Dear Diary: Inside the thoughts of Chrystia Freeland’s vibe-cession #CanadaFinance

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This week, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said Canada is locked in a “vibe-cession.” The country is suffering from any number of materially bad economic indicators, from falling per-capita GDP to rising unemployment, but Freeland offered that this is all a case of bad “vibes”: Canadians feel bad, which is curbing their spending, which is prompting an artificial recession.

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It’s in the service of combating this “vibe-cession” that the Trudeau government has championed a $250 rebate to working Canadians, as well as a GST holiday on alcohol, Christmas trees, toys, restaurant bills and other items associated with the holiday season.

In Dear Diary, the National Post satirically re-imagines a week in the life of a newsmaker. This week, Tristin Hopper takes a journey inside the thoughts of Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland.

Monday

As a former journalist, I am fully aware of the awesome power of the press to distort and pervert reality. Here we all are in 2024 Canada. There is food. There is shelter. There is breathable air. The vast majority of us will go through the rest of the fiscal year without being stabbed on public transit.

And yet, to hear the misinformation and disinformation trafficked by the media, you would think we live in some kind of violent, economically depressed hellscape.

Well, this kind of mendacity has consequences: A nationwide hysteria of bad feelings and negative energy. A fanatical devotion to bad vibes in the face of all evidence to the contrary. I don’t purport to know how to cure such irrational malaise, but I will be very surprised if $250 each and some tax-free liquor and Christmas shopping doesn’t do it.

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Tuesday

Donald Trump’s threat of 25 per cent tariffs is easily the most serious challenge I have faced as Canadian finance minister. The United States is our largest trading partner, and the suspension of free trade across our shared border would invite economic ruin the likes of which we’ve never seen.

Worse, Trump is immune to our usual strategies. We suggested sending his tariff threat to committee, or having it reviewed by a Crown inquiry, but neither offer was accepted. Rather, they want us to stem the tide of illegal migrants using Canada as a base to enter the United States. They are under the impression — let’s call it “bad vibes” — that this is a problem.

But let nobody say that the integrity of our trade flows are not my department’s top priority. As such, we are immediately introducing a one-time bursary of between $150 and $240 paid to any resident of Canada who can prove they have not attempted illegal entry of the United States within the past 12 months.

Wednesday

Our latest fiscal projections show that we ran a $13.01 billion deficit over the last six months. This is certainly higher than what we were looking for, but again it’s all a matter of perspective.

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If you look at $13 billion as a share of GDP the deficit is extremely modest, and as a share of global GDP it’s basically a rounding error. And did you know that the Amazon rainforest generates an estimated US$320 billion in economic value to the planet? That’s way more.

Anyways, clearly our federal budget is suffering from an acute case of “the Mondays.” I asked if we could pay it a special one-time bursary to incentivize it to stop being in deficit. We could call it the Federal Budget Assistance Bursary, it would be between $250 and $500, and it may help the document to snap out of its melancholy and start being in surplus again like it used to.

Thursday

As a finance minister, it can be easy to get too caught up in a bubble of numbers and indicators and lose touch. At the root of the Canadian economy, after all, are people. Human people. These are not just faceless widgets to be manipulated in the service of dogmatic experiments. They are human people with dependents and Disney+ accounts, who like nothing more than spending a long day at the Canadian Tire factory before kicking back with a pre-mixed alcoholic drink and an all-ages drag show.

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Anyway, it was during one of my fact-finding drives through the low-income part of town that I noticed long lines outside of a “food bank”; a sort of financial institution except for food. I asked my assistant what was afoot.

“Remember how we let in millions of temporary migrants in order to artificially boost GDP growth in the wake of COVID? Well, now they don’t have work or homes or food … and they’re not tremendously happy about it,” he said.

“Thank you, Braxton,” I replied, before suggesting a one-time Migrant Assistance Bursary to snap them out of their dumpy mood.

Friday

I wasn’t able to receive my usual briefing this morning because the staffer who does it had her appendix burst a couple days ago, and she’s still in the emergency room waiting to be triaged. We tried doing it by phone but she couldn’t stop screaming in pain (it’s apparently very painful).

She does have an assistant who normally gives the briefing in her absence, but the assistant’s car was stolen last night, and then the guy stealing it died of a fentanyl overdose. Anyways, she tried to take the O-Train to work instead but it broke down — and then she got caught in one of those “Free Palestine” blockades when she tried to take a cab. Then the cab was stolen by a guy on bail.

You know what? Maybe it isn’t the vibes. Maybe this country’s just a real pile of garbage now.

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