Wednesday, November 22, 2023

Mid-Week Post

Afuera! Afuera! Afuera!


Say it. It's catchy:



We need Milei in this country:

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is pledging to keep deficits to no larger than 1 per cent of GDP in future years, delivering a new promised limit as to how much the Liberal government is prepared to spend in future years.
The target implies maximum annual deficits of around $32-billion when the rule takes effect in the 2026-27 fiscal year.

**

Now, with interest rates at a 20-year high, the cost to borrow all that money has spiked from $20.3 billion in 2020-21 to $46.5 billion in this fiscal year. The debt service charges will march even higher in the years ahead. Carrying the debt is expected to cost the federal treasury $60.7 billion in 2028-29, according to the economic statement.

That means debt service charges are now among the most costly line items in the federal budget.

To put that in perspective, Ottawa will spend $28.9 billion on the Canadian Armed Forces this fiscal year — about $18 billion less than what the government will send in payments to the banks and bondholders carrying Canada's debt.

**

The government’s fall economic statement announced an increase to the Canadian Journalism Tax Credit, a refundable tax credit allowing qualifying news outlets to claim up to 35 per cent of up to $85,000 in salary for a qualified employee.
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That’s an increase from the credit’s initial allowance of 25 per cent of up to $55,000 in salary per employee.
First announced in the government’s 2018 fall economic statement and made official in the 2019 federal budget, the tax credit was designed to support print news publishers.
The newly expanded credit will be retroactive to the beginning of 2023, the economic update said. It projects the cost to the federal government will be $129 million over five years.


What no one will tell anyone is that the country is spectacularly broke and that we are not merely in a touch of recession but a full-on depression.

Enjoy the decline.



It's not that the carbon tax is a tax on living or that it's onerous or that it does absolutely nothing to conserve the environment.

It's just that the government should have lied to the gullible public better:

The Liberals' unclear messaging on the carbon tax—a key component of their climate change file—is putting them on the defensive, especially since the Conservatives have been consistently clear on cutting the carbon tax, says pollster Nik Nanos.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) announced on Oct. 26 a three-year national pause on the carbon levy applied to fuel for oil furnaces, it was subsequently reported by most media—including by The Hill Times—as a "carbon price carveout for Atlantic Canadians who use home heating oil."

"We have heard clearly from Atlantic Canadians through our amazing Atlantic MPs that since the federal pollution price came into force this summer replacing provincial systems, certain features of that pollution price needed to be adjusted to work for everyone," said Trudeau, who made the announcement in the Commons foyer surrounded by members of the Liberal Atlantic caucus.

Bolstering that distinctively eastern focus was the accompanying announcement of a pilot project first rolling out in the Atlantic provinces that includes an upfront payment of $250 for low- to median-income households with oil furnaces, and that sign up for a heat pump through a joint federal-provincial government program.

"Well, as a government that is focused on evidence and data and outcomes, and that is listening to Canadians, we heard you. We heard our Atlantic MPs and we heard Atlantic Canadians,” Trudeau said.

Greg MacEachern, principal at KAN Strategies and a frequent Liberal political commentator, said that “everybody talks about the communications problem with the PMO and with the government, and I think there is a communications problem."  

“And then the other part of that is—maybe it’s not as much communications as it is media relations,” said MacEachern. “Following up with the bureaus and saying, ‘Look, I want to be really clear that this is being repeated, and it’s incorrect.'” 

MacEachern said what became really evident in the days after the announcement on the carbon pricing was the large number of people, “both in senior levels of politics and media,” that had “no idea” as to which regions of the country were heated with what. 

The temporary exemption for home heating oil is applied across the country in all jurisdictions where the federal carbon price applies: Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Nunavut, and the Yukon.

According Statistics Canada figures provided by the environment minister's office, there are nearly 1.65 million homes across the country that are heated with oil. While a relatively similar number of homes in Ontario use the fuel (266,700) compared to those collectively across the Atlantic provinces (286,900), the proportion of East Coast homes affected, relative to their population, is much higher. Only 4.6 per cent of Ontario homes use heating oil, while it’s relied on by nearly 53 per cent of homes in Prince Edward Island, and 37 per cent of homes in Nova Scotia. More than one in 10 homes in New Brunswick and in Newfoundland and Labrador rely on the fuel.


