Canadian Politics Thread

[Gurn]

28 minutes ago, bolt said:

The tolerant left wing

So are they all Nazis, for applauding the Nazi- or only some of them?

Maybe it's just the Liberals- or just the NDP or the PCC, or even  just the Conservatives in there.?

Or maybe they all got up to applaud at the appropriate time, and none of them knew the old guy's back story.

Can't be pissed at just one of them. Other than the speaker/ staff that didn't check into him.-Them you can hold to account-the rest just applauded like seals hoping for the trainer to give them fish.

 

[6of1_halfdozenofother]

7 minutes ago, The Lock said:

I'm guessing you're not here to convince people though. You're not here for a civil debate.

 

[Bob Long]

3 hours ago, Optimist Prime said:

and a thuggishness from a part of their support base that seems to be encouraged and endorsed by Poilievre. 

Sort of like if one of the two presidential candidates was reachign out to Timothy McVeigh or the Unibomber as good people and bringing them and their supporters into the tent. Not a perfect analogy but close. It is a scary notion that the brownshirt ultra minority has a seat at the coalition of voters that will enable our next Prime Minister. At least it is concerning to me. And I am fully aware that 80% of CON supporters are just a step right of center, but the part I worry about is the pandering to the minority of extreme right wing views, both in attempt to quash the PPC and to cobble together a winning set of disparate voters to give Poilievre's version of the Reform Party absolute power. 

 

All he has ever done is tell us he wants the power, he is very short on telling us what he will do with the power, and that scares me. Undoing what the last ten years of government has done is not a platform. 

 

its such a weird chest puff too. I think I see it in the guys around 35 now who lean con, they really seem like an angry bunch. 

 

 

[Gurn]

12 minutes ago, bolt said:

 QUoted 3 members calling the Cpc nazis.  Give yourself a Pad on the pad on the back for not partaking.  And now you want to instigate the implications of racism.  

Misquoted- 

Badly at that.

[bolt]

2 minutes ago, aGENT said:

 

Go ahead and look at all the countries ahead of Canada in things like quality of life. They're all "high" tax countries. It's literally THE point point of a Democratic society. To pool resources, to build something greater than the individual sum of it's parts.

 

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/canada-s-standard-of-living-falling-behind-other-advanced-economies-td-1.6490005

 

So why are we failing?

[Gurn]

32 minutes ago, bolt said:

You all sound the same but it was gurn. My apologies 

Wow, again with the fake news.

[Bob Long]

35 minutes ago, bolt said:

The tolerant left wing

 

oh poor you. I guess no one ever explained to you that while yes, we do have to respect your right to hold an opinion, no one has to agree with it, and are free to say what they think about it. 

[Warhippy]

Just now, bolt said:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/canada-s-standard-of-living-falling-behind-other-advanced-economies-td-1.6490005

 

So why are we failing?

I literally did this with you 6 or 7 pages ago.

 

Our production is falling due to lack of investment capital.

This is done at the corporate levels.

Corporations are raking in record profits and not reinvesting that money in to enterprises in Canada

They are hoarding hundreds of billions in cash

Every quarter sees record profits yet also increased costs of goods

Without that reinvestment, production abilities fail and start falling

The government can only fix areas of that via infrastructure including ports rail and highways

Any other intervention to force an increase in production means government take over or a changing of laws which is tantamount to socialism.

This has also been happening since the late 70s and really picked up steam through the 80s and 890s which saw the advent of reaganomics and NAFTA

Continued outsourcing of jobs and manufacturing coupled with a lack of refining and finishing aspects here due to no corporate reinvestment exacerbate this

 

But sure.  Go on and keep telling everyone it is because of the corrupt and inept government

[The Lock]

3 minutes ago, bolt said:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/canada-s-standard-of-living-falling-behind-other-advanced-economies-td-1.6490005

 

So why are we failing?

 

The post you replied to has the premise that Canada is falling because we don't have enough taxes. Nice that you're agreeing with him.

[aGENT]

9 minutes ago, bolt said:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/canada-s-standard-of-living-falling-behind-other-advanced-economies-td-1.6490005

 

So why are we failing?

