In October 2018, Associated Press reported that two Citizen Lab researchers were being pursued by undercover operatives with false identities. The undercover agents had been inquiring about their work involving NSO Group, and also appeared to be trying to goad the researchers into making anti-Semitic or otherwise damaging remarks. After growing suspicious, one researcher contacted AP reporters. Together, they managed to arrange a sting during a meeting with a suspected undercover operative at a hotel luncheon with AP journalists secretly awaiting nearby; after the journalists approached the operative to question him, the operative fled, bumping into chairs and circling the room as he tried to get away. There also appeared to be two additional undercover operatives in the room. The operative that met the researcher appeared to be filming the researcher with a hidden camera during the meeting, and one of the operatives standing nearby appeared to be recording the meeting as well. The operative was later identified as a former Israeli security official. Responding to the AP report, NSO denied any involvement. It was later also uncovered that the identified undercover agent had previously worked on a case linked to the Israeli private intelligence agency Black Cube; NSO Group subsequently denied contracting Black Cube, and Black Cube denied involvement as well.[74]
In February 2019, Associated Press reported that at least four more individuals - three lawyers involved in lawsuits against NSO Group for alleged sales of NSO spyware to governments with poor human rights records, and one journalist who had been covering said litigation - were being pursued by undercover operatives for their work on NSO. Undercover agents again tried to goad the individuals into making racist or anti-Israel remarks. Two of the individuals were surreptitiously recorded by the undercover operatives. Channel 12, an Israeli television channel, obtained and aired the secret recordings made by the undercover operatives shortly before the AP published the revelations.[75] Channel 12 claimed the two individuals were attempting to smear NSO Group on behalf of Qatar.[76] Channel 12 also confirmed that Black Cube undercover investigators were involved.[76][75].
From Wikipedia. Using allegations of anti-Semitism to target critics and investigators.
This FinPost article is very thin. Not exactly providing adequate information for their target financial market readers.
I appreciate the OP’s effort to bring a diversity of news sources here, but this isn’t a particularly useful article other than to flag the announcement.
The Ontario government news release itself has more contextual information despite being written to promote the decision to consider an expansion.
The CBC story weighs some of the risks and concerns.
It’s US federal reserve among other research papers which may not translate to CA 1 to 1. However I wonder if a similar trend in sentiment. I see this quite often around housing prices. Yes, there was a surge and interest went up, but housing is still within budget for the middle class. The sentiment among young people seems to be I’ll never own a home and I need a million dollars.
A mortgage payment has doubled in 3 years to buy the same house (assuming price was even the same which it often is significantly higher) What are you even talking about? This is not normal, and it’s fucked up that somebody who got a house 3 years ago got to pay half of what somebody who gets a house today. This is not capitalism. The market was already artificially high before covid, and then we let the richest people leverage themselves to the max on free money and buy up all the housing supply. The youngest people had the rug pulled on them the hardest. If you can’t see that, I don’t know what to tell you.
It hasn’t doubled, but the past 3 years have been a difficult change, I completely agree. The return to more normal rates, plus the temporary surge with COVID have priced some out of a home. But both these increases are back to normal and this hasn’t priced out most of the middle class. It’s more expensive, and we should try to make housing more affordable especially for those that don’t make enough to own, but hyperbole like yours is exactly what I’m referring to. It’s not double and gen z home ownership rates in the US at least are better than millennials.
Buying points involves paying more money up front to reduce interest rates. Given that someone struggling financially wouldn’t be able to do that I don’t think it’s fair to include them in conversations about the affordability of homes. It’s also not a great idea to buy points if you’re uncertain about whether you’re going to continue living there. It can take years for the savings on interest to recoup the up front cost of points, so you could easily lose money if something happens and you end up having to move or sell the home.
Edit: also the numbers the above commenter used are not far off, in the US average interest rates in 2021 went as low as 2.65%, and average interest rates in 2024 have been oscillating around 7%.
Home owners buy points all the time. I’m not talking about the rich either, this is done at middle class incomes. And as low isn’t a real metric. That 2.65 was going out to folks borrowing less with excellent rates. The average person taking out a 750k loan was absolutely not getting that rate. It would have been closer to 3.5%. You seem to be mixing average with the absolute lowest rate.
