Links - 8th December 2025 (1 - China's 'Peaceful' Rise)

Former CIA officer pleads guilty to spying for China, DOJ says - "Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, 71, of Honolulu, who served as a CIA officer over a seven-year period in the 1980s, worked with an unnamed co-conspirator in 2001 to provide Chinese intelligence “with a large volume of classified U.S. national defense information” in exchange for tens of thousands of dollars, DOJ said, citing the plea agreement...   Ma later applied as a linguist with the FBI’s Honolulu Field Office, where he served from 2004 to 2012.  “The FBI, aware of Ma’s ties to PRC (People’s Republic of China) intelligence, hired Ma, as part of an investigative plan, to work at an off-site location where his activities could be monitored and his contacts with the PRC investigated,” according to the DOJ release."

China won’t tolerate international criticism - "Companies can now hide information about their directors from the public. This means that an appointed politician distributing valuable contracts might well be distributing them to companies of which he or she is a director. And courts will no longer have to reveal the full details of defendants, breaking the age-old tradition of justice being seen to be done.  But Beijing is not content with removing the opposition from the political system. It is also finding new ways to punish and smear its opponents. And it is not limiting its attacks to Hong Kong and mainland China. Opponents of China’s treatment of the Uighurs, including academics, researchers and even the prime minister of Canada, have all been in the firing line.  Some of the punishments are bizarre. In Hong Kong, prisoners on remand have the right to be sent five 40g bags of M&M chocolates a week. But the manufacturer recently reduced the bag size to 37g. The prison service is refusing to change its regulations, so it’s now impossible to send prisoners a bag of sweets... the CCP’s treatment of its opponents is remarkable for its vindictiveness.  For example, academics producing research on China have also been attacked. Dr Jo Smith Finley, an academic at the University of Newcastle, has been focusing her research on the persecuted Uighurs. She has been sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party, which means that she is not allowed to enter China or to do any business with Chinese citizens.  Smith Finley’s treatment is mild compared to that meted out to Vicky Xu, a researcher and journalist working in Australia. She wrote a report on forced labour in Xinjiang, which was published by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. This has prompted a months-long retaliation on the part of the CCP, in which her family and friends in China have been interrogated, and faked sex tapes featuring Xu have been put online.   In the UK, Conservative MP Tom Tugendhat, Benedict Rogers of Hong Kong Watch and Andreas Fulda, a senior academic at Nottingham University’s Asia Research Institute, have all been targeted by Beijing. Fulda – who wrote The Struggle for Democracy in Mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which painted an unflattering portrait of the CCP – has received death threats. And after writing an article for The Times, warning of the influence of Chinese money on British universities, colleagues of Fulda started receiving emails, claiming that ‘he’s been showing sign of psychological issues that are symptomatic of delusional negative repetitive thoughts’."
From 2021

China’s GDP Growth is Now Lagging the Rest of Asia - "India and Southeast Asian nations are projected to achieve 6.5% average per-capita GDP growth over 2023-2026. China, however, is lagging the rest of Asia."

Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 on X - "Fun fact: After viewing classified material about the CCP's influence on TikTok, the bill to ban TikTok passed committee with a 50-0 vote. Fifty to zero, MAGA + centrists + DSA members were unanimous. All the accounts bemoaning this seem totally incurious why that might be."

Crémieux on X - "I just learned what was in the classified briefing on TikTok. Evidence that they're directly managed by the Chinese military."

Drew Pavlou on X - "When you open a link to another website from within the TikTok app, TikTok injects tracking code that can monitor all keystrokes, including passwords, and all taps. Please explain to us why the Chinese government have a First Amendment right to do this to 170 million Americans"

Will Spencer on X - "I was overseas during almost the entire first Trump administration. While America was saying “Russia, Russia, Russia!” the rest of the world was and is saying, “China! China! China!”  Take it from a guy who’s been around the world: China is very much our enemy.   Nations everywhere are watching themselves be economically colonized by Chinese cash, with thick strings attached.   Some examples that I’ve encountered just myself:
## 2016 - Buenos Aires, Argentina,
DAY ONE of my overseas travel, a local walking tour guide pointed out a massive, gleaming, glass-and-steel waterfront office and residential park. Not a person in sight, and the apartments were empty. The Argentinian tour guide told me without my asking that it was “owned by China as an investment property.”
## 2017 - New Zealand
The nation was debating the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill—which ultimately passed—to prevent non-NZ residents from purchasing existing homes.   Why? Chinese investors were buying them up.
## 2018 - Vanuatu, South Pacific
I sail into Luganville and notice a giant shipping facility, hugely oversized for this small, poor island nation. I come to find out that it was built by Shanghai Construction Group, for $86 million.   Where did Vanuatu get the money? A loan from the Export-Import Bank of China. Google it.   Also…  In the capitol city of Port Vila, I was told by a local Vanuatuan taxi cab driver (again, unprompted) that there’s a walled city an hour outside of town. It’s accessible only by passcode. And it’s full of Chinese workers.   Recently I met a man who’d done missionary work in Vanuatu and who validated heavy Chinese presence in the country.
## 2018 - South Korea
Visiting the DMZ, a Korean tour guide explains to me that North Korea is supported by the Chinese because the Korean Peninsula is the most accessible land passage into mainland China.   If a ground force wants to invade China, Korea is the way in. The oppressive North Korean regime ensures Chinese geosecurity.
## 2019 - Sri Lanka
Speaking with a local business owner, he explains to me that China has made huge investments into the country as part of the Belt and Road Initiative.   The business owner claimed it was for LTE cellular infrastructure, which was quite good across the country. But a Google search reveals there are actually 5 bigger projects China has invested in:
- Hambantota Port
- Colombo Port City
- Mattala International Airport
- Lotus Comm’s Tower, Colombo
- Norochalai Coal Power Station
## 2019 - Nepal
On a bus ride back from the high-elevation end of the Annapurna Circuit, down to the lower-elevation tourist town of Pokhara, I notice at least two large construction projects on the side of the road.   Both construction projects have big signs at the entrance covered in text, all written in Chinese.   The projects were hydroelectric dams being built with Chinese money.   AI lists two big dams being built by POWERCHINA with *235 more* such dams (which catch snowmelt from the mountains) being built across the country. An unknown number are being funded by China.
——
Short version: we are not in a unipolar world. China is a massive global power that hides its influence from the American people. If we don’t consider them our geostrategic enemy, they consider us theirs. And they’re behaving with their pocketbooks as such. Time to grow up, America."

Pope Leo: Britain’s surrender of Chagos Islands is ‘significant victory’ - "The treaty establishes a trust fund to benefit the Chagossians and says “Mauritius is free to implement a program of resettlement” on the islands, other than Diego Garcia. But it does not require the residents to be resettled, and some displaced islanders fear it will be even harder to return to their place of birth after Mauritius takes control...  Sir Keir’s Chagos deal would cost 10 times more than he claimed.  The Prime Minister claimed in May that it would cost £3.4bn to give away the islands. But the government’s own estimate is almost £35bn, according to documents under the Freedom of Information Act. Downing Street have disputed the figures and continued to defend its plan to give sovereignty over the islands to Mauritius, despite the country never previously having controlled them."
There're double standards, so good luck as they probably will never be allowed to return

Nick Tyrone on X - "The Chagos Island deal suddenly put a whole tranche of British liberals in the position of wanting Trump to start slightly early to stop it, which is really, really not where any of us wanted to be."
Thread by @blagden_david on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "This is why HM Govt’s enthusiasm for this deal is so baffling: you don’t have to be right-wing to dislike it.  It basically only satisfies the following constituencies:
- FCDO, NGO, and lawyer types who think it’s Terribly Important that the UK obey an ICJ opinion, (a) on principle and (b) because that will encourage others to obey international law (despite all evidence to the contrary, including from the US*, i.e. the base’s main occupant).
- FCDO, NGO, and (some) think-tank sorts who think that it’ll remove a major source of friction in UK/US regional relations, thereby encouraging regional states to line-up with our interests (i.e. hoping that being bullied out of a position will somehow grow our ‘soft’ power).
- Those on the critical left who say ‘decolonisation’ a lot, without noticing that this deal isn’t actually decolonisation, it’s just handing the Chagossian homeland to a different - and much less liberal - colonial power…and inexplicably paying for the privilege of doing so.
- Basically the same three constituencies in the US - the kind who, like their UK counterparts, say “rules-based liberal order” a lot, hoping to make it a real thing - but who have the advantage of letting a foreign government (ours) take the political heat.
They truly are burning a staggering amount of political capital - based on some ‘contested’ (realist take: nonsensical) theories of how international relations works - to push a policy that only pleases three minuscule sub-factions of the UK electorate."