 

That article is about GDP growth, which @Warhippy already covered for you the other day, not quality of life. And you might want to read that article as to what they're inferring 

Edited May 28 by aGENT

[Warhippy]

Speaking of which!

 

The average prices of increases food in Canada during 2023 and thus far in 2024 have been between 9% and 15%

The average price of fuel has increased upwards of 30 cents on the year 

 

This has been blamed on everything but predominantly on the government.  So the prices of everything have been absolutely jacked which is seen by the celebratory excesses of record quarterly corporate profits.

 

Minimum wage goes up in a week.  What is the over/under on a full wave of price increases by corporations (not small mom n pop businesses) to justify having to pay a measly 20 cents or so more an hour?

[Warhippy]

On 5/22/2024 at 12:57 PM, Warhippy said:

Opinion pieces aren't facts they're opinions interspersed with just enough information to narrate a position.

 

Some information though pertinent to your position from the article you posted.

 

Nor is this a short-run problem. It has been going on for decades. In the 1950s and 60s, Canada’s economy grew at a rate of more than 5 per cent annually, after inflation. By the 1970s that had slowed to roughly 4 per cent; to 3 per cent in the 1980s; to 2.4 per cent in the 1990s; to 2 per cent in the 2000s. Over the past 10 years, it has averaged just 1.7 per cent. Last year it was 1.1 per cent.

 

So if you look, it shows clearly this has been an ongoing issue since the 80s.  2 percent or lower through the 2000s through 2014 and then roughly 1.7 percent up until last year?  That .3 of a percent is what you're basing your position off of?

 

At some point all this is going to shake Canadians’ sense of their place in the world. If you took a poll, I suspect you would find most Canadians still think of us as one of the richest countries on Earth: maybe fifth or sixth. And at one time we were. As late as 1981, Canada ranked sixth among OECD countries in GDP per capita, behind only Switzerland, Luxembourg, Norway, the United States and Denmark.  But we’re not any more. As of 2022 we were 15th. Over the 40-odd years in between, Canada’s per capita GDP grew more slowly than that of 22 other OECD members. Countries that used to be poorer than us – Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, Germany, Belgium, Finland – are now richer than we are.

 

So essentially things were great until around 81.  81 is our benchmark by almost all of these statements.  it was fine until the late 70s but started to decline in the early 80s.  What happened globally in the 80s again?  Who was in charge in our nation that set this decline off?  Amazingly we're now behind powerhouse nations like Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Iceland, Australia, Germany, Belgium and Finland.  Do me a solid here, tell me the tax rates for those nations.  Then tell me what controls they have over housing costs, fuel prices and of course food prices.  The highest inflationary drivers in our nation that are causing the highest rates of issue among our population.

 

Knowing this matters but I don't think you care do you?

 

As the postwar baby boom works its way through the country’s age distribution, and as everyone lives longer, the combined effect is to create a society unlike any that has ever existed. By 2040, roughly 25 per cent of the population will be over the age of 65, up from 19 per cent today. Compare that with the early 1970s, when the over-65s made up just 8 per cent of the population. And within that total the proportions over the age of 75, 85 and 95 and beyond will exceed previous records by even wider margins.

(As an example: In 1971, the proportion of the population over the age of 85 was roughly six-tenths of 1 per cent. Today it is more than three times as high, at 2.3 per cent. Twenty years from now it will have doubled again, to between 4.5 per cent and 5 per cent.)  This has two obvious implications. One is cost, particularly the cost of health care. As a rule of thumb, per capita consumption of health care doubles for each 10 years over the age of 55. Now add in the cost of pensions, elderly benefits, and so on. All told, the C.D. Howe Institute’s Parisa Mahboubi calculates, population aging represents a net unfunded liability (promises to pay future beneficiaries of government programs, beyond those for which revenues have been set aside) on the order of $3.9-trillion.

 

So.  The aging population and outflow of money they are taking with them is one of the largest issues in our nation?  Not government spending or policy?  Huh....But we will have to pay them the large regardless up to almost $4 trillion.

 

That’s on top of the unfunded liabilities in the Canada Pension Plan – another $1.2-trillion or so, plus whatever is lurking in the Quebec Pension Plan’s books. On top of the federal net debt of $1.2-trillion. On top of provincial debts totalling roughly $800-billion. Add it up, and that’s an implied public-sector obligation in excess of $7-trillion, or nearly 2½ times our annual GDP.

