Your Idiot Government and You

It never fails to boggle the mind:

Closing this admittedly large gap is not impossible. The economic literature is very clear on how to increase productivity: more investment. When companies invest in new, more efficient production processes, workers are able to do more, and do better, with each hour spent working. This produces more value, which ultimately increases potential remuneration.

Canada has been lagging behind for years when it comes to investment, the lifeblood of productivity. In 2018, for instance, non-residential private investment amounted to $17,389 per job in Canada. In the United States, still on a purchasing power parity basis, the level of non-residential private investment was $27,307 per job. In Sweden, it was $33,214 per job.

Our governments, both federal and provincial, are trying to make up for the lack of private investment with subsidies, but the subsidies required to close the private-investment gap with the United States are simply not sustainable. We would need $200 billion a year in taxpayer money to catch up. And that’s assuming subsidies are just as efficient as private investment, which seems unlikely.

The good news for taxpayers is that closing the productivity gap does not require diverting our taxes toward the private sector in order to close our productivity gap. If other countries succeed in attracting more investment, it’s because their business environment is sufficiently attractive for the private sector to be willing to risk its money there.

Oh, but that's not how the Liberals fool the taxpayers into thinking something is being done:

(Sidebar: and there is a long list of stuff to be done.)

The alarm bells are becoming bull horns: Canada’s housing supply isn’t keeping up with the rapid rate of population growth.

Academics, commercial banks and policy thinkers have all been warning the federal government that the pace of population growth, facilitated by immigration, is making the housing crisis worse.

“The primary cause for (the) housing affordability challenge in Canada is our inability to build more housing that is in line with the increase in population,” said Murtaza Haider, a professor of data science and real estate management at Toronto Metropolitan University.

A TD report released in late July also warned that “continuing with a high-growth immigration strategy could widen the housing shortfall by about a half-million units within just two years.”

But the Liberals are doubling down on their commitment to bring more people into the country, arguing that Canada needs high immigration to support the economy and build the homes it desperately needs.

“Looking at the (immigration) levels that we have recently approved as a cabinet (and) as a government, we can’t afford currently to reduce those numbers,” Immigration Minister Marc Miller said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

(Sidebar: yes, we can, because you have NOWHERE to put these people and no workable plan to do so, either.)

What a silly b!#ch:

Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly says Canada has been considering a “game plan” for how it would respond if the United States takes a far-right, authoritarian shift after next year’s presidential elections.

“We are certainly working on scenarios,” Joly said in French during an interview with a Montreal radio station Wednesday.

And what are those plans?

Your attempt at distraction is not working, Diplomat Barbie. Everyone knows how bad this government is.

It's a poor attempt to slag some rather sturdy opposition here and abroad anyway.

Weak.

Let Ukraine have our cast-offs!:

Cabinet has donated a small portion of its mammoth pandemic ventilator stockpile to Ukrainian war victims. The Department of Public Works spent more than $700 million on Covid-era rush orders for ventilators that were never used: “I do have the Canadian taxpayers’ interests at heart when I am doing my job.”

They are just excess projection, anyway:

A review of Covid contracts approved by the Department of Health showed more than a tenth failed to follow the rules, a federal investigation said yesterday. The department issued 17,000 contracts. Only 40 were checked at random: “Health Canada cannot demonstrate it followed the proper procurement protocols and that its practices were fair, open and transparent.”

Yes, but censorship is only for little people:

A member of cabinet, Citizens’ Services Minister Terry Beech, paid for Facebook ads in the past month even after cabinet announced it was boycotting Facebook, records show. Beech was one of five Liberal MPs to break the boycott: “Working hard for you.”

Would that be like freezing bank accounts and threatening to euthanise pets?:

The federal government remains open to criminalizing a pattern of behaviour known as coercive control, Canada's justice minister says in a new letter, calling gender-based violence an "epidemic" that must be stopped.

The recent letter from Arif Virani to Ontario's chief coroner outlined the Liberal government's response to a series of recommendations that came from an inquest into the 2015 slayings of three women in the rural Renfrew County area, about 180 kilometres west of Ottawa.

Carol Culleton, Nathalie Warmerdam and Anastasia Kuzyk were all murdered that September by Basil Borutski, who had a criminal history of violence against women.

Borutski, who had prior, separate relationships with all three of his victims, had been released from prison the year before the murders.

(Sidebar: ... and there it is. This government actively discourages self-defense, punishes those who DO defend themselves, rejects minimum sentences and makes it possible for violent offenders like Mr. Borutski and even Paul Bernardo to one day be released from prison. Passing this law is pointless busy-work that will do nothing to address actual problems.)

Last summer, a coroner's inquest into the deaths heard that at least one of the women had been trying to learn of his whereabouts once he was released, and that Borutski had been deemed a high-risk offender while in custody.

Asking for a friend: would sex-selective abortions count as "coercive control"?

Also:

The advocacy group Canadian Anti-Hate Network faces a $50,000 federal lawsuit over a Freedom Convoy photo posted on its website. The Network in a Federal Court claim is accused of breaching the Copyright Act by using the image without payment or permission: “The Canadian Anti-Hate Network misrepresented to the Hill Times that the photograph was a screenshot from a video.”