Federal government clearly misstates its economic record

“since 2015 Canada has posted some of the weakest economic growth numbers, measured on a per-person basis, in half a century”

“Denominator blindness” refers to situations where people fail to put what seem to be big numbers into proper context. The affliction is especially common among governments seeking to justify their spending and other policy decisions. In Canada, denominator blindness has become a central feature of the narratives peddled by many politicians.

For example, the Trudeau government’s recent economic update, which includes a forward by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland where she notes that the International Monetary Fund expects Canada to have “the strongest economic growth in the G7 next year.” She also insists her government is fostering economic growth that “creates middle class jobs, raises incomes, and makes middle class communities more prosperous.”

Both claims lack context and misstate the government’s economic record.

Prosperity is measured using both a numerator, typically the amount of output the economy produces in a year, and a denominator, the size of the population. A larger population means the economic pie must be divided into more slices to estimate how much “output” is available to the average resident. With a rapidly expanding population, the economy must generate a lot more output merely to stop the individual pie slices from shrinking.

Minister Freeland is correct that Canada’s economy has been growing, both since the worst of the COVID shock in late-2020/early-2021 and over the period when the Trudeau government has been in power. But she ignores the bigger picture, which shows two important things.

First, since 2015 Canada has posted some of the weakest economic growth numbers, measured on a per-person basis, in half a century. The pattern of feeble economic growth was evident before the onset of COVID.

Second, Canada is among the few advanced economies where output or gross domestic product (GDP) per person in 2023 has still not returned to pre-pandemic levels. In part, this reflects surging population growth, which affects the denominator that helps determine whether economic growth is producing gains in average incomes and living standards. In Canada’s case, modest economic growth combined with a skyrocketing population has resulted in a multi-year decline in per-person income and erosion of overall prosperity. Adjusted for inflation, GDP per person is still 2 per cent lower than in 2019.

Denominator blindness also characterizes recent attempts by the federal, Ontario and Quebec governments to explain why they’re allocating up to $50 billion in subsidies and tax incentives to lure a handful of electric vehicle battery manufacturers to Canada. The politicians making these decisions point to the several thousand jobs the EV manufacturing facilities will support once they are fully operational. But they won’t discuss how this fits within the larger job market.

Total employment in Canada is 20.1 million, with almost 1.8 million jobs in manufacturing. The vast sums being thrown at EV battery manufacturers will have essentially no impact on the aggregate job numbers and barely make a ripple, even in the manufacturing sector. Moreover, not all the promised EV jobs will be “new” positions—many workers attracted to the EV industry will likely be drawn from other businesses, worsening skill shortages that are plaguing Canadian manufacturers.

Perhaps aspiring politicians should be required to study the basic arithmetic of fractions before they run for office.

Author:

Jock Finlayson

Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute

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BREAKING: Globalist Climate Conference Bursts Into Flames

Business

Canada is failing dismally at our climate goals. We’re also ruining our economy.

Published on November 20, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Annika Segelhorst and Elmira Aliakbari

Short-term climate pledges simply chase deadlines, not results

The annual meeting of the United Nations Conference of the Parties, or COP, which is dedicated to implementing international action on climate change, is now underway in Brazil. Like other signatories to the Paris Agreement, Canada is required to provide a progress update on our pledge to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 40 to 45 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030. After decades of massive government spending and heavy-handed regulations aimed at decarbonizing our economy, we’re far from achieving that goal. It’s time for Canada to move past arbitrary short-term goals and deadlines, and instead focus on more effective ways to support climate objectives.

Since signing the Paris Agreement in 2015, the federal government has introduced dozens of measures intended to reduce Canada’s carbon emissions, including more than $150 billion in “green economy” spending, the national carbon tax, the arbitrary cap on emissions imposed exclusively on the oil and gas sector, stronger energy efficiency requirements for buildings and automobiles, electric vehicle mandates, and stricter methane regulations for the oil and gas industry.

Recent estimates show that achieving the federal government’s target will impose significant costs on Canadians, including 164,000 job losses and a reduction in economic output of 6.2 per cent by 2030 (compared to a scenario where we don’t have these measures in place). For Canadian workers, this means losing $6,700 (each, on average) annually by 2030.

Yet even with all these costly measures, Canada will only achieve 57 per cent of its goal for emissions reductions. Several studies have already confirmed that Canada, despite massive green spending and heavy-handed regulations to decarbonize the economy over the past decade, remains off track to meet its 2030 emission reduction target.

