only important to First Nations who depend on it, but also to the world.

The area is breathtakingly beautiful, being part of Canada’s boreal forests and one of the largest peatland and wetland complexes in the world. It is a habitat for species at risk like caribou, wolverine, lake sturgeon, and the main nesting area for nearly 200 types of migratory birds. Peatlands are the largest natural terrestrial carbon store, and Canada’s peatlands store more than 150 billion tonnes of carbon.

The catch here is that any mining in the area, which is full of resources for EVs and other renewable energy-related technologies, will unleash massive amounts of stored carbon. That seems to be in conflict with a carbon-taxing Liberal government.

However, a wild card was thrown into the equation, and that wild card is Donald Trump and the tariffs. That seems to have drastically changed the resource conversation in Canada, with a hope for action at some point.

The Liberals also bet over $52B in tax credits and handouts on the EV economy with battery plants manufacturing becoming a core plan in Canada. Ontario’s Premier Doug Ford promoted it as from mining to manufacturing, all done locally. Completely Made in Canada, if you will. Of course, this can’t happen as we don’t have the natural resources to make it happen or the manufacturing to do it, but the bet is that the Ring of Fire changes it all.

It has chromite, copper, nickel, platinum, vanadium, gold, and titanium. These are significant new critical mineral mining potentials for Canada, which puts it in a strategic geopolitical and economic position. Canada can become a core supplier and manufacturer for things like stainless steel, semiconductors, and batteries with a closed-loop process. Currently, this is Canada’s biggest economic opportunity.

At one point, Doug Ford said he would hop on a bulldozer himself to start building a road to the Ring of Fire. Now he wants to make it a special economic zone, which will exempt projects from Provincial laws and include municipal by-laws.

It isn’t clear what level of support the projects have from the new federal Liberal government, who want to build a low-carbon economy. Some local First Nations support the road construction, some support mining. Others don’t. There are some interesting lawsuits in the works, throwing a wrench into things, but we need to start throwing shovels into the dirt.

For over 20 years, Canada has been talking and doing consultations just on building a road. It will most likely not be completed by 2030. Then, companies need to set up operations. It is absolutely ridiculous that we have wasted a couple of decades’ worth of prosperity on processes. Thousands of Canadians should have been halfway through their career working there by now.

Canada still can’t figure out its own processes and laws to get things done. Liberal’s Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act, is an attempt at that, but Mark Carney didn’t seem to realize the difficulties treaties bring to the table and managing First Nations.

We can’t expect companies to try navigate our red tape when our law makers can’t navigate our red tape. Investment isn’t going to wait around for Canada and investors won’t be interested in years of additional costs doing nothing.

The area around the Ring of Fire is already showing more promising finds. Time to get building and get to work.

I would argue that besides the overall red tape that can be and is put on at the federal level, provinces have incredible opportunities to self-develop, which is unfortunately wasted. However, bad policies at the federal level have a drastic impact on provinces as they are faced with carrying the true day-to-day costs.

Pretty much all provinces have been overwhelmed with the consequences of mass immigration, impacting infrastructure, health, education, and other services. Most provinces were completely mismanaged to begin with, and the added external pressures are pushing many to their worst financial positions yet.

Federal and provincial inflation-adjusted debt has been growing per person in every province since 2007/08. It increased by around $600B to right before COVID, and the debt took off afterwards. Here is what the net debt per person looks like for each province, and of course, the interest it is costing to carry it.

Unsettlingly, the numbers above might be much better than the numbers we will have in the future. Most of the planned Provincial budgets are overflowing with red.

Ontario’s 2025 budget puts infrastructure at the center of economic growth. $200B was allocated over the next 10 years for infrastructure investment with $33B of it will be spent in the next year. The deficit will grow by an extra $10B dollars more than projected last budget and by another $7B the following year before returning to positive.

Ontario’s net debt to GDP will climb to 38.6% and will have a debt servicing cost of $17.8B. The province will have a 211% net debt-to-revenue ratio.

Quebec, which received hundreds of billions in equalization payments over the years, is planning on a record deficit of $13.6B over its 2025-26 fiscal year and billions in additional deficits until 2029-30 when it hopes to achieve balance with a higher boost from federal transfers. Quebec is funding economic growth with aggressive support for businesses and innovation, which, in general, is a good move.

Quebec’s net debt to GDP will increase by 3.2% to 41.9% over the next few years, and debt servicing will cost them $10B in the next fiscal year. Their budget might raise some alarms with the credit agencies, but the final numbers of 2024-25 have a lower-than-expected deficit.

Prince Edward Island has abandoned any plans to return to a balanced budget and is planning on the province’s largest deficit in history. PEI is introducing tax cuts to individuals and businesses and a contingency fund.

PEI’s net debt to GDP will grow from 29% to 35.9% by 2027/28, erasing years’ worth of progress with interest and amortization growing by almost one third to $413M.

New Brunswick is another province that has abandoned return to balance in its outlook. A planned shortfall of $599M in 2025/26 is its largest in years. The province’s net debt to GDP will increase to 28.5% by 2028/29 but debt servicing will increase by $90M this year alone and keep on increasing.

Newfoundland and Labrador is projecting a $372M deficit in the 2025-2026 budget as it expenditure will increase by $536M which is outpacing inflation and population growth. It is planning to get out of the red by cutting spending in the following years.

