The Charter Does Not Protect Property Rights

Look it up.

That rag is nothing at all like the Magna Carta.

Let's keep that in mind:

The government should provide a home to every person who cannot work, says Housing Minister Sean Fraser. Unemployed currently number 1,229,400 according to the latest Labour Force Survey from Statistics Canada: “If you cannot work you should have a home too. Government should work together to provide it to you.”

 

And who is going to pay for it, Sean? You?

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“Canada’s record housing supply imbalance, caused by an unprecedented increase in the working-age population (874,000 people over the past twelve months), means that there is currently only one housing start for every 4.2 people entering the working-age population ... Under these circumstances, people have no choice but to bid up the price of a dwindling inventory of rental units. The current divergence between rental inflation (8.2 per cent) and CPI inflation (3.1 per cent) is the highest in over 60 years … There is no precedent for the peak in rental inflation to exceed the peak in headline inflation. Unless Ottawa revises its immigration quotas downward, we don’t expect much relief for the 37 per cent of Canadian households that rent.”

The goal is that no one will rent or own a house.

But one repeats one's self.

More Provinces Need to Invoke the Sovereignty Act

Alberta and Saskatchewan can't be the only ones to tell Ottawa to stick it:

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith says she’s using the province’s Sovereignty Act for the first time to challenge Ottawa’s requirements to have a net-zero electricity grid by 2035.

Smith said she wanted to invoke the act to send a message that her government is serious about pushing back against Ottawa’s plan to green Canada’s electricity grid by 2035, a plan she says could wreak havoc on Alberta’s natural gas-based grid.

“We’re creating an opportunity for the federal government to do the right thing and back down,” Smith told reporters.

“We’re sending the message: ‘Keep working with us on our 2050 target.'”

 

(Sidebar: the green plans are utter garbage that will ultimately end up wrecking the environment rather than saving it. Carry on ...) 

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Moe vows that on Jan. 1 the Crown corporation will not remit carbon tax on home heating fuel to Ottawa.

This is an immediate crisis for Ottawa, compared to Smith’s more distant alarm.

By New Year’s Day, unless somebody blinks, one province will formally defy the carbon tax, with sympathy from several others.

That could be the snowball that starts an anti-tax avalanche.

Moe’s pledge follows the Liberals’ exemption of home heating oil from carbon tax. They admitted it was done for political gain in Atlantic Canada, then refused to allow a similar break for natural gas.

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Steven Guilbeault and the angry voice in his head are not at all pleased:

Federal Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault said he was surprised by Alberta invoking  provincial legislation aimed at blocking his attempts to eliminate fossil fuels from its electricity grid, but said he will not be deterred from pushing ahead with his plan.

 

Because this fanatic is sure that he will get his way.

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Oil simply must remain in the ground!:

Alberta's New Democrat Opposition and a prominent First Nations leader are calling for a review of the province's energy regulator to be held in public, with public input.

Opposition Environment critic Jodi Calahoo Stonehouse says the current review, led by a longtime conservative activist and oilpatch executive, is too secretive.

Calahoo Stonehouse says the review of one of the most important agencies in Alberta has been handed over in a sole-source contract to a friend of the government, with no information as to its mandate or who it will meet with.

She's calling for a revamped regulator with new leadership, particularly in light of repeated releases of wastewater from oilsands operations.

Chief Allan Adam of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation says his people have lost faith in the regulator and the federal government should step in to replace it.

The regulator did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the review.

 

No one has any plans to update ailing infrastructure, use the resources we already have to heat homes and fuel cares, and there are far too few people invoking a province's right to function without the interference of know-nothing autocrats who end up having to revise their poorly thought out ideologies.

 

Interesting

 And who was running Canada in the Seventies?:

Pierre Trudeau inherited a strong, growing and diversified Canadian economy.

When Trudeau at last left office for good in 1984, Canadians were still feeling the effects of Canada’s worst recession since the Great Depression. Eight years later, the country would tumble into another and even worse recession.

The two recessions 1981-82 and 1992-93 can both fairly be laid at Trudeau’s door.

Pierre Trudeau took office at a moment when commodity prices were rising worldwide. Then as now, rising commodity prices buoyed the Canadian economy. Good policymakers recognize that commodity prices fall as well as rise. A wise government does not make permanent commitments based on temporary revenues. Yet between 1969 and 1979 – through two majority governments and one minority – Trudeau tripled federal spending.