Shopkeepers left demoralised by the authorities’ soft touch on thieving - "The ecological cost of the impending Chagos disaster has also been obscured.  Does the Government accept that this site of outstanding natural value – which should be a World Heritage Site – will soon be just another bit of ocean, as we help other nations exploit the huge no-fishing zone that is currently in place but disputed by Mauritius? The details of wildlife management are sparse indeed.  Does Britain have plans to benefit from the extraction of minerals in the archipelago that help us meet our growing green energy demands, but which we would never have dared mine when we were responsible for it?  And are politicians aware that the loss of one of the last coral wildernesses will conveniently obscure the havoc that humans cause at sea, and hide the resilience to climate change that the Chagos archipelago demonstrates?  Sadly, it’s even easier to do creative accounting with ecology than economics."

Winston Marshall on X - "Op. Rising Lion immediately exposing further lunacy of Starmer’s de-colonisation folly of the Chagos Deal - if US want to launch B2s from Diego Garcia, they must first inform the British who must inform Mauritius who are deeply tied to China, Iran’s ally"

Steven Barrett 🎗 on X - "I have seen this spun as 'de-colonialism' It isn't It's pure, old fashioned colonialism Giving a colony to a foreign power, for sums of money/deals, without bothering to ask its people - they may as well start wearing pith helmets 😐"

Labour accused of rigging debate over Chagos surrender by smuggling in 'killer' clause: 'This is NO democracy' - "A so-called "killer clause" of the Chagos Islands Treaty grants the Government power to make any amendments without consulting Parliament, a bombshell report has claimed.  Critics say Clause 5 of bill, made in connection with the UK-Mauritius deal signed by Sir Keir Starmer in May, enables the Government to change any part of the agreement by "Order in Council", bypassing the need for a vote or any dispute... [there was] a letter signed by over 40 senior MPs, peers, former ministers, and national security leaders calling on Donald Trump to stop the Chagos Islands agreement."

Meme - Barbie Agitprop @Barbi...: "Freaks obsessed with Tiananmen Square: hey what's this?" *1985 MOVE Bombing*
Kovalyow @Alexey__Kovalev: "And how did this image come into your hands? Did you smuggle it out of the country on microfilm roll disguised as lipstick, risking long-term imprisonment? Or did you download it from one of the most popular websites in the history of internet? (which is banned in China)"

Meme - 🔻 @uncle_authority: ""They use slave labor in Xinjiang"
"Source?"
"*study of 8 people conducted by the White Jesus Intelligence Institute For Infinite Military Expansion*"
vice lord @almagro75: "How do you address the fact that Uighurs currently make up 0.3% of chinas population but made up 20% of their prison population in 2017? There's clearly some systemic issues here where they're vastly over policed/ overprosecuted. (Chinas own data fyi)"
h u n t e r @mango_daddy13: "LMAO BRO YOU DID EXACTLY WHAT THE TWEET SAID"
vice lord @almagro75: "How does citing the governments own stats mean I did what the tweet said? Can you not address anything even remotely honestly? Lol"
Truly wonderful, the mind of a tankie is. They're so obsessed with Adrian Zenz they need to pretend that all the other evidence including interviews of Uighurs, satellite imagery and leaked government documents all don't exist

BMW to integrate Huawei smart-connect system into its China-made cars in 2026
When you hate the US, Donald Trump and Elon Musk so much, you decide to strengthen China instead (while probably violating GDPR)

Zac Goldsmith on X - "A Chinese state controlled mine has dumped 50 million litres of concentrated acid, dissolved solids and heavy metals into Zambia’s most important river - instantly killing the country’s most important ecosystem.  About 60% of Zambians live in and depend on the Kafue River basin for drinking water, fishing, agriculture. To call this a catastrophe for Zambia is an understatement. It is Ecocide.  This is the price Zambians are paying for allowing their country to be usurped by China."

Former Facebook executive tells Senate committee company undermined US national security with China - "Wynn-Williams served as director of global public policy at Facebook, now Meta, from 2011 until she was fired in 2017. “Throughout those seven years, I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine U.S. national security and betray American values. They did these things in secret to win favor with Beijing and build an 18 billion dollar business in China,” she said in her prepared remarks... she said Meta “ignored warnings” that building a “physical pipeline” between the U.S. and China would provide China with backdoor access to U.S. user data. These plans — called the Pacific Light Cable Network — never materialized, but Wynn-Williams said that was only because lawmakers stepped in... “This is a man who wears many different costumes,” Wynn-Williams said of Zuckerberg. “When I was there, he wanted the president of China to name his first child, he was learning Mandarin, he was censoring to his heart's content. Now his new costume is MMA fighting or... free speech. We don't know what the next costume is gonna be, but it will be something different. It's whatever gets him closest to power.” The hearing comes just days before Meta’s massive antitrust trial is scheduled to begin. The Federal Trade Commission’s case against the tech giant could force the company to divest Instagram and WhatsApp."

China Worker Shortage Has Xi Telling Kids to Study Manufacturing - Bloomberg - "Xi needs a pipeline of skilled laborers to keep the factories humming, of course, but with 1 in 6 youths unemployed, he also faces rising social discontent. Only 45% of the university class of 2024 had received job offers by April, when most campus recruitment ends, according to employment search website Zhaopin Ltd. For graduates of vocational colleges—which often have partnerships with companies that offer internships and placements—the figure rises to 57%. “There’s a structural mismatch between the job market and education,” says Kelvin Lam, an analyst at Pantheon Macroeconomics. “New graduates don’t want to go back to the factories.”... It’s a tough sell persuading parents to send their kids to vocational schools as they’ve long had the stigma of being an inferior choice for underachieving students. For thousands of years in China, the goal of studying was to pass the imperial examination and get a civil service job. University-bound teens today spend most of high school studying for a similar test called the gaokao, a notoriously grueling, days-long college entrance exam. The highest scorers go to the top colleges, while lower-scoring students end up at less prestigious universities or even vocational schools."

Analysis: Xi Jinping's personality cult shows signs of weakening - Nikkei Asia - "While continuing to brandish a big stick against Taiwan, Chinese President Xi Jinping's administration has recently signaled some flexibility on another policy front, the economy... The administration's economic pivot is significant, but something much more remarkable is taking place behind the scenes, where retired Chinese Communist Party elders and others have been maneuvering in a way that ensures they will affect China's future. One immediate effect has to do with Xi's personality cult, with some political pundits saying it appears to be suffering from arrested development. "It seems unlikely to strengthen any further," one said. "Might have already passed its peak," another surmised, with another agreeing that it "shows signs of weakening, albeit slightly." The 71-year-old president also serves as party general secretary and chairman of the Central Military Commission, or CMC. The complicated political maneuvering seemed to have been on display during a reception at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sept. 30 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. It could be divinated by looking at the seating arrangement. Xi sat at a huge round table at the front of the hall, flanked by former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, 82, and former Politburo Standing Committee member Li Ruihuan, 90. The arrangement was somewhat natural, given that other influential party elders were not able to attend due to poor health. However, Wen and Li are party elders who symbolize the era of "reform and opening-up" initiated by former supreme leader Deng Xiaoping. Among the other party elders sitting at the table was former Chinese Vice President Zeng Qinghong, 85. Zeng, a sharp politician, was said to be the right-hand man of late former Chinese President Jiang Zemin. As a "second-generation red," or child of revolutionary-era party leaders, Zeng is powerful enough to summarize the opinions expressed by party elders. Zhang Dejiang, 77, and Yu Zhengsheng, 79, also sat at Xi's table. When they walked into the reception hall, they beamed and waved to other guests... On July 15, the opening day of the third plenum, state-run Xinhua News Agency published a commentary praising Xi as an outstanding reformer. It stressed that Xi and his late father, Xi Zhongxun, had played big roles in the "reform and opening-up" policy introduced in the late 1970s. But the commentary, titled "Xi Jinping the reformer," was immediately withdrawn by Xinhua and even completely deleted from the internet in China. One source explained that the commentary drew a particularly strong backlash from some party elders, as it "smacked of a personality cult [around Xi], diluting Deng Xiaoping's great achievement and further enhancing the current top leader's authority." Partly because of a slight change in China's political zeitgeist due to the article's deletion, the leadership team was forced to make a move. After careful consideration during the summer, it finally admitted the economy was in dire straits. The admission came on Sept. 26 during a meeting of the party's powerful Politburo presided over by Xi. At the meeting, the Politburo determined that it was imperative to "face the difficulties" in the economy."
Noah Smith 🐇 on X - "China's elites quietly realize that they've purchased a lemon. Xi has fucked up a ton of times -- Belt & Road, Zero Covid, tech crackdown, "wolf warriors", Hong Kong, and the real estate bust. He's great at dominating the CCP but bad at everything else."