 

So essentially, one of the largest issues we're facing is our social programs and safety net for the seniors of our nation.  I guess we could just scale that back.  Easy enough.  Cuts to social nets are what the Conservative brand do best and they'll be in office by this time next year give or take.  But then whatever; it's just the pension plan we've all paid in to since we were teenagers.  

 

Now factor in the second implication: relatively fewer people of working age. Not too long ago, there were as many as five workers for every retiree. Before long, that ratio will have fallen closer to 2.5 to one. No doubt increasing numbers of people will elect to keep working past 65, but not enough to make much of a dent in the basic arithmetic of population aging: much higher costs, with fewer people to pay for them.

 

So just raise the retirement age back to whatever it was back in 2012.  If they work harder longer maybe they'll die and that will alleviate the burden right?

 

The only way out is faster growth. It doesn’t have to be a lot faster, so long as it is sustained: that way we get the magic of compounding working in our favour. If we can get our growth rate up, and keep it there, year after year, decade after decade, the next generation or two will be so much richer than we are that they can afford to look after us in our dotage.

 

But our growth rate has been falling dramatically since the late 70s.  What's the magic number here?  Obviously the new guys will have a plan right?  I mean they've been campaigning that Canada is broken for almost a full year so obviously they have a plan right?

 

This is why it is right to call this a growth crisis: at the very moment we most need growth to pick up, it has all but petered out. What makes this especially galling is that it is almost never talked about in our politics. Party leaders hammer away at each other over growth in the short term, though they can do very little to alter it. But long-term growth barely rates a mention.

 

Oh...no.  Guess not.  They don't mention any long term strategy according to this.  They just say it's broken with no actual strategy on how to correct it.

 

The OECD tracks investment across its 38 member states plus nine others. From 2011 to 2015, the growth rate of investment in Canada was merely awful: 37th out of the 47. From 2015 to 2023, it was appalling: 44th, ahead of only South Africa, Mexico and Japan.

 

So prior to the corrupt inept terrible Trudeau it was merely awful.  Now it's appalling.  Because it dropped from 37th to 44th.  Ironically; what isn't factored in here is the level of investment  done within our nation, only outside investment.  

 

Simply put, our workers are less productive than other countries’ workers because they have less capital to work with. As recently as a decade ago, gross fixed capital formation per worker in Canada was within striking distance of the United States: about 95 per cent. It has since declined to roughly two-thirds. A similar decline has been observed relative to the OECD generally.

 

Our workers have less capital to work with.  Which is amazing considering the corporate entities they work under have to a company posted record profits every quarter since late 2020.  One would think all of that profit would go towards correcting this issue and seeing a general reinvestment within our nation and their enterprises here.  Instead we see prices increasing across the board and zero reinvestment of that money in to these companies that would increase capacity and production.  What we see is the government having to invest in it instead which is tantamount to socialization of corporate enterprise with our tax dollars.  

 

But seeing as how this is a general decline across the EOCD generally it isn't just Canada flagging here is it?

 

So this is the issue with opinion articles.  Normally people in the position you are taking just see a headline or take it from someone more eloquent and then regurgitate it as fact without reading the why and the where let alone the who and the when.

 

Everything here indicates that when Mulroney took power in the 80s and effectively tied our economy to that of the trickle down Reaganomics economy of the US lock step and then NAFTA we lost control over our growth and a slow decline became a slide.  It indicates that corporations are absolutely taking the money we are giving them, enjoying the profits and running with it while people blame the government for their lack of reinvestment in to our nation or their enterprises here.  It shows or indicates that higher taxed nations with tighter controls over food, fuel and housing are experiencing far better growth than our own nation 

 

But then this isn't my opinion; this is what you posted and it's not even your opinion let alone suggesting what you think it is.

 

This is my respnse to basically the same article posted about a dozen pages ago.

 

Ya never responded so I thought I'd bring it back for ya.

 

12 minutes ago, bolt said:

https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/canada-s-standard-of-living-falling-behind-other-advanced-economies-td-1.6490005

 

So why are we failing?