Newfoundland and Labrador has one of the heaviest debt burdens in Canada with a projected rise to 44.4% but this is another province that is set to benefit substantially from resource development. It has a gold mine coming up, an increase in oil and gas production, and renegotiation of the hydroelectric power station Upper Churchill contract with Quebec that will pay it hundreds of millions of dollars every year for decades. It has huge economic potential.

Manitoba is planning a $794M deficit in its 2025-26 budget with its largest capital plan in its history of $3.7B, with a focus on schools and healthcare centers while cutting some taxes. It is planning to return to positive territories in a few years, but its net debt to GDP will reach 37.1% and debt servicing costs will keep rising to $2.478B.

Nova Scotia is going from a surplus budget to not forecasting a return from the red and deficit of $898M in its next year. The plan is to reduce some taxes and costs, and face healthcare-related costs. The Province will reach a new high of a 40.9% net debt to GDP ratio and cross the one billion mark in debt servicing cost, reaching $1.249B - 43% growth just in a few years.

Saskatchewan has a beauty of a budget and is the only province in Canada forecasting surpluses. That’s with substantial tax cuts while still increasing support for people in need including seniors and disability tax credit that will go up by 25%.

The issue is that Saskatchewan didn’t allocate money for a contingency fund for tariffs, which its farmers got targeted by China as well, and the strengthening of the Canadian dollar may hurt exports. Finance charges will increase by $110M and it’s net debt to GDP is 14.6%.

British Columbia is yet another province that is planning on a record deficit budget in 2025-26, with a disastrous budget. BC will be spending heavily on healthcare and social services. Its debt will increase by 70% in just 3 years as expenditures will double revenue.

Net debt to GDP will rise to 34.4% as its tax-supported debt will increase from $97.7B to $166.5B. It will pay 6.9 cents per dollar of revenue just to service its debt. British Columbia better get focused on its economic development as it is projected to be have not province in the future - for no logical reason considering its recourses and ports.

Alberta got a surprise surplus in budget 2024-25 of $8.3B but is expecting a $5.2B deficit the next year. $4 billion contingency fund will contribute to the deficit and tax cuts. Alberta is benefiting from being the province of choice for interprovincial migration, which is increasing its tax revenues, but expenditures also grew by an extra $1B to service all the new residents.

Alberta will make more money as the Trans Mountain expansion came online but the price of oil is lower than expected so far. There is a good capital plan in place for infrastructure, however, the missed opportunity in Alberta’s finances is to clean out the inefficiencies of the public sector and overhaul the current money wasting waste that supports innovation and use more of its surplus to support these industries.

Net debt to GDP will grow but it will just be 9.3% which is the lowest in the country.

Essentially, all provinces are trying to facilitate some tax cuts as an economic growth tool, and that’s because the more companies can invest and reinvest, the more it will grow the economy, and so will disposable income. I’m glad that there is finally some realization to this across all Parties, and there is so much more room here.

In general, provincial budgets are mostly really bad but not horrible, and that’s because Canadians are just so overtaxed. If there were more focus on economic development, including emerging technologies and not just resources, and cutting public sector bloat and inefficiencies, we could have easily balanced budgets and much lower taxes while getting better services, and actually have money for more services in the future.

I want to provide you with the complete picture, including data that explains what the younger generation is going through. Where the gaps are and trends. The younger generation is defined here as those aged 15 to 29, but some data specifics use the range of 15 to 24; all will be labeled accordingly.

Youth are facing incredible economic challenges in entering the workforce, affordability, and even education, becoming a question of ability. There are many underlying issues here, including the fact that if a family's overall financial well-being isn’t good, youth are expected to work and contribute financially, which naturally comes at the cost of their own future progress, and/or parents just can’t afford to send them to secondary education.

Youth not in employment, education, or training - also known as NEET- is an indicator that is used worldwide to “assess the risk of social disconnection and exclusion among youth during their transition from education to employment.”

When young people are not in school or employed, it highlights significant issues and stress. That means they are missing out on key skill development years, earnings, career potential, and their general well-being is reduced.

During the 2020/2021 pandemic year, NEET rates rose to the highest level in 20 years - 13.2%. After recovering from the pandemic shock, the NEET rate started to increase again and reached 11.3% in 2023/2024. That is a higher rate than pre-pandemic and is climbing.

What’s more concerning is that according to the latest data, there are over 280,000 youth who are not employed or in education because of a disability. That represents an increase of over 90,000 people since the last data reading, which occurs every 5 years. Right now, I would say there are close to 400,000 young people who aren’t getting educated or participating in the labour force because of a disability. That’s an alarming number.

Men in their mid to late 20s are specifically hit harder as their labour force participation drops and they are less likely than women to go back to postsecondary education.

Youth who aren’t in school are having a hard time finding jobs, and so do students. In January 2020, right before the pandemic, the student unemployment rate was 9.7%. In April 2025, it was 15.4%, which is even higher than some months during the pandemic.

The changes in labour characteristics are dramatic. While the 15 - 24 year old student population grew by 7.1% from May 2023 to May 2024, and 2.9% from May 2024 to May 2025, almost all employment growth statistics are negative. The total employment rate over the last year dropped by 2.6%. Over half of that population growth in that age group became unemployed.

The youth who aren’t students in that age group have just as alarming stats, with unemployment growing by 10.3% over the last 12 months and 29.9% over the previous 12 months before then. The unfortunate part is that the population in that age group that isn’t going to school is growing as well.

Employment rate by young people is lower than all demographics and at a multi-year low, including much lower than the years before the pandemic.

