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Freedom Convoy protests [Split from All things 2019-nCoV]

Arguing over which style of eating/which foods we eat in terms of their environmental impact is almost pointless. It doesn't matter what we do; there are 8 billion of us, and ANY method of eating/diet is going to have a hugely negative impact on the planet, whether it be emissions of Green House Gasses or destruction of habitat.

Agreed, so live and let live ?
 
Ok, so I asked you what policies were made by the Trudeau liberals that caused us to be in (or contributed to our being in) our negative situation, and you haven't provided one. You presented instead an argument that decisions were made to not do things that could have ameliorated our situation. Those aren't the same thing, "policies that made our situation bad" are not the same as "policies that don't help us get better". I'm still waiting for someone to tell me a policy or decision our current government made that materially contributed to our current economic woes.

Now, to your specific example about the whole LNG deal with Germany:
  • Germay (and mainland Europe in general) have an immediate need substitute their dependence on Russian gas supplies
  • Canada has no ready liquefied natural gas export infrastructure, and it will take at least 3 years before new projects come online
  • Europe is accelerating its plans to reduce gas use by ramping up energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy sources
  • Markets like Norway are more logical to fill immediate needs
  • Canada cannot ramp up supply before 2025, while Europe’s energy needs will largely be resolved by that time
  • Therefore, new Canadian liquefied natural gas infrastructure would be at risk of becoming stranded once it came online in 2025
Look, if you're going to talk about you and you're family's and your friend's problems right now, you can't use an example and say "things are this bad because the government is incompetent" because they chose not to do things that wouldn't have seen a benefit tot he economy for literally years in the future. It's not like if they had signed the deal, the economy would have suddenly gotten better over night.

So, do you have any other examples of decisions made by the Trudeau Libearls that either a. materially contributed to our current economic woes, or b. prevented us from being in a substantially better position today (i.e. would have prevented your friend from having to have his adult children move back into his house). I'll wait...

The list is pretty long, I'm not sure whether I should do a chronological timeline or separate the decisions in to categories? I think I'll do it by category 😁

To provide a bit of an executive summary before I begin, the Trudeau Government's model of Governance (incl their economic policies) can basically be summarized as Urbanist Socialism that sees increased Government Spending and Bigger Government as a solution to our problems.

It has greatly increased spending since coming to Power in 2015 and it's plan to accomplish this has been with deficits which will eventually be paid for with increased Government taxation.

Lets first look at Taxation:

When the Trudeau Government came to power they campaigned on a mandate of what can essentially be described as "Strengthening the Middile Class while Taxing the Rich".

Indeed one of their first policies was an immediate reduction in the tax rate of the "Middle Class" from 22% to 20.5% and also creating a new tax bracket for any income over $200,000.00.

This is a popular stand to take in Canada. Canadians seem to be naturally envious of those with more and any time someone says they are going to "stick it to the rich" that resonates with your average Canadian.

What the Trudeau Government has done since then though has been to tax everyone and anyone it could in ever increasing amounts. It has also sought to subject more and more areas of the economy and our lives to taxation.

Consulting firm Grant Thornton did a nice primer for small business owners and clients on the First Term of the Trudeau Government and their various new taxation schemes, you can read it here:


What has happened since then has been ever increasing amounts of taxation on basically everything and everything the Government could dig its claws into.

With every solution being More Government Spending accompanied by more taxes. The latest being Trudeau's Carbon Pricing scheme along with increased corporate taxes and taxes on banks and others.

It got so bad that Trudeau even caused a split in his own party with the various Red Tories in the party abandoning him, see Bill Morneau.


Here's the reality......

Trudeau Likes Big Government and Big Government Likes Him:

The PM and his cronies seems to think that the Government and more of it is the solution to everyones problems.

His policies are to increase the Government's control in all aspects of our lives. It's the equivalent of breaking our legs and then giving us crutches and telling us we should be thankful for the crutches we were given.

Trudeau has increased the size and scope of the civil service and the public sector. His Government has spent hundred of $billions of dollars on various Public Initiatives:

He has basically sought to undo all the changes implemented by the Harper Government and greatly enlarged the Public Sector. It's not even disputable, you can read about it here:


I don't actually think there has ever been a point in recent History where the civil service has wielded as much power as it does today?

What else is there to say?