Also:

Nearly four out of five Atlantic Canadians want last month’s carbon tax carve-out to extend more than just home heating oil, according to a new poll.

Commissioned by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, the Leger poll shows net support for extending the federal government’s three-year carbon tax pause on home heating oil to other forms of home heating at 77 per cent.

**

How have forests been regrown because of this tax?

I'll wait:

A new poll suggests Canadians are broadly in favour of the federal government’s decision to exempt home heating oil from its price on carbon, and would welcome expanding the relief to all forms of home heating fuel.

The governing Liberals announced last month a three-year reprieve from the carbon price for property owners who depend on heating oil, along with funding to help people make the switch to electric heat pumps.

The abrupt about-face from a government that considers tackling climate change a cornerstone priority triggered an uproar in Ottawa over a controversial measure that has proven politically useful on both sides of the aisle.

Climate activists denounced the reprieve as a short-sighted move that risks doing permanent damage to the Liberal government’s efforts to limit the impact of climate change.

**

Trudeau’s move to pervert the federal carbon tax even farther from the economically ideal model proves yet again that such ideal forms are always inherently doomed to corruption by the political process. The harmful impacts of a carbon tax, unmitigated by those various “ideal” caveats, are landing on the pocketbooks of the public, and one suspects the prime minister knows it. He should consider stealing an issue from his leading political rival and taking an axe to the tax he created, rather than leave that chore to his successor.


**

Steven Guilbeault and the angry voice in his head have suddenly lost the messages supporting the now-unpopular carbon tax:



Justin Trudeau is a scumbag.

Prove me wrong:

Trudeau is set to raise his federal excise tax on alcohol again in 2024. This time by 4.7%.

But even a 4.7% tax hike downplays how much tax you pay every time you go to the liquor store.

Taxes in Canada already make up about half the price of beer, two-thirds of the price of wine and more than three-quarters of the price of spirits.

That means if you buy a 24-pack of pilsner, a couple bottles of Pinot and a bottle of vodka, you can expect to pay about $120. More than $75 of that is tax.

In fact, Canadians pay five times more tax on a case of beer than our friends south of the border. In Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island, and Newfoundland and Labrador the tax on a case of beer costs more than the total price of a case in half of American states.

While Canadians are paying higher taxes, Americans are enjoying tax cuts. From 2017 to 2019, Canadian beer taxes went up $34 million for large brewers while American beer taxes went down down by $31 million.

The feds have been bingeing on alcohol tax hikes since the 2017 budget. That year, the Trudeau government introduced an automatic tax hike escalator. That means the federal excise tax automatically increases with inflation every year on April 1.

With inflation having reached a 40-year high, Canadians are facing a steep tax hike in 2024.


Also - we don't have property rights.

Justin's dad made sure of that:

