Canada Rant

Check out this piece (below link) by Dan Mitchell noting Canada's lagging economic performance.

Paradigms and Demographics: Canada Is Part of the Anti-Convergence Club 

Canada's economic lusterlessness is understandable when one considers the country's commitment to nihilist, woke Socialism. You can be thrown in jail in Canada for misgendering. The tyrannical Canadian government's closing of truckers' bank accounts for protesting draconian Covid strictures was Soviet-like in execution. Canada is more woke than California. For example, the principal monument at Barkerville (a gold mining camp tourist village near Quesnel, BC) is a brass plaque on which the BC provincial governor apologizes to the Chinese for abuse of Chinese labor during the Canada gold rush. The otherwise fascinating Canada gold rush story itself takes second place at Barkerville.

I've motorcycled up and down the Alaska Highway a couple of times. On one of those rides, I visited Barkerville. Thankfully, most of Alberta, eastern BC and Yukon is Canada at its most beautiful and at its most conservative. I've long thought that the notion of a swap, with Alberta going to the US and Maine and Vermont going to Canada, has great appeal. Sadly, however, today, Canada as a whole, which began its nationhood as a refuge for weak kneed Royalist fence sitters, maintains its cultural and therefore, economic flaccidness.

Caveats: Regrettably, I don't have a good explanation for the stellar Canadian performance at Vimy Ridge during WWI. Also, Canadian opposition leader Pierre Poilievre seems to have his country's number and wants to reverse Canada's ongoing decline. Poilievre is fascinating to watch and says all the right (pun intended) things. But, considering the sustained moral droopiness of Canada today, I find it hard to believe that Poilievre's party can become the majority and him Prime Minister. Hope springs eternal.