Trudeau and his Government seem to believe in a few things:

1. The Government and more of it is the solution to Canada's problems.

2. The Government's focus should be on redistribution of wealth instead of wealth creation.


The Trudeau brand is a form of Cronyism mixed with Socialism. It's sort of like Crony-Capitalism, only "Business" is replaced with "Preferred Groups".

This picture summarizes the Trudeau Brand perfectly:

Crony-Capitalism-meaning.jpg
 
This is just the first one that came up but there are plenty of different sites with similar charts, beef is always near the top by a large margin. So you think that if people don’t have a freezer full of meat that they’re going to make a separate trip to the grocery store for every meal, just for meat, instead of getting it on their regular grocery trip? Ha!

Do you want the carbon foot print on most other foods produced in Canada? First hand experience not some wish washy green group
 
Arguing over which style of eating/which foods we eat in terms of their environmental impact is almost pointless. It doesn't matter what we do; there are 8 billion of us, and ANY method of eating/diet is going to have a hugely negative impact on the planet, whether it be emissions of Green House Gasses or destruction of habitat.
Agree.

The vegetarian lifestyle advocates love to greenwash their choice of food intake.

The Livestock industry have a lot of issues and they are trying to address them. But scale of production vs environmental stewardship is a hard row to hoe.
 
Agree.

The vegetarian lifestyle advocates love to greenwash their choice of food intake.

The Livestock industry have a lot of issues and they are trying to address them. But scale of production vs environmental stewardship is a hard row to hoe.
Yes. You have covered one of the key issues. The BEST example of crop and livestock production I know of is Gabe Brown and Brown's ranch in North Dakota (over 5,000 acres) that implements full eco-system restoration and management, high food productions, massive carbon sequestration and minimal fossil fuel use.
Mark Shephard in Wisconsin has the most useful orchard/livestock production system I can think of.

Their are excellent practices and management systems for farms of ALL sizes going forward (Canada could easily become a global breadbasket) but we are hindered by old and outdated paradigms, markets at the higher end kicking farmers to the dirt (Galen Weston, thats YOU!) and government feel good bureaucrats (there are government policies and funding that encourage people to eat less beef as an example and same government will also provide funding for beef producers especially large scale feedlots, kind of self defeating, eh?)

The one consensus for us farmers (large and small) is using the Gabe Brown six soil health principles and holistic management framework is one of the best food production tools going forward.

Herding ruminants (Cattle, yak, bison, sheep, goats, musk ox, reindeer are a few examples of domesticated ruminants) are the biggest nutrition bang for your buck, lowest carbon footprint (actually when managed half decently carbon sinks) and these ruminants can be grown almost anywhere globally.
 
This is true because you say so?

Nope, big nope. Its alot more of a multiplier and cascading effect than you realize. I felt the pain myself.

One small example I went through
-I average 35-50 customers a year freezer meat orders (I make about 10-15G a year from this)
-Customers very satisfied with the product
-Summer is rolling around, my customers are mostly urbanites that travel 2-6 hours to get their orders (Yes that far)
-I ended up with 3 meat order customers
-I follow up with my other regulars as to what happened
-Example of some of the reasons
---Gas is too expensive to make the trip
---We can't afford meat anymore
---We have to choose between hydro, heat and food
---We can only afford to buy Costco sale beef
---I have to sell my house, can't afford anything
---Etc

I am but one example of many, many businesses that feel the pain of the carbon tax. You, yes YOU make all these assumptions that its other factors (there are a FEW not many), However you seem happy to offer up explanation after explanation. Your tone deaf. End story.

I am only touching the tip of the ice berg on Trudeau's carbon tax. Just about all of his policies are a colossal failure and waste of money. Everything they touch is a boondoggle and prime example of mismanagement. Printing new money doesn't help. Continious waste of public funds. Extra elections when he said he wouldn't do it. Never answering in parliament for his actions. How long of a list do I need to make?

The government should be doing what they can to enable Canadians, not further hinder them.

The ship is sinking with an incompetent Captain and too many people are making excuses for him. Enough.

The current Government in Ottawa is retarded, anyone with any sort of business sense or basic understanding of economics will understand this.

The only saving grace is that everything is so bloody telegraphed by them that if you have any sort of basic understanding of commodities, you can actually make money off these dummies by playing the commodity market. I would personally be investing heavily in Potash & Fertilizer because of pending Government interventionist policies.

