When will #justintrudeau ever encourage housing construction? Just look at this map! Toronto is only building more towers than almost every other city combined...wait...what??? #canpol
"During the 2015 election, the Liberals promised to end a Canada Post program, which was then underway, converting addresses from door-to-door home delivery to community mailboxes." A bad — but politically popular — decision of the Trudeau ministry.
For more radical change, @acoyne proposed many years ago that we give #CanadaPost to the postal union and let them find solutions.
I wish we could take the cameras out of the House of Commons. It was bad enough when politicians were playing for a clip on the evening news; now they're angling for a clip they can share on social media.
Parliament would work better if the real audience speakers were addressing were the other MPs in the House.
@jerome Sure, #PierrePoilievre shouldn't have called the PM a wacko, and he should have withdrawn the remark once the Speaker asked him to do so. It's a lowering of the discourse, unworthy of any MP, let alone the leader of the opposition.
But let's acknowledge that debate in the House of Commons has been deteriorating for sixty years at least. It's not so much a matter of individuals, there's a structural problem. I think the underlying cause is that they play to the cameras.
Mr. Clark and PM Trudeau had learned their parliamentary craft before cameras came in and the point became to gain a 30 second clip on the evening news.
I'm not saying that parliamentary debate in Canada was some Socratic ideal in the past, but it really was better.
"In February 1849, the Rebellion Losses bill formally turned up in the House of Assembly, then located in Montreal, the capital being a moving target in those days, alternating between French and English cities. The debate on compensation was, on the surface, about the money. Really, it was about anglophone prejudices and fears, about losing power, about having to live in a world that was making less sense."
I supported the #TransMountainPipelineExtension project in principle [0], but not at any cost. For this reason, it was always unwise for the government to be main funder of the project, let alone the sponsor. $34B is a huge amount of money; will the economic benefit of the project come close?
[0] The world does need to act against #ClimateChange, but fossil fuels are so widespread and fungible that unilaterally cutting supply is ineffectual -- we need to reduce demand.
I've been somewhat surprised by how slowly organisations already present on #Threads have been at sharing their posts with the #Fediverse. If you're trying to broadcast news about your sports team (for instance), why not make a simple choice that increases your broadcasting range?
So I'm delighted to see that @theagendatvo has joined the Fediverse in the last few days. Welcome, Mr. Paikin and #TheAgenda.
Personally, I think the anglophones of Québec have a weak case for partition. The Cree and Inuit (inter alia), on the other hand, have at least as much right to their traditional territories as the residents of Montréal and southern Québec do to them.
Let me add further than I can easily envision an attempt by First Nations to resist secession flaring into armed conflict. The SQ tries to enforce certain laws, they find resistance, in the struggle shots are fired, armed camps appear and so on.
Your average English Canadian will not fight to keep Québec City or Montréal part of Canada, but he would have a lot of sympathy for the First Nations in such a conflict — I can imagine volunteers coming from elsewhere in the country to join in.
Here's my real opinion on the increase in the #CapitalGains inclusion rate in the recent federal budget: I don't think it was based on a belief it was necessary for "fairness". I don't even think it was based on a belief the gov't needs more revenue [0]. I think the #Liberals just wanted a symbol, something they can point at to claim that they are against the rich and for the middle class.
[0] The amount it will raise is not high, and PM Trudeau is unfazed by deficits.
"When the federal [gov't] announced an increase in capital gains taxes in its recent budget, the hike was defended, in part, as a way to ensure the wealthiest Canadians pay their fair share. But how exactly do we determine what a "fair share" is? Especially, as some data suggests, the wealthiest are already paying a larger share of the overall income tax burden."
@mpjgregoire It's all a matter of perspective, and no one entity is always consistent in their view point, but the C.D. Howe institute has certainly been described as conservative[0], if not sometimes right-wing[1] depending on the source.
The Fraser institute itself has been described as a right-wing[0] or libertarian[2] think tank. It also has a streak of climate-denialism[3].
@mpjgregoire There is an alternative to lower spending, and that is raising taxes as you mentioned. One of the ten points in the scheme rebuffs "populist" taxation, which seems to make their stance pretty clear: the reasonable way to raise funds to is shrink government and lower taxes. I'm not making a value judgement, just stating that it sounds pretty conservative.
"Up to and including Mulroney’s time, the grand commission was a distinctively, if not uniquely, Canadian way to conduct high-quality academic research, consult widely and consider policy options on vexing problems outside of the partisan political framework. In sector after sector, from the Constitution and fiscal policy to newspapers and fisheries, much of the architecture of federal policy was drafted by commissions."
"Gone is the plaster, the flooring, wiring, plumbing, elevator — in effect the surface layer of almost the whole interior. Now the empty shell is standing waiting for the order either to renovate it from the top to the bottom or to demolish and rebuild."