Your middle-of-the-week head-shake ...
When all else fails, initiate class warfare:
The Commons yesterday by a 208 to 118 vote passed a Ways And Means Motion to raise capital gains tax revenues. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland called it a blow for tax fairness against multimillionaires, a claim disputed by critics: “Almost 50 percent of the people impacted by this tax otherwise make less than $100,000 a year.”
If Chrystia was really serious, she would tax herself, Justin and his friend, Jag.
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The whole schmeer is being handled in a bill separate from the budget, and the original announcement didn’t include any of the persnickety fine details necessary to actually legislate and start collecting the cash. Those details, or some of them, were dropped on the heads of investors and bureaucrats yesterday, leaving everyone a fortnight to react. The overall message is “Sorry, no loopholes, no stunts, no exemptions: anything that has the hypothetical character of a ‘capital gain’ will be subject to the new inclusion rate.”The brisk implementation of the hike guarantees that it will force investors to shed assets in a hurry to take advantage of the existing lower rate, creating a one-time capital-gains windfall that will show up in next year’s Liberal budget. The C.D. Howe Institute has observed that this up-front jackpot comes to an estimated $7 billion, a lump of cash that dwarfs the present value of the extra revenue in future years.
Environmental benefits of an $8 billion subsidy program for industry are unknown, Department of Environment managers yesterday told the Commons public accounts committee. Conservative MP Dan Mazier (Swan River-Dauphin, Man.) expressed outrage: “You are so flippant about it. You don’t even care.”
Despite the Bank of Canada’s decision to drop interest rates, it’s not enough for most Canadians to get into the housing market, according to a recent poll.On June 4 the Bank of Canada dropped its key interest rate by 0.25 percent from five percent to 4.75 percent. It was the first cut in four years.However, in a June 11 survey by polling firm Ipsos, eight in 10 (82 percent) of respondents said that even if interest rates drop further, homeownership will still be unattainable for them. Sixty-two percent said they’ve given up on ever owning a home.
Ontarians are under extreme financial strain as more mortgages come up for renewal at higher interest rates while unemployment creeps up, according to a new report by credit reporting agency Equifax.
In Ontario, the total mortgage balance reaching “severe delinquency” — 90 days or more without payment — exceeded $1 billion for the first time in the first quarter of 2024. That’s double the level recorded before the pandemic, the report stated.
“A shocking number,” said Rebecca Oakes, vice-president of advanced analytics at Equifax Canada. “And it’s not a case of it’s increasing or flattening — it’s still on an upward trajectory in terms of missed payments. That really is where the concern is coming from.”
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For those that missed Canada’s employment data, unemployment has been climbing steadily. The seasonally adjusted national rate reached 6.1% in May, representing 1.34 million people. Over the past year, that rate has climbed 1.0 point (+250.9k people), which is a 20% increase. Rising unemployment is a trend being observed across the country, but the lion’s share driving growth is the Toronto CMA.
Looking for a job? Toronto might be the least likely place to find one these days. Over the past year, the unemployment rate climbed 1.0 point (+83.8k people) to 7.9% (317.2k people) as of May. About 1 in 3 of Canada’s unemployment gains over the past year is in the region, which now has more unemployed people than the whole province of Quebec (241.2k people).
Any future Conservative cabinet would appoint a lobby-free tax reform committee, Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said yesterday. He made the pledge as Conservatives opposed an $18 billion increase in capital gains taxes: “Get ahead by working hard.”
As of this writing, near-universal majorities of Canadians want more criminals in jail for longer periods. A pretty solid majority of Canadians would also be fine with seeing murderers at the end of a rope.This time last year, a Postmedia-commissioned poll by Leger found an incredible 78 per cent agreeing with the sentiment “the justice system is too lenient on offenders who are found to be guilty of committing a violent crime.”
In April, Research Co. polled Canadians on whether they’d like to go back to executing murderers again. It found 57 per cent in favour of executions — the highest it had ever recorded. ...
