Diane Francis: Why our friends Down Under are doing so much better than us

financialpost.com:

In 2022, I wrote a column asking why Canada couldn’t be as smart and successful as Australia. Two years later, by almost any metric, Australia continues to outperform us economically, while maintaining its social democracy and generous welfare programs.

Canada now has a population of over 40 million, while Australia is home to around 27 million. Both are resource-rich and have educated populations. Yet since 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been driving Canada into a ditch.

A 2021 OECD report predicted Canada would have the lowest per capita GDP growth of any advanced economy throughout this decade, as well as between 2030 and 2060. “In other words,” reads a commentary from the Business Council of British Columbia, “Canada will be dead last not only for the next decade, but also for the three decades after that.”

Two years ago, in a rare public rebuke, former Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz said at a conference in Banff that Canada is a chronic underachiever because of poor political decisions and its failure to address unresolved issues.

“We get in our own way,” he said, then listed a few problems: “A political quagmire that requires a crisis to make decisions”; “layers of regulation”; “permit and consultation that take ages to complete”; “Canada is one of the most highly taxed economies on earth”; “interprovincial barriers that cost four per cent a year in GDP alone to Canada”; and falling foreign investment.

The result is that our peers, such as Australia, continue to outperform Canada, thanks to Trudeau’s cabinet of environmental activists and professional politicians who lack financial, business, geopolitical, economic and technological expertise.

The difference in how the two countries compare in terms