Nemesis followed hubris. Commodity prices dropped. Predictably, Canada tumbled into recession and the worst federal budget deficits in peacetime history.

Trudeau’s Conservative successor Brian Mulroney balanced Canada’s operating budget after 1984. But to squeeze out Trudeau-era inflation, the Bank of Canada had raised real interest rates very high. Mulroney could not keep up with the debt payments. The debt compounded, the deficits grew, the Bank hiked rates again – and Canada toppled into an even worse recession in 1992. By 1993, default on Trudeau’s debt loomed as a real possibility. Trudeau’s next successors, Liberals this time, squeezed even tighter, raising taxes, and leaving Canadians through the 1990s working harder and harder with no real increase in their standard of living.

Do Canadians understand how many of their difficulties of the 1990s originated in the 1970s? They should.

To repay Trudeau’s debt, federal governments reduced transfers to provinces. Provinces restrained spending. And these restraints had real consequences for real people: more months in pain for heart patients, more months of immobility for patients awaiting hip replacements.

 

Flash-forward:

Public anger over economic failures is reminiscent of the 1970s, Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem said yesterday. However Macklem ruled out any interest rate relief in 2024 as “a huge mistake.”

Canada: the Land of Corporate Welfare and Money-Laundering

But don't take MY word for it:

The network of an elite Chinese Mafia suspect with significant industrial assets in British Columbia has been implicated “in recent RCMP investigations of CCP police stations in Canada, and other countries,” according to a sweeping new report from a United States anti-corruption NGO.

The report cites a collection of stunning cases and statistics to argue that transnational criminal networks with ties to China, Iran and Russia are using Canada to launder tens of billions annually, and related economic and political operations are undermining safety and democracy in the West.

Calling for urgent action in Ottawa, including legal and institutional reforms, it says: “Canada has become a safe zone for the world’s most notorious crime groups and threat networks that are harming Canada’s national security and imperilling the security of other nations.”

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When the Ontario and federal governments greenlit one of the biggest corporate subsidy payouts in Canadian history last summer, their main pitch was the deal would create jobs.

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“The governments of Canada and Ontario are partnering to attract once-in-a-generation projects that will anchor our auto manufacturing sector and keep good jobs in Canada,” reads the opening line of a July 6 joint statement announcing a record-breaking $28 billion in government “performance incentives” to secure two foreign-owned EV battery factories in Southern Ontario.

The subsidy-per-job ratio was never great. Even according to the most optimistic estimates of government spokespeople, the two factories — one operated by Volkswagen, the other by Stellantis — would create about 5,500 jobs. Per job, that’s roughly $5 million in lifetime subsidies and tax credits.

But now, it appears that many of those jobs may not even go to Canadians.

Last week, during a visit by South Korean Ambassador Woongsoon Lim to Windsor, Ont., a social media post by the Windsor Police casually mentioned that “1,600 South Koreans” would soon be arriving in the community to staff the Stellantis plant, which is set to open next year.

The CEO of NextStar — the Stellantis joint venture operating the factory — hasn’t confirmed the 1,600 figure, but said in a statement that the “equipment installation phase of the project requires additional temporary specialized global supplier staff.” He added that the company was “committed” to hiring Canadians to fill the 2,500 full-time jobs at the completed plant

The revelation has sparked a wave of confusion and finger-pointing among the very officials who, mere months ago, were championing the plant as an unalloyed triumph for Canadian manufacturing jobs.

When the subsidy arrangement was first announced in July, Ontario Economic Development Minister Vic Fedeli called it a “historic deal” and “a great agreement” that “protects the thousands of jobs quite frankly that were at stake.”

But on Monday, Fedeli’s cabinet colleague, Labour Minister David Piccini, said he’d never heard of any plans to bring in foreign workers when his government approved $5 billion in provincial subsidies to the plant. “My message is simple; Ontario jobs first,” he told reporters, while adding that since borders are Ottawa’s jurisdiction, it was a “federal process” that brought in the South Koreans.

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In a Monday scrum on Parliament Hill, federal Industry Minister François-Philippe Champagne said “we obviously want to maximize Canadian workers,” and said he’d been on the phone with the CEO of Stellantis to “make sure of that.”

“This is a new technology … so you’ll have a few people, a very few people, selected people, who need to come to transfer technology,” he said.

