Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese awarded Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau high praise after announcing his resignation.
“I wish Justin Trudeau all the very best in whatever he chooses to do next in his life”, Albanese said.
“I regard him as a personal friend, but he is a great friend of Australia”.
Trudeau resigned amid a slump in the polls and pressure from his colleagues, with polling suggesting that his Liberal Party could win as few as 21 seats in the 338-seat parliament.
Anthony Albanese should be concerned that Australia’s Labor government could suffer a similar fate given that it has followed Canada’s economic playbook.
In 2022, Canada’s then-immigration minister, Sean Fraser, viewed immigration as a competition for global talent that he was determined to win.
Canada witnessed a record population rise of approximately 800,000 in 2022. Nonetheless, Fraser declared that Canada will accept 465,000 permanent residents in 2023, 485,000 in 2024, and 500,000 in 2025.
“If we don’t do something to correct this demographic trend, the conversation we are going to have 10 or 15 years from now won’t be about labour shortages; it’s going to be about whether we have the economic capacity to continue to fund schools and hospitals and public services that I think we too often take for granted”, Fraser commented in 2022.
Canada then experienced a record immigration boom, increasing its population by more than 1.2 million people in 2023, resulting in an unparalleled housing shortage.
This enormous disparity between population demand and supply drove rental vacancy rates to all-time lows and rental inflation to record highs.
Despite creating Canada’s housing crisis via unsustainable immigration levels, smooth-talking Sean Fraser was appointed housing minister in July 2023.
“I know we are going to solve the housing crisis because I know what Canadians are capable of”, Fraser stated during his appointment.
Canadian first-home buyers are also facing record low affordability.
Meanwhile, Canadian living standards as measured by real per capita GDP have stagnated throughout Trudeau’s term as Prime Minister, falling way behind the United States.
Anthony Albanese’s Labor has charted a nearly identical course to Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party.
In 2022 and 2023, then-Australian Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil promised to ramp immigration, citing skills shortages and a “race for global talent”.
O’Neil argued that immigration had been the “special sauce in our national story” and advocated for more.
She stated that Australia needed to transition “away from a system which is almost entirely focused on how we keep people out to one that recognises that we are in a global war for talent”.
Australia thereafter experienced the largest immigration surge in its history.
A serious mismatch developed between Australian population demand and housing supply.
Australian rental vacancy rates collapsed to historical lows and asking rents skyrocketed.
After causing the rental crisis through reckless immigration, smooth-talking Clare O’Neil was appointed housing minister in August 2024.
O’Neil then had the audacity to state that “Australia is in a housing crisis because we have a housing shortage. To answer this crisis, our country needs to build more homes”:
O’Neil intentionally ignored the fact that Australia is experiencing a housing shortage because, as Home Affairs Minister, she imported nearly one million net overseas migrants in just two years, overwhelming supply.
Australia’s real per capita GDP growth has also collapsed.
Thus, it was almost as if Australia’s Albanese government had directly copied Canada’s Trudeau government.
Both countries are grappling with housing crises that will take years (if ever) to resolve, as well as stagnating productivity economies with plummeting living standards.
Both countries are experiencing extreme “capital shallowing” as a result of population growth driven by high immigration rates outpacing investment in business, infrastructure, and housing.
Australian capital shallowing
Canadian capital shallowing
Both nations are prime examples of what not to do when the goal is to improve the living conditions of incumbent residents.
Anthony Albanese should now copy his “good mate” Justin Trudeau and resign.
