Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Lost Decades" in English language version.
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)Japan has never recovered from the promise of the 1980s. Canada is now facing its own lost decade. Can we recover?
Diane Francis: The Liberals' lost decade
{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: DOI inactive as of November 2024 (link)According to the International Monetary Fund, Canada experienced nearly zero real per capita GDP growth between 2014 and 2024. That's an entire decade where the average Canadian didn't see any meaningful improvement in their standard of living.
Throughout the 2025 campaign, the Conservatives have frequently referred to what they call the 'Lost Liberal Decade,' a reference to the fact that Canada has lagged dramatically on virtually every available indicator since the Liberals first came to power in 2015. In sum, the economy is worse, crime is worse, public services are worse, affordability is worse — and there's a whole galaxy of niche indicators, such as firearms incidents, refugee backlogs, even life expectancy, that are worse than they've ever been.
We're tempted to call the past ten years Canada's lost decade and we're hoping that we'll break out of the stagnation over next ten. An imminent population growth slowdown may help per capita measures but one of the quickest and easiest ways to boost per capita GDP might be to lower interest rates materially to spur interest sensitive demand.
There has been a lot of discussion lately about Canada's lost decade from 2015 to 2025, attributable to the Trudeau regime's destructive and divisive economic and social policies.
University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe, writing in The Hub, estimated that in 2024, the gap in real GDP per capita between Canada and the U.S. was about $22,000 – $66,300 in the U.S. compared to $44,400 in Canada, in 2015 dollars. In 2024 dollars the gap was even higher – roughly $28,000.
Canada is now 30% less productive than America, and Canadian GDP per capita is no higher than it was in late 2014. This has been Canada's lost decade.
In the past 10 years, our GDP per capita rose a dismal half per cent — second last among 38 OECD countries, ahead of only Luxembourg, and far behind the U.S., where it increased 21 per cent. According to the Fraser Institute, earnings per person in our richest province are now lower than in the poorest U.S. state. Since 2015, government spending has nearly doubled in Canada, while investment has fallen by a third, helping explain our insipid productivity. Federal debt reached 70 per cent of GDP last year, with a balanced budget nowhere in sight. We have a bloated bureaucracy and annual interest obligations of $47 billion and rising. The Wall Street Journal calls it our 'lost decade.'