Justin Trudeau’s new giveaway plan stinks of desperation - "Quick, someone tell Doug Ford: Now’s your chance to secure federal billions for a tunnel under Highway 401. I kid, I kid. But it is hard not to escape the extremely Fordian air of the emergency policies announced on Thursday afternoon by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. A $250 one-time vote-buying cheque? Liberals were mocking the Ontario Premier’s plan for $200 handouts, right up until they decided to steal the idea. Instead of its euphemistic title of Working Canadians Rebate, they might as well have called it Our Last Shred of Dignity. It’s true, at least, that the federal Liberal plan will at least be means-tested, the cheques only going to those that earn less than $150,000, but that still includes an awful lot of voters who are not, by any standard, desperately in need of a $250 handout. If you are making six figures and cannot make ends meet, I think we can go ahead and call that a budgeting problem, not a revenue problem. There’s even less need for such largesse given the complementary plank to JustinBucks, a temporary, two-month pause on GST/HST on a raft of items: children’s clothing, snacks, restaurant meals, pre-made foods and, wait for it: beer. BEER. Technically, beer, wine, cider, and pre-mixed cocktails below 7% alcohol by volume, but you truly could not come up with a more Doug Ford-esque policy than cheaper beer, unless Trudeau announced a nationwide ban on road tolls and protected bike lanes... Pity the Liberals and their supporters who must now trot out and try to sell these ideas as anything more than the shameless adventures in politicking that they are, the product of a government and a leader that have been mired in lousy polling numbers so deeply and for so long that they are now casting about for any sort of rope to help them climb out. This is the same party that has for literal years now insisted that there was nothing to be done about the rising prices of consumer goods because inflation was a global problem, due to forces beyond their control and exacerbated by the necessary spending during the pandemic... The best evidence that this policy was thrown together on the fly, and in no small part because the federal NDP just proposed eliminating the GST on a host of items themselves, is that it isn’t particularly coherent. There is a distinct whiff of Christmas savings about the whole idea. The Liberal list of GST-exempt items includes party supplies, common gift items like toys, books and video-game consoles(!), and even Christmas trees. But the two-month exemption does not begin until Dec. 14. Anyone throwing a holiday party or doing their Christmas shopping before the middle of next month is out of luck... The Liberals, of course, also need the support of another party in the minority Parliament to get the changes approved, and the NDP has already signalled it will oblige. Ah how things have changed since the heady days of ... September. Remember those many months ago leader Jagmeet Singh furrowed his brow angrily (on video!) and insisted he was done with propping up Trudeau? It turns out he was not that done after all. All it took this time was a billion-dollar handout to voters. Rank populism: not just for Doug Ford, anymore."
Jamie Sarkonak: Trudeau's cynical GST 'holiday' that no one asked for - "they want us to squawk about the GST “holiday” that Canadians will supposedly embark upon on Dec. 14 for two months, plus the $250 cheque that will be going out to sub-$150,000 income earners. Essentially, it’s a bribe. It won’t go far and it won’t amount to much, but boy will it be a pain to administer. GST is suspended only for certain kinds of items: restaurant meals, prepared foods, packaged snacks, low-alcohol-content alcohol (such as beer), children’s clothing, toys, books and Christmas trees (nevermind that most people have bought their trees by mid-December). So, in less than a month, businesses large and small will have to figure out how to code this patchwork of tax exemptions into their systems, only for them to undo these changes by February. Oh, and it’s going to cost the government $1.6 billion in lost revenue. And for what? To achieve savings akin to the perks of a Costco membership: decent, but not life-changing, especially in the short-term. It’s estimated that $2,000 of spending in the GST-suspended categories over two months will amount to about $100 in savings. In any province where HST is in the picture, it’ll be even more because the feds are proposing to exempt the entire HST (whether they plan to reimburse provinces for the lost revenue, the feds haven’t said). The other handful of crumbs, the $250 “Working Canadians Rebate,” will go out to about 18.7 million Canadians, which equals out to a cost of $4.7 billion dollars. For very little gain, I add. It might win a few votes — if people haven’t forgotten about this stocking stuffer by the next election — but for most, a couple hundred bucks is gas money. It’s not going to make a difference in the lives of those earning, say, $120,000, and even for those in need, that one-time cheque doesn’t go a long way. And remember, this is on top of the carbon tax rebate, which evidently hasn’t won over enough Liberal support for the party to ease up on the cash handouts. Meanwhile, do you recall the deficit? Atrocious levels of federal spending have delivered us an annual interest bill of $54 billion . But sure, keep adding to that debt. The same could be said for the Conservatives in 2021, when they proposed a similar GST “holiday.” However, because it was the Conservatives doing the dumb thing and not the Liberals, one could