{"id":14534,"date":"2026-04-22T10:54:47","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:54:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/14534\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T10:54:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T10:54:47","slug":"john-robson-carney-the-answer-is-simple-deregulate-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/14534\/","title":{"rendered":"John Robson: Carney, the answer is simple \u2014 deregulate everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to\u00a0Monday\u2019s\u00a0National Post<\/a> A1, \u201cScenarios are all either bad or very, very bad,\u201d which could refer to almost anything and I\u2019d likely agree. But oddly here it\u2019s the economy where, for once, I see a happy outcome. To quote my grad-school bumper sticker, \u201cDeregulate everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not actually crisis-specific. Long before Adam Smith, David Ricardo then various Austrian and neo-classic economist theorists, it was practically clear that places that left peaceful, honest citizens to manage their own affairs prospered economically, culturally and even militarily, whereas bloated-state societies were stagnant and frequently grotesque. And forgive the pedantic references but our prime minister has a PhD in economics.<\/p>\n

Not that it does him much good, or us.\u00a0I was in\u00a0grad\u00a0school so long ago I remember how people\u00a0laughed when Thatcher, Reagan or\u00a0Roger\u00a0Douglas sat down to play. Or howled. But Britain, the US and New Zealand benefitted massively from deregulation\u00a0and even\u00a0Canada,\u00a0more timidly, got gains.\u00a0It\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0enough,\u00a0but it\u00a0confirmed the\u00a0theory.<\/p>\n

So of course we chucked\u00a0it.\u00a0For a third of a century, every day in every way the state has\u00a0gotten\u00a0bigger and bigger.\u00a0And with\u00a0gruesomely disappointing\u00a0results,\u00a0from\u00a0real incomes\u00a0to\u00a0social division,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0full speed behind.<\/p>\n

As another\u00a0Postie, Carson\u00a0Jerema,\u00a0just wrote<\/a>, \u201cThere is no great mystery behind why some nations are wealthy and others are not. The policy mix varies\u00a0very little\u00a0and is well understood.\u00a0Countries with lower, neutral tax systems, minimal regulations, the rule of law and openness to international trade and foreign investment are wealthier than countries with higher taxes, more complicated regulations, and which are closed off to the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Including\u00a019th-century Britannia ruling the waves, markets and culture with a \u201cnight watchman\u201d state taking under 10 per cent of GDP, then choosing 20th-century\u00a0socialism and shrinking:\u00a0ever\u00a0poorer,\u00a0seedier\u00a0and angrier.\u00a0But\u00a0is it\u00a0\u201cwell understood\u201d?\u00a0It seems not.<\/p>\n

Back in my salad days I thought the big challenge was understanding good policy. Now that I\u2019m wilted, I think it\u2019s understanding why good policy doesn\u2019t happen. With me in charge you\u2019d get low, flat taxes, sound money, a bonfire of the regulations and big cuts to social programs that reward undesirable conduct, from being unemployable to not saving for retirement. Calvin Coolidge with internet.<\/p>\n

So\u00a0what do the Liberals\u00a0do\u00a0instead?\u00a0Why?\u00a0And why do we let\u00a0them?<\/p>\n

Especially with their\u00a0weird recruiting<\/a> of Marilyn Gladu it\u2019s clear that their ideology is as hard to articulate as, say, Doug Ford\u2019s. Mark Carney has the slick careerist intellectual\u2019s gift for high-falutin\u2019 references, but as Geoff Russ just wrote in the\u00a0Post<\/a>, when he quotes\u00a0Wilfrid Laurier\u00a0he\u00a0totally misses\u00a0the point,\u00a0Laurier\u2019s\u00a0commitment\u00a0to liberty under law.<\/p>\n

Instead, consistent with Trudeau Sr., would-be civil libertarian architect of big, meddlesome, profligate government, we get rhetorically slippery, theory-poor \u201cL\u2019Etat, c\u2019est moi\u201d in which no decision is best left to private citizens within a predictable, impartial framework. Instead it\u2019s all catalyzing the leveraged transformation. Nudge theory with a thesaurus.<\/p>\n

Strangely, Canadians love it. That Post front-page story included \u201cJust 15 per cent of Canadians believe there will be a stronger economy in six months, compared to 27 per cent a month ago.\u201d So the Grits soar in the polls. And Peter Menzies just complained that the media hailed<\/a>\u00a0Carney\u2019s Parliamentary majority as \u201chistoric\u201d\u00a0and lauded \u201cwhat the Liberals have been able to achieve in the past year\u201d\u00a0while backing and filling with\u00a0\u201csometimes ambition does take time, sometimes several election cycles.\u201d\u00a0So never mind all that silly \u201cmove at\u00a0a speed and scale not seen in\u00a0generations\u201d\u2026\u00a0even though\u00a0they keep\u00a0chanting\u00a0it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Certainly one cannot say Carney has fixed the deficit, immigration, housing, or internal trade barriers. And while he claims to have hit our two per cent of GDP defence target, there are no receipts.<\/p>\n

On the other hand,\u00a0historian Tammy Nemeth\u00a0argues, Canada\u00a0increasingly\u00a0has<\/a> an \u201cExemptocracy: a hybrid regime where the outward forms of liberal democracy \u2014 elections, statutes, the \u2018rules-based order\u2019 \u2014 remain intact, while real power operates through the discretionary granting of exemptions, carve-outs, waivers, fast-tracks, and regulatory mercy by the Prime Minister\u2019s Office and its inner circle.\u201d Which puts Carney firmly, if opaquely, on the Third-Worldist side against Western traditions. And our economy in the dumpster.<\/p>\n

So\u00a0call me simplistic. But with every economic indicator heading the wrong way, and knowing the bigger the state gets the more\u00a0the economy crumbles,\u00a0shouldn\u2019t we\u00a0make the state smaller?\u00a0Instead\u00a0voters, including Tristin Hopper\u2019s Laurentian Boomers blasted on SSRIs, cheerily accept\u00a0every weirdness from\u00a0assisted suicide\u00a0to\u00a0massive lockdowns,\u00a0unapologetic\u00a0favouritism\u00a0from\u00a0corporations<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0public servants<\/a>, alienated youth, you name it. But\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0dream of touching\u00a0dairy quotas<\/a>.\u00a0In Canada you cannot deregulate anything, let alone everything.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0bleak. But\u00a0for once\u00a0there\u2019s\u00a0a\u00a0cheery scenario: we\u00a0smarten up.<\/p>\n

National Post<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to\u00a0Monday\u2019s\u00a0National Post A1, \u201cScenarios are all either bad or very, very bad,\u201d which could refer to almost…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[7730,7731,7732,111,5430,3203],"class_list":{"0":"post-14534","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mark-carney","8":"tag-adam-smith","9":"tag-david-ricardo","10":"tag-honest-citizens","11":"tag-mark-carney","12":"tag-national-post","13":"tag-parliament-hill"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}