I’m not mixing average with lowest rate, the average dipped that low in 2021, meaning lots of people were getting even lower rates than that. And yes, of course people with middle class incomes buy points. That doesn’t counter my point.
I don’t think it’s fair to lay current economic landscape squarely at Trudeau’s feet.
Everywhere is poorer, corporations have been taking an unfair share for a long time and it is only ramped up in recent years. The United States is in a similar spot
I’m a bit of a loop here, I tried to look them up and I mostly got some corporate BS about them rebranding. When you have time are you able to enlighten me?
Looks like execs got some prison which is a pleasant surpise coming from US.
My understanding is that the scheme went straight to nepo baby prime minister who appears to got away unscathed here tho being elite really does make you above the law.
Corporations don’t have a share. Corporations have shares. Shareholders own those shares.
That being said, the single biggest drain on most advanced countries lately has been real estate. The value of which has been increasing far more rapidly than corporate profits.
It’s land owners who’ve been taking too much for the last few decades, as was predicted would eventually happen in the late 1700s and early 1800s by early economists. It happened in Japan 30 years ago, and look where they are today. Tiny homes, overworked, declining population…
I think our housing markets biggest problem is twofold outdated zoning laws that only allow for single-family homes to be built and carcentric infrastructure that requires huge roads and parking spaces that require enormous amounts of public funds to maintain.
I think our housing Market’s biggest problem is that fucking rent is $2,000 a month… I don’t give a fuck about car Centric infrastructure or single family homes… I can’t pay $2,000 a month for rent. that’s the housing markets problem.
I don’t think it’s fair to lay current economic landscape squarely at Trudeau’s feet.
I agree. There is plenty of blame to go around. Trudeau, the other leaders, the MPs, and the very parties themselves going back to at least 1990 are to blame.
There is virtually nothing that can’t be traced back to changes in policy enacted by, supported by, and tacitly accepted by literally everyone involved.
Changes to EI that gutted the power of non-union employees.
Changes to business and labour policies such that “society owes me a business” and “nobody owes you a job” attitudes were fostered, then cemented.
Any subsidy or tax reduction or public funding of anything that generates private profit.
Complete dismantling of a world-leading social housing program.
Gutting civil service in favour of consultants and industry association advisors.
Allowing already weak anti-monopoly legislation to gather dust in a drawer.
The focus on the financial health of the stock market instead of the financial health and stability of the general public.
The idea that industry can self-regulate potentially damaging behaviours. It’s never happened. It never will.
And my favourite, running the country like a business. Every employer runs their business as a dictator. Who the hell thinks that’s the right model for running a country?
As someone who looks at a lot of data and charts I don’t remember seeing any charts where Canada isn’t gotten noticeably worse compared other G7 countries.
I actually find it hard to believe people don’t think Trudeau’s leadership has been a very significant problem for this country. It’s just laughable that anyone thinks Pierre is better.
It’s definitely true that we’re lagging behind other G7 nations and I don’t think our leadership is blameless just definitely not the only blame.
I’m skeptical we’d be in a better spot under different leadership but with climate change, war and late stage capitalism in full swing I won’t hold my breath.
I’m probably voting for NDP whenever they decide to call a election. I don’t think Jagmeet is going to be a good PM but if he can deliver voting reform that’s a lot more than I’d expect from anyone else.
NDP’s insistence that PR be the only acceptable voting reform possible is a primary reason we didn’t get voting reform.
NDP could have sided with the LPC and gotten us STV or Ranked Choice, but they sided with the CPC and asked for an unnesswcary referendum and a dealers choice PR system that they knew the LPC wouldn’t be able to support,and wouldn’t pass the senate in any case.
They didn’t have a majority on the ER committee. So should they have unilaterally ignored the majority report of the other parties and just ram through their own preference for STV? Or maybe abandon their grass roots party supporters and gone with PR, despite the fact STV was party policy, reaffirmed only a year or two before? How about the referendum the NDP supported by voting with the CPC in committee, should the LPC have ignored that and if ignore that, why not the whole thing? If they ran the referendum nothing would have gotten done before the next election anyway. This was honestly more complicated that I think a lot of people give it credit for, and the NDP Alliance with the CPC is no small part of that complication.
