Or who did a foreign interventionist vote for?
It's so hard to figure out these days:
An expected winter recession will “hurt small businesses significantly,” a former federal Budget Officer yesterday told the Senate banking committee. Both the Bank of Canada and Department of Finance forecast a recession is likely: “We have to be careful.”
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Almost one in five small businesses face permanent closure in Canada, the Senate national finance committee was told yesterday. The figure represents the equivalent of more than 200,000 operators: “The economy has not moved on. We are still way behind.”
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Statistics Canada said Tuesday the economy grew at an annualized rate of 2.9 per cent between July and September.
That compares with 3.2 per cent growth in the second quarter.
Although the headline growth rate is significantly stronger than forecasters had anticipated, the fall in consumer spending suggest higher interest rates are beginning to affect the economy more broadly.
“Sometimes the headline numbers look one way and the rest is quite a bit different,” said Karyne Charbonneau CIBC’s director of economics.
Household spending fell for the first time since the second quarter of 2021, edging down 0.3 per cent.
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After an energy-hungry Germany was snubbed by Canada, Berlin has instead gone all-in on a gas contract with Qatar, the small, autocratic nation currently hosting the World Cup.
This week, German firms announced a 15-year contract to buy roughly two million tonnes of LNG per year of Qatari natural gas.
The multi-billion-dollar deal comes just three months after German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a rare official visit to Canada for the explicit goal of securing Canadian sources of liquid natural gas.
At the outset of 2022, Russia was meeting roughly 50 per cent of Germany’s natural gas needs. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine left Scholz scrambling for alternative sources, he was open about Canadian gas being his first choice.
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“As Germany is moving away from Russian energy at warp speed, Canada is our partner of choice,” Scholz told a Toronto economic conference in August. “We hope that Canadian LNG will play a major role in this.”
Nevertheless, the German leader’s entreaties were met largely with disinterest from the Canadian federal government.
At a joint press conference with Scholz, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said openly that there has “never been a strong business case” for Canadian LNG exports to Europe.
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Throughout the pandemic, the need for food banks steadily increased. We used to serve about 19,000 people per year—now it’s more than 30,000. In October, we had the highest demand on record with more than 11,000 visitors to one of the food banks in our network.
Over the past 12 months, as food prices rose, every month has been a record-breaking one. On average, we’ve seen a 30 per cent increase in new food bank users during the pandemic. Everyday people access our services: about 75 per cent of people who use the food bank have a source of income, whether that’s through employment, social assistance or disability benefits. And this is the first time we’ve had a significant number of people tell us that it’s the cost of food, specifically, that has put them over the edge. A parent of five children who comes to our food bank told us that even when they do have money to shop for their own groceries, they end up leaving half the cart behind because things are too expensive. The weight of bills combined with rising grocery prices is crushing. Like many people living in poverty, this family is stuck in a loop: either they earn enough money to disqualify them for any support when they still need it, or they don’t make enough to cover basic expenses.
In the past, for folks living in poverty, there was still enough room to cut costs in certain places, shuffle things around, and maybe make ends meet. But now that things cost so much more than they used to, people don’t have that little bit to borrow from one pocket to put into another. On average, grocery prices have increased by around 12 per cent—the biggest surge since the early ’80s—and staples have become even more expensive. This year alone, the price of fresh fruit and meat has gone up about 10 per cent. People have no choice but to turn to food banks.
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Increased federal hiring surpasses rates in the private sector, Budget Officer Yves Giroux yesterday told the Commons government operations committee. “It’s mostly recent and ongoing,” said Giroux, who earlier estimated payroll costs will top $50 billion this year: “Growth has been faster in the public sector.”
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According to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF), the Liberal government is giving Quebec a “special deal” on carbon taxes while the rest of the country has to fork up 14 cents per litre of gas by next year. All provinces, other than Quebec, will have to raise the carbon tax on fuel to 37 cents per litre by 2030. On the other hand, Quebec will only have to pay an additional 23 cents per litre on gas by the end of the decade due to its provincial carbon pricing scheme.
“Trudeau is giving Quebec a special deal on carbon taxes and giving other Canadians higher gas prices and heating bills,” said CTF federal director Franco Terrazzano.
“The solution is simple: Trudeau should scrap his carbon tax and lower gas prices and home heating bills across Canada.”
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