Canada heading for prolonged decline in living standards: study

By Clayton DeMaine, True North Wire

Despite what Chrystia Freeland wants Canadians to believe about the economy, Canada’s living standards have declined since 2019.

According to a study by the Fraser Institute, if per-capita GDP does not recover this year, it will mark the longest and largest decline in per-person GDP over the last four decades.

Inflation-adjusted per-person GDP, a broad measure of living standards, declined from $59,905 to $58,111, or by 3% from April 2019 to the end of 2023, the study found.

“This is a wake-up call for governments across Canada that we can’t continue as we have. This is not a milestone that Canadians want to reach. We don’t want to see our living standards enter into the longest decline in the last 40 years,” Grady Munro, one of the study’s co-authors, told True North. “We definitely need a policy shift resulting soon.”

Munro holds a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s in public policy and acts as a policy analyst at the institute.

“Our study tracks Canadian living standards from 1985 to 2023…by measuring changes in per-person GDP,” he said.

Per-capita GDP is determined by dividing the value of all final goods and services produced within an economy in a given year by the average population for the same year.

“What we find is that living standards have been declining from 2019 through to the end of 2023, and that, in fact, this ongoing decline is the second worst in nearly 40 years,” Munro said.