“My father is becoming radicalised by China-propaganda” - a daughter finds out there are more of such cases in Singapore - "A user took to Reddit’s Singapore community page to seek advice on what she claimed is self-radicalisation of her father due to his consumption of extreme pro-China content.   The daughter, who goes by the handle “poppraline”, posted a thread on this issue on Friday (24 Jul) – two days before Dickson Yeo’s case was reported. She shared how her father was watching videos “day, afternoon and night” that propagated the strength and prowess of China... She said she is bombarded by anti-US videos all day that speak with robotic voices.   As a result of this, she realised that her father has started verbalising “increasingly extreme and hostile comments”... Other users replied to her post to detail the experiences of their family members as well."

Meme - i/o @eyeslasho: "China is good at colonialism. No bloodshed, no occupation, no moral confusion — instead it just floods developing countries with its crappiest consumer goods, rapes their natural resources, and then sucks them dry with loan debt from falling-down projects."

China facing criticism in Africa for 'shoddy' quality projects - "Chinese projects are facing problems over “shoddy work” and “lack of transparency” on the part of their companies, reported the Hong Kong Post.  On February 11, the Department of Employment and Labour of South Africa filed a case against China’s Huawei Technologies in South Africa for not complying with the Employment Equity Policy of the country. Further, a Kenyan High Court last year ordered the cancellation of a USD 3.2 billion agreement between Kenya and China for failing to comply with the country’s laws, according to the media outlet.  Expressing unhappiness over China’s exploitative tendencies, President of the Democratic Republic  of Congo (DRC) Felix Tshisekedi has also called for a review of mining contracts signed with China in 2008. Noting that he wanted to get fairer deals for his country, Tshisekedi said, “Those with whom his  country signed contracts are getting richer while DRC people remain poor.”... with COVID-19 weighing down on economy, African countries are facing difficulties to service loans they have taken from China and thus they prefer to suspend controversial projects lacking unaccountability.  Moreover, China’s projects under its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are also being resisted by local environment and civil society groups in Africa.  Thus, Beijing is facing several difficulties in implementing its projects in Africa amid public opposition over work quality, environmental and social concerns"

Links - 7th December 2025 (2 - Left Wing Economics: Canada)

WATCH: MLA asks why does Eby dump on Trump, but let Xi go free - "Brodie referred to China’s interference in Canadian elections, hostage diplomacy and 100% tariffs on Canola oil and seafood and Eby’s refusal to sell U.S. wine and spirits in B.C. government liquor stores. “But instead of retaliating and railing against China, like he does with Trump, the Premier rewarded our economic enemies in China with a multi-billion dollar B.C. Ferries contract.”"

Trump not to blame for province's financial woes, Eby is | Vancouver Sun - "Finance Minister Brenda Bailey released a budget update Thursday confirming that Premier David Eby has thrown away the good financial position he inherited from his NDP predecessor, John Horgan... The $17 billion turnaround in just three years ranks as the most dramatic reversal in the B.C. government bottom line in the more than 40 years I have been covering provincial finances. Note, too, that Bailey only managed to cap off the deficit at $11 billion by bringing forward almost $2 billion in future payments from the settlement with Big Tobacco. The province won’t get some of that money for another 18 years. The province’s independent auditor general has challenged what Bailey characterized as a “standard accounting treatment.” She went ahead and counted the money as if it were cash on hand... New Democrats would have one believe that Eby’s debt loading was mostly undertaken to pay for schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, transit lines and other capital projects. In fact, the budgetary fine print shows that about half of the increase ($32 billion out of $65 billion) was to cover successive operating debts from program spending, not capital projects. Eby is outspending revenues at a record pace, making for record deficits. Interest payments are also rising. When Horgan left office, debt servicing cost $2.7 billion a year. Today, it has hit $5.1 billion with no end in sight. Interest on the debt is now the second largest program in government, exceeded only by the budget for the Health Ministry. Yet, in many ways, the most remarkable thing about the Eby government’s performance is that it has comparatively little to show for all this debt. Hospital ERs are still closing. Public safety is at risk in many communities. Ambitious NDP programs like child care have fallen behind, according to advocates. Bailey says the government is making progress on getting the budget under control. But you’d be hard pressed to find the evidence in the 75-page financial update released yesterday... The financial update showed that the minister had also presided over a reduction of 700 positions in the public service, mostly by attrition. That, too, is less than one per cent of the positions in a public service that the New Democrats have increased by almost 50 per cent since taking office... Finance Minister Selina Robinson, who served as Horgan’s finance minister after James retired, may have been poised to continue his record. But a few days after she delivered the above fiscal update, Eby demoted her to the ministry of post-secondary education. She became the first finance minister in modern times to be fired after delivering a surplus. Her replacement, Katrine Conroy, showed not the slightest interest in getting a handle on spending, deficits and debt. The only time I asked about a plan to balance the budget, she just laughed... she tried to put the first helping of blame on “unjust and unpredictable trade policies,” originating from Donald Trump’s America. But a comparison of this year’s books with the results from three years ago shows that the main perpetrator of B.C.’s fiscal fiasco is a fellow named David Eby."

The BC NDP Government is Allergic to Prosperity : r/VancouverLandlords - "Wealthy resource rich countries are currently busy building and growing entire cities out of desserts and forests, yet here we are, endowed with immense wealth, struggling to create roads, homes, schools and hospitals. BC's predicament is entirely the fault of the ideologically extreme BC NDP government that is allergic to any and all forms of prosperity. They are communists who get anaphylaxis the moment anyone dares to propose any sort of profit-making enterprise in this province. Whenever some enterprise or development does happen, Eby begins salivating at the idea of taxing it into the ground or giving it away in a secretive land claims deal. Cross the border into Washington State and see the vast wealth their government has created by nurturing industry, capital and investment. Do you think that the BC NDP has any plan to deliver that sort of prosperity to British Columbia? Our largest home-grown corporation is like what, Lululemon? And no surprise, the BC NDP and their supporters treat it and its founder as if it's some sort of terrorist enterprise. Do you think we have any chance of fostering a home-grown Boeing, Amazon, or Microsoft under the leadership of the BC NDP regime? Not a chance! It's been 8 years, what the heck is their plan? What is their vision? Eby has none. He's motivated by nothing more than ideological hatred for those who work hard, make investments, buy property. It seems to me that all the BC NDP wants is to create a class of drug addicts that depend on government handouts so they can foster a reliable voter base that they can use to stay in power."

What exactly is David Eby and the BC NDP's plan for British Columbia's economy? They have an ideological opposition to almost every single industry. What is their plan? : r/VancouverLandlords - "What exactly is David Eby and the BC NDP's plan for British Columbia's economy? There isn't a single industry (aside from the junkie-industrial complex) that they don't have some sort of ideological opposition to. Over the past eight years, the BC NDP has devoted considerable time and political capital to waging war on the real estate sector, which has also discouraged the very investment the construction industry relies on. They’ve driven away capital from the natural resource sector, maintained an ideological hostility toward the energy industry, and are now working overtime to squander the potential benefits of hosting the World Cup for the tourism industry. Meanwhile, manufacturing has sharply declined under their watch, and they’ve made little effort to attract global tech investment. And whatever remains, such as the film and gaming development industry, is now at risk of being decimated by American competition and tariffs. And the cherry on top is the record deficit. The province’s finances have fallen off a cliff. If the government is intent on opposing nearly every industry that generates tax revenue, where exactly do they expect the money to pay down this debt to come from? So, what is the plan? David Eby is an ideologue who doesn't have a clue as to what he is doing."

Donald Trump not to blame for B.C's financial woes, David Eby is : r/ilovebc - "They’re “saving” the lives of drug addicts while killing tax payers with poor hospital services and by spreading drugs to kids in suburbs."

Eby sees approval rating fall to new low, finds latest poll

Meme - Michael A. Arouet: "What happened in Canada will be studied by many historians and economists as the prime example of self-destruction of an otherwise prosperous nation after blindly following left ideology."
"Canada's living standards growth is even worse than Britain's. Change in GDP per person, adjusted for inflation"
Elbows up! Canada needs to spite Trump by destroying its economy!

Jamil Jivani on X - "The federal government wants to be your daddy and buy your kids' lunch. The federal government should instead be building an economy where you can afford to buy your own kids' lunch. Tell me what you think:"
Kristin Raworth 🇨🇦 on X - "What am I missing here? Isn’t it actually good to give children free lunch?"
Lee Humphrey on X - "The difference between a liberal’s (Kristin) way of thinking & a conservative’s way of thinking is pretty clear. Both want children to have full bellies, the Liberal thinks that it’s the gov’s responsibility to do that directly. The conservative thinks it’s the gov’s responsibility to minimize the taxes & regulations on businesses so the parents can make a good living so they can feed their children. Kristin wants socialism, the rest of us want free market solutions!"

