Canadians go to the polls next Monday. The Canadian economy has been in a rut for 15 years.

Will the voters have the courage to change directions? In 2010, Canada’s national income per head was 80% that of the U.S. Now it is just 70%. Were Canada’s ten provinces to comprise an American state, it would be worse off than Alabama, the fourth-poorest U.S. state. In 2023, per capita GDP in current U.S. dollars is $82,769 for Americans versus only $53,431 for Canadians.

A big reason is that big spending and burdensome regulations have crushed Canada’s provinces, while the opposite is true in most U.S. states. Indeed, the Fraser Institute’s  report “Economic Freedom In North America” finds that New Mexico is the only U.S. state to have become less economically free since the 1980s. Even so, New Mexico is still more free than all but two Canadian provinces.

The debate in Canada should be over why it has fallen so far behind. Instead, the incumbent Liberal Party government and its media allies have pretended that the only campaign issue is how best to man the barricades against the Trump Administration. If Canadians choose poorly, the country will get poorer.