expect a little more blunt criticism of the move. Back then, the CBC was fast to find sources who could label the move a “gimmick.” Critics aren’t so easily found on the broadcaster’s site this time around . Actual economists, at least, aren’t jazzed about the Liberal proposal. As University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe wrote on X Thursday, “The GST is a relatively efficient way to raise revenue. The government could have instead used the same fiscal room to adopt pro-growth tax changes that boost growth, productivity, incomes, etc.” A head-shake was also given by University of Toronto’s Rob Gillezeau: “A seasonal GST holiday is actually a dramatically worse idea than the NDP’s proposal to pull the GST off of items like diapers & children’s clothing. We’ve got plenty of high quality evidence showing this kind of measure accomplishes very little while draining fiscal resources.”... But efficiency wasn’t the point. The purpose of the tax suspension plus rebate cheque is to dangle a seasonally themed shiny announcement over people as they worry about finances during a time when the purchase of unnecessary products is expected. It’s about emotions, not financial sense... they’re sprinkling tax relief with one hand and firehosing inflationary policies and new charges with the other"
Of course, many of the people bashing Doug Ford for a $200 cheque are quiet here
CBC media bias is a myth
Of course, we will still be told that inflation is not the government's fault - only when it's a left wing government, of course
Trudeau offers more ridiculous nonsense on the economy - "the federal government announced a $4.7-billion tax expenditure, along with a two-month sales tax change that will create severe administrative and logistical nightmares for businesses, and whose effect on federal revenue the government seems to have badly miscalculated. According to economist Trevor Tombe, it will likely cost around $3.0 billion, versus the $1.6 billion the government estimates... next week Canada’s large and mid-sized banks will publish their annual financial results for the year ended Oct. 31. We can expect that every one of them will do so and that it will be a major news story if any fail to. By comparison, the federal government has a March 31st year end and yet, eight months later, it still has not got round to publishing its accounts for the 2023-24 fiscal year. The politicians running it evidently don’t have time to concern themselves with finances and the economy, either. Too busy, it seems, helping the prime minister prepare announcements of ridiculous nonsense."
Will the Liberals’ ‘tax holiday’ pay political dividends? What it signals - "Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet accused the Liberals of abusing the public purse to improve their position in the polls. “The Liberals have shown that when they need billions of dollars in order to literally buy votes, they find it,” he told reporters Thursday. Khan says that Canadians ought to be mindful of where the money is coming from heading into an election year. “We also have to remember, they’re kind of bribing us with our own money here, as governments like to do sometimes,” he says. “It’s a question of whether we value it and find it useful at the time, and, I imagine, remember it at the polls.”... Trudeau claimed Thursday that the Liberal measures would not reaccelerate inflation, which ticked back up to two per cent in October, in line with the Bank of Canada’s target. He also credited the Liberals’ fiscal restraint and efforts to reduce the costs of dental and childcare in Canada as helping to rein in costs and set the central bank up for lower interest rates... Mendes said that the sales tax exemptions will “mechanically lower inflation,” but the Bank of Canada will “look through” those effects and instead be more concerned about the impacts on growth and underlying price pressures. With expectations that the Liberal affordability measures could stimulate spending and economic growth, Mendes said he sees the central bank moving cautiously with 25-basis-point cuts heading forward... Asked about the sustainability of the proposed spending, Trudeau defended the government’s fiscal position. “Canada is on a solid footing. Our macro economy is doing well, but that’s why we’re choosing to put that in service directly of Canadians.” While Trudeau has touted the government’s declining debt-to-GDP ratio and other fiscal anchors, the Parliamentary Budget Officer has called into question the accuracy of the government’s projections. Last month, the fiscal watchdog said the Liberals were likely on track to miss pledges to cap the federal deficit at $40 billion in the last fiscal year. The PBO said in its economic and fiscal outlook that the federal government posted a $46.8 billion deficit for the 2023-24 fiscal year. It also projected that the deficit would decline to $46.4 billion in the current fiscal year — but that was before the latest slate of measures was announced. Khan says that the Liberal government, knowing it was likely to blow past its fiscal anchors, likely decided it was better to miss in a way that benefits the party and Canadians... Khan says that, after nearly 10 years in office, the Liberals also need to show they are committed to a new fiscal direction that will invest in growth rather than spend its way to a rising GDP. “Transfers to individuals alone, while they can solve a whole bunch of important problems, you do need an economic engine that’s generating wealth for people, but also for this government, too,” he says. “If you want progressive policies, you need to be able to pay for them.”"