Meme - Mark Marissen: "Amazing to see all the right-wingers on this app who think the world has ended or want to leave Canada because of a national school lunch program"
Anti-Taxxer @mapleblooded: "This isn't something to celebrate. Canada went from having the most prosperous middle class in the world to subsidizing school lunch programs in only 1 decade."
Rational Posts: "I think it's amazing every Liberal that says a school program is critically important for the kids, yet not one started a GoFundMe for a food program in their local school, volunteered their time to help it happen, and did not conduct one food drive for it."
Anti-Taxxer: "Liberals outsource their charity to taxpayers."

Taleeb Noormohamed 🇨🇦 on X - "On National Child Day, we’re reminded that every child deserves to be safe, healthy, and happy. That’s why we made the national school food program permanent to provide up to 400,000 kids with healthy, nutritious meals. No child should start the day hungry."
Jasmin Laine 🇨🇦 on X - "No parent should be taxed so high that the government strips away their dignity and wants a pat on the back for giving their child a granola bar."

The three villains of the Canadian economy - The Globe and Mail - "In the story of Canada’s sagging productivity growth in recent decades, there is a rotating cast of villains. Sometimes, high taxation is singled out for blame, with a outsized burden on personal and corporate income – choosing to tax success rather than consumption. Others point to the grip of a growing morass of regulatory red tape, with new layers added year after year. And still others see this country’s protectionist bent as culpable: restrictions on foreign investment that leave Canada badly out of step with other modern economies. The damage is plain to see. Canada’s productivity growth has lagged for years. Real gross domestic product per capita has flatlined over the last four years, with the second quarter of this year marginally higher than in the same period of 2021. Longer term, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has warned that Canada is projected to lag its peers in per capita growth in coming decades. Of course, each of those three bad policy choices, decades in the making, play a role in Canada’s deep-seated economic malaise. Each would be bad on its own. But together, they act to prop up each other – leaning on each other for support. Protectionist policies reduce competition, tempting governments to remedy the resulting market failures through regulation. The ever-growing number of regulations inflates the cost of doing business, but also shields incumbents from upstarts unable to afford lobbyists, law firms and regulatory compliance departments. That insulation from competition protects profit margins and makes the burden of excessive taxation a little easier to bear. And to bring it full circle, as the burden of regulations and taxation erodes competitiveness and dulls innovation, it increases the clamour for protection against foreign competition. The result is corporate complacency, a willingness to settle for the lukewarm results of not-bad profit margins. Economist and former federal finance official Don Drummond points out that successive federal governments have tried to deal with each of those issues, with at best mixed results. Mr. Drummond says something beyond numbers may be at work: a business culture that lacks ambition. Tinkering around the edges won’t deliver enough of a jolt to shock Canadian businesses out of their complacency. Incrementalism is doomed to fail because of the mutually supporting nature of the three villains. But a bold move against one could succeed in defeating the trio. Those defending the status quo like to say that Canada’s tax burden is not particularly high. And, superficially, they are correct. As the chart below shows, Canada sits precisely in the middle of the OECD, as measured by taxes as a percentage of GDP, as of 2023, the most recent ranking. And this country’s tax burden, at 34.8 per cent of GDP, is just above the OECD average of 33.9 per cent. But take a look at the components of that tax burden, and the problem is readily apparent... Taxes on personal income in Canada are much higher than the OECD average - half again as high. The gap is less pronounced on corporate taxation but still substantial. More telling is what is decidedly absent: any tax advantage for Canada in a world in which the fight for global capital is intensifying. There is an area in which Canadians have an edge over other OECD countries: consumption taxes. Canada’s value-added taxes are just three-fifths of the OECD average. That might sound like a good thing, except for this: consumption taxes are far less damaging to investment and productivity growth than taxes on income. Or to put it another way: Canada has chosen to heavily tax success, in the form of higher incomes and corporate profits... Taxes have one virtue – their cost is obvious. Not so with the second big problem gumming up the works of Canada’s economy: overregulation. A Statistics Canada analysis from earlier this year laid the problem out in stark terms, namely a federal regulatory burden that rose 37 per cent between 2006 and 2021, as the chart below shows. Just at the federal level, there was a net increase 86,700 regulations over that period. Add on top of that provincial and municipal red tape and you start to get the idea of the magnitude of the problem. The costs estimated by StatCan are staggering: a reduction in GDP by 1.7 per cent (about half the economic damage of the financial crisis); a 1.3-per-cent reduction in employment growth; and a 9-per-cent hit to business investment... For a trade-dependent economy, Canada is surprisingly hostile to foreign investment. Whole sectors are effectively off limits for companies wanting a controlling stake, ranging from the somewhat plausible (airlines) to the downright odd (fishery licences). Vincent Geloso, senior economist at the Montreal Economic Institute, estimates that nearly a third of the Canadian economy is protected from foreign competition, once health care and education are excluded. Even more jaw-dropping is this country’s international ranking on protectionist measures... Canada ranks 73rd out of 104 jurisdictions, and is the most protectionist economy in the G7 when it comes to foreign investment. The Scandinavian countries that Canada so often aspires to emulate have far more open economies. The politics of tearing down those protectionist barriers are daunting, to say the least. Target any one sector and businesses within it would argue, with some justification, that they will feel a full measure of pain without being able to enjoy the benefits of heightened competition elsewhere in the economy. The solution, then, is to abandon the failed incrementalist approach, and tear them all down at the same time. Without those protectionist barriers, Canadian businesses would face much more intense competition and would have to innovate and ramp up investment – or go bust. Without those barriers, Canadian businesses would not be so accepting of a lopsided tax burden. Or so willing to endure a morass of regulations. Every gang has a ringleader. And for the three villains of Canada’s economy, it is protectionism that keeps the gang together."

Moody: Liberals have made our tax system complex and inefficient - "In Canada, compulsory taxes have exploded in both quantity and complexity under the current Liberal government. In addition, the number of officials at the Canada Revenue Agency has grown to 59,155 in 2024 from 40,059 in 2015 — a staggering 47.7 per cent... For me, respect starts with controlled government spending. It then extends to a tax system that is approachable and understandable, is efficient in its administration, encourages and rewards hard work and risk-taking, and is competitive with other countries. A poor tax system is just the opposite: complex beyond comprehension, bloated with too many officials and it punishes hard workers and risk-takers. Canada’s tax system fits that description. Canada’s taxation system has also become a giant income and wealth redistribution scheme that is designed to achieve political goals (get voters addicted to cheques) rather than achieve good public policy."

City of Toronto imposes hiring freeze on non-essential workers : r/toronto - "Everything is going to shit because the government refuses to tax people. It’s becoming infuriating... People are idiots. You can’t run a city without the funds. It’s not just Toronto going through this. It’s all the municipalities, the provincial AND federal government. They should be directing taxes towards the wealthy and toward corporations. People will vote conservative against their own interests because they’re idiots."
Left wing economics - keep increasing spending and taxes (but not on me). Because higher taxes will be paid by "the rich" and "corporations"

City of Toronto imposes hiring freeze on non-essential workers : r/toronto - "Everything is going to shit because the government refuses to tax people. It’s becoming infuriating."
"Toronto has had well above inflation property tax hikes for three consecutive years: a 7% increase in 2023, a 9.5% increase in 2024, and a 6.9% increase approved for 2025"
"These tax increases should have been implemented long before but it’s been a bigger jump since Tory kept kicking the can down the line. Everyone will blame Chow or whoever else stepped in as the Mayor who had to eventually do it since the City is running out of money and property tax has not kept pace. Toronto still has one of the lowest tax rates in Ontario and has been able to get by due to economy of scale. Other smaller and neighbouring municipalities have higher tax rates than Toronto"
"Peak r Toronto comment, must be from someone that lives in a basement and pays no tax. Hey, did you know Toronto has a double land transfer tax, new condos have $160k development charge, property taxes have increased ~20% in the past three year and they have a massive commercial tax base?... Density should be driving huge tax revenue and economies of scale, not to mention the other items mentioned above. I didn’t even mention the fewer services condos get, garbage pickup not covered by the city, private snow clearing, etc.. This city has a massive spending problem."
Left wing logic - claim cities are more efficient then look at tax rates on home value, not tax dollars paid and then claim taxes are still too low

City of Toronto imposes hiring freeze on non-essential workers : r/toronto - "It’s estimated it cost up to $850,000 to rename sankofa square. It’s also estimated to cost 12.5M to fullly rename Dundas street. Are they spending our money wisely?"
"If you're not first willing to address the $1.2B we spend annually on police, then you're not actually serious about the "wisdom" behind our city budget."
"Regardless of the massive cost difference between the two, you can make arguments about the usefulness of police in a city. It's very difficult to argue the benefits of renaming a street."
"But it allows performative activists to pat themselves on the back without actually improving the means of anyone in the city"
"All I ever see on this site is "cops bad", "cars bad". These "Torontonians" want no cops and no roads. What they really want is to live in a field with nobody else around except ubers to take them out to socialize."
These are the same people who rage against CEO pay and claim that workers could be paid better if CEOs were paid less, when even if CEOs worked for free, workers would get a few cents more