Polls have long shown that people around the world support action on climate change right up to the point where it starts costing them personally. And thus the carbon tax has become one of the single most unpopular policies of the Trudeau government.
In November, the Angus Reid Institute asked Canadians what they would do if they were in charge of the carbon tax. Fifty-nine per cent would either lower it or abolish it, with a mere 15 per cent hewing to the federal plan to raise it in perpetuity. That same poll also found Canadians stating bluntly that they preferred affording things to saving the environment. Nearly two-thirds endorsed the sentiment that “cost-of-living concerns should come first, even if it damages policies to fight climate change.” ...
Your government that kills the old and young alike also doesn't care about how much they tax you or what damage they inflict on you.
For the longest time, you were glad to coast along until you realised that your dollar doesn't stretch as far anymore and that you are not even remotely a prized voters block.
This leads me to the tweet of the day:
Okay, Canadians.
— Devon Eriksen (@Devon_Eriksen_) June 12, 2024
I'm ready to hear your apology.
For decades, hell, for generations, you sneered at Americans and our guns. You thought of yourselves as a more civilized, more refined, more polite, and more sophisticated. You thought of yourselves a species of human evolved… https://t.co/L7kavV9mTx pic.twitter.com/yry7r9b8SD
Facing disappointing polls and a simmering conflict with the federal government over immigration, Quebec Premier Francois Legault last week announced the creation of a new committee to study the province’s rights and enhance its powers within the federation.The committee is tasked with examining federal intrusion into areas of provincial jurisdiction.
“The federal government has intensified a worrying trend toward centralization and encroachment,” Legault said Friday during a speech in the legislature with strong nationalist overtones. “We must continue to strengthen Quebec’s autonomy, preserve its rights and obtain more powers in fundamental areas.”On Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau dismissed the move as a political response to the rise in popularity of the sovereigntist Parti Quebecois, which has been leading in provincial polls since the fall.
“I know Mr. Legault is under a fair bit of pressure from the PQ right now,” Trudeau told reporters after a meeting with Legault in Quebec City. “There’s nothing inherently threatening about a province deciding to look at ways of improving our democracy.”
The initial reports I read in Israeli media suggested that around 50 Palestinians had been killed in the raid. The IDF later revised that number to “under 100.” But it didn’t take long for much of the media to start citing wildly higher figures given by Gazan health officials and characterizing the rescue op as some sort of a mass slaughter.
The Qatari state broadcaster Al-Jazeera tweeted a breaking news story about the rescue at 6:48 a.m. ET. Not long after, it posted another story citing “dozens” killed in Israeli raids that didn’t even mention the hostages. By Sunday, the headline on the story was changed to, ‘Bodies Scattered on Streets’: Israel Kills 226 in Central Gaza Attacks.
Western media also reported Hamas’s casualty figures uncritically. The Washington Post buried the lede, when it wrote, “Israel’s military launched one of the bloodiest raids of the war Saturday, killing more than 200 Palestinians in a brazen operation,” before mentioning the perfectly legitimate rationale for the mission: liberating civilians who had been illegally held for 246 days.
It then quoted Khalil al-Degran, a spokesman for al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, who claimed that, “Israel committed a massacre,” killing 210 people. Al-Degran’s unverified death toll was also picked up by the Associated Press (AP), which should know better because, only a day earlier, it published an expose on the irregularities in Hamas’s data.
On Friday, AP released the results of its analysis of casualty figures released by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which revealed numerous inconsistencies in the “official” numbers. Not only has the death toll been dropping in recent months, according to Hamas’s own data, the proportion of women and children being killed has plummeted — a statistic that has gone unnoticed by the media and the United Nations.
The proportion of women and children deaths — a key indicator of the civilian casualty ratio given that Hamas doesn’t distinguish combat deaths from others — dropped to 38 per cent in April, from a high of 64 per cent at the end of October. Yet throughout the war, the health ministry has maintained that women and children make up around 70 per cent of casualties.