Weird how a tax cut increases corporate greed, which as left wingers know is the cause of inflation
GUNTER: Trudeau Liberals’ latest vote-buying attempt laughable - "Just about 20 years ago, a Liberal named Scott Reid, who was party leader Paul Martin’s communications director, sneered at a campaign promise from Conservative Leader Stephen Harper. The Conservatives had proposed to give Canadian families $1,200 a year to spend on the child care of their choice — day homes, family members and friends or formal daycare. Reid sneered during a CBC panel discussion that the payments would just turn out to be “25 bucks a week to blow on beer and popcorn.” For his contemptuous remarks (and his insult to the intelligence of ordinary Canadians), Reid had to apologize and his boss, who was prime minister at the time, was forced publicly to assure Canadians “there’s no doubt in my mind parents are going to use (the money) for the benefit of their families.” Well, guess what the current Liberal PM has done now? In one of the most cynical attempts ever to buy voters’ favour, Justin Trudeau has openly and blatantly pledged to lower the cost of beer and popcorn. Beer and snack foods are two of the items named specifically in Thursday’s announcement to give Canadians a two-month GST holiday on selected items. What once was thought by snooty Liberal elitists to be beneath contempt has now become a straw this Liberal government can grasp at. Liberal strategists imagine this will win back ordinary Canadians’ support for Prime Minister Trudeau and his caucus... I suspect, if anything, this will push Liberals fortunes down even further. Look at their equally transparent attempt to buy back support in Atlantic Canada — last fall’s announcement of a carbon-tax holiday on home heating oil. Since that announcement last October, Liberal standing in Atlantic polls has continued to slide, although admittedly more slowly than before... More proof that they think Canadians are dunces: At his announcement in a fake kitchen in a studio, Trudeau was surrounded by ordinary food stuffs — bread, pasta, cereal, vegetables, fruit. Nearly all of the items in the background are already exempt from the GST. Always have been. The inclusion of tax-exempt goods is an effort to give the impression that this tax-holiday is bigger than it is. That is exactly the kind of manipulative misinformation this government is always complaining to be victims of. One other hypocrisy: The inclusion of Christmas trees in the list of temporarily exempted items. I love that Christmas trees are covered. However, since coming to office the Liberals have relied heavily on a 2015 Supreme Court decision forbidding Canadian governments from showing favouritism for one religion over the others. Recently, for instance, they claimed the Saguenay decision forbid armed forces chaplains from mentioning God in prayers at Remembrance Day ceremonies. They have been obsessed with keeping faith out of Canadian life, until now. But let their political lives be on the line and — presto! — they fall all over themselves favouring a Christian symbol over Jewish and Islamic ones. This government is so inept, it can’t even get vote-buying right."
William Watson: Christmas bribes? What kind of people do the Liberals think we are? - "That the money is borrowed means it is actually a gift from our children to ourselves, though mandated by us. There may be maudlin Victorian tales of virtuous poorhouse parents going further into debt to give their kids a second-hand rag doll or wooden top for Christmas. But for a 21st-century G7 country to do so as a matter of policy is perverse. Any parent who gets a cheque or saves some GST should stuff the money in their kids’ stockings, since they’re the ones paying for it. Best not to be wholly glum, however, as the sun recedes and the solstice slowly approaches. The blistering backlashes against last year’s Atlantic exemption to the carbon tax and this year’s attempt at seasonal self-bribery are two of the most heartening policy-related events the country has seen in some time. They suggest there may actually be a political market out there for sensible tax policy. Give us taxes, the biting condemnations of gimmicky seem to say, that are broadly based, have few (preferably no) exceptions, can therefore be imposed at low rates and are sufficient, but just that, to cover the truly necessary expenses of government — which at the federal level, given our constitutional division of responsibilities, are not actually that great, and certainly don’t extend to school lunches, municipal zoning, urban transit or several dozen other preoccupations of the current federal government."