Alberta tops in Canada for 'social mobility', Quebec dead last: study - "Alberta notably had fewer legal and regulatory barriers to mobility than other provinces, making it easier for residents to pursue quality education and training, enter occupations and find adequate housing close to where they work. Despite coming out on top, Alberta still had much room for improvement, earning just 57 of a possible 100 points. It fared especially poorly with respect to occupational licensing and regulatory takings... “The fact no Canadian province gets a grade of 60 per cent or above is an indictment of the web of regulations that have cemented society in place and prevented so many from bettering their situation,” said Renaud. “Canadians rightly expect to see their hard work pay-off, and government policy should not stand in the way of that.”... The index incorporates both policy-driven barriers to mobility and “natural barriers” like childhood poverty and family instability. Quebec finished 10th out of the 10 provinces in both categories, hindered by both low social capital and high government-imposed barriers to mobility. Brossard noted that Quebec has compulsory certification rules in place for 25 trades across the construction industry, more than twice as many as any other province. Workers who want to enter these trades must undergo months of training and apply for a government-issued license... Quebec also fared poorly on indicators of social connectedness like family intactness and hours spent volunteering. The western provinces generally ranked higher on the index than Quebec and Atlantic Canada, with Ontario falling right in the middle at number five."
Proof that Capitalism needs to be regulated. Quebec needs even more regulation to improve social mobility

Public grocery stores unlikely to bring down food prices, say experts - "NDP leadership candidate Avi Lewis is promising to lower grocery bills across the country by bringing in a national “public option” to compete with corporate supermarket chains, but economists say this could be a hard row to hoe for a meagre yield. “I think it would be profoundly expensive, and very difficult to make succeed, for a relatively marginal benefit for Canadians,” said Mike von Massow, a professor of food, agriculture and resource economics at the University of Guelph. “If you wanted to provide food support for low-income or underserved Canadians, (there are) much more cost-effective ways of doing that,” said von Massow. Lewis said in a recent interview that the federal government has the capacity to buy food directly from distributors and then sell it to Canadians at cost via non-profit grocery stores. “People cannot get by when they’re paying 300 bucks for a cart of groceries … when the market fails any industry, the government has to step in and actually provide an alternative that is not in the market mindset, where everything has to make a big profit,” said Lewis. Lewis called his plan for public grocery stores a “fantastically popular policy that I think (the NDP) can win with.” Five large chains, three domestic and two foreign, control roughly three-quarters of the Canadian market for groceries. The idea of a public option for food and groceries has recently caught fire in democratic socialist circles south of the border... Von Massow said that, even if government-owned grocery stores integrated seamlessly into the market, they’d still offer a relatively small savings for the average customer, given already thin profit margins for grocers. “So even if you bought just as well as Loblaws or Sobeys do, you would only be able to reduce the cost at checkout by somewhere around five per cent. And that’s not insignificant, but that’s assuming that they do it as efficiently as the big guys, and there’s no evidence that they can,” said von Massow. Profit margins average between 3 and 4 percent among Canada’s major grocery chains, according to the Retail Council of Canada. Von Massow noted that the federal government already has programs in place to help the food insecure, such as the national school lunch program and Nutrition North. Sylvain Charlebois, a professor of agri-foods distribution and policy at Dalhousie University, says he’s worried about how Lewis’s proposal will impact the already thinned out agri-food labour force. “Essentially, what Mr. Lewis is trying to do is make sure that food is sold at cost. But it’s incredibly dangerous to do that, because you basically undermine the value of the work that’s being done across the supply chain, from farm gate, to store, to restaurant,” said Charlebois. “You’re basically saying to Canadians, well, if you’re in the food business, you’re not allowed to make money … and that’s an incredibly dangerous message when we’re already struggling to recruit young Canadians to work in different areas of food distribution,” he added. Charlebois noted that the food industry has become increasingly dependent on temporary foreign workers (TFWs) in recent years, and more government involvement in food distribution would only further this trend... Kent Fellows, an economist at the University of Calgary School of Public Policy, says that it’s Canada’s geography, rather than large chains themselves, that’s led to the concentration of ownership in Canada’s retail grocery sector. “The firms themselves aren’t doing anything to keep new entrants out of the market … I think it is because of the economies of scale, particularly in the large urban centres that tend to be served by the big chains,” said Fellows. Fellows said that agglomeration allows the major chains to combine retail groceries with higher-profit-margin entities like pharmacies. He added that there’s a stronger argument to be made for small-scale public grocers in underserved areas than a national public option. “I think that argument really needs to be predicated on the notion that we now consider this part of the social safety net,” said Fellows... A spokesperson for rival NDP leadership candidate Heather McPherson said that she would soon be putting forward a plan focused on giving Canadians an “immediate change in the price of their groceries.” McPherson called in a video posted to social media last month for an emergency price freeze on staples and a windfall tax on the big grocery chains to fund the removal of the federal sales tax on prepared foods and snacks."

He’s cost taxpayers £200m: Meet Britain’s biggest Nimby

He’s cost taxpayers £200m: Meet Britain’s biggest Nimby

"[Chris] Todd, 58, has a claim to be one of Britain’s costliest Nimbys. Over the past six years, the group he runs, Transport Action Network (Tan), has brought numerous legal cases against the Department for Transport (DfT). Some challenged official policies defining so-called nationally important road infrastructure – big programmes where ministerial decisions can override the conventional planning process. But Todd has also brought court challenges against individual road schemes in the North of England and East Anglia with a total value of £2.5 billion. And while none of these cases has so far succeeded, the delays and uncertainties they brought with them have raised the costs of those schemes by £200 to £300 million. 

Decades ago, campaigners occupied construction sites when they wanted to stop road-building. Now they occupy the High Court, seeking permission for judicial review of ministers’ decisions when they grant consent for projects. Even Sir Keir Starmer, a staunch supporter of those using the law to assert their human rights, is exasperated. In January, the Prime Minister wrote an article condemning “Nimbys and zealots gumming up the legal system often for their own ideological blind spots to stop the Government building the infrastructure the country needs”. Activists were bringing cases they had no chance of winning, he said, hoping to drag things out to the point where the Government or industry gave up.

“They want to win for themselves, not for the country,” he went on, likening them to “Extinction Rebellion activists who block the motorway at rush hour, without a care for the hard-working people going about their lives”. Starmer singled out former Green Party councillor Andrew Boswell, who has brought a number of failed actions against a road scheme near Norwich, one of which was dismissed by the Court of Appeal last year for having “no logical basis”. People close to the DfT say he also had Todd in mind, but could not mention him because Tan had cases outstanding that he did not want to prejudice. One former DfT official, Michael Dnes, even posted about it on X, calling Todd “the Nimby the PM can’t name”...

He sees his group as the Government’s conscience, helping it to frame a transport policy that fits with the many environmental goals adopted in recent years, including new air-quality targets, the Paris climate accord and Theresa May’s decision to go from an 80 per cent carbon-emissions reduction by 2050 to net zero. “Maybe if someone in government could point out to me where we are on track to meet net zero, then I’d put my hands up and agree we were wrong to do it. But no one has.”...

True, direct action in itself never stopped roads being built once the works had started. But by imposing delays, protesters could sap the will of ministers, outlast a government, and even, through the media, win the PR battle...

The roads programme was already on the skids by the mid-1990s, as economic pressures squeezed the transport budget. The coup de grâce came with the arrival of Tony Blair in 1997. The new Transport Secretary, John Prescott, belied his “Two Jags” sobriquet and scrapped 113 of the 150 schemes he inherited from the Conservatives, promising to find radical new ways of beating the scourge of congestion. Roads were put on the back burner. “I will have failed if, in five years’ time, there are not many more people using public transport and far fewer journeys by car,” Prescott said...

In a country that took four years in the 1950s to build the 73-mile first section of the M1, from plan to opening, it’s sobering to discover how long modern road projects take. This 10-mile stretch of dual carriageway was first conceived in 2015, when Chancellor George Osborne revived road-building from its long slumber as a way of digging Britain out of its post-2008 economic malaise. The scheme went through three rounds of public consultation before the design was fixed in 2020; two years later it finally got planning approval, being signed off by then transport secretary Grant Shapps.

And that’s before a single digger came on site. Then came Todd’s challenge, on the grounds that the new road would generate excessive carbon emissions and destroy too many habitats. This added another year (and £150 million to the bill, according to National Highways), despite being thrown out twice by the High Court and then by the Court of Appeal. The scheme won’t now be finished until 2027.