In the last Equifax report, excluding mortgages, ages 18-25 had the 2nd highest delinquency rates and a delinquency rate increase of 20.06%, while ages 26-35 had the highest delinquency rate and a delinquency rate increase of 21.04% year over year.

Consumers under the age of 26 had the highest credit card 90+ day delinquency rates, with a 21.7% year-over-year increase. Auto loans delinquency in younger demographics saw a 30% year-over-year increase, nearly doubling the overall delinquency rate increase of 15.3%, which is troubling enough in itself.

Never mind affording a mortgage or saving for a house, our youth can barely afford to pay for $9,000 worth of debt.

Mass immigration into a weakening economy has eroded the accessibility of youth into skill development and the workforce. Intro and entry jobs became careers for people instead of a stepping stone. I’ve warned before that this will start causing societal issues.

The impact of the cost of living also has a direct impact on youth. Families in the lower quantiles have less nominal dollars to spend on kids’ education and skill development. This is part of the reason why we see youth not participating in either.

There are over 1.4 million children living in poverty across Canada and that number has grown by over 360,000 kids in just the last 2 years. Use of foodbanks makes up over 20% of kids and is higher for families with kids. Places like Nova Scotia have child poverty rates above 20%.

Families with kids are getting poorer overall, but also the geographical concentration of high child poverty growth requires a very focused approach.

When youth have less participation ability and options in society, their mental health suffers, and they turn to vices. In many parts of the country, overdoses from drugs are the leading cause of death. Suicides are in the top 3 as the leading cause of death across Canada and higher than the average in the developed world.

While men and boys by far lead in deaths from suicide, the hospitalization rates of women and especially young girls are astronomical. There is barely any talk in our society on this but these numbers are a cry for help.

The future of our society depends on positioning our kids for success. It also puts everyone else in a position of success. We need to rethink our institutions and policies because they are obviously failing.

Our youth need opportunities, support, and places to take risks and grow.

It takes a village to raise a child, and our children need that village.

What are the expectations of a society? Shared values, stability, standards, and norms that integrate and bind individuals as a community, resulting in the living organism that a society is.

It’s based on folkways, individual behaviour, moral guidance, cohesiveness, and general trust that generates a culture into a workable whole. You may even refer to it as societal characteristics, and some places have very unique identities as a result.

Normality is stability. It’s something we take for granted. Stability is strength, it’s holistic purposefulness that coordinates large-scale cooperation. Instability is what gives strength to others.

Societies thrive when people can count on expected outcomes; going to school yields a better economic opportunity, laws, safety, ethical impartiality, role performance, etc. But this is all changing.

There is no question that society and culture, particularly in the western world are rapidly changing, and even slowly erasing. Patriotism and national pride were much greater in the previous generations, and were encouraged and promoted by institutions. It’s almost the opposite now.

We turned down the route of isolationism and compartmentalization. Celebrating our cultures, history, and collective identity became frowned upon and inventively insulting.

Statues are toppled, history is apologized for, and national imagery is being removed. A generation is being raised under guilt and weakness rather than strength, pride, and belonging. Kids these days have to celebrate everyone else but themselves.

Ideological theories are confusing people into mental health issues. Indoctrination is submission to others. Separatism naturally arises as people still search for connection as groups form, removed into the corners of society. People are trying to find where they fit in and outburst in many ways when they don’t. Which is why we now see so many conflicts and radicalization between and within our citizens.

Laws and justice systems have significant political play, if they are even applied these days, creating unnecessary crime and stress in our streets at levels we have never had before. Social behaviours and being out in society became scarier and riskier, pushing people away from each other.

Conforming to standards that have been vilified and conflicted becomes culturally polarizing and corrupts moral guidance. People start becoming disconnected, alienated, and the feeling of uncertainty is exacerbated. Anxiety, depression, and lack of motivation manifest. We see it in record addictions, homelessness, and suicides. New pills and places to consume them aren’t needed. Returning them to the community and contributing is what is needed.

Mass immigration has made our citizens unwelcomed, unhireable, and invisible in our own country and our own communities. Youth unemployment is at near-record highs across Canada. A whole generation that doesn’t build skills, connects or participates in their own country because of LMIA and TFW system and scams. How do you expect them to feel?

New immigrants with totally different values and norms now make up a big portion and even a majority of many places across Canada and elsewhere. Think Brampton, Surrey, and Europe’s no-go zones. We don’t expect anyone to adapt our standards and values or assimilate. This turns our country and culture into another country and culture.

Our laws, norms and social programs slowly evolve to benefit others at our expense. We disregard what our culture and standards have achieved, which people come here to benefit from, but are afraid to demand respect for and live accordingly. They expect us to change to them and we do so because we perceive it to be offensive not to, but is it not offensive to us?

Politicians play into this by promising different things, and often conflicting things, to different groups. Justin Trudeau called Canada a post-national state. It’s easier to give something up than defend it and build it up. I view this as surrendering.

Besides the social and cultural difficulties that people are going through, we have massive economic changes. Inflation, the cost of living, and people not able to find good-paying jobs are creating incredible amounts of stress on top of everything else.

We got so comfortable in the western world that we thought we could use virtue signaling, and red tape as a manipulation tool to direct economic activities into some ultraistic destination without consideration of how it impacts people along the way or its reality.

When legitimate paths are blocked for economic opportunity, equality of opportunity, and betterment, individuals resort to deviance. One of the most fundamental parts to society’s well-being is economic opportunity. As the saying goes, every society is three meals away from chaos. We may mask it now with food banks, but the point is to thrive and not be fed by the government.

