Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[Azure]

Originally Posted by peter12

So on the positive side, this budget provides a suite of good tax incentives that will help our clean tech economy remain competitive. It also will help fulfill our obligations to our allies.

Negative side? Our fiscal position is weakening steadily and dark times are looming. It also does not do nearly enough to address lagging productivity.

Does it?

This year’s budget, which was tabled in the House of Commons by Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland (University-Rosedale, Ont.) on March 28, includes just $30-million of new defence spending over the next five years, including the expiring 2022-2023 fiscal year.

The new money, along with an additional $10-million from past departmental resources, is devoted to creating a NATO Climate Change and Security Centre of Excellence, which was agreed upon during the military alliance’s 2022 summit in Madrid. The centre will be located in Montreal.

While the budget trumpets ongoing investments in Canada’s defence—including $38.6-billion for NORAD modernization over 20 years, and $2.1-billion over seven years to increase Canada’s NATO contribution—it puts forward little new funding at a time when Ottawa has been under increased pressure from its allies, including the United States and France, to increase its defence spending.

https://www.hilltimes.com/story/2023...budget/383028/

[calculoso]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Wait, what? No it isn't. Where did this false dilemma come from? The question is whether they're better than if the government had done something different that can be readily identified. The answer to that is not "assuredly yes"; there are many things that they obviously should have done differently.

The choice that is constantly presented has been spend or do not spend. That is what I’m addressing.

You’re addressing “yes do something but not that”, which ventures so far into other what-if areas to be a purely theoretical discussion

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Wait, what? No it isn't. Where did this false dilemma come from?

I mean, clearly it's from the person they were responding to who presented it that way.

If the engine on your car dies and you spend $5K replacing it, you don't lament how you spent $5K and are no better off than before the engine broke. The $5K was so you could go from a non-working car to a working one. You can say you spent more than necessary, that's a fair criticism; but that's clearly not what that person was doing.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by calculoso

The choice that is constantly presented has been spend or do not spend. That is what I’m addressing.

You’re addressing “yes do something but not that”, which ventures so far into other what-if areas to be a purely theoretical discussion

A theoretical discussion still has value, but if you are debating past policies it will usually give advantage to the opposition. We only know the outcome from one party, and we are comparing it to a party that could have had (theoretically) an infinite amount of different outcomes had they enacted a different policy.

[Jacks]

That’s the wrong question this time. With the context of the pandemic and projected job and business losses, the question isn’t “better than they were before” but “better than if the government had done nothing”. The answer to that is assuredly yes.

There has been too much waste, some instances verging on fraud that should be investigated, and the “missing” money, but all-in-all the spending prevented a bigger catastrophe in my opinion. Our economy did not crash and came back faster than anyone expected. That in itself provides justification for a large majority of what one-time programs and spending that was put in place.

Well first off this government went into structural long before Covid hit. They promised 30 billion to spend on infrastructure over 3 years, it was double that with spending all over and just kept rolling.

As for the pandemic, very few people will argue that the government had to act and that a large deficit was going to occur, obviously these things are true. The argument is that this government did a terrible job thinking out, implementing and running those programs.

Here are the big ones:

CERB - I doubt anyone would argue that this was a mess. I didn't collect it so I'm not going to argue details about how it could be better but at the very least they could have paid a percentage of income with a cap rather than one size fits all.

CEWS - This was really bad. Basically if you had a business that saw a revenue drop of 30% or more (based on the couple months prior to lock down) then the government stepped in and paid 75% of your labour costs, if your revenue dropped 25% you get nothing. My commercial landlord was in this situation, their revenue was down just shy of 30% mind you the bulk of their costs weren't in labour so it wouldn't help a lot anyway, they got no help except a little bit from CEBA. This creates a situation where if a business qualifies then they are better off turning down revenue going forward to stay under the 30% threshold. It seems so ridiculously easy to instead base it on a sliding scale. If your revenues are down more than 10% we'll cover 20% of labour, 20% down we'll cover 40%, something along those lines. It's not like this would have been difficult to manage, businesses already had to submit monthly calculations to the government as part of the program and were reimbursed after. For many labour based businesses this was a pot of gold.

