Derrick Hunter: The most important Canadian election ever

Many elections are touted as being the most important “ever” Few actually are. The upcoming Canadian election just might be.

Amid all the chaos that he unleashes on a daily basis, Donald Trump is clearly trying to ignite animal spirits in the United States economy through lower tax rates, the re-shoring of manufacturing facilities, DOGE, golden visas, and—yes—tariffs. Canada’s response should be similar; to reignite animal spirits in our own moribund economy. Economic growth is always and everywhere driven by entrepreneurship and free enterprise. If our response to Trump is simply to stop importing Kentucky bourbon and to spread money COVID-style among affected businesses, we will not have seized the moment.

This is particularly true in the various extractive resource sectors in which we hold a competitive advantage such as energy, forestry, agriculture, and mining. Ten years of anti-development regulatory policies driven by progressive environmental ideology and uncompetitive, redistributionist tax policies have led to flatlining Canadian economic growth and falling relative living standards. We need to be building infrastructure, developing resources, lowering taxes, expanding our trading relationships and encouraging entrepreneurs if we want to turn this around. We have to appreciate that the world needs what Canada can provide and hamstringing our own economic interests in order to demonstrate our environmental bona fides has been all cost and no benefit.

Which leads to Mark Carney’s ascension to the office of prime minister following an opaque leadership election coronation in which no serious questions were asked, no gloves were dropped, and two Liberal MPs of colour were disqualified for no clear reason. With the fawning support of a quiescent and incurious media, our new prime minister was selected by some 140,000 voters most of which may not even be Canadian citizens or old enough to vote in a general election. He has now re-assembled the same band of financially illiterate cabinet ministers and plans to run for election under a “Change” banner.

Has there ever been a Canadian politician to receive gentler treatment from the mainstream media than Carney? A man fully embedded in global organizations ranging from the World Economic Forum to the United Nations to international banking alliances to the very largest private equity conglomerates barely merits a skeptical appraisal from any broad-circulation Canadian newspaper or dinner-hour newscast. It seems to verify the concern voiced in the Ottawa Declaration which The Hub initiated last year: can Canadians trust a news media that depends upon the government for their ongoing solvency? It seems not.

Fortunately, given that the Canadian press is uninterested in providing the electorate with objective coverage, we have Carney’s own words and actions to consider. Indeed, he has long been on record expressing his firm belief in climate catastrophism and his faith in global elites such as himself to direct economic activity in order to prevent it. He helpfully wrote an entire book in 2021 detailing the same.

Until he stepped down to focus on his leadership campaign, Carney was also a trustee of the World Economic Forum, which emphasizes a government-led redefinition of capitalism, and co-founded the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, which uses the banking system to defund organizations that provide the energy that the free world needs to operate. Carney and his ilk would choose the car that you drive, the food you eat, how you heat your house, and how often you travel. He advocates the compelled spending of trillions of dollars, public and private, in re-making the global economy in the quest for a green utopia. He is no believer in free markets.

Which is interesting because we are currently living in a moment where all Canadians have been exposed to what Albertans already knew; that Canada is hopelessly dependent on a single nation for its energy exports and that energy is our most critical export industry. Energy is life. Its consumption is perfectly correlated with economic growth. A man who agrees that “65 percent of all oil and gas reserves must be left in the ground and there is no need for any exploration of new oil and gas fields cannot be credibly relied upon to champion the new pipelines that a majority of Canadians are now clamouring for. He is more of what we have endured for the past decade.

Canadians are being offered a clear choice: economic freedom versus autocracy.

The Hub is non-partisan but its roots are firmly grounded in the principles of classical liberalism. These principles include economic freedom, the rule of law, freedom of speech, and a core confidence in the ability of free markets to solve most of society’s challenges. These tenets have been fundamental to the creation of modern civilization. They also make free societies more dynamic and pleasant to live in.

Will Canada revive the animal spirits in our economy by recognizing our strengths to build resilience and economic vigour, or will we stick with the same high-tax, redistributionist, grievance-laden, and regulation-heavy policy environment that has resulted in a static economy for the past decade?

The stakes are high. This might indeed turn out to be the most important choice for Canadian voters ever. You can vote your way into authoritarianism, but you have to shoot your way out.