Culture is downstream from institutions. They play a paramount role in shaping society or changing it. Governments, schools, and community organizations need to promote our shared values, standards, and strengthen our identity unapologetically.

Communal structures such as neighbourhoods, families, and religious institutions need to be brought back to the historical point when they provided guidance and support.

Fostering community with local initiatives, volunteer groups, and cultural events help rebuild and make social connections and counteract alienation. I encourage everyone to play a part at this level and take action.

We all have a part in protecting our future, and we need leaders who will enable it and fight for our society.

There is a new industrialization economic race happening around the world. In some parts of the world, to be more precise as the divergence is significant. That race is who can store, manipulate, and move more bits. The energy demand here will be greater than ever.

The computational advancements of artificial intelligence are remarkable. It currently doubles the length of tasks it can do every seven months. To continue this exponential growth, and overall industry growth, will require massive amounts of resources and including power generation infrastructure.

As perhaps polarizing Donald Trump’s presidency may be, one of the best attributes of his presidency is his accessibility to innovators, builders, and disruptors. He gets this constraint.

It may make sense now why he wants power to be as cheap as possible in the US, and his goal to get chip manufacturing into the US. It’s not just economics but also national security and geopolitical strategy.

Hardware innovation will yield better performance per watt, quantization and algorithm optimization will reduce energy per computation, but the advancement of artificial intelligence will still be training cluster-based and its computational intensity.

A trillion-dollar cluster is a matter of time, and the time to build capacity to power these training clusters takes longer. You want these data centers to be built in your own backyard for security reasons. The industry is at significant risk of a power bottleneck.

AI’s Energy demand will grow 300% in the US in the next few years. By the end of 2026, it is estimated that data centers will consume twice the energy of Japan’s total consumption. Global energy demand from clusters will increase by almost 5x by 2030.

The question is which country can compete in this innovation, and to compete, you need to have infrastructure for power generation. The unfortunate part for many European countries is that they fell into the carbon tax - Green Agenda, as we shall call it, and started demolishing reliable generation and underbuilt.

China, however, saw the writing on the wall that energy is key to economic growth and future industries. In the last 20 years, China has not only surpassed America in electricity production but is now doubling it. With coal being its main reliable source, which Trump has also said the US will be restarting.

AI energy demand isn’t only about its development, it’s also about its use. The utilization and interaction with AI models as a search engine, generating photos and other casual interaction, and all the way to research will also be responsible for immense growth in energy requirements.

This is a field that will be a cornerstone of modern technology and economic production competitiveness. AI applications will proliferate into every industry and will be their base function. This transformation wave of optimization will reshape industries.

This means that countries that enable this AI growth and hold the innovative companies will have the greatest strategic advantage and participation in the over $15T that will be added to the global economy from this field over the next 5 years.

Grid and reliable, uninterrupted power supply will be the difference between the economic and military superpowers of tomorrow.

The Canadian Shield is a geological shield that makes up the North American Craton. It’s the ancient core of the North American continent. It’s over four billions years old and has some of the oldest rocks on earth. It began to develop during the Archean Eon with a foundation dating back to Earth’s earliest history.

The Canadian Shield area stretches from the northern parts of the US, continuing north from the Great Lakes to the Arctic Ocean, and covers over half of Canada.

It had towering mountains formed by the collisions of early tectonic plates, creating ranges as vast as the Himalayas and larger than most of today’s mountain systems. A billion years ago, one orogeny created the Grenville Mountain Range, which stretched from Quebec through Ontario and down to Texas.

Hundreds of millions of years and several ice ages, with 3 km thick ice, have ground and eroded the mountains down to our current topography. As glaciers moved and retreated, they cut the basins of the Great Lakes and the thousands of beautiful lakes we see on our map today. This is also part of the reason why Canada has around 20% of the world’s freshwater.

The Canadian Shield was part of the Laurasia Plate, which broke off the supercontinent called Pangaea, and later split into North America, Europe, and Asia. It was part of the then North American crust.

As this supercontinent traveled Earth throughout tropical and subtropical zones, it entered the Carboniferous Period, which formed rich plant life, lush rainforests, and established land animals.

A couple of hundred million years later, as Pangaea was starting to break apart, we entered the Cretaceous Period which gave us dinosaurs, birds and many other big changes but the Period came to a sudden end when a large asteroid hit earth where today’s Gulf of Mexico is…or is it Gulf of America now?

The Cretaceous Period gave us dinosaur museums and our oil and gas industry, while the Carboniferous Period gave us coal. Carboniferous means coal-bearing. The historic Sydney Coal Field came from that era.

Canada’s coal mines had a crucial part in the American Revolution, and actually in becoming a nation, as coal was the critical ingredient (energy) to industrialization. Coal equaled wealth and power.

To appease the unrest in the British colonies of Upper Canada and Lower Canada, which became Canada West and Canada East, which are now Ontario and Quebec, were united into the Province of Canada to solve governance issues and focus on commercial interests.

The only problem is that surveying the Province of Canada found no coal but the Maritime Colonies, which were much more self-sufficient, had coal, mostly in Nova Scotia.

The British sought to reduce costs and increase the Province of Canada's self-sufficiency. The end of the Reciprocity Treaty in 1866 by the US, which was a free trade deal with British North America, put the natural resources economic aspect of the Maritimes at risk, which helped push the Colonies and the Province of Canada into Confederation. Industrialization in Ontario and the railway from the Colonies to this new market cemented the creation of a new country.