 

[Warhippy]

On 5/22/2024 at 12:22 PM, bolt said:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-is-no-longer-one-of-the-richest-nations-on-earth-country-after/

 

So you want to give credit to an Inept and corrupt Liberal Government?  We're being left in the dust by other nations.  

 

Judging by recent poll numbers luckily your opinion represents a fringe % of the population who think these Liberal clowns are doing a good job.

For the record, it is page 545 and this is the post you made I responded to.

[Ricky Ravioli]

17 minutes ago, Bob Long said:

 

which part? what your personal take is, or the talking points from the US that the CPC uses?

 

8 hours ago, Bob Long said:

 

It's almost like people take jobs to make money and have careers.

 

And yes Rick all your talking points in here are fed to you by the US right.

This. My opinions are my own. Not some bullshit like what I have bolded. As again I couldn't care less about American politics so don't lump me in with those jabronis 

[Bob Long]

1 minute ago, Warhippy said:

For the record, it is page 545 and this is the post you made I responded to.

 

you need to use qualifiers like "owned" and "destroyed" otherwise you won't get their attention. 

[Bob Long]

Just now, Ricky Ravioli said:

 

This. My opinions are my own. Not some bullshit like what I have bolded. As again I couldn't care less about American politics so don't lump me in with those jabronis 

 

maybe you don't fully understand the origin of the CPC talking points you use all the time on here. Take "parents rights" e.g., do you know the origin of that?

[Gurn]

11 minutes ago, aGENT said:

 

That article is about GDP growth, which @Warhippy already covered for you the other day, not quality of life. And you might want to read that article as to what they're inferring 

Colour me shocked, yet another misunderstanding of what people actually wrote?

Once apon a time there were people with conservative political leanings, that could discuss stuff in a reasonable manner.

Now- not so much.

All vitriol and deliberate misreading of what people say.

 

Edited May 28 by Gurn

[bolt]

37 minutes ago, Warhippy said:

 

Apply this appropriately to the Canadian political theater.  Bottom line is while it's incredibly unlikely anyone in government is actually a Nazi

 

Nazis and people that harbour those sentiments certainly have a serious voting preference though and it's a very specific party.

 

Why do you think that is?  Serious question 

 

Those who dislike immigration =ppc

 

The anti semites are gravitating towards the left. 

 

Extremist left- green

Extreme left- ndp

Left- Liberal

Center right- conservative

Extremist right- ppc

 

Edited May 28 by bolt

[Satchmo]

Just now, bolt said:

The anti semites are gravitating towards the left and those parties are welcoming it. 

WTF.  |This is one you are just going to have to back up or shut up. 

[bolt]

1 minute ago, Satchmo said:

WTF.  |This is one you are just going to have to back up or shut up. 

Do you think the protesters screaming for the death of jews are more likely going to vote Green, NDP, Liberal, Conservative or PPC?  

[Gurn]

5 minutes ago, bolt said:

Extremist left- green

maybe-maybe in the environmental side-- but they are a right leaning party in most other ways.

They would likely stand a better chance of true significance if they altered some of their financial stances to align closer with the Left.

Edited May 28 by Gurn

[bolt]

1 minute ago, Gurn said:

maybe-maybe in the environmental side-- but they are a right leaning party in most other ways.

They would likely stand a better chance of true significance if they altered some of their financial stances to align closer with the Left.

What right wing policies does the Green party have?

[Satchmo]

2 minutes ago, bolt said:

Do you think the protesters screaming for the death of jews are more likely going to vote Green, NDP, Liberal, Conservative or PPC?  

Please re-read my post and respond to what I actually said before you ask me a tenuously related question.   

[Gurn]

and

 

gotta admit- I'm surprised to see the greens as close to the Libs and NDP, as these show.

must have moved a fair bit left since I last looked at their platform.

 

might be where my next vote goes- more research required, but I'll take a look.

[bolt]

3 minutes ago, Satchmo said:

Please re-read my post and respond to what I actually said before you ask me a tenuously related question.   

You don't want to answer the question of what party they would be comfortable voting.  I wouldn't want to be lumped in with anti semites either.

Edited May 28 by bolt