Imagine having a plumbing company or other labour based business where more than half of your expenses are in labour costs. Say you had 1M in revenue, labour costs of 600K, overhead of 250K and a profit of 150K. If your revenue dropped 30% then you are looking at 700K in revenue, labour costs of 150K, overhead is lower but let's leave it at 250K and the profit jumps to 400K. If you are that owner you are absolutely turning down jobs to stay under that 30% threshold to keep the benefit. Think I just made these numbers up? I didn't. I had a company that was very similar to this. We didn't turn down work because our revenue spiked just before the pandemic due to a couple of large contracts so we qualified every month.

CEBA - Where do you start with this joke, there were no restrictions on this. You could have a company that was making a nice healthy profit and still apply for this benefit. Basically you get a loan for 40K, pay back 30K and keep the 10K profit. I applied the first time because who knew what was coming and I might need the money. The second time my bank called to ask if I was applying, I said no, the account manager asked why not? her words "It's free money for you". The companies that really needed the money of course needed a lot more and couldn't just pay it back right away to get the 10K freebie.

CECRA - I can't go into a lot of detail on the commercial rent program, like a lot of businesses I didn't qualify because I was a long term renter who's lease had expired. We were renting month to month on the terms of the previous lease. Lots of businesses do this and they got nothing. I get that they had prevent abuse but it's pretty easy to give the benefit to companies that had been in the same location 3 months (or something like that) prior to Covid.

Sorry for the wall of text. I get that the government had to roll out programs fast but they had enough time to put some simple thought into it rather than just fire hosing money everywhere. Even if you think they didn't have time they surely could have amended the programs months later. Did they have to go into deficit? yes. Did it need to be so massive? no.

[calculoso]

Originally Posted by Jacks

Here are the big ones:

CERB - I doubt anyone would argue that this was a mess. I didn't collect it so I'm not going to argue details about how it could be better but at the very least they could have paid a percentage of income with a cap rather than one size fits all.

I don’t think it was a mess. Sure there were abuses, but this prevented many people and families from going into piles of debt (if they had access to it) or going without. This social safety net prevented a lot of other problems, especially around the time where people were told to not leave home and many were laid off from their work. Not everyone had the benefit of keeping their jobs or having piles of savings to fall back on.

Should those that abused this program have been gone after harder? Absolutely… but that in no way invalidates the benefits of the program.


I don’t know much about the business programs, so will not comment on them and removed them from my reply.

Originally Posted by Jacks

Sorry for the wall of text. I get that the government had to roll out programs fast but they had enough time to put some simple thought into it rather than just fire hosing money everywhere. Even if you think they didn't have time they surely could have amended the programs months later. Did they have to go into deficit? yes. Did it need to be so massive? no.

They did amend the programs months later. They evolved as conditions changed. That said, if you’re coming from a standpoint that there should have been a default no but qualification to get money instead of a default yes with qualifications to be disqualified, then anything other than a substantial redesign of the program would not be enough.

[Jacks]

I don’t think it was a mess. Sure there were abuses, but this prevented many people and families from going into piles of debt (if they had access to it) or going without. This social safety net prevented a lot of other problems, especially around the time where people were told to not leave home and many were laid off from their work. Not everyone had the benefit of keeping their jobs or having piles of savings to fall back on.

I think I pretty clearly said that a benefit was necessary but that CERB was poorly thought out.

They did amend the programs months later. They evolved as conditions changed.

You'd have to fill me in on what changed, I didn't see anything but I didn't collect CERB.

That said, if you’re coming from a standpoint that there should have been a default no but qualification to get money instead of a default yes with qualifications to be disqualified, then anything other than a substantial redesign of the program would not be enough.

Not sure what you are saying here. I think I laid out the problems in my post.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by Aarongavey

What you describe (an MP talking to one of hundred of consulates in our country) is not dubious. What is dubious is Global relying on truthiness as a defence for their defamation.

An elected official, already under surveillance with the nickname "scarecrow" due to ties with a foreign government who may have interfered into getting him elected within the Liberal party, is secretly meeting (aka meeting off the record) foreign diplomats of that very same country that has thrown money and interfered with Canada's domestic affairs. And they discussed political hostages (corroborated by Han Dong that they did discuss them just not in the way being alleged).

