Who Did You Vote For?

Enjoy the decline:

A third of Canadians worry they will never enjoy the standard of living their parents did, says in-house Privy Council research. The stark finding follows 2023 Statistics Canada data showing inflation was eating away at young families’ finances: ‘At the moment how much do you worry you won’t be financially better off?’

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Over two-thirds of Canadians oppose the Trudeau Liberals’ planned increase to the federal carbon tax, suggests new numbers released this week by Leger.

In the poll commissioned by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, 69 per cent of respondents said they’re not in support of increasing the federal carbon tax, which is scheduled to increase on April 1.

“The poll proves the vast majority of Canadians don’t support and can’t afford another carbon tax hike,” said Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation “If Trudeau and his MPs care about making life more affordable for Canadians, then the least they could do is not hike their carbon tax.”

Canadians will see another hike to the federal carbon tax on April Fool’s Day, with the levy increasing to 17 cents per litre of gasoline, 21 cents per litre of diesel, and 15 cents per cubic metre of natural gas.

Opposition to increasing the carbon tax largely comes from provinces outside of British Columbia and Quebec — whose provincial carbon levy schemes exempt them from the federal tax.

Seventy-one per cent of those aged between 35 and 54, and respondents over the age of 55, were more likely to be against the tax increase, while 62 per cent of respondents between 18 and 34 said they were opposed.

Three-quarters of rural respondents were opposed, along with 70 per cent of suburban and 63 per cent of urban respondents.

Of the 31 per cent who were in favour of the April 1 increase, most were between the ages of 18 and 34, and lived in urban areas.

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In truth, it's under-employment or a second job to pay higher living costs:

A new report from Statistics Canada has found people taking on “gig work” as their main job reached 871,000 in the final three months of 2022.

According to the Conference of European Statisticians (CES) , gig work is a type of employment characterized by short-term jobs or tasks that do not guarantee steady work and where they must take specific actions to stay employed.

Thomas Sasso, assistant professor of management at the Gordon S Lang School of Business and Economics at the University of Guelph, told Global News gig workers can encompass many fields.

“We often think about it as task-based work,” he said. “And we also talk about it as time-limited, meaning that there’s not a long-term contract that an individual is employed by.”

Of the 871,000 Canadians who said “gig work” was their main job, there were an average 624,000 who were self employed aged 15 to 69 whose job had characteristics the agency noted is “consistent with the concept of gig work,” which includes a lack of employees or a physical building dedicated to their job.

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Let's also talk about the depleted standard of living thanks to government policies, mismanagement and just outright greed from Ottawa:

Canada’s biggest grocers are investing money and space in discount stores such as No Frills, Food Basics and FreshCo as shoppers look for ways to save on food amid the higher cost of living.

Converting grocery stores to discount is a relatively easy move, experts say, and one that is helping the grocers keep profits steady despite consumers seeking ways to rein in their spending.

“There’s all sorts of things that ... people are doing, but one of them is looking for cheaper options. And so they are going to discount stores,” said Michael von Massow, a food economy professor at the University of Guelph.

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A real journalist doesn't protect the inept and corrupt government that is sponsoring them.

Learn to code:

Working in retail is not “befitting” journalists who face layoffs without taxpayers’ aid, says the president of the Canadian Association of Journalists. He made the remark while successfully appealing for renewal of a 100 percent wage subsidy for employees in select newsrooms: “What are they going to do? Are they going to work at Home Hardware?”

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Electric vehicle owners in the province will need to fork out an extra $200 to pay the new fee, starting as early as January 2025.

When Finance Minister Nate Horner tabled his first provincial budget on Thursday, he said the tax will be paid when owners register their vehicles, and will come in addition to the existing registration fee. 

According to the province, the money will help account for wear and tear on roads, and make up for the fuel tax that electric vehicles owners don't pay. Hybrid vehicles will be exempt from paying the tax.

These electric cars:

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, cars emit only about 1% of all direct fine particulate matter in California, and most of those emissions come from older models. The newer gasoline cars that California wants to ban will often have particulate filters that reduce emissions to below one 1/1,000th of a gram per mile driven.

Where do most particulate emissions attributed to cars come from? California speaks as if their primary source is the tailpipe. That was true in the past. But today most vehicle-related particulate matter comes from tire wear. Cars are heavy, and as their tires rub against the road, they degrade and release tiny, often toxic particles. According to measurements by an emission-analytics firm, in gasoline cars equipped with a particle filter, airborne tire-wear emissions are more than 400 times as great as direct exhaust particulate emissions.

California calls electric cars “zero emissions vehicles” because they don’t have tailpipes. That is deceptive. Generating the electricity that powers those cars creates particulate pollution, and of course electric cars still use tires, which are made from petroleum. Electric cars weigh far more than gasoline-powered ones, so their tires degrade faster, as electric car buyers are learning. The same analytics firm cited earlier compared two cars—a plug-in electric and a hybrid. The electric car weighed about one-third more than the hybrid and emitted roughly one-quarter more particulate matter because of tire wear. Total direct emissions went up, not down, when the electric car was driven.