Tariffs and the fear that some of ‘Canada’ would be taken to be a part of the US actually played a role in the formation of Canada. Imagine that.

While surveying what is now Ontario and Quebec, they found no coal at the time, but they did discover bitumen and the southernmost part of the Canadian Shield. It led to the establishment of the world’s first petroleum company, the International Mining and Manufacturing Company, in 1854.

The surveyor, Sir William Edmond Logan, who founded the Geological Survey of Canada and has a couple of mountain peaks named after him, was an incredibly devoted individual to his profession. Canada owes so much of its recognition to Sir Logan’s obsession-like devotion to Canada’s geology.

He opened geological museums in Canada and promoted Canada’s minerals and even asphalt in different expositions abroad. While he was showcasing his work, it started to generate tremendous interest in Canada’s natural resources. His exhibitions worked like a tradeshow for Canada.

Canada’s mineral riches were well known many years earlier as French explorer Samuel de Champlain, who founded Quebec City, learned from the local First Nations in the 1600s, who knew of the minerals and quarried copper in the area for thousands of years.

The Canadian Shield’s rocky terrain and thin soil didn’t make it an intuitive area for settlements. Farming turned out to be all but impossible for many, so it was easier just to be where farming was fruitful. The area is even referred to as “the country of our defeat” in a poem by Al Purdy, as it turned into abandoned communities and farms.

The riches of the Canadian Shield weren’t rediscovered until there were commercial interests in the explorations, and even then, much of it by accident, just because it is so rich.

The Hudson Bay Company, via a royal charter, got control of most of the Canadian Shield land for years but focused on the fur trade. Its explorers randomly came across minerals but left them alone as fur was the priority. What a lesson for businesses here.

The fur trade came to its end, and HBC sold most of its land back to Canada. They did try to venture into resources with the Hudson’s Bay Marland Oil Company in 1920s, but it was a failure. While HBC totally missed what is probably one of the biggest opportunities for wealth in human history, they did play a role.

HBC’s waterways and canoe maps were immensely helpful for prospectors to navigate the Canadian Shield. Their Posts became hubs for miners, and where many minerals nearby were found.

The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway made significant discoveries as the route went through the rugged terrain of the Canadian Shield to Manitoba and the West. Blasting through the Canadian Shield led to the discovery of the Sudbury Basin, one of the world’s largest nickel mining areas.

Rail made it possible to get in supplies and heavy equipment into the Canadian Shield, and once things were discovered, rail played a critical part in their transportation out to markets. Towns and settlements quickly built up along the railways, making exploration possible and the foundation for Canada’s natural resources economic boom.

Silver in Cobalt, gold in Timmins and Kirkland, copper and zinc in Rouyn-Noranda, and the Flin Flon greenstone belt in Manitoba, one of the richest mining areas on earth, were all possible and discovered thanks to rail. CPR built a line to The Pas and Flin Flon, bringing in everything needed for mining and building a concentrator, power plant, and smelter. Canada was off to the races.

The age of the Canadian shield benefited it (us) from the tectonic activities, volcanic activities, and catching a meteorite, giving it the time to form its vast natural resources, which are now one of the most productive mining areas in the world, holding some of Canada’s largest deposits.

Most of these mining activities and discoveries are under 150 years old. We are just getting started here. Let’s get this country to work.

Over time, what people did went from generalization and labour, which transitioned to more specification of labour tasks and the specialization of new fields. Industrialization specified labourious tasks while innovation required specialization to develop new fields.

People went from needing ten kids to work their farms to a couple kids who could run a tractor and the family farm would be ok. The same is happening in many industries with innovation. The same should be considered in our immigration policies.

The trend in economic evolution is that the demand for general, unskilled labour is diminishing, and employment is not transferable. We won’t need people moving boxes from one place to another or to serve us coffee at a fast food joint in the future. Robots will do that.

The overall skill and knowledge in our society will need to be greater and we need to be prepared for it within our education system but also within our immigration systems. However, more knowledge will be much more accessible and easier to use.

We are at the point where we should be looking at certain jobs with a lifespan - life cycle lens. It will be important to be proactive in helping people transition and upskill but more importantly not to immigrate people for these jobs and their skill set (or lack off) that are going out.

To put it bluntly, we shouldn’t be bringing in people who are less ‘intelligent’ than the innovation-executable knowledge available or less capable than it. Immigration will be important to position the skills needed to build the future instead of what was built in the past.

Bringing in people to do low-skilled jobs that will most likely be gone in the next ten years will be economically and societally disastrous. Not only do these jobs not cover current social services costs but these people will require even more taxpayer-funded services in the future, which will increase additional net costs to Canada as a whole.

Canada’s current immigration mistakes are already well documented in our economy. The real output per hour worked has collapsed.

Canada’s cost of labour has outgrown its productivity showcasing that we have abandoned economic growth in favour of low productivity sectors, driven by the public sector.

In other words, we have bloated expensive low-productivity sectors while immigrating low-skilled labour promoting wage suppression on the lower end and promoting low-skilled industries instead of focusing on the growth of high-productivity sectors and emerging technologies.

About 20% of Canada’s labour force is employed in industries and roles that are already obsolete to existing technology and innovation. That’s not including the employment in service industries (including public administration) created by reckless spending.

