Who Did You Vote For?

Governments have consequences:

A new report from Desjardins shows Canadians are facing high levels of debt, leaving a majority facing a “fragile situation.”

The report, published Tuesday, showed that while household disposable income and expenditures are up, allowing the household savings rate to stay higher than before the COVID-19 pandemic, disparities exist over how much people can save depending on the income bracket they’re in.

Even after a recent interest rate cut to 4.75 per cent, the rate increases by the Bank of Canada through the pandemic from 0.25 per cent in March 2022 to five per cent in July 2023 came as Canadians had the third-highest household as of the fourth quarter of 2023.

It’s not the first time Canada’s reached this level, having also been the third-most indebted nation in 2021.

“The effect of indebtedness is really unequal for Canadian households of different revenue categories,” Lorenzo Tessier-Moreau, Desjardins principal economist, told Global News. “Canadians on the lower spectrum of income are impacted a lot more by the effect of interest rate hikes.”

More than half the debt, both mortgage and consumer, is held by Canadians in the two highest income quintiles. But 60 per cent of households in the lower three income brackets still hold 45 per cent of total debt even though the report shows just 35 per cent of income and assets belong to them.

**

According to those results, nearly four out of 10 Ontarians are considering moving elsewhere in hopes of finding more affordable housing.

Article content

Across Canada, 28 per cent of all respondents were considering leaving their province but the highest concentration was in Ontario, where 39 per cent of respondents were considering such a move.

British Columbia residents were second mostly likely to make a move, with 36 per cent of respondents considering leaving, followed by Nova Scotia at 25 per cent.

As for where they are headed, 26 per cent of Ontario respondents who indicated they would make a move cited “abroad” as their most likely destination. Alberta and U.S. were tied as the second most-considered destination at 17 per cent, while 14 per cent were also eyeing Atlantic Canada.

New Canadians, those who have been in the country for less than a decade, were also likely to seek a new location, with 39 per cent of recent immigrants considering a move.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, respondents in Canada’s two most expensive cities, Toronto and Vancouver, are also contemplating a move. In Toronto, 44 per cent of respondents are considering a move, with similar sentiments in Vancouver.

Article content

Along generational lines, younger Canadians, those aged 18 to 24, were more likely to consider relocation, with two-in-five contemplating a move due to housing affordability.

**

The goal was to get you used to conditions as seen in the former Soviet Union:

Mr. Harrison and Mr. Rickard have claimed their rights were violated “as a result of government decision-making and conduct that was rooted in negligence, bad faith and willfully blind to the absence of scientific evidence or disconfirming scientific evidence regarding the role, and, in particular, the unknown efficacy, of Covid-19 vaccination in reducing the risk of Covid-19 transmission and infection within the transportation sector.”

**

It's not like you matter to the government or anything:

A new injection and inhalation centre near a Montreal elementary school is angering parents, business owners and residents who want it closed but the federal government and the province aren’t backing down.

For André Lambert, who moved to Saint-Henri 15 years ago, it’s ruining a calm and close-knit community.

“That changed drastically since the Maison Benoit Labre centre has been actually opened,” he said.

Since April, the centre has provided a safe-consumption centre, 36 transitional apartments, food, clothing and a place to rest. The project required authorization from Health Canada and is carried out at the provincial level in collaboration with municipal authorities.

The centre is located 200 meters from Lambert’s property, across the street from the Atwater Market and near the Lachine Canal National Historic Site, in the heart of Immigration Minister Marc Miller’s riding.

More alarmingly to the residents, it is located 180 meters from the Victor-Rousselot elementary school.

“It’s the children who suffer,” says Chantal Gagnon, a member of the Victor-Rousselot Coalition, who represents dozens of residents, businesses and parents. Ms Gagnon is also a member of the school’s governing board.

“Today our children are being yelled at. We are hypervigilant. Children are being asked for money. We are talking about children aged four to 12 years old,” says Gagnon.

The coalition has listed tens of incidents since the opening of the centre in April such as needles in a playground, public nudity, awkward interactions between children and homeless people, an increase in homelessness, multiple police and paramedic interventions and a growing fear within the community.

 

Marc Miller cares about Marc Miller.

Stop asking the antipathetic government for fix your problems. 

Vote the b@$#@rd out.

**

Privatise alcohol stores and be done with it:

The head of the union representing LCBO workers repeated this notion when discussing the province’s plan to expand alcohol sales to convenience stores and all grocery stores later this summer. “Imagine what would happen,” JP Hornick, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU), said, “in gas stations if you wind up with wine, beer and ready-to-drink [being sold] with very little training.”

LCBO workers began striking on Friday to protest Premier Doug Ford’s efforts to break up the agency’s hold on retail alcohol sales in the province. While OPSEU is pushing for pay hikes and more full-time jobs for LCBO employees, Mr. Hornick has said the union’s “line in the sand” is over the liberalization of alcohol sales in the province. OPSEU doesn’t want to see ready-to-drink cocktails, in particular, being sold in corner stores and grocery stores, since the move poses an existential threat to the LCBO’s continued retail dominance. And besides, only the government can be trusted to sell you alcohol responsibly. (Well, the government, and the foreign-owned conglomerates that operate The Beer Store. And the folks who run rural agency stores. And the Wine Rack. But mostly the government.)

To the extent that this argument ever had much merit – Alberta, with its private liquor retail model, would like a word – it started eroding in 2015, when the first grocery stores in Ontario started selling six-packs of beer, and has all but collapsed now in 2024, with 450 grocery stores across the province licensed to sell beer and wine. The successful rollout of cannabis sales through private retailers, with Ontario serving as the wholesaler for the province, has also quieted the notion that private retailers can’t be trusted to sell regulated substances.

An LCBO worker strike might have rattled the province a decade ago, when people couldn’t just pop into a nearby grocery store to pick up a bottle of wine, or order online for delivery in a couple of days. But the little bit of liquor liberalization Ontarians do enjoy has provided a release valve for whatever pressure a strike might’ve exerted years ago, while at the same time emphasizing the importance of further loosening the LCBO’s grip on the retail market. Indeed, the irony here is that by walking off the job to maintain their monopoly, the LCBO’s workers are demonstrating the importance of dismantling that monopoly. In effect, they are making Mr. Ford’s case for him.

The trajectory of liberalized alcohol sales in this province suggests that this will be the first and last LCBO strike; it is more likely that the LCBO’s role will evolve to be less of a retail operation than as the provincial wholesaler of alcohol. Indeed, despite whatever small concessions the union might win over the course of these negotiations, it is unlikely to succeed in its demand to maintain its antiquated hold on the market – especially not now that Ontarians have gotten a taste, so to speak, of what an open market for alcohol sales might look like in the province.