LILLEY: Trudeau blames everyone else for his screwups - "Did you hear about the two guys who were in a stolen car that crashed into a TTC bus on Monday? They were out on bail but in Trudeau’s world, that’s not his fault, it’s not the fault of his catch-and-release policies including Bill C-75, it’s the fault of provincial judges and justices of the peace. This has been the false argument Trudeau’s government has put forward for some time now. It’s true provinces run the administration of justice, including appointing lower court judges and justices of the peace, but it’s the federal government that sets the criminal code. Under Bill C-75, judges and JPs were given very clear instructions to “give primary consideration to the release of the accused at the earliest reasonable opportunity and on the least onerous conditions that are appropriate in the circumstances.” Those are the rules the feds established and the ones they stick to even as provinces and police associations ask for changes. Oh, and if a justice of the peace does deny bail, they are often overturned by a federal court judge appointed by … the Trudeau government. On immigration, Trudeau released a video this past weekend explaining what is happening on the immigration front including changes his government is bringing in to reduce immigration numbers. What was the problem with immigration? “Increasingly, bad actors like fake colleges and big chain corporations have been exploiting our immigration system for their own interests,” Trudeau said. Interesting, because last I checked colleges and big chain corporations don’t run Canada’s immigration system. Sure, colleges and universities can ask for more foreign students, companies can apply to bring in foreign workers but it was still the federal government that decided whether to approve or deny those visas... When they aren’t blaming schools and companies, they are blaming provinces who don’t run the immigration system. Trudeau always says he wants to fight misinformation and disinformation and yet he and his government spread it Liberally. Take his claim on the carbon tax. “We’re facing a level of attacks of misinformation and disinformation,” Trudeau said at a conference in Brazil as he was discussing the carbon tax. He portrays everyone against the carbon tax as wanting to do nothing on climate change and a carbon tax as necessary to fight climate change. The United States doesn’t have a carbon tax and their emissions are coming down, Canada has one and ours are going up. Also, Trudeau refuses to admit what the Parliamentary Budget Officer has shown, when the total economic impact is considered, most Canadians pay more than they get back in rebates. In fact, a Trudeau minister called that claim by the PBO “disinformation” during Question Period on Monday. The way Trudeau sees it, his carbon tax isn’t unpopular because it makes life more expensive, it’s unpopular because other people are lying about it."
There're left wingers who believe all of this, so they blame provincial courts for not trying accused criminals even though Trudeau refuses to appoint judges and provincial governments for accrediting "degree mills"
Justin Trudeau and Kamala Harris share uncanny parallels - "In both cases, personal brands were created out of whole cloth with the shameless collaboration of mainstream media. Justin Trudeau was launched as leader of the Liberal Party after a remarkably undistinguished career whose apex was as opposition critic for secondary education and sport. Democrats want everyone to forget that last month Harris was a clear political liability, with 54 per cent of Americans viewing her unfavourably. Like Trudeau, Harris has been anointed in the hope she will win, rather than for what she has accomplished, and with barely a thought about how she will govern. “Sunny ways my friends, sunny ways” evokes a distant memory of crushed expectations and broken promises. Harris pledges the “politics of joy” yet is the standard-bearer of (decidedly un-joyful) “Trump derangement syndrome.” And she is distancing herself from Joe Biden’s weak (and joyless) track record on the border, inflation, crime and foreign policy... Justin Trudeau is the farthest-left prime minister in Canadian history. If her San Francisco past is prologue, Kamala Harris is a contender for that honour in the U.S. In spite of a centrist acceptance speech, she is likely to adopt many of the same dysfunctional progressive policies that have already played out in Canada: bigger government, profligate spending, targeted giveaways, tax hikes, support for favoured unions, intrusive regulation, softness on crime, identity politics, further limits on free speech and climate alarmism. Although light on policy pronouncements so far, Harris has promised a first-ever federal ban on “price gouging” in the grocery and food industries, which the Washington Post characterized as a populist gimmick likely to lead to food shortages. She supports rent controls, which reduce the supply of rental housing, and a $25,000 gift to first-time homebuyers that can only raise the price of housing. She also favours a 44.6-per cent capital gains tax, the highest in American history, and a weird 25-per cent tax on unrealized capital gains of the ultra-rich that three-quarters of Americans oppose. In her acceptance speech, Kamala Harris declared that growing the middle class will be a defining goal of her presidency. Justin Trudeau speaks frequently of “standing up for