Dear John,

It’s hard to believe we are already in September! I hope all is well and that you have had a pleasant summer. 

Here at the Fraser Institute, we’ve been keeping busy providing Canadians with reliable information about the poor policy choices made by our federal government.

These poor choices have resulted in a full-blown economic growth and investment crisis that is threatening our standard of living!

Thankfully, our high-quality, timely and impactful studies and commentaries are reaching more and more Canadians than ever.

… and even the establishment media is singing from our song sheet!

In July, we released an important study which found that Canada’s per-person GDP is growing at the slowest rate since the Great Depression. It found that our economic problems are homegrown due mainly to poor government policy.

Speaking of attracting investment – or in Canada’s case, discouraging investment – another of our recent studies found that business investment per worker in Canada declined by 20% since 2014, while US investment grew by 70%! This obviously does not bode well for our future prosperity, which depends in large part on the strength of business investment.

Here is the good news, John – while the government is ignoring common sense, Canadians are not!

We have been front and centre in the media, and have reached millions of Canadians online with these and many other important messages.

So far this year, the Institute has:

• published 78 books and studies;
• generated nearly 30,400 media mentions, including over 3,700 opinion commentaries in outlets across the country;
• welcomed nearly 1.8 million unique visitors to our websites; and
• reached a combined audience of over 35.1 million on social media!

Even the Editorial Board of the Globe and Mail is starting to sound a lot like scholars at the Fraser Institute.

On July 25, the Globe’s Editorial noted that the Prime Minister “would rather dwell on the largely mythical shortcomings of the Harper government than face the fact that his economic program has been in fact a formula for declining prosperity”.

A few days later the newspaper highlighted that “the Liberals’ economic philosophy has been built around higher federal spending, high taxes, more regulations, more government intervention… the result has been sluggish economic growth caused by the poor policy choices”.

These are great headlines to see, but we need to go a step further by educating Canadians about the foundational ideas that helped to shape our free and prosperous societies – and why those ideas are still important today.

To that end, I’m happy to report that our new and improved Essential Scholars series has seen immense success this year as well.

In partnership with international think tanks, our new website, videos, podcasts, and audiobooks have reached millions of people around the world. To date, nearly 275,000 Essential Scholar books have been distributed – and that’s not including all the translated versions!

John, none of this would be possible without the support of people like you.

Together we are having a tremendous impact, and now is the time to push harder and create a real understanding of the policies needed to change course!

If you support our projects and would like to see our continued success, please consider making a donation today.

Thank you so much for your continued support.

Sincerely,

Niels Veldhuis
President
The Fraser Institute