Also, the real killer for average Canadian is going to be the interest rate increases due to high consumer debt.

Any basis point increase made by the Government usually takes six months to actually be felt by the market so all these interest rate increases will only start to be felt later this year into next year.

They are going to absolutely crush average Canadians with high levels of personal debt. If you have no debt and cash in hand though, this is going to present a tremendous buying opportunity 😉
 
The current Government in Ottawa is retarded, anyone with any sort of business sense or basic understanding of economics will understand this.

The only saving grace is that everything is so bloody telegraphed by them that if you have any sort of basic understanding of commodities, you can actually make money off these dummies by playing the commodity market. I would personally be investing heavily in Potash & Fertilizer because of pending Government interventionist policies.

Also, the real killer for average Canadian is going to be the interest rate increases due to high consumer debt.

Any basis point increase made by the Government usually takes six months to actually be felt by the market so all these interest rate increases will only start to be felt later this year into next year.

They are going to absolutely crush average Canadians with high levels of personal debt. If you have no debt and cash in hand though, this is going to present a tremendous buying opportunity 😉

I think what you have to take in mind is that the average Canadian is lazy and superficial. They like big government, and they like the government solving and doing everything for them.

To the average Canadian the world juniors are all that matters right now. And that says so much in my eyes.
 
Also, the real killer for average Canadian is going to be the interest rate increases due to high consumer debt.
Most Canadians are naive/ignorant/uninformed enough to believe Trudeau with his garbage “we’re [Govt] taking on the debt, so that you don’t have to…” word salad.

I would personally be investing heavily in Potash & Fertilizer because of pending Government interventionist policies.
 
The Liberal plan to tax fertilizer into the ground to “reduce carbon” is going to be the death knell for hundreds, if not thousands of Canadian farmers. But that will help feed people, right?

As well, there is basically no oil company making any investment in Canada. Why would they- they can see how their efforts would be treated. If all the projects on the books in 2015 had gone forward (when “evil” Harper was still PM), instead of being regulated into nothingness by this Government, Canada would have had 2-4 million more BBL/day production capacity and tidewater capacity to get world price, instead of selling to the US for a discount. That we don’t is directly, 100% on this Liberal Government. The only reason the feds own TMX pipeline is that they made the business/regulatory environment so miserable for the Majors, nobody can make any money or get a project approved.

But, nothing is ever the Liberals fault…
 
And the overhead is increasing exponentially.... the camel's back is groaning:


Public service will swell to 409,000 in five years, PBO says​

“Oh, yes, they’re growing the public service,” parliamentary budget officer says, with an extra $2.3 billion earmarked for salaries and benefits.


OTTAWA – The seven-year hiring spree in Canada’s public service will continue with billions of dollars in additional spending that will push the size of the workforce to about 409,000 jobs within five years, says the parliamentary budget officer.

Treasury Board President Mona Fortier tabled the government’s latest spending plans – known as supplementary estimates (B) – asking Parliament to approve another $21 billion. That’s among some of the biggest asks in supplementary estimates other than emergency spending to deal with the pandemic.

In his latest report, Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux estimates $2.3 billion of this additional spending is needed for the salaries and benefits of an expanding bureaucracy, which pushes the wage bill to $55 billion this year. That’s more than $130,000 per full-time employee.




For context, here's where the jobs are going (cut from the article);
  • Canada Revenue Agency: 9,900 new recruits,
  • Employment and Social Development Canada: 8,500,
  • Public Health Agency of Canada: 1,900,
  • Immigration, Refugee and Citizenship Canada (IRCC): 1,750.
  • Canada Border Services Agency got $137 million to recruit and train more border guards,
  • Veterans Affairs snagged $115 million to help hire and keep case managers,
  • IRCC is filling 1,250 new positions to tackle backlogs.
On top that, Chief Information Officer Catherine Luelo says the public service needs to fill about 7,000 IT jobs. The military is short about 10,000 members.
They include the military within the workforce numbers, which accounts for about 25% of it. Apparently our civlian SWE is based on filled positions, not actual positions, which we've found out as we've tried to fill empty jobs. We currently have a hiring freeze on as a result, and looking at temporarily filling them with contracts (at a much higher pay rate). Genius. Some bright light probably got promoted by cutting our SWE years ago to 'eliminate' the placeholder for unfilled jobs, but weirdly we need those jobs filled to do things (and actually looking for new positions due to the increasing workload).

