Despite its shortcomings, Canada is not an economic basket case​

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Try to keep up A5, it wasn't my headline!

It was a headline in an opinion article in the Globe and Mail ]

Yes, sorry Chuck I forgot you don't have any original thoughts, you only parrot propaganda you agree with.
So according to your logic, it is acceptable to insult with a backhanded compliment your country or husband/wife as the case may be in your instance, as Long as you are parroting what someone else said.

Do you think that a country with the unlimited potential of Canada should be satisfied with achieving slightly above basket case status? Or would you rather that we set our sites somewhat higher? Perhaps aim for banana Republic status instead?

[jazz]

Canada is a basket case, confirmed. Squandered wealth and opportunity at every turn.

[foragefarmer]

Not surprised those on the outside looking in are negative towards housing, and discrediting it as a very important part of Canada's GDP. It's also a big part of the USA's GDP the richest economy in the world.

Money gravitates to where the best ROI can be achieved. I know some are fixated on O+G, but you invest your money where you choose, and by all means keep talking O+G up while continuing to try to predict when the housing market is going to crash. Trillions have been made in housing the past twenty years and it has contributed immensely to the GDP.

Don't let me stop you from hanging onto your dream of the 2030-2035 commodity supercycle as you do need something to grasp while opportunity passes you by. You guys have plenty of time to reload for that one.

Here's something regarding housing GDP and ROI: Had to cut and paste this.

"This past summer Statistics Canada reported that the housing market contributed more to the gross domestic product, totalling approximately $267 billion and expanding nearly three per cent from July 2022 to July 2023. As a share of the GDP, real estate makes up more than 20 per cent

Meanwhile, by comparison, the other sectors contributing to economic growth from 2022 to 2023 were manufacturing ($193 billion), oil and gas ($160 billion), and finance and insurance ($151 billion)."

. In 2000, the average price of a residential property in the Canadian real estate market was around $225,000. Ten years later, it was about $340,000. Today, the national average home price is above $655,000, skyrocketing nearly 200 per cent this century.

Try to discredit housing as being part of GDP , but money talks and what a great ROI housing has been.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Forage, you didn't answer any of my questions. How does housing contribute(positively) to our balance of trade?
All buying and selling housing does is takes money from one Canadian pocket and puts it into another Canadian pocket. At some point we have to sell something to a foreign country to pay for all the goods we import.
How does a housing bubble fit that bill?

If that is your definition of gdp, then all we need to do is keep selling the same trinkets back and forth to each other over and over again and we will have the biggest most successful economy ever.

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Here's a real life example forages theory that all we have to do is spend money and it will magically produce GDP. I've just driven by two different permanently closed cannabis production facilities.
One never produced anything, has been up for judicial sale for years with no takers. One employed up to 500 people and lost money for 5 years before closing.
If we follow the logic that a housing bubble is great for the economy because it adds to the distorted way we measure gdp, then these money losing cannabis facilities were huge contributors to our economy and productivity. Employed hundreds of people to build them, hundreds of people to produce a product that no one wanted at a cost no one would pay. Consumed countless resources in the construction and operation. Most of the components would be imported from Europe or asia. The steel would be imported from china. Every transaction that took place to build and operate these facilities was a positive contribution to our GDP according to the forage model.
In reality, it took skilled people away from the already tight labor market, consumed scarce resources. Tied up and then squandered scarce capital. Sent even more Capital outside of the country to buy the equipment.
All to produce a product with no export potential, which would be consumed domestically and would serve to further decrease the productivity of our workforce.
The municipalities will be left with unpaid tax liabilities. Someone will eventually be left with the liability of remediating the facilities into something useful.
One facility destroyed a huge tract of what used to be the best farmland in alberta. The exact same scenario that the housing bubble is creating across the country. It's only further erodes our productivity and actual exportable GDP.

[sumdumguy]

Why any sane peoplekind would kill the goose that lays a golden egg is beyond me. Total lunacy to kill Carbon the element that drives life itself. I guess they are masochists.

[rumrocks]

This guy is bang on, Canada is intentionally strangled by red tape and bureaucracy.


