The idiocy of voting for stupid people to run the country. If you voted Liberal/NDP you are responsible for what has happened to Canada economically.
“Canada: The Industrial Implosion” v. the United States
by Wolf Richter • Sep 12, 2025 • 6 Comments
Stunning charts of how investment in industrial machinery & equipment collapsed a decade ago in Canada but stayed on track in the US.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
“According to the latest national accounts data, real investment in industrial machinery & equipment [in Canada] fell in Q2 to its lowest level on record (data back to 1981). As today’s Hot Chart shows, the divergence with the U.S. is nothing short of appalling,” wrote Stéfane Marion and Matthieu Arseneau, at Economics and Strategy, National Bank of Canada, in a note sent to subscribers today.
“How did we get here? Years of excessive regulation, and a chronic lack of ambition by successive governments in promoting domestic transformation of our natural resources—recently made worse by Washington’s protectionist agenda,” they wrote.
Their note included this stunning chart of investment in industrial machinery and equipment in the US and in Canada. Investment in both countries had roughly tracked on a similar trend in for decades through 2012, and then the bottom fell out in Canada, while investment in the US continued roughly along trend.
The analysts wrote in their note: “We’ve written about the plight of Canada’s industrial sector [ here, here, and here].” The first of their linked reports includes these two charts:
Private nonresidential investment, inflation adjusted:
Net capital stock in manufacturing, inflation adjusted:
In their note today, the analysts wrote:
“That failure has eroded Canada’s manufacturing base and left us at risk of becoming irrelevant in global supply chains. To Ottawa’s credit, the pledge to quickly ramp up military spending to 3.5%–5% of GDP could help catalyze a reindustrialization. But time is of the essence—if we are to salvage what’s left of the sector.
“What Canada needs is a wartime multi-pronged strategy that ends the dithering: a competitive tax regime, a sweeping reduction in red tape, and clear laws on how we intend to develop our natural resources. Clarence Decatur Howe—the architect of Canadian industrialization—showed what determined leadership can achieve. Canada must now draw on that inspiration to rebuild its industrial base before it’s too late.”
But Canada sure knows who to invest in, push, promote, subsidize, and build a housing bubble that ranks among the world’s most splendid, if not the most splendid, that not even the Financial Crisis could slow for more than a couple of quarters, but that has now run into trouble, at least in Greater Toronto:
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