It’s impossible to build a dual carriageway without having some sort of environmental impact. But I’m struck by the new road’s wiggliness as it carves through the countryside. “It’s designed to navigate around areas of environmental value – habitats, woods, hedgerows and so on,” says Gareth Moores, programme manager at National Highways. As we drive across the site, he points to a stand of trees in the distance: “We spent four months unable to work within 500 metres because an owl had nested there with its young.” Workers were only able to resume when the owlets learnt to hunt and left.

It’s tempting to attribute the slower pace of development to the fact we no longer disregard the natural world in the way our heedless predecessors did. But that’s not wholly fair: back in the 1950s, the M1’s developers might perhaps not have been quite as attentive to the welfare of bats and owls, but the route was shifted for environmental reasons. What we have undoubtedly done is create a hugely cumbersome system that is both slow and fantastically expensive. The Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet scheme is estimated to come in at £100 million a mile – eight times the £12.6 million a mile (in present-day terms) cost of the M40 extension north of Oxford in the late 1980s.

Many attribute this extreme inflation – at least in part – to the kind of legal warfare that Todd has made his stock in trade... He remains convinced that moving cars off roads and investing in buses and trains offers far more bang for the buck than new roads, and (ironically in light of how others see him) regards himself as a sort of public-spending watchdog. “The good use of taxpayer’s money is a key part of what we campaign on because wastage prevents investment in better alternatives.”...

By the late 2010s, new avenues were opening for legal action, ironically as a consequence of government efforts to streamline infrastructure decisions. Concerned by the time that it took to deliver Heathrow’s Terminal 5 in the 2000s, Gordon Brown’s administration moved to shield “nationally significant” projects from the vagaries of planning. The last word would rest with ministers on the basis of policies that laid out national requirements in relation to each sector: roads, aviation, etc.

Yet for all the speed ministerial override gave, it also widened the doorway to judicial review, especially if it could be argued that a decision conflicted with some other area of official policy, such as the UK’s increasingly complex skein of environmental and climate commitments...

Sam Dumitriu, head of policy at Britain Remade, a campaign group that champions planning reform, sees the growth in “lawfare” as a disaster for public infrastructure. “More and more projects are caught up in these challenges,” he says. “Each one takes a year even if it’s unsuccessful, and can add hugely to the cost of an already expensive scheme.” A recent review by planning barrister Charles Banner cited National Highways calculations that the added cost comes to £66 to £121 million per road project. While not rejecting the numbers, Todd says it’s “total bulls—t” to blame him for the high cost of roads, saying his challenges are just a “small part” compared to the epic wastage caused by poor governmental and National Highways decision-making.

It’s not just the direct legal costs or the need to keep construction crews hanging about. Judicial review reinforces a pre-existing problem: the tendency of developers to gold-plate everything to ensure it passes environmental muster. “It’s the chilling effect,” says Dumitriu. “Developers become more belt-and-braces about their planning application. Let’s say in the past you did one bat survey; now you do three or four. You worry that one public consultation may no longer be adequate, so you do more of them.” He points to the Lower Thames Crossing, a proposed £9 billion road tunnel east of London. This has consulted the public no fewer than seven times, and even paid £4 million to fund a bankrupt local council’s opposition to the bridge so it could show it hadn’t disregarded contrary views. Not that this will necessarily stop Tan from challenging the project, which the Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander cleared for development last month. Todd responded to the announcement by saying the scheme was “madness” that would block “better, cheaper, smarter alternatives”. 

The biggest worry for the taxpayer is that the financial incentives to bring legal action are so skewed in favour of organisations such as Tan. Under the Aarhus Convention, an international treaty, the UK Government is bound not to seek damages from citizens challenging it on environmental issues, and only to recover nominal costs (£5,000 for an individual complainant and £10,000 for an organisation). “It basically means that groups like Todd’s can crowdfund a few tens of thousands and tie the taxpayer up in costs worth millions over issues they know judges have rejected time and time again,” says one transport expert. “I understand there are issues around access to justice but this is ridiculous: it’s just a free hit.”

Michael Dnes, the consultant who used to work at the DfT, also perceives an agenda to piggyback on media interest, just like Swampy did years ago. “Every case gets lovely media coverage – ‘planners bad’ when started and ‘sad defeat for plucky campaigners’ when chucked out,” he wrote in January. This PR, he thinks, is priceless.

It’s easy to see why many are cynical about Todd’s motivations. When we meet in Brighton, he struggles to justify why Tan builds so many cases on arguments the courts have consistently rejected. One of his first challenges, against the then government’s £27 billion road investment programme, was based on the claim that extra carbon emissions from the road-building programme were incompatible with net zero. Yet despite the judge dismissing its argument as “unreasonable”, Tan has used variations of it again and again.

Todd’s answer is to say it’s not him but the judicial review process that’s defective...

The suspicion remains that winning in court isn’t the only point. While Tan routinely loses, sometimes the delays its activities impose can be decisive. After last July’s election, its long-running support of campaigns against two big road schemes got its reward when the new Government cancelled two projects – the upgrade to the A303 around Stonehenge and the A27 Arundel bypass – after years and many millions spent on preparation...

Embarrassed by stories about the HS2 high-speed rail project spending £100 million on a so-called “bat tunnel”, for example, politicians are trying to make it harder to drag out challenges. Banner’s review, set up last year by Rishi Sunak, proposed cutting the number of appeals a plaintiff can bring in planning cases from three to two – an idea Starmer has endorsed. Few, however, believe this will change much. Sam Bowman, an economist and pro-development activist, would like to see the Government pull the UK out of the Aarhus Convention and seek damages from those who bring cases that fail. “If the Government and the developers could claim back 10 per cent of what they’d lost, you could solve the problem tomorrow,” he says. If such a rule had applied with the Black Cat to Caxton Gibbet challenge, it could have left Tan nursing a bill of some £15 million. That compares with the £10,360 the group crowdfunded to pursue the case.

Such radical action seems unlikely under Starmer. So the only real recourse is to reform planning law to speed things up and make it mesh more smoothly with the UK’s environmental and climate laws; both to give developers more clarity about their obligations, and to reduce the scope for legal challenges. That’s a huge task and many think the Government’s new Planning and Infrastructure Bill, while welcome, is too cautious. But it’s essential, Bowman argues. “The process has gone mad,” he says. “People have to accept there are trade-offs between development and the environment. Nothing would have been built in Victorian times if we had anything like this.”" 

 

Climate change hysteria is costly in so many ways

Left wingers blame capitalism for high costs, when it's really all the nonsense they demand, because they hate development, change, progress and modernity

 

He's right that the juidicial review process is defective - just in the wrong direction

Links - 7th December 2025 (1 - Migrants: Canada)

Rupa Subramanya on X - "Out of status TFWs are putting down roots in Canada by getting married and having children. They know Canadian authorities will not deport them. Very soon, all these guys will bring their entire villages to Canada as has been happening for the last 30 years through bs policies like family reunification."
Racism! Xenophobia! Time to deport her for hate crimes

Rudra Verma on X - "Immigration from India has a weird pattern since Covid. More than 75% immigrants are just from Punjab in various categories like students , asylum seekers, temps etc Rest of 98% India has less immigration than China, infact most of the high skilled leaving Canada are Indians"

Rupa Subramanya on X - "It's no accident that all these men come from one region in India, not known for its scientists and engineers, but for drugs and criminality. Canadians who trace their ancestry back to this area are well represented in Canada's Parliament. The politicians represent key swing constituencies where the ethnic vote from this one region is crucial.   These guys protesting know powerful people with strong ethnic ties to their community have their backs, and that's why they're sticking around with a staggering sense of entitlement and protesting despite being out of status."

Rupa Subramanya on X - "Again, literally, every single person visible in this video protesting to stay as low skilled workers in Canada outside the Ontario parliament comes from one region in India: Punjab. They're even speaking in Punjabi. They are out of status and should be deported, instead, they're agitating to be allowed to stay in Canada.   Why do you think they all come from this specific region to Canada? Why not from western and southern India which send highly skilled migrants such as scientists, doctors, and engineers?  Why do you think they're speaking in Punjabi?  It's because Canadian politicians of all political stripes have long pandered to this one community but it seems to be especially bad among Conservatives at the present time, although all these folks were let in under Trudeau.   Remember, when Trudeau bragged in 2015 that there were more Sikhs in his cabinet than in Indian PM Modi's cabinet? That tells you everything you need to know about the pandering.   And it's gotten worse as evidenced by this sense of entitlement from these out of status protestors. It's not the protestors fault for being let into the country, but the protestors know that Canadian politicians are supine and have their backs. That explains their sense of entitlement.  And if Canadian politicians don't placate the protesters, they're going to face electoral consequences especially in key ridings that has the ethnic Punjabi vote. That's why they're speaking in Punjabi, to appeal to people in the community, and those that represent the community.   In my first ever column for the National Post back in 2020, I argued that such pandering is degrading the Canadian polity. Unfortunately, pandering is here to stay, distorting Canada's national interests, and electoral calculus will mean that's not going to change anytime soon."