And even if Canada somehow met its costly and stringent emission reduction target, the impact on the Earth’s climate would be minimal. Canada accounts for less than 2 per cent of global emissions, and that share is projected to fall as developing countries consume increasing quantities of energy to support rising living standards. In 2025, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), emerging and developing economies are driving 80 per cent of the growth in global energy demand. Further, IEA projects that fossil fuels will remain foundational to the global energy mix for decades, especially in developing economies. This means that even if Canada were to aggressively pursue short-term emission reductions and all the economic costs it would imposes on Canadians, the overall climate results would be negligible.

Rather than focusing on arbitrary deadline-contingent pledges to reduce Canadian emissions, we should shift our focus to think about how we can lower global GHG emissions. A recent study showed that doubling Canada’s production of liquefied natural gas and exporting to Asia to displace an equivalent amount of coal could lower global GHG emissions by about 1.7 per cent or about 630 million tonnes of GHG emissions. For reference, that’s the equivalent to nearly 90 per cent of Canada’s annual GHG emissions. This type of approach reflects Canada’s existing strength as an energy producer and would address the fastest-growing sources of emissions, namely developing countries.

As the 2030 deadline grows closer, even top climate advocates are starting to emphasize a more pragmatic approach to climate action. In a recent memo, Bill Gates warned that unfounded climate pessimism “is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” Even within the federal ministry of Environment and Climate Change, the tone is shifting. Despite the 2030 emissions goal having been a hallmark of Canadian climate policy in recent years, in a recent interview, Minister Julie Dabrusin declined to affirm that the 2030 targets remain feasible.

Instead of scrambling to satisfy short-term national emissions limits, governments in Canada should prioritize strategies that will reduce global emissions where they’re growing the fastest.

Annika Segelhorst

Junior Economist

Elmira Aliakbari

Director, Natural Resource Studies, Fraser Institute

Artificial Intelligence

Lawsuit Claims Google Secretly Used Gemini AI to Scan Private Gmail and Chat Data

Published on November 19, 2025

Todayville

By Ken Macon

Whether the claims are true or not, privacy in Google’s universe has long been less a right than a nostalgic illusion.

When Google flipped a digital switch in October 2025, few users noticed anything unusual.

Gmail loaded as usual, Chat messages zipped across screens, and Meet calls continued without interruption.

Yet, according to a new class action lawsuit, something significant had changed beneath the surface.

We obtained a copy of the lawsuit for you here.

Plaintiffs claim that Google silently activated its artificial intelligence system, Gemini, across its communication platforms, turning private conversations into raw material for machine analysis.

The lawsuit, filed by Thomas Thele and Melo Porter, describes a scenario that reads like a breach of trust.

It accuses Google of enabling Gemini to “access and exploit the entire recorded history of its users’ private communications, including literally every email and attachment sent and received.”

The filing argues that the company’s conduct “violates its users’ reasonable expectations of privacy.”

Until early October, Gemini’s data processing was supposedly available only to those who opted in.

Then, the plaintiffs claim, Google “turned it on for everyone by default,” allowing the system to mine the contents of emails, attachments, and conversations across Gmail, Chat, and Meet.

The complaint points to a particular line in Google’s settings, “When you turn this setting on, you agree,” as misleading, since the feature “had already been switched on.”

This, according to the filing, represents a deliberate misdirection designed to create the illusion of consent where none existed.

There is a certain irony woven through the outrage. For all the noise about privacy, most users long ago accepted the quiet trade that powers Google’s empire.

They search, share, and store their digital lives inside Google’s ecosystem, knowing the company thrives on data.

The lawsuit may sound shocking, but for many, it simply exposes what has been implicit all along: if you live in Google’s world, privacy has already been priced into the convenience.

Thele warns that Gemini’s access could expose “financial information and records, employment information and records, religious affiliations and activities, political affiliations and activities, medical care and records, the identities of his family, friends, and other contacts, social habits and activities, eating habits, shopping habits, exercise habits, [and] the extent to which he is involved in the activities of his children.”

In other words, the system’s reach, if the allegations prove true, could extend into nearly every aspect of a user’s personal life.

The plaintiffs argue that Gemini’s analytical capabilities allow Google to “cross-reference and conduct unlimited analysis toward unmerited, improper, and monetizable insights” about users’ private relationships and behaviors.

The complaint brands the company’s actions as “deceptive and unethical,” claiming Google “surreptitiously turned on this AI tracking ‘feature’ without informing or obtaining the consent of Plaintiffs and Class Members.” Such conduct, it says, is “highly offensive” and “defies social norms.”

The case invokes a formidable set of statutes, including the California Invasion of Privacy Act, the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, the Stored Communications Act, and California’s constitutional right to privacy.

Google is yet to comment on the filing.