middle class Canadians and those working hard to join it,” although personal prosperity, as measured by GDP per capita, is near 2017 levels. Immigration is a problem for both Trudeau and Harris. Canada’s population grew by more than a million people in less than a year, due to permanent and temporary immigration (which a UN report calls a “breeding ground for contemporary slavery”). The result is a housing crisis, exacerbated inflation and increased demand for social services. Sixty per cent of Canadians, a record high this century, now believe we are accepting too many immigrants... On the Middle East, Trudeau was quick to abandon moral clarity and equivocate between a democratic ally and the genocidal terrorists trying to destroy it. He pledged not to sell arms to Israel, urged a ceasefire and called military action in southern Gaza “completely unacceptable” — even if not going in would assure Hamas’ survival as a fighting force. Harris was in full-throated agreement with Biden’s policy of urging the Jewish state not to respond after each attack, whether the Oct. 7 massacre, the 300 Iranian drones and rockets (“Take the win,” Biden advised Israel’s government), the Houthi rockets aimed at Tel Aviv or the more than 19,000 Hezbollah rockets raining down on northern Israel. Granted, America has been a critical source of military equipment, but its very public leaning on Israel stiffens Hamas resistance to a ceasefire. Crime is a growing focus in both countries. In Canada, violent crime is up by 33 per cent since 2015, arguably a result of Liberal catch-and-release policies. In the U.S., 63 per cent of respondents, a new high, tell Gallup the crime problem is extremely/very serious — which many people attribute to de-fund the police initiatives in Democratic cities. Climate alarmism and hostility to the energy industry are Trudeau’s principal obsessions. As for Harris, she cast the tie-breaking vote in the U.S. Senate on the deceptively-named “Inflation Reduction Act,” which was in fact the biggest climate bill in U.S. history. On the cultural front, Harris once enthused that “Everyone needs to be woke,” while Canada under Trudeau has been called the wokest country in the world. The two leaders are soulmates on DEI, affirmative action, critical race theory and equality of results over equality of opportunity."
Justin Trudeau is the only one acting like Donald Trump - "On the question of China’s interference into our elections, Justin Trudeau is doubling down on a familiar strategy: never admitting anything is wrong, denying he has any knowledge of whatever it is being alleged, and attempting to find a way to bait the Conservatives into doing something irresponsible. In this case, the prime minister seems desperate for the opposition to accuse him of colluding with China... Rather than acknowledge the seriousness of the claims, the prime minister’s initial response was concern not with what the CSIS leak revealed, but that there was a leak in the first place. He has also complained about “inaccuracies” in CSIS’s findings and is refusing outright to hold a public inquiry, in addition to suggesting that anyone asking about the security of our elections must be doing so for partisan reasons. Liberal MP Jennifer O’Connell similarly accused the Conservatives of using “Trump-type” tactics and Trudeau’s former principal secretary Gerald Butts dismissed the Globe’s reporting as “clickbait bulls–t,” as if they ran a front page story about cat videos. Are Trudeau and his supporters acting so defensively because China’s goals were to return a minority Liberal government to power? Is the prime minister perhaps feeling nervous after years of cozying up to China? Is Trudeau worried there will be questions about his years of ambivalence towards the threat China poses, be it in espionage, corporate theft, opening police stations in Canada, and de-facto kidnapping our citizens? Or does he fear questions about his government’s refusal to do more than barely acknowledge the genocidal policies being waged against the Uyghurs, the strangling of Honk Kong, and Taiwan’s ever present existential peril?... A true statesman would pledge to solve the problem. Trudeau is angling for a lead in the polls. After Global revealed Friday that CSIS was concerned that Liberal MP Han Dong is a “witting affiliate in China’s election interference networks,” Trudeau remained defiant and gave Dong his full throated support. “We are extraordinarily lucky and happy to have a Member of Parliament like Han Dong,” he said Monday. Trudeau even suggested that concern about election interference was driven by “anti-Asian racism.”... In fact, it is Trudeau who is the one acting like Trump, specifically 2016-era Trump when there was evidence of Russian interference in the U.S. election. Trudeau, like Trump, is pretending interference was not a problem, and Trudeau, like Trump, is attacking media and political opposition for even asking questions. Trump dismisses reporting he doesn’t like as “fake news,” while the Trudeau Liberals often do the same thing but call it “misinformation.” At least Trump’s defensiveness in 2016 could be explained away by mostly unsupported allegations of collusion, and hysterical claims his presidency was illegitimate. Trudeau faces no such accusations from anyone credible. However much the Liberals might wish it were so, the allegations of election interference are not coming from some crank far right yahoo. Democracy be damned anyway."