Mountain City 🇨🇦🇮🇳 on X - "Almost all immigration woes stem from diploma mills and visitor visas i.e, influx of low-skilled Punjabis and Haryanvis. I work in construction for a major contractor. All those Punjabi firms in Surrey just hire Punjabi labourers. As you said, the community is very influential."

Rupa Subramanya on X - "If you want to see what decades of political pandering to a special interest group looks like, and how it corrodes a country,  read on.  A week after October 7, Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a key Khalistan figure, released a video praising Hamas and urging Sikhs to emulate October 7 tactics, including violence against Hindus worldwide. He has also urged boycotts of Air India tied to his own threats. CSIS and RCMP were investigating these threats in 2023.   The Khalistan movement carried out the worst terrorist attack in Canadian history,  the Air India bombing,  killing more than 300 people, most of them Canadians.  Yet CTV News @ToddCTV  chose to platform Pannun, without mentioning any of this, and even treated him as an “expert” on Canada–India trade, something countless qualified Canadian economists or even those who don't especially like India, could speak to.  Only in Canada do we see someone who has endorsed violent rhetoric treated as a legitimate commentator. It’s glaring and disturbing. Is there a simple explanation for this? That @ToddCTV  failed to do his homework so it's sheer incompetence or something more nefarious going on? Perplexing.   The point is you don’t need to like India, Hindus, or care about the Khalistan issue. But surely we can agree that a credible news organization shouldn’t platform someone who openly advocates violence against any group."

Kirk Lubimov on X - "The buffoons at CTV platformed a Khalistani extremist that mused with taking down planes and endorsed Hamas actions with a similar threat against India as some kind of thought leader on Canada - India trade talks. Oh and he had anti Hindu genocidal slogan behind him the whole  time.  The level of stupidity required to do that is off the charts."

Indian flag desecrated, violent slogans raised at unofficial 'Khalistan Referendum' in Ottawa as over 53,000 attend : r/OntarioNews - "White nationalist terrorist murdered people in 2021 and 2017 in Canada. Khalistanis last murdered people in Canada in 1985.  The fact that you don't even seem to be aware of white nationalists actively murdering Canadians is crazy dude. Educate your goddamned self.  And also, the only thing Hamas and Khalistani terrorists have in common is being not white. So in sum, you think all brown people are the same and don't count white terrorism as terrorism. Nice job outing yourself."
"Yes, those attacks in 2017 and 2021 were horrific — but they were hate crimes carried out by two individuals, acting alone. No organized white-nationalist terror group in Canada planned, funded, or coordinated those attacks the way Hamas or Khalistani terrorist groups have operated.  That’s the difference.  Hamas is an organized militant organization that planned and executed a mass-murder operation on October 7. Khalistani terrorists carried out the Air India bombing, the worst mass killing in Canadian history, and that was done by a coordinated network — not some random guy acting alone.  So pretending these are the same thing is just dishonest. A lone-wolf hate crime is evil, but it’s not the same as a structured terrorist movement with leadership, funding, ideology, and a history of coordinated attacks, bombings, and massacres.  Calling that out isn’t racism — it’s just being accurate."
Of course, the cope is that white nationalists radicalise people so everything can be blamed on them even if they don't actually organise attacks

Thread by @JDVance on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "While I'm sure the causes are complicated, no nation has leaned more into "diversity is our strength, we don't need a melting pot we have a salad bowl" immigration insanity than Canada.  It has the highest foreign-born share of the population in the entire G7 and its living standards have stagnated. And with all due respect to my Canadian friends, whose politics focus obsessively on the United States: your stagnating living standards have nothing to do with Donald Trump or whatever bogeyman the CBC tells you to blame.  The fault lies with your leadership, elected by you."
Clearly, the Canadian economy has been shit since 2015 because of Donald Trump

JD Vance takes a shot at CBC and Canada's 'immigration insanity' : r/canada - "It is fundamentally unjust to deny people entry based on criteria that would exclude most of our own population. It's pure hypocrisy.  We not better or more deserving than anyone else just because we were born here. We should accept far more immigrants than we do."
Time to blame "capitalism" for the problems that mass migration causes. Of course, left wingers advocate open borders on the basis of non-discrimination but advocate a racial caste system with "indigenous" people having special privileges

Ben O'Hara-Byrne on X - "If Vance's tweets were a trick to expose Maple MAGA minions on here, it's worked a charm. Not that there isn't some truth to his comments, but to cheer loudly and agree completely with a VP in an administration as incompetent and intent on harming Canada as his is pretty telling"
Jon Fraser on X - "Calling Canadians you disagree with "Maple MAGA minions" doesn't demonstrate any attempt at professionalism from a radio host. You can think whatever you want of Vance, but in this case, he was absolutely correct."

govt.exe is corrupt on X - "According to Steven MAcKinnon, if you're against mass immigration, you're MAGA. Mackinnon is a retard. 675k people have come to Canada in 2025, and the economy has only created 22k jobs. Mass immigration is economic suicide."
When you destroy your country to spite the US

Martyupnorth®- Unacceptable Fact Checker on X - "It's by design. The Canadian Liberals want our country to fail, and they will blame Trump and the U.S.A., hoping that naive Boomers from easter Canada will re-elect them as "saviours"."

Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 on X - "🚨BREAKING BOMBSHELL President of the CBSA union REVEALS that Canada lets in refugees via AN APP on their phone due to understaffing No physical interaction EVER occurs. They land and click a few buttons and walk INTO CANADA and get MONEY! .... 10% dont even USE THE APP!"

Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 on X - "🚨MAJOR BREAKING Blacklock's reporting that Canada will DISCONTINUE mandatory medical checks for refugees looking to become permanent residents this only 2 days after the CBSA union head revealed refugees can enter Canada by simply downloading an app. This is MASS AMNESTY!"

Burton Bailey on X - "INSANE Liberal officials REFUSE to reveal number of REJECTED ASYLUM CLAIMANTS that got healthcare. While 6.5 million Canadians don't have a family doctor, $900 million of YOUR TAX DOLLARS paid for 623,000 people to receive healthcare in our system. WHERE IS THE ACCOUNTABILITY?"

Jamie Sarkonak: Immigration plan doesn't solve Canada's overcapacity problem - "The immigration levels plan Prime Minister Mark Carney released Tuesday addresses Canada’s population overload in the same way that partially mending a plumbing leak helps drain a flooded basement. It doesn’t. Carney intends to give 380,000 people permanent resident status per year from 2026 to 2028 through regular streams; over the next two years, another 148,000 refugees and work permit holders will be granted PR as well — which means not everyone is going home, despite their temporary status. The government will also bring in 385,000 temporary residents (workers and study permit holders) in 2026 and 370,000 in each of the two years after. Altogether, that’s over 800,000 per year. A budget footnote quietly adds that these numbers don’t include asylum seekers, which aren’t being capped. These can come from a number of sources: visitor visas, illegal border crossings, students and temporary workers who abuse their status to claim asylum and functionally extend their time in Canada. And on that note, visitor visas aren’t capped either. If the only people using visitor visas were genuine visitors, this wouldn’t matter — but people come to Canada all the time on visitor visas, particularly from poor countries, to claim asylum and reap the benefits that come with. Processing their applications takes years, which gives plenty of time to access Canadian health care and lay down roots to support future permanent residency applications that can be made if an asylum claim is rejected. And thus, the basement will continue to flood. The Carney levels amount to a reduction from the shocking numbers of 2022 — 437,000 new permanent residents and 604,000 admitted temporary residents, for a total of 1,041,000 — and that fact will draw praise from those who hunger for any improvement. But that shouldn’t count for much. The 2026 plan is still higher than 2014’s 681,000 new entrants (260,000 permanent and 421,000 temporary); a return to these levels should be the base expectation, but after the Trudeauwave, we need even lower numbers to allow state capacity to catch up. Remember: each year we run at overcapacity is another year of artificially intense competition for young people in the job market; another year of higher-than-should-be housing costs; another year of the health-care system scrambling to serve; another year of schools desperately trying and failing to make room for all the new families whose kids get to study here for free, some without English ability. There are also the costs of cultural non-integration that we can’t really quantify... On asylum seeker and refugee health care, $1 billion is planned over the next two years. This is because our system guarantees health-care coverage to anyone who makes an asylum claim — and no one thought to change it when the migration avalanche hit Canada. This coverage includes the full suite of doctor access that a Canadian enjoys (usually after enduring a waitlist) and beyond: one helpful government information sheet explains that it includes prescription drugs, vision care (including one eye exam per year and a pair of glasses), dentures, psychological counselling, mobility aids, oxygen equipment and ambulance fees. Another $479 million is planned over the next three years for “Asylum System and Legal Aid Capacity,” which means that we’re paying for their lawyers, too. Some of this funding is also going to the Canada Border Services Agency, whose job it is to enforce and deport, but the agency is also facing a two per cent budget cut... Nothing in the budget directly addresses the problem that Canada will face in the coming years: the 2.4 million people whose temporary visas will be expiring in 2025 and 2026, but who may very well stay. Some will be upgraded to permanent residents, and the rest will be expected to leave. That will be difficult to actually enforce, considering that we don’t track the number of overstays as is, and that various procedural avenues — asylum claims and appeals, among others — allow these individuals to fight deportation for years afterward."
Looks like "capitalism" and "corporate greed" will continue to get worse, driving housing, food and other prices up