The head of the Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce, meanwhile, has said that both levels of government should have seen this coming. “This is something that we’ve known, especially with a plant of this nature and magnitude,” Rakesh Naidu told CBC Windsor this week.

With the Stellantis plant set to receive up to $15 billion in payouts and tax credits, it represents the largest single outlay of government subsidies in Canadian history. Bombardier — which used to rank as the “most-subsidized” Canadian company — collected a mere $4 billion in public funds over 50 years.

The full text of the deal has never been made public, but the arrival of the South Korean workers seems to indicate that it was struck without any kind of provisions mandating that the plants would need to hire Canadian.

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Feds confirm gov’t has begun issuing permits to foreign workers to build taxpayer-funded #ElectricVehicle battery plant in Windsor, Ont.
PM @JustinTrudeau announced subsidies March 23, 2022 on promise to “create middle class jobs.” https://t.co/jxuW0D10LY #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/WByYkecYnv

— Holly Doan (@hollyanndoan) November 21, 2023

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Liberal MPs on the Commons government operations committee yesterday opposed public disclosure of federal contracts with electric auto battery manufacturers. The Opposition has asked to check whether taxpayers are subsidizing foreign workers: “If they’re so sure this is a good deal for Canadians, they’re certainly not acting like it.”

Keeping Canadian oil and gas in the ground, using taxpayer money on batteries that don't work, hiring people not Canadian, no investment, and keeping pensions Canadians have to pay for.

We are being robbed.

Gradually.

It's Not Your Money; It's Theirs

Canadians are happy to part with what they've earned and not care where it ends up or with whom.

To wit:

The profligate Trudeau government is proposing a tax reform to ensure fair tax contributions from all, but in reality it’s nothing more than a stealth tax hike designed to fill government coffers at the expense of Canadian charities. The tax grab is coming by way of proposed changes to the alternative minimum tax (AMT), and the country’s donors and charity fundraisers are upset.

 

Giving to charity is for suckers, right, Liberals?

Except for Justin's dad's foundation:

 

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The Liberals’ cabinet retreat in August, focusing on the rising cost of living for Canadians, ran up a six-figure tab from just one government department, while any expenses from other departments have yet to be disclosed.

The Privy Council Office (PCO) confirmed it spent $160,467.17 on lodging and transportation at the P.E.I. summer retreat. The costs were disclosed in a response to an order paper question by Conservative MP Tracy Gray.

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The total cost of the retreat could be higher, since the PCO was the only department to provide an answer to Gray’s question.

 **

Cabinet should consider directly paying individual reporters up to $45,000 a year in the name of diversity, says a Department of Canadian Heritage report. Direct cash payments would be in addition to rebates of $29,750 per employee at cabinet-approved newsrooms: “A paradigm shift is needed in the way traditional news media share the stories of Indigenous, racialized and religious minority communities.”

 

(Sidebar: what's a "racialized"?)

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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.

 **

But you benefited from Justin's largess. You even voted for it:

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.

Of those, 58 per cent are strongly in favour of extending the carve-out while 19 per cent report being somewhat in favour.

Thirteen per cent of respondents were opposed to that plan — seven per cent said they were somewhat opposed to extending the pause, while only five per cent reported strong opposition.

Ten per cent of respondents said they didn’t know.

 

Justin can't afford to ditch this tax because it is the thing that lines governmental coffers.

If people truly knew the terrible state of Canada's economy and how bad it will get they would bolt up their houses and run away:

Gone are any prior Liberal promises of a return to a balanced budget, and, instead, the federal deficit is set to remain stuck between $30 billion and $40 billion for the foreseeable future. By 2025, debt servicing payments are expected to top $50 billion per year, putting them roughly on par with the amount of money the feds spend each year on health-care transfers.

The Trudeau government’s usual counterpoint to all this is that Canada’s debt situation is still in great shape as compared to its peer countries. According to the fall economic statement, Canada “maintains both the lowest deficit and net debt-to-GDP ratios of all G7 countries.”

“Years of responsible fiscal stewardship have left Canada in an enviable fiscal position relative to our global peers,” reads an introduction.

But while Canada is still doing exponentially better than the debt burdens of places like Japan or the U.S., discussions of debt often contain a pretty glaring omission: They don’t account for Canada’s remarkably high rate of sub-sovereign debt. As a result, when the debt from all Canada’s 10 provinces is mixed in with its total federal debt, Canada suddenly emerges as one of the more indebted nations in the developed world.