This puts our economy and fiscal situation at great risk as we aren’t in the position of leading sector evolution but reacting to it. Without addressing this first, we can’t turn our economy around and build prosperity. Our natural resources sector help mask this but they are also impacted.

Instead of allowing temporary foreign workers and other immigration to low-skilled jobs, we need to help these businesses implement technology and start refusing these visas. We should want people to do much more meaningful tasks than moving boxes or flipping burgers.

One of the reasons Canada has over 600,000 people working in ride sharing and food delivery is because of low economic opportunity. One of the reasons Canada has hundreds of thousands of people working in fast food as a long-term career is because there is no economic mobility opportunity. This is something the next government will have to fix, and adding more people to this area makes no sense.

Instead of immigrating more truck drivers, we need to create lanes for self-driving trucks (which already exist). Time to implement drone deliveries, robotic fast food restaurants, high tech warehouses and so forth. More importantly, we need Canada to develop industries that disrupt the future.

We used to make machines to amplify human potential, and now the focus is to amplify machines’ potential to amplify humanity’s potential.

This economic and labour reorganization is Canada’s path to retaining talent, wealth and significant tax cuts.

In the United States, before the income tax government revenue came from tariffs, and something that Donald Trump thinks he might be able to replace the income tax with. He has mentioned it years before he took to a political career, mentioned it in his recent campaign, and now that he won his Presidency it became clear that it will be a cornerstone idea he will try to initiate.

And this is businessman Howard Lutnick, the Secretary of Commerce nominee who echoes the same thoughts as Donald Trump. Howard also commented on the tariffs on Canada as being there to get Canada to take action but also left the door open to future tariffs to be studied.

While tariffs do reduce trade deficit, they are essentially competition equalizers with other nations protecting one’s industrialization. It is a protectionism mechanism, at its basics. For example, because of labour costs and regulations, it may be cheaper to manufacture something outside your country. Tariffs on that product will drive its price up and will allow for local manufacturing to compete with it.

The United States had industrial protectionist policies for most of its existence, and they only decreased substantially shortly after WW2. This is also when the 2nd wave of globalization began which is what some of Trump’s team attributed to trade deficits and economic weakness which isn’t exactly true.

America’s trade deficits, as a percentage of GDP, started with the collapse of the Bretton Woods Agreement in 1971. The Bretton Woods Agreement was an international monetary system signed in 1944 by 44 nations that saw to the return of the classic gold standard and stopped competitive currency devaluations.

Countries agreed to keep their currencies within 1% convertibility value into the USD, the USD will be convertible to gold at a value of $35 per ounce, and countries will settle internationally in USD. At the time the US controlled majority of the gold. It also gave birth to the IMF and World Bank Group.

European economic powerhouses; Britain and France, couldn’t compete with America’s industries anymore. In the 1930s Britain even created it is own economic bloc cutting out US goods. Two world wars, however, have done their damage and destroyed their domestic industries. They needed America’s help to rebuild and America wanted access to the British empire which together represented over half of the world’s trade.

The Bretton Woods Agreement officially made the US the superpower country; ending British Empire’s economic dominance and financial power which was shown when the US gave Britain $4.4B in aid that led them to sign the Agreement. This moment of dominance transition is rather more symbolic than I think some people appreciate as Britain didn’t want America to industrialize and forbid tariffs which are some of the reasons that led to the American Revolution.

When the United States achieved independence, under the Articles of Confederation the federal government couldn’t collect taxes directly. The power to levy taxes and tariffs came six years later when the United States Constitution came into effect. Tariffs was the second bill signed by President George Washington imposing 5% tariff on the majority of imports.

Leading to the War of 1812 tariffs in America averaged 12.5% but they didn’t have a strong enough impact to encourage domestic consumption. When the War broke tariffs doubled to 25% to account for government spending and new industries were developed as imports were disrupted - sound familiar?

These tariffs were so successful for the industrial development that manufacturers wanted them to stay and in fact, they even increased and kept increasing. In 1816 average tariffs went up to 35%, 40% in 1820 and until the end of WW2 the US had some of the highest tariffs in the world.

That didn’t come without hiccups. The Southern States didn’t want the protectionism as they were agrarian but the Northern States were industrial and they did. That was part of the reason for another war - The American Civil War. During the War tariffs climbed to 44%. Abraham Lincoln said: “Give us a protective tariff, and we will have the greatest nation on earth”. Again, sound familiar?

Tariffs worked early on because they were paramount for what was the development of a brand-new economy. It’s an economic principle that’s called the infant industry argument which believes that new industries don’t have the economies of scale to compete with their established competition (and countries), thus requiring protectionism to establish.

Tariffs are a fundamental part of the American School of Economics aka the National System. Free trade was viewed, at the time, as a British colonial system and the thought was that Britain would recolonize them which is why they were a catalyst to a few wars. It’s Jeffersonian democracy; American Republicanism, which is the foundation of the Constitution of The United States.

Simply; economic independence = political independence. I would argue it is still true today and is probably viewed more so now under Donald Trump. It’s patriotism at its core.

Tariffs played a crucial role in the transition from the Industrial Revolution to the Second Industrial Revolution paired with infrastructure investment and access to capital for entrepreneurs - something that America is still leading at and for some reason other countries just can’t get their heads around. It moved people from agriculture towards industries and innovation. Risk taking.

This was America’s manufacturing golden age which lasted until WW2. Everything as a consequence was booming as well. Oil and gas, sewage systems, railway, mining, finance, and many more industries were built and gave way to incredible wage growth, and skilled labour demand which attracted millions of immigrants from Europe.