Growth of food delivery platforms is based on cheap labour - "Food delivery is booming. One in four Canadians regularly use apps such as Uber Eats, DoorDash and Skip, up from one in five a few weeks before the pandemic, according to recent data from the Agri-Food Analytics Lab at Dalhousie University. These platforms have grown exponentially in recent years — both in sales and the number of delivery workers they recruit. In their paper published in the Journal of Canadian Labour Studies, Baril and Mircea Vultur of l’Institut national de la recherche scientifique show that this growth depends on the cheap labour of young and immigrant workers. Baril has been studying delivery platforms since 2016, first focusing on Uber rideshare, “the only app at the time.” He began examining food delivery apps when he started his PhD at Toronto’s York University in 2019, and worked as a courier himself in the summer of 2021. He used a regular bike but quickly realized that in order to work for more than a few hours at a time, he needed an e-bike, which can run thousands of dollars and is costly to rent... Across North America and Europe, the pandemic brought a new wave of young, immigrant workers, says Baril. Food delivery app recruitment went up, and pay floors went down. “As working conditions got worse and worse, we saw the changing of the workforce towards more precarious immigrants.”... tipping has only become more significant. Pre-pandemic, tips were five to 15 per cent of the total income for an order. Today, they make up roughly 30 to 50 per cent. “The pay structure has changed and we are so much more dependent on tips,” an Uber Eats courier in Toronto told the researchers... The couriers also identified over-recruitment as an issue. “They’re saying there’s no cap on the number of couriers they allow on the app, so you’re basically competing against your peers for orders, and so it’s going to be who’s willing to accept the lowest-paying order.”"
Proof that flooding the labour market with immigrants doesn't lower wages, and that it's Capitalism that's to blame, so you need to regularise all illegal immigrants and have open borders to bring in even more

SquintyNoodle on X - "My Canada-born-and-raised kids applied to work at a big box store that’s opening soon near us. They’re so excited and said after the interview, “I think we’re really strong candidates!” My heart is breaking because they don’t know about wage subsidies for newcomers and I won’t tell them. They’ll just keep applying at different places with hope, while I want to cry. I hate what our government has done. F*ck the Liberal Party."

Mark Carney is already struggling with Justin Trudeau’s immigration legacy - The Globe and Mail - "There are more than three million people in Canada on temporary visas, plus a significant but unknown number whose visas have expired, but who have not left. Most want to immigrate permanently. How many permanent residence spots are there? Just 380,000 a year.  Taylor Swift’s concert promoters are not so thick as to let millions of people into the stadium before realizing that they only have a fraction of that number of seats on offer.  The Trudeau government’s many acts of mismanagement on this file will trouble Canadian immigration policy for years to come. The fallout is already bedevilling its successor. Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government released its immigration plan last week, featuring a significant cut to the flow of new temporary immigration. But it also increased permanent immigration, while claiming to be doing the opposite."
Time to blame Harper

Mark Carney is already struggling with Justin Trudeau’s immigration legacy : r/canada - "Those of us who are either the children of legal Indian immigrants or who came here through proper methods and integrated with Canadian society, are upset with how these policies ruined the public’s perception of our diaspora. The closest experience would be what became of the MENA communities here after 9/11."
"I’ve heard this, an educated young lady from Mumbai asked me what’s up with Canada bringing in the village idiot boys (her term) who are a pain to deal with and not the folks who are ready to fit in here from day one. I felt pretty bad for people like you - I know what it’s like to get judged by the behaviour of people who are superficially in my so called ethnic group"
"Every Indian/Bengali/Pakistani person I've spoken to that I've known for years shares the same sentiment.  That part of the community has worked so hard to share the beauty of their culture while embracing Canadian life only to have the newer folks who don't want to integrate and show zero civic sense are furious."
Damn immigrants pulling up the ladder behind them! What hypocrites!

Brand New Dairy Queen - 146 McGettigan BLVD, Marystown, NL : r/jobwatchcanada - "What’s with the fuckin flip flops?"
"I was just about to comment on that. I’ve seen these open toed and open feet flip flops at a number of restaurants. Isn’t fully covered footwear mandatory in food service?"
"Yes. Non-slip and covered is required"
"In Canada that was required. This is CanIndia now."

Knights Templar International on X - "🇨🇦More Racist violence against white people A women was attacked by Africans at “Wet N Wild” in Brampton, Canada while children watch. A man can be seen hitting the defenceless women on the ground with an object multiple times. Another white women trying to stop the fight was chased down and attacked by a group of foreigners . No arrests. This is getting out of hand now."

Senior border official says agency lost 32,000 illegal immigrants - "Erin O’Gorman, the president of the CBSA, told Conservatives during a House of Commons Public Safety Committee meeting on Thursday that the border security agency is “actively engaging” at least 30,000 individuals to deport, while it can’t locate 32,000 who have active warrants."

Liberal Deputy Minister of Immigration Doesn’t Know How Many Temporary Foreign Worker Permits His Department Has Issued This Year : r/jobwatchcanada

'They're a problem': Diwali fireworks damage two houses in south Edmonton : r/WildRoseCountry - "OMG this story is SOOO raSCisT - i am literally SHAKING RN...!"

Ottawa cutting immigration has eased pressures on housing and labour - "Ottawa hitting the brakes on population growth by drastically cutting incoming immigration has eased the pressure on social and economic infrastructure, according to a newly released report from TD Economics.  Last year, notes TD, government policymakers acknowledged that the influx of immigration was too high relative the ability of Canada’s social and economic infrastructure to cope. Unemployment rose more than a full percentage point between 2022-2024, while businesses struggled to keep up with a rapidly expanding supply of workers. Meanwhile, housing affordability was being stretched to its limits...  Reducing the number of immigrants can relieve housing market pressures a few ways, they write.  In the rental market, drastically slower immigration bears out TD’s softer rent growth forecast of 3-3.5 per cent in 2026, which is roughly half the growth rate of 2024.  Lowering the cap on newcomers has also lowered condo demand for both homeownership and the secondary rental market. It has also caused downward pressure in asking rents across major cities, write Caranci and Ercolao.  The largest shifts were observed in B.C. and Ontario due to a higher proportion of temporary foreign workers and students. Those markets also have the highest supply of condo units where the secondary market was previously attractive to investors... Turning to the labour market, an increase in immigration during the pandemic recovery period helped address shortages in key sectors of the economy. In the beginning, Canadian employers showed capacity to integrate the new workers. However, this capacity was exhausted as labour force growth approached nearly four times its pre-pandemic growth rate, say Caranci and Ercolao. And by the middle of last year, there was plenty of evidence to show labour markets were cooling. Job vacancy rates normalized, employment growth moderated, and the unemployment rate pushed higher...  If labour growth rates of the prior two years were maintained through 2025, “we estimate today’s unemployment rate could have breached 8%.”"
Weird how reduced immigration reduces "greed"
How ignorant. Don't they know that immigrants create jobs?

Meme - Mario Zelaya: "If you're a refugee, and you're gay, Canada will give you 12 months of income. If you're Canadian you get nothing. Correction... .you get the bill."
"Government-Assisted Refugees Program The UNHCR, Rainbow Railroad and other referral organizations can identify and refer LGBTQI+ refugees to be resettled under the Government-Assisted Refugees Program. Refugees resettled under this program get 12 months of income and settlement support through the Resettlement Assistance Program."

Quebec passes bill requiring immigrants to adopt shared values - "Newcomers to the province must adhere to shared values including gender equality, secularism and protection of the French language.  The law is Quebec's answer to the Canadian model of multiculturalism that promotes cultural diversity.  The Quebec government believes the Canadian model is harmful to social cohesion.  Quebec can use the new law to withhold funding for groups and events that don't promote Quebec's common culture.  Critics have said the legislation is an attempt to assimilate newcomers and could stoke anti-immigrant sentiment."
Apparently assimilation is bad