It then quoted Khalil al-Degran, a spokesman for al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, who claimed that, “Israel committed a massacre,” killing 210 people. Al-Degran’s unverified death toll was also picked up by the Associated Press (AP), which should know better because, only a day earlier, it published an expose on the irregularities in Hamas’s data.
On Friday, AP released the results of its analysis of casualty figures released by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which revealed numerous inconsistencies in the “official” numbers. Not only has the death toll been dropping in recent months, according to Hamas’s own data, the proportion of women and children being killed has plummeted — a statistic that has gone unnoticed by the media and the United Nations.
The proportion of women and children deaths — a key indicator of the civilian casualty ratio given that Hamas doesn’t distinguish combat deaths from others — dropped to 38 per cent in April, from a high of 64 per cent at the end of October. Yet throughout the war, the health ministry has maintained that women and children make up around 70 per cent of casualties.
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Both Israel and Hamas committed war crimes in the early stages of the Gaza war, a UN inquiry alleged on Wednesday, saying Israel’s actions also constituted crimes against humanity because of the immense civilian losses, and that they included acts of “extermination.”
The findings were from two parallel reports by “independent experts,” one focusing on the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on Israel and another on Israel’s military response, published by the UN Commission of Inquiry (COI). The commission has an unusually broad and open-ended mandate to collect evidence and identify perpetrators of alleged international crimes committed in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Regarding Israel’s actions, the commission alleged “a widespread or systematic attack directed against the civilian population in Gaza.”
“The commission found that the crimes against humanity of extermination; murder; gender persecution targeting Palestinian men and boys; forcible transfer; and torture and inhuman and cruel treatment were committed,” it added.
Israel bitterly rejected the allegations and accused the commission of systematic bias.
The European Commission said it will impose extra duties of up to 38.1% on imported Chinese electric cars from July, risking retaliation from Beijing which said on Wednesday it would take measures to safeguard its interests.
Less than a month after Washington announced plans to quadruple duties for Chinese EVs to 100%, Brussels said it would combat excessive subsidies with additional tariffs ranging from 17.4% for BYD (002594.SZ), opens new tab to 38.1% for SAIC (600104.SS), opens new tab, on top of the standard 10% car duty.
That equates to billions of euros of extra costs for the carmakers at a time when they are struggling with slowing demand and falling prices at home, according to Reuters calculations based on 2023 EU trade data.
And now for something completely interesting:
The wreck of the last ship belonging to Sir Ernest Shackleton, the famed Irish explorer of Antarctica, has been found off the coast of Labrador by an international team led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.
The Quest was found using sonar scans on Sunday evening, sitting on its keel under 390 metres of churning, frigid water. Its towering mast is lying broken beside it, likely cracked off as the vessel was sucked into the depths after it struck ice on May 5, 1962.
Shackleton’s death aboard the ship in 1922 marked the end of what historians consider the “heroic age” of Antarctic exploration. The explorer led three British expeditions to the Antarctic, and he was in the early stages of a fourth when he died. He was 47.
The Quest’s discovery was “profoundly moving,” said John Geiger, leader of the Shackleton Quest Expedition. “It’s just such a great story. It links Canada to this most-famous-of-all polar explorers.”
Geiger said Shackleton had planned to take Quest on an expedition to Canada’s High Arctic, but the federal government at the time axed the trip. That’s when the explorer decided to head back to Antarctica for a fourth time.
Renowned shipwreck hunter David Mearns, the expedition’s search director, said it was his responsibility to interpret the sonar images and declare whether the long-sought vessel had truly been found.
“To be part of that, to be able to deliver that, is a huge privilege in my life,” he said in a telephone interview Tuesday evening, shortly after he and the crew docked in St. John’s, N.L.
The jubilant voices of about 12 of his fellow explorers could be heard in the background, sometimes overtaking his voice.
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