America’s economy was growing twice as fast as European economies just like today’s emerging markets. America was that emerging market back then.

Tariffs worked in the formation of America’s economy but it was also due to its geographical location - the fact that it wasn’t part of Europe and wasn’t impacted by two world wars to the same extent. While European countries were destroying each other, America was building with no risk and with more reward as it had increased demand from Europe for goods because many of their industries were shut down.

Wars end and postwar reconstruction is an economic boom on its own that impacts trade demand. During WW1, America’s agricultural industry had a surge in growth and prosperity but shortly after the war demand decreased as redevelopment of Europe’s agriculture industries took place. America’s farm income fell by around 40%.

Panic set in and other industries demanded action from their government electing Republicans to control the White House and Congress. That action that the industries wanted was tariffs of course, and so the Emergency Tariff Act in 1921 came into effect mostly focusing on raising duties on agricultural products, and just a year later the Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922 became law.

Like for any policy, market timing, and other conditions play a critical role in its outcome. The Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922 was ill-timed. It increased tariffs back up from when they were dropped in the Tariff Act of 1913 aka the Revenue Act of 1913 which also re-introduced the federal income tax for the first time since 1872. The Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922 also gave the President power to raise or lower rates on goods.

I would say at this point tariffs became political appeasement rather than political and economic strategy. The Fordney-McCumber Act of 1922 complicated access of allies to America’s economy which they needed to make the payments on the war loans from America. European countries retaliated with significant tariffs back.

America’s tariffs failed to stimulate the economy and protect their industries while causing havoc in the global financial system. The issue here was that America’s economy was overproducing because of the stimulus from the war. It was an artificial boom, after the boom comes the bust. Tariffs made it worse, and now we have the Great Depression.

What was the solution? More protectionism, increasing the tariffs again. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act came into law in 1930 increasing tariffs to their second highest level in America’s history after the Tariff of 1828 which was called the Tariff of Abominations by the Southern States.

In 1927 the League of Nations, now the UN, in the World Economic Conference agreed that it was time to end tariffs as they were too destabilizing as the countries’ debts had to be paid. Goods and services did that. Trade and monetary policy have an important relationship.

The US was not part of the League of Nations and when the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act came into effect other countries responded aggressively and protested. Canada responded by increasing extra duties on American goods and decreasing tariffs on imports from the British Empire.

Implementing tariffs which made products more expensive during The Great Depression when people already had less money and disposable income was essentially non-existent made things worse. The tariff wars made it much worse.

US trade with the world fell by two-thirds between 1929 and 1932. Gross National Product collapsed from $103B in 1929 to $55.6B in 1933. World trade fell by two-thirds from 1929 to 1934.

This was a majorly failed isolationist policy. It’s hard to collect debt from overseas when you block trade from overseas that pays for the debt. The world was much closer intertwined than America even considered and the failure of banks in Europe hurt the US as well.

The US moved from isolationism and protectionism towards the significance of international trade, and a step towards globalization, in 1934 with the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act. It gave the President the power to negotiate bilateral trade. Duties started going down, America’s economy started recovering, and its place in the global economy was secured.

Mostly, America’s industries didn’t need protectionism, they were ready to take on the world as electrification accelerated industrial innovation. Their economic opportunity was participating in others’ economies. The USD became officially gold-backed global reserve currency with the Bretton Woods Agreement and moved towards political influence. Foreign affairs.

In 1948 the US sent Western Europe $13.3B, with the Marshal Plan, to start rebuilding European economies and stop the spread of communism. They increased their presence in Europe further in 1951 with the Mutual Security Act which increased foreign aid in grants to 1961. The US was in a Cold War with the Soviet Union and against the influence of communism.

Trade barriers came down, tariffs came down. The US was running a trade surplus. The problem is now that the USD is a global reserve currency and it complicates things. The domestic economic interests created demand and the other countries’ economic demands that are served by the global reserve currency are in conflict. The US has to provide these other countries with currency supply.

How do you provide other countries with currency supply? Trade deficits. Being a global reserve currency the US has to run a trade deficit or else it will have to drastically increase monetary supply which will cause hyperinflation and financial stress internally and externally leading to other countries not being able to repay their debts as was the case in the Great Depression.

The other problem was being gold-backed and in 1958 foreign currencies became convertible to gold. Between foreign aid, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War the US was sending a lot of currency out while having to create currency at home backed by gold. The US experienced inflation which means the USD was getting devalued so the currency held overseas was overvalued. Imports technically became much cheaper than exports.

The USD peg to the price of gold hasn’t changed in decades while the currency was technically becoming worth less and gold still had a free market price otherwise. It was cheaper to get USD from America then buy gold with it. Arbitrage. The demand for gold increased, which led to the outflow of gold from the US, and more currency creation meant having to get more gold. There just wasn’t and isn’t enough gold to sustain currency as it is finite and currency creation is technically infinite.

With the Smithsonian Agreement in 1971, they tried to raise the fluctuation rate currencies of industrialized countries to 2.25% against the USD, and raise the price of gold peg to $38 an ounce. This means the USD got devalued. None of this worked as it was also working against the national interests of the US to reduce unemployment and with the Federal Reserve reducing rates to stimulate the economy more dollars flowed out. This is the paradox of being a global reserve currency.

