Canada possesses some extraordinary advantages — abundant natural resources, a skilled and educated population, and a tradition of enterprise. But the conditions for prosperity have deteriorated and the warning signs are no longer subtle.

Our public infrastructure is in a state no wealthy nation should accept. The cost to replace road transportation and water infrastructure already rated in poor or very poor condition exceeds $350 billion — and that figure covers only the assets that have actually been assessed.

Canadians who paid into the system are made to wait for the most basic services. At least 5.9 million Canadians had no family doctor as of December 2025. The median wait from a GP referral to treatment reached 28.6 weeks in 2025, and after finally seeing a specialist, patients waited 4.5 weeks longer than physicians consider clinically reasonable, with 18.1 weeks for an MRI. Housing has slipped beyond the reach of an entire generation: CMHC estimates Canada must build between 430,000 and 480,000 homes per year through 2035 simply to restore the affordability of 2019, yet faces a shortage of 1.4 million trades workers by 2033 to build them. And those who already gave a lifetime of work are being squeezed hardest of all. Old Age Security is tied to the Consumer Price Index, but that adjustment rose just 0.1% for the April–June 2026 quarter and only 2.1% over the year — a measure that badly understates how much of a senior’s budget goes to the rent, food, and health costs that have risen fastest. The result is visible at the food bank door: food banks recorded nearly 2.2 million visits in a single month, double the figure of six years earlier, with seniors among those forced to choose between medication and groceries. In British Columbia — where roughly a quarter of seniors live on about $2,000 a month and many spend close to 70% of their income on rent alone — food bank use has risen nearly 80% since 2019.

Housing has slipped beyond the reach of an entire generation. CMHC now estimates Canada must build between 430,000 and 480,000 homes per year through 2035 — nearly double the roughly 245,000 starts projected under current conditions — simply to restore the affordability of 2019. Yet we lack the workers to build them: roughly 270,000 construction workers are set to retire over the next decade, and the country needs 1.4 million additional trades workers by 2033, facing a persistent annual gap of more than 20,000 if nothing changes.

Meanwhile, our industrial base is being hollowed out. Manufacturing payroll employment fell by 40,600 jobs in the year to December 2025, with the heaviest losses in tariff-exposed transportation equipment and metal manufacturing, while manufacturing output dropped 2.6% in its third consecutive annual decline. Energy costs are part of the story: one Fraser Institute study estimates that high electricity prices — a made-in-Ontario problem tied to provincial policy — account for some 75,000 lost manufacturing jobs, a sector that on its own represents nearly 40% of Canada’s exports.

Behind these symptoms lies a deeper failure: Canada has stopped investing in itself. Adjusted business investment per available worker stood at only about $15,000 in late 2025 — down nearly a quarter from its 2014 peak. For every dollar of new investment in intellectual-property products enjoyed by an American worker, the average Canadian worker received only 32 cents. Capital that should be building Canadian firms, factories, and productivity is shrinking — and falling business investment drags down wages and living standards with it.

The Common Good Party rejects this slow decline. We want an innovative economy with fair competition, secure and well-paid jobs, a strong base of industrial value creation, and a just tax system. To get there, we will:

Invest in what lasts. Direct serious, sustained investment into the roads, bridges, water systems, and transit a modern economy depends on, rather than letting a $350-billion repair backlog compound.

Back Canadian innovators, not foreign giants. Channel support toward homegrown companies and start-ups rather than billions in subsidies for established multinationals, so the value created here stays here.

Build the workforce we need. Treat the skilled-trades shortage as the structural crisis it is — prioritizing completion and retention, not just recruitment — so we can actually build the 430,000-plus homes Canada requires each year.

Secure affordable, reliable energy. Recognize that punishing energy costs are driving industry and jobs out of the country, and make competitively priced, dependable power a foundation of industrial policy.

Canada’s productivity and investment decline is not an accident of nature — it is partly the result of markets that no longer function as they should. Research drawn on by the OECD finds that rising industry concentration and falling rates of new-firm entry are directly dragging down Canadian productivity and investment. In sector after sector — banking, telecommunications, groceries, air travel — a handful of dominant firms shelter behind regulatory walls, charge Canadians among the highest prices in the developed world, and face little pressure to innovate because they face little real competition.

This is not a free market; it is a protected one, run for incumbents at the expense of everyone else. The Common Good Party will confront entrenched market power directly: by giving competition authorities real teeth to block anti-competitive mergers and break up dominant players, by tearing down the barriers that shield incumbents from new entrants, and by ensuring that where a natural monopoly genuinely exists, it serves the public interest rather than private rent. Concentrated economic power is not only an economic problem — it is a democratic one, because corporations large enough to capture markets are large enough to capture policy.

Protecting our air, water, and soil is a genuine responsibility, and the degradation of our natural environment is a real challenge no serious party can ignore. But honesty must come first. Blind activism and ill-conceived measures do not protect the environment; they raise the cost of living, drive away the industries that fund every public service, and erode the public’s willingness to support sensible environmental protection. Ontario’s electricity experience is the cautionary tale: policies sold as green delivered soaring prices, and that same period saw manufacturing employment and output decline year after year.

The most valuable contribution a resource-rich, innovative country like Canada can make is not to deindustrialize itself, but to develop and export the practical technologies that make a cleaner economy possible — while keeping energy affordable and well-paid jobs at home.

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Our country deserves a confident policy that prioritizes the wellbeing of its own citizens and is built on a clear understanding that the interests of our larger neighbour is not always the same as ours. Our goal is an independent Canada in a multipolar world — not a junior partner whose resources, data, and decisions are dictated from abroad.

What are the policy positions of the new party? How can I support the Common Good Party? How can I become a supporter or sponsor? You probably have many questions.