Some Liberal MPs issue a deadline to Trudeau: make up your mind to stay or go by Oct. 28 - "some 24 Liberal MPs have signed a document calling on Trudeau to go... About 20 MPs — none of them cabinet ministers — also stood up in the Liberal caucus meeting today to urge Trudeau to rethink his pledge to stay on as leader into the next election... When Trudeau emerged from the meeting, his only comment to reporters was that "the Liberal Party is strong and united."... Three MPs have come forward publicly to say they signed a caucus document committing them to making the case for Trudeau's resignation: Newfoundland's Ken McDonald, Prince Edward Island's Sean Casey and New Brunswick's Wayne Long. McDonald, Casey and Long have all said that while they want Trudeau to go, they're not yet willing to leave the party and sit as Independents. Speaking briefly to reporters before the caucus meeting, Casey said he'd like to see a secret vote to decide Trudeau's future: "I wish there was a mechanism for it, yes." McDonald told CBC's Power & Politics Tuesday that he and other dissenters have also discussed voting against the government if there's another non-confidence vote and they don't see evidence that Trudeau and his team are taking their concerns seriously... "The Liberal Party is an institution in this country, it's bigger than one person, one leader, and it's incumbent on us as elected officials that we put our best foot forward""
Opinion: Premiers should take Trudeau’s carbon tax back to court - "The legal issue stems from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to remove the carbon tax from furnace oil — a popular fuel source in parts of Atlantic Canada. When the Supreme Court okayed Trudeau’s carbon tax, it was because the government argued a national problem needs a national solution. The court ruled Ottawa could set minimum national standards for emissions reductions under the Constitution’s peace, order and good government clause: “The proposed matter of establishing minimum national standards of GHG price stringency to reduce GHG emissions is of clear concern to Canada as a whole,” the court wrote. The court went on to note that “the withdrawal of one province from the scheme would clearly threaten its success.” The Trudeau government applauded the decision, with then-Environment Minister Catherine McKenna proclaiming the carbon tax “an issue of national concern.” The government’s argument was climate change is a national concern, and the national solution is an evenly applied carbon tax. This is the legal rationale the court accepted. But Trudeau torpedoed that argument by creating a carve-out that mostly benefits one part of the country... If climate change is a national emergency requiring national coordination, why are some families allowed to escape the full brunt of the tax while others are not? By providing a break to specific regions, Trudeau undermined the constitutional justification that allowed the carbon tax to exist in the first place... Justice Malcolm Rowe foresaw this issue in his dissent in the original Supreme Court decision. He wrote, “regulations that have the effect of favouring or imposing unequal burdens on certain provinces and industries in a manner that cannot be justified,” would be unconstitutional."
Meme - "Justin Trudeau's greatest moments
Elbowgate
Cash for access
Aga Khan
Blackface
Groping
Left teaching in middle of year
India trip
SNC lavalin interference
SNC lavalin election donation
WE charity
RCMP interference
$6000 a night at queens funeral
Arrive CAN $54 million
Chinese interference convoy
Nazis in house of commons
Jamaica vacation
Emergency act unconstitutional
Record-high inflation
Foreign interference
Soft on crime policies
Carbon taxes
The most expensive housing to date
Fewer rights for hunters
Free drugs for addicts
Celeb photo ops
More federal debt
More tax hikes
Record food bank use
Slush Fund corruption
'I will lie cheat & steal to stay in power'"