The Bretton Woods Agreement collapsed in 1971 and the USD came off the gold standard and became fiat. As prices were essentially being artificially held by a peg it gave rise to resources. Gold, oil, etc all started increasing from here on. When you see the memes “what the heck happened in 1971”, this is what happened. This is also when the US started having trade deficits.

This was a soft default by the US which Nixon did try to avoid with wage and price freezes but inflation ran high as the currency supply increased and other nations refused to change their currency for the USD. The value of USD dropped by a third in the 1970s and the FX markets were a mess. The USD remained the world reserve currency.

The US entered a period of stagflation. The economy was growing slower while inflation and unemployment were high. Wage renegotiations wanted higher wages driving inflation higher resulting in union employment drop. Other inputs like the oil crisis made things worse. Many other economies were suffering as well.

Just like the post-WW1 economic expansion came to an end, this was the post-WW2 expansion coming to an end with added currency markets resettling. The 1973-74 stock market crash was the worst downturn since the Great Depression.

Interest rates were high and double digits for many many years. Pre-recession unemployment took over 20 years to reach. OECD real GDP growth averaged down from almost 5% in the 1960s to 3% in the 1970s to 2% in the 1980s. During the Bretton Woods Agreement, the world saw 38 financial crises. Afterwards from 1973 to 1997, there were 139.

While there were always tariffs, they were nothing more than mid-level political afterthought during this whole period and pretty much right up to Donald Trump’s first term.

What really helped save the USD and the US economy was the USD becoming the petrodollar. Oil trade was growing, and with its increasing demand, it also increased demand for the USD giving it value which is what is needed for a fiat. Traders and exporters would park their excess USD in US treasuries which helps keep interest rates low and finance America’s government budget and trade deficits.

Trade deficits here helped maintain the petrodollar which was crucial to geopolitical influence. A whole sector of finance turned into a trillion-dollar industry of international currency trade and finance backboned by the USD resulted from this.

The US has already increased spending on social (welfare) programs after the Great Depression and with the Great Society - War on Poverty programs that created major new federal programs establishing higher federal spending requirements into the US budgets. This was originally an unintentional move moved the US towards Keynesian economics.

Rather than tariffs, the US pivoted to using fiscal and monetary policy with the government having a bigger role in the economy driving up the total spending in the economy, hoping to benefit from the multiplier effect. When politicians write cheques it becomes more political rather than what is the best for society, and that changes many things including the productivity of the dollar and where it goes.

Industries went from wanting tariffs as they did for over 100 years in the US to government stimulus and protectionism with monetary policies. This includes raising military spending to stimulate the economy becoming a permanent war economy. Military spending gave the US advancements within the industry and politically but it is now the biggest cost to taxpayers.

What drastically changed over the last 50 years is that America’s government has grown to record size and increased spending to record levels - including on things that have nothing to do with America or the economy but more political and ideological spending that produces very little ROI for the dollar its costing them.

This reckless spending has benefited many industries including innovation, tech, and digital services but the rest of it is highly inefficient. The US has printed over $12T just in the last 4 years and now the overall debt is over $36T costing Americans over $1T a year which produces no more benefits to their future and becoming a serious liability.

I don’t know why many are afraid to admit it but America’s financial situation is a disaster, and unsustainable. This is what was handed to Donald Trump to deal with in his second term. While I don’t recall Trump saying this, Elon Musk who is running DOGE has said that America is on a path to default without action. I agree with that, and it’s clear that Trump sees it as well and not kicking the can down the road like many politicians have and would have.

This is Donald Trump’s last term and he is trying to fix the twin deficits; budget and trade deficits. This is important to understand. He has to do what is good for the future of his country and no one else’s that has been benefiting from the spending and trade. Other countries should want that long-term too as defaulting America isn’t good for anyone else either.

This is a long-running global stimulus that has to be slowly curtailed or we will see a bust. He has to cut the size of government and inefficient spending to decrease budget deficits as they are also based on expansionary monetary policy. In other words, the US is creating its own currency devaluation and inflation because of it.

Trade deficits are obviously something the US should naturally look at. Many countries have protectionism for their exports to the US, and use currency devaluation to compete with other countries for trade surpluses - how China operates.

The levels of tariffs that Trump is talking about to try and balance out trade deficits, however, are highly unsustainable and something that the US hasn’t seen in over 80 years. Any benefit could be crowded out unless there is growth in national savings and investment - without new aggressive money printing. The danger is that this tariff policy will lead to a tariff war for the US, and increase internal costs and inflation further which will make their debt even more expensive to carry negating other efforts to reduce the impacts of budget deficits. It’s not something that they can afford.

The US doesn’t need to and must not run trade deficits this high but it must run trade deficits more or less because it is a global reserve currency. There is no doubt that the future global monetary system will have to be rethought. In the meantime, the US has to implement some fiscal austerity policies and return to budget surplus as it had in 1998-2001 even though it had trade deficits.

The US can’t replace the income tax or a large portion of it with tariffs as Donald Trump’s administration keeps mentioning anytime soon. What it must focus on is to get rid of the artificial governmental increase to the aggregated demand and utilize the money already in circulation to boost consumer and business spending which will increase productivity and profits thus making everyone’s lives and the economy better.

More importantly, one of the reasons the US can do this and pivot fast is because they didn’t red tape their economy shut and unproductive like many Western countries did. Donald Trump is getting rid of even more red tape to unleash this. Red tape are essentially tariffs - shackles on your own economy. The US has an incredible competitive advantage here.

Time for others to rise and make their economies better and grow the size of the pie for all.