Trump didn’t create our debt, trade barriers or housing mess. We did

Canadians have plenty to worry about these days, from grocery bills and housing costs to government debt and our increasingly difficult relationship with the United States. These issues may seem unrelated. They aren’t. Canada is entering a period when we need to be more competitive, more productive and more economically resilient. Yet too many of the obstacles holding us back are of our own making.

We can’t control Donald Trump. But we can certainly control what we do to ourselves.

Start with your grocery bill. Canada’s Food Price Report 2026 estimates that a family of four will spend $17,571 on food this year, nearly $1,000 more than last year. Food prices are now 27 per cent higher than they were five years ago.

There are plenty of reasons food prices rise, including weather, commodity prices, wages and transportation costs. But government policies can also add to the cost of doing business. Interprovincial trade barriers are a good example.

After decades of talking about tearing down internal trade barriers, governments have finally begun making some progress, but significant barriers remain. Different provincial rules, licensing requirements and other restrictions can make it harder and more expensive to do business across provincial borders.

Think about that for a moment. Canada is locked in a bruising trade battle with our largest customer while continuing to make it harder in some cases for Canadians to trade with other Canadians. How does that make sense?

And those aren’t the only costs governments impose on Canadians. There’s an old adage that governments spend the money and the private sector pays for it. Like most old adages, it has survived because there’s a lot of truth in it.

A Canadian Federation of Independent Business analysis found that federal public service employment grew by 36 per cent between 2013 and 2023. Over the same decade, private-sector employment grew by 13 per cent and Canada’s population by 15 per cent. There’s nothing complicated about the arithmetic. Government can’t keep growing faster than the private economy that ultimately pays its bills.

While public servants perform many essential services, taxpayers have to pay for them. And it isn’t just the growing number of government employees that matters. Government jobs also come with benefits most private-sector workers can only dream about.

A 2025 Fraser Institute study of government and private-sector workers found that 86.7 per cent of government employees were covered by registered pension plans compared with 21.8 per cent of private-sector workers. Government employees also retired an average of 2.2 years earlier.

Then there’s government debt. The Fraser Institute estimates federal and provincial governments spent a combined $94.4 billion servicing their debts in 2025-26. Depending on the province, that works out to between $1,845 and $3,348 per person. Federal debt interest alone was projected at $54 billion, almost as much as the $54.7-billion Canada Health Transfer, Ottawa’s main transfer to provinces and territories for health care.

Think about what that means. Every dollar spent on interest is a dollar that can’t be spent on health care, infrastructure, defence, tax relief or whatever else Canada may badly need if our trade troubles with the United States continue. And the interest meter never stops running.

Housing is another example of a serious problem we’ve made worse ourselves. A 2023 Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation study estimated that Canada would need 3.5 million additional homes by 2030, beyond those already expected to be built, to restore housing affordability to levels last seen around 2004.

Where are they going to come from? Governments like to announce housing programs, but you can’t solve a housing shortage while municipal zoning, approval delays, development charges and other obstacles make homes slower and more expensive to build.

We need more duplexes, townhomes, low-rise apartments and other so-called missing-middle housing in established neighbourhoods. That means local governments will have to make some politically difficult decisions. There is no magic government program that can repeal the law of supply and demand.

Which brings me to the issue that could overshadow all the others: Canada’s relationship with the United States. The latest round of negotiations with the Trump administration has demonstrated just how difficult that relationship has become. Recent disputes have extended beyond tariffs into agriculture, Canadian cultural policies, language requirements and other long-standing irritants.

Canadians are understandably frustrated with Trump’s shifting demands. So am I. But frustration isn’t an economic strategy. The United States is by far our most important trading partner, and that economic reality isn’t going to change.

We therefore have two jobs. The first is to defend Canadian interests vigorously and intelligently in Washington. The second is to make Canada stronger at home.

That means finally getting serious about internal trade barriers. It means controlling debt before still more tax dollars disappear into interest payments. And it means allowing Canadians to build the millions of homes we desperately need.

None of those things requires Donald Trump’s permission.

For too long, Canadian governments have behaved as though our extraordinarily favourable economic relationship with the United States could be taken for granted. It can’t anymore.

Navigating our relationship with Trump’s America is like paddling a canoe through rock-strewn rapids. We will need courage, creativity and some very careful steering. But before heading into those rapids, we should at least stop drilling holes in our own canoe.

Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader and former director of five global corporations. He brings decades of executive experience to his analysis of the Canadian economy, energy policy and federal governance.