A lot of people on the internet blame Canada's malaise on their historically lax immigration stance.

While to a certain extent it has caused some social issues (eg. Indian, Chinese, Viet organized crime took advantage of it to leave crackdowns during the 2010s and 2020s and degree mills abounded), it's impact on the economy is overstated.

Canada's economy was always a resource extraction and construction driven economy, and

1. the blocking of the Keystone Pipeline project (thus making Canadian ONG less competitive than American sourced ONG for refineries)

2. the rise of America as a net energy producer and exporter especially in ONG (thanks Obama/Biden, Trump/Pence/Tillerson, and former Govs Burgum and Perry)

3. the blocking of the GasLink LNG project (blocked the ability for Canada to build marketshare in Asia)

4. the blocking of the Northern Gateway pipeline project (blocked the ability for Canada to build marketshare in Asia)

5. the blocking of the Energie Saguenay LNG project (blocked the ability for Canada to build marketshare in Europe)

6. Bipartisan support in America for trade barriers against Canada even before the Trump tarriffs (eg. Biden and Trump's softwood lumber tariff policy)

7. (becuase this failure is bipartisan) Blue provinces halting renewables projects in Alberta and Saskatchewan while American governors on both sides took full advantage of CHIPS and the IRA, thus preventing Canada from building domestic dealflow in GreenTech

all played a much larger role than immigration in causing economic malaise for Canada.

At the end of the day, Canada's economy in the 2010s was structurally unprepared for America becoming a major energy producer and exporter by the 2020s, and was unable to successfully build infra to make Canadian ONG cost competitive against American ONG nor the ability to sell outside of North America.

THIS is the legacy of the Trudeau administration - if your economy is based on resource extraction, fighting against it for political reasons is self-harming.

Canada's GDP has essentially been stagnant for almost 15 years, and all kinds of infrastructure projects that would have helped the Canadian economy grow were blocked. Additionally, Canada has the same economic complexity [0] as Bulgaria [1] and Serbia [2] and is even less complex than Mexico [3], which makes Canada the least competitive choice for FDI within NAFTA.

Australia is in the exact same boat as Canada, but unlike Canada, their political class fully backed their resource extraction industries.

[0] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/124/export-complexit...

[1] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/100/export-complexit...

[2] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/688/export-complexit...

[3] - https://atlas.hks.harvard.edu/countries/484/export-complexit...

Serious question: what is ONG? I assume it's like LNG (liquefied natural gas), but after multiple searches, all I can come up with is Oklahoma Natural Gas, NGO in French, and On God.