understand why Canada is taking in so many immigrants you need to take a closer look at the Canadian economy ( or lack of ).
Canada is a bankrupt country where the only path to wealth creation is real estate, no booming industries , no business investments, capital flight etc… Canada has been in recession since 2018 but has avoided negative GDP growth through massive immigration, by scamming immigrants from all over the world. The government knows that there aren’t any jobs and the only way to keep the Ponzi scheme going is to bring in immigrant scam them out of their life savings. Take a look at the IRCC YouTube channel and you’ll see how they are false advertising Canada. the only path to wealth creation in this country is real estate , immigration industry and that’s it really. The government makes hundreds of millions in application fees, schools makes billions through tuition fees so they can pay the over inflated salaries of their DEI staff , landlords have endless supplies of tenants and whatever little industry is left has access to cheap labour so they can remain profitable.
The United States has an economy, Germany has an economy Sweden and the Netherlands have economies , an actual economy, Canada doesn’t , what is has is an illusion of an economy. Selling houses to each other back and forth isn’t a very smart economic strategy. Canadian economic snapshot in 2022 : real estate was valued at $267 billion followed by manufacturing $193B , natural resources $160B and finally financial services and insurance at $150B. Of course we have secondary industries such and money laundering worth $150B and our fastest growing industry right now is Auto theft but the numbers aren’t out yet on that one.
Money laundering is almost equal to our natural resources industries. That’s a disaster!
I wish our economists and politicians stopped comparing stats between Canada and the US
Canada and the United States, share a border, speak the same language and ford f150 is the number one vehicle sold in both countries that’s where the similarities ends. I moved to the U.S. in 2022 and after working professionally for quit some time now I can tell you that the two countries are not similar so stop comparing the two. As I said America has an actual economy, Germany has an economy but Canadian economy is just a Ponzi scheme being presented as an economy.
First of all Americans love taking risks and have a very high risk tolerance while Canadians are very risk avers , secondly Americans see the government as an obstacle to getting things done while Canadians see the government as an institution to get things done. Canadians core identity is “we are not Americans” or “canada is America’s nicer sister” or other phrases to that effect.
Let me illustrate that:
America is the number one destination for foreign direct investments, in every industry imaginable Americans are either the largest player or one of the largest. Aviation, defense , R&D, tech, agriculture and agribusiness, financial services , insurance, real estate, construction, pharmaceutical, transportation, engineering, retail , wholesale, telecom and the list goes on and on. How many Americans companies are there that have a global presence ? GM, ford , Microsoft , Raytheon , Texas instrument , Apple, Amazon, DeWalt , Milwaukee, Dell , IMB , Google , Tesla , Meta, Boeing , General Electric, general dynamics, the list is endless… For every letter of the alphabet you can find at least 10 major companies that start with that letter.
Remember what I said earlier about risk taking ? America is a startup nation because of that spirit. When they have an idea they have the guts to go after that idea and if they go bust it is part of the game , they accept it and start over again.
Meanwhile Canadians only invest in real estate, because the system is risk averse, getting funding to startup anything other than buying real estate is very difficult. Every sector has a few players who are fiercely protected by the government and endless regulations, red tape and hostility to discourage any attempt to break into that sector.
As I mentioned before Canada’s largest economic sector is Real estate valued at $267 billion dollars, in comparison oil and gas and mining only generate $160 billions annually, heavily underutilized and penalized. Canada is an oligarchy economy, where every sector has a couple of players that are protected by government , hostile to competition , hence the high prices we pay for everything such as telecom , air travel , car insurance , groceries, internet etc…
In comparison Israel, a nation of 8 million people has 9 telecom companies, has the second highest number of startups per capita behind the United States, and their GPD per capita is soon to surpass that of Canada !
United States economy is a different animal altogether. Let’s use Sweden for example now , how many famous Swedish brands are there: Spotify , H&M, IKEA, Bofros, Saab, Volvo, Scania, Electrolux, Ericsson, Sweden is a an export oriented economy. The Netherlands is another example, it is 1/40 of Ontario , yet it produces 14 million tons or cow milk vs Canada 10.3 million tons, it is the 10th largest producer of potatoes in the world 6 million tons ( a country that’s 40 times smaller than Ontario ), Randstad one of the world largest HR firms is also a Dutch company, Shell is another Dutch company a major global oil and gas player.
In 2023, one in ten Dutch enterprises (13%) brought new goods, processes, or services to the Dutch or global market.Majority of Dutch firms are also more technologically oriented than EU peers – almost eight out of ten Dutch firms (78%) employed at least one digital technology in 2023.
Do we even need to talk about Germany ?
Canada would have been a second or even third tier economy, on par with Romania , Albania and Bulgaria maybe even Venezuela ! if we didn’t have the United States as our neighbor. In Canada we can’t even build homes without screwing things up ! A nation of mediocrity and underachievers, no wonder every other country is over taking us. Canadian economy is stuck in the late 90s and refusing to adapt and evolve.

[cropgrower]

what will it take to get the criminal thieves convicted ?

[sumdumguy]

Hmmm, I wouldn’t bet on RCMP even opening the box.

[jazz]

This guy is bang on, Canada is intentionally strangled by red tape and bureaucracy..

That is bang on, but he misses the reason why. If Canada were to realize its potential, that means opening up our resource sector much more. Doing that would flow power away from Ottawa and into Sask/Ab. Alberta would have 14m people, not Ontario and Quebec and we cant have that.

The economy of Texas is as large as Canada and they have a smaller population.