CARNEY IS DROWNING CANADIANS IN DEBT: PM continues Trudeau's big spending

I can't for the life of me understand

why Mark Carney and the Liberals are

popular. They're not doing much

different from what they were doing when

Justin Trudeau was the prime minister

and he was the least popular prime

minister since the Second World War.

Carney came to office saying that he

would reduce the federal deficit. He

increased it. He said he would reduce

the size of the civil service. He

hasn't. He would grow the economy. Not a

chance. We're going to build big

projects. Uh-uh. None of that is

happening yet. But because he's standing

up to the orange man in Washington DC,

oh, he's so he's so dreamy. He's so

popular.

Now, the federal regulator for banks

comes out this week and says Canadian

household debt

is $13%

of GDP. It's $2.5 trillion. That's not

the amount that governments owe.

That's the amount that you and I and our

neighbors owe. Now, a lot of it is in

mortgages. It will probably not be

defaulted on. It's maybe not too much to

worry about, but about 25% of it is in

credit card debt and other similar

transitory debt.

It's a big amount. It's the largest

amount

relative to GDP of any country in the

G7. We're more indebted as households in

Canada than any other country in the G7

and more indebted than any other country

in the OECD. the the group that is the

40 largest economies in the world, more

indebted than any other country in the

OECD than Switzerland. Switzerland's at

128%, we're at 103%.

The Americans are at 71%. The Brits are

at 81%. Even the Japanese, who have had

decades of true debt problems,

are only at 68%.

Now, governments are bad, too. Don't get

me wrong. Our government's national debt

is the same as the household debt. It's

about $2.5 trillion. By the end of this

year, it could be $2.6 trillion.

That's more than 100% of GDP.

30 years ago, all of the finance

ministers for the Feds and the provinces

were in a dazed in a in a dither over

the fact that they were approaching

75%

of GDP in debt. Now they're way beyond

that. The federal government owes about

1.4 or 1.5 trillion.

That's an amount that doubled under

Justin Trudeau and it's going up rapidly

under Mark Connie. Last year we were

supposed to see a much smaller deficit

in the federal government in the budget

than we did was $79 billion. It was

higher than anything Trudeau ever had.

We have the highest housing prices in

the developed world. We have the highest

grocery inflation. We have youth

unemployment at about 15%.

And it goes on and on and on. The

Canadian Federation of Independent

Business this week said there are more

Canadian small businesses closing

than opening.

You can't sustain that in an economy for

very long. You you you can't have a case

where there are businesses closing

faster than businesses are opening.

All of this has happened under the Carne

Liberals

and it's not changing.

So why is it that they are so popular?

And I just keep coming back to the fact

that Donald Trump is so hated in Canada

and Mark Carney has positioned himself

as the defender of Canada against Donald

Trump that that's made him terribly

popular. But you're not he's not going

to be able to stay popular for very long

if the economy doesn't improve. And I

don't see the economy improving anytime

soon. For Post Media, I'm Lauren Gunter.