An Indictment of Canadian Capitalism

           Adam Smith believed that Capitalism would be the economic model that would ultimately benefit humanity and that it would utilize self-interest and competition to our benefit as a society, guided by an invisible hand of market forces, and the existence of a limited government designed simply to protect property rights and enforce contracts.

            Here we are now, in the Year of Our Lord 2025. Capitalism is the economic and political norm, and has been since the Industrial Revolution. It has existed in many forms, from the Classical Liberalism of the Enlightenment and the supply-side model known as Reaganomics (referred to as Trickle-Down economics by detractors), to the Social market economy of many countries in the European Union and the Social Liberalism of Canada. Even societies that positioned themselves as Socialist were State Capitalist models such as the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. So what has happened?

            Here in Canada, we experience an economy that is defined by a relationship between the public sector and the private sector. Entities exist in the Canadian economy known as Crown Corporations, which are structured like private businesses but run by the Provincial or Federal government, providing services that cannot be covered by the private sector. However, it is also an economy built on shaky ground. Capitalism is an economic system run on constant growth and pursuit of profit, a motive that runs without concern to the sustainability of living standards, affordability, natural environment, etc. Economic growth only climbs so much before it begins to deteriorate the quality of life of the people. Productivity also ignores the needs of the people and their wages. And the risks associated have become the case in Canada, with little will to change it from the political class.

            In early 2020, COVID-19 entered the global scene, creating the fifth-deadliest pandemic in history, and bringing the global economy to a screeching halt. The Pandemic lasted three years, three months, and five days, and it resulted in a global economic recession. 

Impacts of COVID-19, Canada at a glance, 2o22. Source: Statistics Canada Archive.

            Moreover, the global economy was still experiencing the effects of the Great Recession in 2008, creating a global affordability crisis that shows no sign of stopping. Global stock markets crashed in February of 2020, the global supply chain and shipments slowed in 2021, inflation surged, 169 industries experienced a chip shortage, the film industry experienced major problems, and panic buying and price gouging took hold. Most importantly, average people experienced major, long-lasting damage, with 44% of Canadian households experiencing unemployment. Housing prices continued to soar (a problem in Canada reaching back to the 1980s), food and telecoms continued to become more unaffordable, and the healthcare sector that experienced constant austerity throughout the country from Provincial government policies became overwhelmed. Though the Pandemic ended in 2023, the affordability crisis and recession has continued. Unemployment in Canada is at 7% and is at 14% for Gen Z. Meanwhile, for many of the major industries in the private sector, it was business as usual. More growth, more profit, more market solutions, more wealth for the wealthy elite. The Loblaws Corporation continued to raise prices at will, inadvertently admitting to this when Galen Weston Jr. announced in an advertisement that his companies would freeze prices for a month after the prices soared to unreasonable levels for months before. Loblaws, Bell, Rogers, and other major entities continued to post record profits while the average person struggled to make ends meet. Now, a trade war with an increasingly Fascist government in the United States and a bubble in Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has contributed to the employment crisis as profit and growth continues to dominate the priorities of the Canadian economy, and economies around the world. 

            All of these problems have laid bare a painful reality in Canada. Capitalism cannot continue. The telecom sector is dominated by three private entities, namely TELUS, Rogers, and Bell. Price gouging has become normative in telecoms, as well as in energy, and food. Unemployment continues to rise as companies continue to outsource labour and utilize the Temporary Foreign Worker program (TFW) to avoid labour regulations, and the economy continues to promote AI at the expense of workers and the natural environment. These have all been caused by the endless pursuit of growth and profit, for the insatiable greed of the rich at the expense of everyone else. The prosperity promised by Adam Smith is seen not in the population of the workers and marginalized groups, nor even the petty bourgeois class spoken of by Karl Marx, but only by those who already have too much. While Galen Weston lives in the Fort Belvedere Castle, maintains a private island in Georgian Bay, and a palatial estate in Florida, Canadians can barely afford rent, food, gas, and their own phones. Meanwhile, the political class, especially on the federal level but also on provincial and municipal levels, have done little to address this crisis, as they insist on Neoliberal solutions to problems caused by Neoliberalism. The Conservative Party and the Liberal Party each refuse to break up the monopolies or regulate the economy properly, because they believe free-market Capitalism to be the answer to problems, and because many of them belong to a class unaffected by the crisis. The CRTC remains toothless to prevent the monopolization of our telecoms, and what efforts the federal government has taken to address food affordability have been lackluster, letting people like Weston off with little more than a slap on the wrist.

            As a nation, and as a proletarian class, we must push for a new economy and do so through actions against the ruling class. The crisis of the 2020s has laid bare the unsustainability of Capitalism, and how it leads to collapse. It is time we abandon the policies and models associated with Neoliberalism and move to a Socialist economy built from the bottom up. Workplace Democracy, a genuine social safety net, normalization of worker co-ops, taxation of the elite and redistribution of wealth, economic reconciliation with Indigenous nations, the end of our reliance on fossil fuels and oil, implementing a truly representative political system, and workers ownership of the means of production. All these must be achieved and implemented to create a truly free and equal society. 

            We must move against the Capitalist ruling classes if we hope to see an end to an exploitative economy. A general strike for the workers to be treated fairly, direct action against the destruction of our natural environment, and mass resistance to the unaffordability driven by the rich.