By Iain Burns
July 12, 2024
Excerpt from article:
Canada’s economy has suffered for decades from “terrible management” and it will take decades to fix it, a finance expert has argued.
Stephen Johnston, who works as Omnigence Asset Management’s director in Calgary, said Canada has become the “poster child for stagflation.”
Stagflation occurs when a country’s economy suffers from sluggish growth – stagnation – and rising prices – inflation – at the same time.
That combination “makes nobody happy,” Johnston told NowMedia video host Jim Csek, since it leads to lower living standards.
Explaining Canada’s precarious economic position, Johnston emphasized the country’s lack of manufacturing, loss of capital, fiscal deficits, overvalued housing, uncertainty about natural resources development and penchant for borrowing.
He discussed many of those points in a paper earlier this year titled “Is Canadian growth dead?”
“Basically, Canada is the poster child for stagflation,” he said. “Like, if you think, there was a list of 20 things you shouldn't do … And you certainly shouldn't do all of them. We've basically done all of them.”