Federal government out of touch with economic reality in Canada

In light of recent comments from federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland about the supposed “vibecession” infecting the brains of Canadians, it’s time to set the record straight. It’s not just that people don’t feel good about the economy, the economic wellbeing of Canadians has been declining for years.

Firstly, it’s true that the overall economy is growing and inflation has been brought back down to the Bank of Canada’s 2 per cent target. While these are positive signs—especially considering the alternative of a shrinking overall economy and rising inflation—they do not necessarily mean that Canadians are better off.

Gross domestic product (GDP)—the value of all goods and services produced in the economy—is the most widely used measure of overall economic prosperity. But measuring it in “aggregate” doesn’t tell us about the individual living standards of Canadians. To gauge how individual Canadians are actually doing, we measure GDP per person (and adjust for inflation). And on this measure, the data tell a different story.

From the middle of 2019 to the end of 2023, Canada experienced one of the worst declines in inflation-adjusted GDP per person of the last 40 years. According to new data from Statistics Canada, this decline in living standards has continued for most of 2024, and as of September 2024, GDP per person ($58,601) was 2.2 per cent lower than in June 2019 ($59,905). Simply put, Canadians have suffered a marked decline in living standards over five years.

And while GDP per person is a broad measure of individual prosperity, other measures tell a similar story.

According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, median earnings (i.e. wages and salaries) of workers were lower in every Canadian province than in every U.S. state in 2022 (the latest year of available data). In other words, workers in Canada’s highest-earning province (Alberta) earned less than workers in the lower-earning U.S. states such as Louisiana and Mississippi.

Moreover, Canada’s private-sector employment has stagnated. From 2019 to 2023 (the latest year of available data), employment in the private sector (including self-employment) grew by 3.6 per cent compared to 13.0 per cent in the government sector. And that’s a problem. The private sector pays for the government sector, primarily through taxes. While a growing private sector helps drive wealth-creation in the economy, a growing government sector extracts that wealth and redistributes it elsewhere or even inhibits that wealth-creation in the first place.

Despite data showing that private-sector employment and living standards have stagnated and/or declined for years, the Trudeau government insists that everything is fine and Canadians just “feel” worse off. Clearly, this government is out of touch with economic reality.

Jake Fuss

Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute

Grady Munro

Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute

Related Topics:#CanadaGDP #ChystiaFreeland #FraserInstitute #GradyMunro #InflationCanada #JakeFuss #JustinTrudeau Vibecession

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Resurfaced Video Shows How Somali Scammers Used Day Care Centers To Scam State

Published on December 30, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Harold Hutchison

A resurfaced 2018 video from a Minneapolis-area TV station shows how Somali scammers allegedly bilked Minnesota out of millions of dollars for services that they never provided.

Independent journalist Nick Shirley touched off a storm on social media Friday after he posted a photo of one day-care center, which displayed a banner calling it “The Greater Learing Center” on X, along with a 42-minute video that went viral showing him visiting that and other day-care centers. The surveillance video, which aired on Fox 9 in 2018 after being taken in 2015, showed parents taking kids into the center, then leaving with them minutes later, according to Fox News.

“They were billing too much, they went up to high,” Hennepin County attorney Mike Freeman told Fox 9 in 2018. “It’s hard to imagine they were serving that many people. Frankly if you’re going to cheat, cheat little, because if you cheat big, you’re going to get caught.”

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Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota was accused of engaging in “systemic” retaliation against whistleblowers in a Nov. 30 statement by state employees. Assistant United States Attorney Joe Thompson announced on Dec. 18 that the amount of suspected fraud in Minnesota’s Medicaid program had reached over $9 billion.

After Shirley’s video went viral, FBI Director Kash Patel announced the agency was already sending additional resources in a Sunday post on X, citing the case surrounding Feeding Our Future, which at one point accused the Minnesota government of racism during litigation over the suspension of funds after earlier allegations of fraud.

KSTP reported that the Quality Learning Center, one of the centers visited by Shirley, had 95 citations for violations from one Minnesota agency between 2019 to 2023.

President Donald Trump announced in a Nov. 21 post on Truth Social that he would end “Temporary Protected Status” for Somalis in the state in response to allegations of welfare fraud and said that the influx of refugees had “destroyed our country.”

Business

Disclosures reveal Minnesota politician’s husband’s companies surged thousands-fold amid Somali fraud crisis

Published on December 30, 2025

Todayville

MxM News

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s latest financial disclosures reveal seemingly sudden wealth accumulation inside her household, even as Minnesota grapples with revelations of massive fraud that may have siphoned more than $9 billion from government programs. The numbers, drawn from publicly filed congressional reports, show two companies tied to Omar’s husband, Tim Mynett, surging in value at a pace that raises more questions than answers.

According to the filings, Rose Lake Capital LLC — a business advisory firm Mynett co-founded in 2022 — jumped from an assessed range of $1 to $1,000 in 2023 to between $5 million and $25 million in 2024. Even using the most conservative assumptions allowed under Congress’ broad valuation ranges, the company’s value would have increased thousands of times in a single year. The firm advertises itself as a facilitator of “deal-making, mergers and acquisitions, banking, politics and diplomacy.”

Archived versions of Rose Lake’s website once showcased an eye-catching lineup of political heavyweights: former Ambassador to Bahrain Adam Ereli, former Sen. Max Baucus, and prominent Democratic National Committee alumni William Derrough and Alex Hoffman. But as scrutiny surrounding Omar intensifies — particularly over whether her political network intersected with sprawling fraud schemes exposed in Minnesota — the company has quietly scrubbed its online footprint. Names and biographies of team members have vanished, and the firm has not clarified whether these figures remain involved. Omar’s office offered no comment when asked to explain the company’s sudden growth or the removal of its personnel listings.

Mynett, Omar’s third husband, has long been a controversial presence in her political orbit, but the dramatic swell in his business holdings comes at a moment when trust in Minnesota’s oversight systems is already badly shaken. Federal and state investigators now estimate that fraud involving pandemic-era and nonprofit programs may exceed $9 billion, a staggering figure for a state often held up as a model of progressive governance. For many residents, the revelation that Omar’s household wealth soared during the same period only deepens skepticism about who benefited from Minnesota’s expansive social-spending apparatus.

The financial story doesn’t stop with Rose Lake. A second Mynett-linked entity, ESTCRU LLC — a boutique winery registered in Santa Rosa, California — reported an assessed value of $1 million to $5 million in 2024. Just a year earlier, Omar disclosed its worth at $15,000 to $50,000. Despite the dramatic valuation spike, ESTCRU’s online storefront does not appear to function, its last social media activity dates back to early 2023, and the phone number listed on its website is no longer in service. As with Rose Lake, Omar’s office declined to comment on the winery’s sudden rise in reported value.

The House clerk has yet to release 2025 disclosures, leaving unanswered how these companies are performing today — and how such explosive growth materialized in the first place.