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When Justin Trudeau came to power he made a lot of noise about looking after the middle class, particularly their financial or commercial interests. But in the years since he glibly trotted out those lines, his policies have done nothing but smack the middle-class consumer in the wallet.
The most visible hits are things like the carbon tax. But there are some that are not so evident, yet they hit as hard or even deeper.
The latest example is the report on April’s Consumer Price index. It rose sharply, largely because the cost of fresh fruit was up 10 per cent and fresh vegetables rose roughly 15 per cent for the second month in a row. The reason they went up? The Canadian dollar. It was down and that makes all imports more expensive.
And the dollar’s decline – about 10 per cent in the past year – is the result of federal policy, primarily Ottawa’s disdain for the oil and gas industry. By restricting it, we sell less and that means less demand for the Canadian dollar. In turn, that depreciates our currency and hurts real people in a big way.