I guess 30 year old equipment will just replace itself. 🤷‍♂️
 
Eating bee

Eating beef by itself is NOT high carbon. I will go circles around you on farming in Canada. My cattle and lamb NEVER see a feedlot, they are on pasture one day and the next in slaughterhouse.
Driving 2-6 hours to fill a large freezer with meat in ONE trip is more efficient than 30-60 trips over six months to get weekly meat in grocery runs. YOUR making assumptions. Better dig in and get some facts first.

How is the carbon tax not a boondoggle? It isn't slowing people down (people still have to commute). It is slightly raising demand of EV (which are useless for the most part and really expensive). Hint, Canadians outside of the GTA and Urban Ontario think the Carbon Tax is causing more harm than good.
I'm a huge fan of this approach; we did it years ago but haven't been able to find anyone recently after the last guy retired. A side of beef was a huge amount of meat, but basically we were good for a really long time, and that was splitting it with friends.

Tasted much better as well, and we ended up paying about the same per pound as what I'd buy ground beef for at the grocery store.

I don't agree with the carbon tax either; aside from the upfront costs, it compounds on everything else. The better way to reduce people's transportation usage is to not build massively spread out cities; meanwhile the GTA is going to now sprawl into the Greenbelt.

If they wanted to do something federally stopping rezoning of farmland in specific areas (ie Golden Horseshoe) would probably be more effective, and also force the cleanup of former industrial zones for redevelopment.
 
The current Government in Ottawa is retarded, anyone with any sort of business sense or basic understanding of economics will understand this.

The only saving grace is that everything is so bloody telegraphed by them that if you have any sort of basic understanding of commodities, you can actually make money off these dummies by playing the commodity market. I would personally be investing heavily in Potash & Fertilizer because of pending Government interventionist policies.

Also, the real killer for average Canadian is going to be the interest rate increases due to high consumer debt.

Any basis point increase made by the Government usually takes six months to actually be felt by the market so all these interest rate increases will only start to be felt later this year into next year.

They are going to absolutely crush average Canadians with high levels of personal debt. If you have no debt and cash in hand though, this is going to present a tremendous buying opportunity 😉
“The government” doesn’t change interest rates, the BoC does
 
I think what you have to take in mind is that the average Canadian is lazy and superficial. They like big government, and they like the government solving and doing everything for them.

To the average Canadian the world juniors are all that matters right now. And that says so much in my eyes.
Yes, it's true.

And it's the real ruthless scoundrels who will make money off this situation. 😄

The Liberal plan to tax fertilizer into the ground to “reduce carbon” is going to be the death knell for hundreds, if not thousands of Canadian farmers. But that will help feed people, right?
Going to be real bad for farmers and us, going to be real good for the big producers though!

As well, there is basically no oil company making any investment in Canada. Why would they- they can see how their efforts would be treated. If all the projects on the books in 2015 had gone forward (when “evil” Harper was still PM), instead of being regulated into nothingness by this Government, Canada would have had 2-4 million more BBL/day production capacity and tidewater capacity to get world price, instead of selling to the US for a discount. That we don’t is directly, 100% on this Liberal Government. The only reason the feds own TMX pipeline is that they made the business/regulatory environment so miserable for the Majors, nobody can make any money or get a project approved.

But, nothing is ever the Liberals fault…

Again, for the few who have the capacity to take advantage of this situation, the best time to invest in these companies is now. Why?

Because companies like Suncor, Cdn Natural Resources, etc are transitioning to a "value for shareholders" model.

All of the smaller/mid-sized companies will be absorbed by these megacorps who will consolidate and develop a monopoly. They will then be able to massively increase prices due to having a complete monopoly on the market while delivering worse and worse service and conducting no new investment.

If you remain invested, you'll make more and more money off share buybacks, splits and dividend increases every year!

It'll be just like cigarette companies! There will always be people addicted to nicotine, no matter how many interventions the Government tries. Government policy actually made the existing cigarette companies that survived grow ever stronger! They are also wildly profitable!

Reduce supply and the available product becomes more valuable! Who knew!!!
 
…and the Public Service is independent too…and the CBC…and…
View attachment 75708

Austin Powers Doctor Evil GIF


🤣🤣🤣🤣
 
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