In Tuesday’s fiscal update, the Trudeau government found itself trying to bury the lede in a bad news story of bigger deficits, higher debt payments and a weakened economy.
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Following a slew of opinion polls that show the Liberals trailing the opposition Conservatives by a widening margin, the update also exuded a palpable sense of urgency as the government scrambles to address a critical issue on which they were caught completely off guard: housing.
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Housing has emerged, in recent months, as arguably the single biggest political concern in Canada. It impacts middle- and lower-income Canadians most severely and is a significant part of why the Liberals have been bleeding support amongst these key constituencies, which disproportionately include younger Canadians.
In response to their slide in the polls, the Liberals have belatedly started to act on the file — by removing the GST on new rental builds and dedicating $4 billion to a housing accelerator program that aims to incentivize municipalities to remove prohibitive zoning barriers. The fiscal update boasted that this fund has already signed agreements with nine cities to build 21,000 homes over the next three years, which sounds impressive until you consider that Canada needs approximately 3.5 million new homes by 2030 to fix the affordability crisis.
While any new housing supply will be welcome, the measures amount to knee-jerk reactions by a government that tries to solve problems by hastily showering them with money. While the Housing Accelerator Fund correctly focuses on scrapping restrictive zoning, the real goal should be to incentivize the construction of privately built housing on a mass scale, rather than simply subsidize additional public housing. The real cause of Canada’s housing shortage is not market failure but a series of policy failures on multiple fronts and levels.
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Perhaps most alarming is the government’s assault on short-term rental housing by reducing tax deductions available to property owners, framed as a crusade against greedy landlords profiting from tourists while everyday Canadians scramble to keep a roof over their heads. The implicit assumption seems to be that, by making short-term rentals less attractive, these units will be magically transformed into long-term rental accommodations (which is wishful thinking, to say the least). In so doing, the government overlooks the diverse array of reasons Canadians choose to rent out properties on a short-term basis.
Flexibility — as facilitated by platforms like Airbnb — is essential for those who do not wish to commit to full-time landlord responsibilities. Additionally, Canadians may have family members who intermittently require housing, such as aging parents or university students. Long-term tenancy, burdened with compliance issues and eviction challenges, is unappealing to many property owners. If the government instead chose to make the work of a landlord more attractive, it wouldn’t need to make short-term rentals less appealing.
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Even more troubling is the broader trend of the government encroaching on Canadians’ property rights, ostensibly to compensate for its own housing policy failures. Dictating how citizens use their own property raises serious concerns about the government overstepping its bounds. In a country with well-established property rights, it is inappropriate and misguided for the government to meddle in the choices of families seeking to make ends meet by renting out their properties.


The show trial continues:

The criminal trial of two "Freedom Convoy" organizers resumed today after a two-week break with testimony from an Ottawa Police Service liaison officer.

Const. Nicole Bach, the primary police contact for organizer Chris Barber during the three-week demonstration that gridlocked downtown Ottawa early last year, is set to be cross-examined today.

Bach's testimony was paused in October as defence lawyers argued for access to redacted police communications, including emails, police logs and transcripts of chats during the convoy.

The judge in the trial decided that some of the information should be admitted as evidence in the trial.

**

There's no evidence to support that Tamara Lich and a fellow "Freedom Convoy" organizer should be viewed as co-conspirators in court because their actions were not illegal, her defence team said in a court filing on Tuesday.

The Crown finished its case against Lich and Chris Barber on Monday.

The two are co-accused of mischief and intimidation, among other charges connected to the massive protest against COVID-19 restrictions that gridlocked downtown Ottawa for weeks in 2022.



There were actually people who denied and then justified this:

The hypocrite feminists launch campaigns for “pink quotas”, for "inclusive writing", for the prices of pads, for "neutral pronouns", to overcome the "patriarchy", to pass laws against those who whistle at a girl on the street, believe every claim on #MeToo - and they don't say a word about it.

"A woman was raped surrounded by her dead friends. Another had her breasts cut off and the terrorists played with them. A Holocaust survivor saw her granddaughter raped and murdered. A fourteen-year-old girl was found with her legs spread and semen on her back. She had been shot in the head. Most of the women were shot multiple times in the head. Some bodies were so badly damaged that after three days blood was still dripping. They mutilated the genitals of several women."

The Israeli police investigation into mass sexual violence by Hamas terrorists involves allegations ranging from gang rape to post-mortem mutilation. “The police are collecting evidence of sexual violence from witnesses, surveillance footage and interrogations of arrested Palestinian jihadists,” says David Katz, head of the Israel Police Lahav 443 investigative unit. The investigation will last “six to eight months”.

Police showed reporters a recorded interview with a female survivor of the Supernova rave party who witnessed the gang rape and murder of a woman. "They bent her over and I realized that they were raping her, one after another. Then they handed her to a man in uniform. She was alive. Standing up and bleeding from her bottom. They held her by her hair. A man held her shot in the head while he raped her, while she had her pants down."

**

The University of Alberta says it has fired the director of its campus sexual assault centre after she signed an open letter calling reports of sexual violence during Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel an “unverified accusation.”

University president Bill Flanagan issued a statement Saturday afternoon saying that “effectively immediately” the director of the U of A Sexual Assault Centre “is no longer employed by the university.”

The centre and its director, Samantha Pearson, were listed as signatories to a petition from Ontario MPP Sarah Jama and Victoria Coun. Susan Kim which called on MPs who support a humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza to resign in protest.

