Canadian Economy Beginning To Catch Cold?

You know the famous line, "America sneezes, Canada catches a cold." It's a cold, hard fact and reality of Canada's situation. Reminds me of a quote I read during a history of Latin America course I took in school and repeat once in a while, "Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States!" I forget who said. I think a Mexican priest.

In any event, you can easily replace Mexico with Canada.

Are the Americans proud of themselves for making the continent miserable? That's some good dancing though.

Anyway.

I heard on the news Canadian unemployment is on the rise while the U.S. has trended downwards. Unexpectedly of course. That was the story of my life in financial services, "unexpected by analysts."

Quebec in particular - as usual - experiences the highest rate going from 8% to 8.7% - well above the national average of 7.5%.

Yet, our provincial discourse continues to center around building and adding to the welfare state. According to my math, something is not adding up. Less people working and low productivity but let's create more departments? Oh, right. Transfer payments. Right.

Then we wonder why taxes across the board keep going up.

You know things are messed up when you have workers earning $28 000 complaining the government takes too much off their pay cheques.

It'll be interesting to watch the economy moving forward.