Your mid-week slow crawl to Easter ...
Cronyism and nepotism remain rampant in federal hiring, says the Public Service Commission. A majority of staff, 53 percent, “believe appointments depend on who you know,” the Commission said yesterday: “There are still areas for improvement.”
Budgets DO balance themselves, right?:
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit Canada in March 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau boasted his prudent management of federal spending since taking office in 2015 meant the government had the “fiscal firepower” to weather the coming economic storm.
But a new study by the fiscally-conservative Fraser Institute — released Tuesday — says runaway spending by the Trudeau government before the pandemic hit added as much as $160 billion to Canada’s public debt, making it much harder to recover from the economic devastation it has caused going forward.
“Additional spending by the federal government in the years leading up to COVID-19 … left the country in worse fiscal shape to deal with the pandemic,” said study co-author Tegan Hill in the report, Ottawa’s Pattern of Excessive Spending and Persistent Deficits.
“Generations of Canadians will be paying for Ottawa’s high spending and additional debt, a situation that was exacerbated, but not caused, by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The study found between the fiscal years 2015-16 and 2019-20, the Trudeau government ran consecutive deficits, causing the federal debt to rise by $112.2 billion.
During that period, the government increased spending by 36.1%, up from $248.7 billion in 2014-15 (the year before Trudeau came to power) to $338.5 billion in 2019-20, exceeding the growth rate of government revenues.
The report says if the Trudeau government had moderated its spending from 2015 to 2019 — before the pandemic hit in March 2020 — to the rate of inflation plus population growth, or the rate of nominal GDP growth, it “would have recorded surpluses nearly every year over the period and avoided taking on approximately $150 billion to $160 billion in debt.”
Instead, the Trudeau government increased average annual spending by 6.4%, more than double the average annual rate of inflation plus population growth at 2.9%, and nominal GDP growth of 3% annually.
**
The Bank of Canada has hiked its key interest rate to 0.5 per cent, the first step of a series of signalled increases amid economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The overnight rate target will rise 25 basis points, the central bank announced Wednesday, up from the floor of 0.25 per cent it held for much of the pandemic.
In a statement accompanying the decision, the Bank of Canada said the war in Ukraine is “a major new source of uncertainty” that is driving prices higher on oil and other commodities.
That explanation only works if we get everything from Ukraine.
Which we don't.
There was out of control spending before the lockdowns, huge deficits, trade imbalances, the shutting down of the oil and gas sector, bare shelves, higher costs of living and total morons in charge of it all.
When one's government is led by a snowboard instructor and a "journalist", it comes as no surprise that any action take is far from constructive:
Machine guns. Pistols. Carbines. 1.5 million rounds of ammunition. Sniper rifles.
Those are some of the lethal weapons that Canada has offered to Ukraine. The federal government also announced an additional $25 million in military aid that could include helmets, body armour, gas masks and night vision gear. This information, with details of how Canada plans to support Ukraine — and what, exactly, the government is doing — is readily available online.
But why is this very specific information made public?
“The reason I think the government can be specific about the weapons it’s sending to Ukraine is because, while they are militarily important, their real value is symbolic,” said Timothy Andrews Sayle, assistant professor at the University of Toronto’s department of history and director of the international relations program.
“It’s not like Canada is giving Ukraine a brand new capability that is going to change what the Ukrainians can do and that the Russians would have to adapt as a result.”
The aid announcements are directed at Canadians, who are the primary audience (along with those who have deep ties to Ukraine). Canadians gathered in the thousands over the weekend to protest against Russia and rally in support of Ukrainians. The government making the decision to share such announcements is likely a “response to this enormous public outcry over the invasion,” said Sayle.
Mollify the masses.Feel like part of a happening without having to do anything of any consequence.
Justin is still a pants-wetting coward whose Gestapo brutalised participants in a popular movement.
He can own the lies and everything else left behind.
Also - it's just someone else's money:
Taxpayers have bought snowmobiles for Northerners, the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations yesterday disclosed. Free machines were purchased under a multi-million dollar program to promote Indigenous hunting and berry picking: “What does that mean?”
And - as long as some gated white liberal feels good about "doing something":
Materials used by the renewable energy sector are often produced by slave labour, the Senate human rights committee has been told. Forced labour including children are used in supply chains that produce electric car batteries and wind turbine parts: “Look at issues like modern slavery and the environment.”
And how many occupy positions of great importance at all levels of government and influence?:
Forty-seven Canadians have been arrested and 12 children have been removed from abusive situations as part of a global investigation into online child sexual exploitation, the RCMP said Wednesday.
The Mounties said 186 charges have been laid in Canada so far during the investigation, dubbed Operation H. Arrests have been made in eight provinces over the past two years, they said, adding the investigation is still underway.
Remember that Russia (and China) sits permanently on the UN Security Council:
Ukrainians said on Wednesday they were battling on in the port of Kherson, the first sizeable city Russia claimed to have seized, while air strikes and bombardment caused further devastation in other cities, especially Kharkiv in the east.
Russia's week-old invasion has yet to achieve its aim of overthrowing Ukraine's government but has sent more than 870,000 people fleeing to neighbouring countries and jolted the global economy as governments and companies line up to isolate Moscow.
The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to deplore the invasion "in the strongest terms". It demanded that Russia withdraw its forces in a resolution backed by 141 of the assembly's 193 members.
Yes, Ukraine is a playground for some of the richest and most corrupt people whose name rhymes with Xiden.
Putin is also a former KGB agent, an autocrat and the pass peddler of Europe.
“It was provoked by NATO, the U.S. and even Canada sending lethal weapons,” wrote Woodsworth on Twitter, something espoused by Kremlin cretins and other Putin apologists to justify the invasion.
This viewpoint ignores that Putin’s obsession with Ukraine is an irredentist plot to ensure Russia’s historic sphere of influence does not slip away. It is why he invaded Georgia in 2008, and why he invaded Crimea in 2014. If Ukraine’s neutrality was somehow guaranteed, does anyone truly believe that would satisfy Putin, and that he wouldn’t seek to install a pro-Russian puppet regime, as in Belarus?
Alas, NATO’s alleged new expansion in Eastern Europe hasn’t actually occurred. Ukraine has not joined the alliance, but a majority of Ukrainians surveyed in December said they wanted their country to be part of it, and now surely will when the Russian invasion ends.
Also - if Russia is truly repugnant, why not cut if off completely?
Or must we repeat the sycophancy to China here, too?:
Cabinet yesterday faced demands it target Russian investors in Canada including billionaire owners of a federally-subsidized Regina steel mill once toured by Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland. Punishing Russia for its invasion of Ukraine “may involve some sacrifice from us,” said a Liberal-appointed senator: “What has the Government of Canada done to get our $40 million back?”
Uh, nothing.
And - you really thought this through, didn't you, hobbit?:
Canada will expand its Russia sanctions to target more Putin-friendly oligarchs and businesses, but Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland warns Canadians there will be an economic price for these punitive measures in support of Ukraine.
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