@dmacphee The headline is misleading. It doesn't surprise me that the Fraser Institute, the Montreal Economic Institute or the Macdonald Laurier Institute say foolish things about #ClimateChange, but environmental issues are a very small part of what they do. It's like describing U of T as a place to play soccer.
As for @acoyne personally, he believes climate change is real and that humans are responsible. He's told the public we should have a #CarbonTax for 20 years or more.
Imagine if Republicans actually got on board with this awesome idea instead of painting it as the destruction of America like they undoubtedly will. Conservatives have lost their way and their minds, truly. https://www.threads.net/@potus/post/C607StBrwUy
For reference for the curious, the Parliamentary Budget Office has announced that they miscalculated the effect of the #CarbonTax on Canadian citizens. A correction will be issued in Fall 2024.
It's always interesting when someone whose politics you think you know supports something unexpected: the NRA member who opposes capital punishment, the socialist who favours free trade, the pro-life feminist. How often are beliefs only found in a set because of a historical coalition, not any deeper principle? Do you hold any beliefs at variance with your political in-group?
@bluGill@laimis
I think some useful lessons can be drawn from the Canadian experience with immigration policy.
Immigrants can integrate well into their new home, and even high levels of immigration can enjoy wide public support, but the necessary precondition is that immigration must be in accordance with a system established by law. If the public feels immigration is mostly uncontrolled, then they turn against it.
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.
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.
@jerome Sure, #PierrePoilievre shouldn't have called the PM a wacko, and he should have withdrawn the remark once the Speaker asked him to do so.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.
"Menzies said the fundamental problem with the CBC is that it’s not so much a public broadcaster as it is a publicly funded commercial broadcaster that is competing with private news organizations for eyeballs and advertising dollars."
Here's my plan for the #CBC in the age of streaming. Keep #RadioCanada as is. Keep the news. #Telefilm becomes the home for funding new video; the #NFB produces videos in house and CBC TV becomes the distributer.
#CBCRadio as is; #RadioCanada as is; CBC News as is [0]; #CBC TV as a repertory broadcaster, more like #PBS; CBC Internet as a repository of Canadian taxpayer-subsidised videos.
No more direct competition with private networks for viewers and advertising; no more US game shows; no more CBC Sports; no quest to create a new hit show that also vaunts the Canadian identity.
[0] Maybe a few minutes on the hour every hour on CBC TV, similar to CBC Radio?
If you have impostor syndrome, just remember that you've never been summoned to Parliament to be yelled at by the Speaker and MPs for a couple of hours for doing a Very Bad Job.
@evan Yelled at? The admonishment seems to have been "On behalf of the House of Commons, I admonish you." Mr. Firth should have received a real dressing-down from the Speaker.
Americans are notoriously ignorant about the politics of other countries, even closely-allied ones like Canada, and I’m really not an exception to this rule.
However, I did just watch this video by a Canadian political pundit who provided a bit of insight, along with some bias.
Apparently, Canadian-Indians have somewhat disproportionate political power and tend to be Sikhs who support separatism from India, through the proposed creation of a splinter nation called Khalistan.
This isn’t just armchair support, but has included major acts of terrorism, including the Air India bombing in 1985, which killed all 329 people aboard. And this separatist terrorism is ongoing.
The guy who was allegedly (meaning: probably) assassinated by Indian operatives in Canada was one such Sikh separatist and had been accused of funneling money to terrorists.
At the same time, Modi is basically India’s version of Trump; a belligerent right-wing populist who’s killed before and way overstepped political boundaries with this assassination.
While Modi deserves to wear the black hat of the villain in this, it’s not clear that the victim is any less of a villain. There are no heroes to cheer for here.
And non-Indian Canadians aren’t cheering for anyone because they are generally ignorant and apathetic about the Sikh/India conflict.
The government just wants the issue to go away without souring Indian relations or losing the support of Sikh voters.
This is along a backdrop of the West courting India as a way to counter China…
"[M]onthly costs to service the federal debt are now at $4.3 billion — almost double what they were pre-2020. [...] Canada could soon be paying $50 billion per year to service its debt. That would be $1,250 per year, per Canadian, just to pay down the interest. It would also be a sum significantly larger than the $36.7 billion annual cost of the Canadian Armed Forces."
The current HFR project is working on connecting #QuébecCity to #Toronto via Ottawa. But for a fraction of the money, they could improve the line between #Ottawa and #Montréal and use that as a base to gradually increase service at 200 km/h speeds.
If the HFR project results in no more than a series of studies, then this would be an excellent path forward.
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.
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.
"Chrystia Freeland put out the bunting after her April 16th budget. The fiscal plan had three targets or “guideposts”: keeping the deficit below $40 billion in 2023/24; lowering the debt-to-GDP ratio in the current fiscal year, compared to last fall’s financial statement; and keeping deficits below one per cent of GDP in 2026/27."
But the Department of Finance now says the deficit was $50.9B.
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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.