The letter took particular issue with NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who it said “repeated the unverified accusation that Palestinians were guilty of sexual violence.”

**

Please make a quick mental list of the things on which progressives pride themselves. They are democratic, sensitive, open-minded, tolerant, feminist, pro-LBGTQ+ and peaceful, right? Now list those on which Hamas openly prides itself: dictatorial, ruthless, dogmatic, death-to-Jews, patriarchal, death-to-gays holy warriors. Where’s the only place in the Middle East a transgender Muslim can speak “their truth?” Right. The one regime progressives hate with frenzied unreason to the point of denying ghastly forensic evidence of sexual violence by maniacs systematically briefed in advance on how to say “Take off your pants” in Hebrew.
Something is very wrong here. And not just the thrill of hanging with the rough trade. There’s something dark, self-loathing and evil about an ideology that claims to overflow with love to the point that its adherents can’t wait to scream obscenities and excuse genocidal rape.



Imagine for a moment that the massacres that happened in Israel happened in Canada.

Imagine a eunuch imploring for the safety and security of their perpetrators.

Now imagine a public that would tolerate it:

On the crisis involving Israel, Trudeau has been a most major disappointment. I speak of the absolutely vicious day of murder, rape and kidnapping, Oct. 7, the day the terrorists of Hamas, in body armour, equipped with all the most powerful military weapons mercilessly slaughtered 1,200 men, women and children (mainly Jews of course) and took 250 hostages.
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They took children from their parents — some very young, some infants (those they did not horribly kill), some very old and sick. Have we since that day, has Mr. Trudeau since that day or his government, tried to imagine if a proportionate number of Canadians (5,000 is a close estimate) were targeted how we would have felt and reacted? Imagine what it would be like here in Canada after such a slaughter and outrage. What would it be like if it were Canadian parents, five weeks later still wondering where their kidnapped children were? How they were being treated, whether they were even alive?




Both parents and teachers have done little to nothing to teach children about the Holocaust or any history like it.

Banning speech under the guise of not fomenting such anti-semitic feeling (like the kind one sees in the biggest Liberal Party voters blocks in the country) has not only not worked, it would serve to hide the morons who would make such absurd and offensive claims as the Holocaust never occurring:

That’s a big part of why I oppose efforts to muzzle pro-Palestinian protesters despite being married to a Jewish woman. I don’t want them to be able to pose as martyrs for their cause. I also believe in the natural right to liberty, no matter what government officials may prefer in the name of “order.” And I have a strong interest in seeing who might hate my wife and my kid and potentially target them at a later date. Step forward and be counted, folks.




We don't have to trade with China:

Beijing has defended its prosecution of two Canadians for espionage, after The Globe and Mail reported that Michael Spavor blames intelligence work done by Michael Kovrig for their nearly three-year-long detention.
Mr. Spavor is seeking a multimillion-dollar settlement from Ottawa, two sources told The Globe, alleging he was arrested in China in late 2018 because he unwittingly provided intelligence on North Korea to Mr. Kovrig, which was later shared with Canada and allied spy services.
Mr. Kovrig served as a diplomat at Canada’s embassy in Beijing from 2012 to 2014, where he contributed to the Global Security Reporting Program (GSRP), which sees diplomats collect information on security in countries of strategic importance to Canada in a non-covert fashion. He took a leave of absence from Global Affairs Canada in 2017 to join the International Crisis Group (ICG), and was working at the independent think tank when he was detained in China the following year.
A third highly placed source told The Globe that Mr. Kovrig — while not an employee of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service — was viewed as an intelligence asset due to his GSRP work, and later when based in Hong Kong at the ICG. The Globe and Mail is not identifying the sources because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
In a statement Sunday, China’s embassy in Ottawa said the two Canadians were “suspected of committing crimes endangering China’s national security” and their case was handled by the Chinese judicial system “in accordance with the law.”
“Recent relevant reports once again prove that the above facts cannot be denied,” the embassy said. “Canada’s hyping up of so-called ‘arbitrary detention’ by China is purely a thief crying ‘stop thief’ and fully exposes Canada’s hypocrisy.”

Why didn't you use your secret police stations to arrest Kovrig then, China?



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