BY SHANE WENZEL 

At the end of each year, I try to encapsulate what I consider the three components of the past year into what was ‘good, bad and ugly’ for Canadians that year. This year I am having difficulty finding what was ‘good’ but have many ‘bad’ and ‘ugly’ categories. I find very little change in people’s actions regardless of a rapid falling of ‘feeling good things are on the near horizon for Canada’.

One good thing is we have some snow which has a history in Canada of persuasion towards making better decisions by ‘smart people’ while on long walks in the snow. So, let’s begin with that thought in mind.

The Good

Danielle Smith and her team have been working hard to assess and turn our challenged health care system around to offer more favourable outcomes to the rapidly growing population in Alberta. With more than 200,000 people having moved to Alberta over the past two years, needless to say, our health care system has been challenged to meet the demand for more doctors and other medical staff. The good news is that a strong ‘come to Alberta’ campaign has proven successful with a high number of doctors answering the call. While they didn’t intentionally target one of our closest neighbours, most are coming from B.C. There is still much more to be done, but this is a major win.

The Bad

Inflation remains high across the country, which I would unapologetically blame on the growing and unnecessary carbon tax. Commercial centres like Calgary experience a lower median income than capital cities like Edmonton and feel the pinch harder. Not surprisingly, Ottawa-Gatineau still reflects the highest income across the country and produces the lowest productivity. Canada’s labour force grew by 137,800, more than double the rate of job growth, which saw the unemployment rate increase to an eight-year high of 6.8 per cent in November. Worse yet, only 12 per cent of new jobs created were in the private sector. You can guess where the rest came from. Overall while Canada only created 329,000 jobs the working population increased by 600,000. Thus, the increase in unemployment.

The Ugly

• An overall key ‘ugly’ in 2024 is that PM Trudeau has devastated our economy, and we are suffering from a flight of investment capital across several industries including our key industry of oil and gas. The escalating carbon tax will be able to take credit for leading to some 57,000 job losses by 2030. Expert economist Jack Mintz projects the NDP/Liberal Alliance capital gains tax increase alone will lower Canadas GDP by $90B and employment by 414,000.

• The real ‘ugly’ for 2024 is that PM Justin Trudeau at the time of writing this article still refuses to step down while our economy falls down.

One Good I forgot to mention was ‘Trump Won’. His suggestion that unless Canada does something about our border, he will implement a 25 per cent duty on all goods from Canada has resulted in the provinces forming a ‘Team Canada’ effort to find ways to work on the border issues, and to also convince Justin Trudeau he needs to go.

Trudeau still scoffs and talks DEI.