They didn’t have a majority on the ER committee. So should they have unilaterally ignored the majority report of the other parties and just ram through their own preference for STV?
They had majority in the House. They chose how the committee was constructed.
I’m really amazed how the people with 44 seats is suppose more responsible for something than the people that had 184 seats.
The initial proposed structure of the Special Committee was three voting members allocated based on each official party’s seats in the House (six Liberal members, three Conservative members, and one New Democratic member), with a member of the Bloc Québécois and Green Party leader Elizabeth May given additional non-voting seats.[6]
The structure of the Special Committee was criticized by the opposition party leaders, as the government would have possessed a majority of the committee seats and could unilaterally recommend alterations to the electoral system without the support of any other party. Interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose, the Leader of the Official Opposition, denounced the plan as “stacking the deck”, while Nathan Cullen, the NDP critic for Democratic Institutions, urged the government to reconsider this plan as well. The Green Party and Bloc Québécois additionally objected to their lack of voting representation on the committee.[7]
On June 2, 2016, Monsef announced that the government would support a motion by Cullen to alter the structure of the committee to have seats allocated based on percentage of the nationwide popular vote in the 2015 election and give the Bloc Québécois and Greens one voting seat each on the committee.[8][9] The Liberal caucus on the committee would have in effect only four voting members, as the chair would not vote unless there was a tie.[10]
To be fair, the Liberals wouldn’t choose a voting system that would see them lose access to power, which PR would: there would never be another election where they could get 30ish% of the vote but win a majority, which suits them just fine: they’d rather change seats with the Conservatives every few years than be forced to compromise with other parties.
The electorate in this country is much more left-wing and progressive than the politicians it elects, and PR would codify that. The Calgarian and Laurentian elites wouldn’t ever let that happen, which means that, if the NDP and BQ ever manage to form a plurality, they need to ram it through immediately.
And the Senate can pound sand: next to the Governors General, they’re a useless rubber stamp anyway.
I actually find it hard to believe people don’t think Trudeau’s leadership has been a very significant problem for this country. It’s just laughable that anyone thinks Pierre is better.
I keep having this conversation with people who hate Trudeau. I get them to list out their issues with him, and none are problems the Conservatives are looking to solve. But the anti-“woke” brainworm is just too strong. They will literally vote against their own interests to own the Libs. The Americanization of Canadian politics is already here.
Lol any reports of rent prices going down in this city are a lie. Any stories of a landlord adjusting their rent to charge a tenant less is fantasy. The housing market goes up, we pay higher rent, the market goes down we pay higher rent. Economy good? Higher rent. Economy bad? Higher rent.
Nobody passes on the savings, nobody is getting cheaper rent
What a bullshit article. Basically it’s looking at average condo rent prices and average is down slightly because more new cheaper end condos were built.
CBC’s headline (“Canadian economy grew 0.2% in February”) is factual - though I’d prefer if they just said GDP instead of “economy”
“Canada’s economy is losing momentum” is an unqualified statement so it can’t be factual - it doesn’t mention the measurement, aggregation bucket or the comparison baseline. It’s falsifiable but still quite subjective, because if you measure at a quarter-level analysts called it “decent”. Their opening paragraph is more objective than the headline:
The Canadian economy lost momentum in February as it grew at a slower pace than both analyst expectations and Statistics Canada’s previous prediction
And if you yank out the unnecessary subjective addition:
The Canadian economy grew in February at a slower pace than both analyst expectations and Statistics Canada’s previous prediction
You can see how that would have made a more factual but less dramatic headline
Canada’s economy grew in February less than predictions
There’s somewhat small blurb at the end stating what sectors actually saw change, but overall the article is to clearly to convey BoC should lower rates soon as it’s mentioned three times in a rather short article.
Sure they will…I’m sure that these asshole would be just as willing as me to move to Argentina to escape a minor increase in taxes. Fuck off chorus of Canadian businesses, you ain’t doing shit just like your asshole counter parts in America and Europe outside of bribing conservatives harder.
I remember when Europe taxed companies even more! The whole place died!! No Business! No Europeans! Nothing existed! Business ceased to exist!! it was horrible!!!.. Or was it business as usual…?..
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