But you, are claiming that is not dubious , yet focusing on a reputable media source's story simply because they only have testimony from intelligence officials without having access to highly confidential transcripts and recording, and claiming that as dubious. One media source (one of the ones who broke the foreign intelligence) felt there was not enough hard evidence to run the story, while a 2nd one did. You are making it sound like they ask a bum on the street for a story and ran with it.

Care to explain your logic here in a way that won't come across as a blatant Liberal apologist?

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Care to explain your logic here in a way that won't come across as a blatant Liberal apologist?

I don’t know if you’re familiar with the story of The Boy Who Cried Wolf but if you keep calling everyone who disagrees with you a liberal apologist hypothetically when the time comes for you to call out an actual liberal apologist people might not take you seriously.

[GordonBlue]

Originally Posted by Firebot

An elected official, already under surveillance with the nickname "scarecrow" due to ties with a foreign government who may have interfered into getting him elected within the Liberal party, is secretly meeting (aka meeting off the record) foreign diplomats of that very same country that has thrown money and interfered with Canada's domestic affairs. And they discussed political hostages (corroborated by Han Dong that they did discuss them just not in the way being alleged).

But you, are claiming that is not dubious , yet focusing on a reputable media source's story simply because they only have testimony from intelligence officials without having access to highly confidential transcripts and recording, and claiming that as dubious. One media source (one of the ones who broke the foreign intelligence) felt there was not enough hard evidence to run the story, while a 2nd one did. You are making it sound like they ask a bum on the street for a story and ran with it.

Care to explain your logic here in a way that won't come across as a blatant Liberal apologist?

what hard evidence? All I read is Global spoke with someone, but they didn't actually see any hard evidence.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by GordonBlue

what hard evidence? All I read is Global spoke with someone, but they didn't actually see any hard evidence.

That's not that odd, especially when dealing with classified material. That said, the story used some pretty soft language to leave room for error:

Both sources said Dong allegedly suggested to Han Tao, China’s consul general in Toronto, that if Beijing released the “Two Michaels,” whom China accused of espionage, the Opposition Conservatives would benefit.

That's makes it sound like 3rd hand information. If the sources had themselves seen the transcript or heard the recording, you'd expect the article to say "Both sources said Dong suggested to Han Tao..." or just say something like "Dong allegedly suggested...". But the way it's written implies that the sources haven't actually seen the evidence themselves, but are just repeating allegations.

[Yoho]

https://twitter.com/user/status/1640763836524363791

[GGG]

Originally Posted by Jacks

Well first off this government went into structural long before Covid hit. They promised 30 billion to spend on infrastructure over 3 years, it was double that with spending all over and just kept rolling.

As for the pandemic, very few people will argue that the government had to act and that a large deficit was going to occur, obviously these things are true. The argument is that this government did a terrible job thinking out, implementing and running those programs.

Here are the big ones:

CERB - I doubt anyone would argue that this was a mess. I didn't collect it so I'm not going to argue details about how it could be better but at the very least they could have paid a percentage of income with a cap rather than one size fits all.

CEWS - This was really bad. Basically if you had a business that saw a revenue drop of 30% or more (based on the couple months prior to lock down) then the government stepped in and paid 75% of your labour costs, if your revenue dropped 25% you get nothing. My commercial landlord was in this situation, their revenue was down just shy of 30% mind you the bulk of their costs weren't in labour so it wouldn't help a lot anyway, they got no help except a little bit from CEBA. This creates a situation where if a business qualifies then they are better off turning down revenue going forward to stay under the 30% threshold. It seems so ridiculously easy to instead base it on a sliding scale. If your revenues are down more than 10% we'll cover 20% of labour, 20% down we'll cover 40%, something along those lines. It's not like this would have been difficult to manage, businesses already had to submit monthly calculations to the government as part of the program and were reimbursed after. For many labour based businesses this was a pot of gold.

Imagine having a plumbing company or other labour based business where more than half of your expenses are in labour costs. Say you had 1M in revenue, labour costs of 600K, overhead of 250K and a profit of 150K. If your revenue dropped 30% then you are looking at 700K in revenue, labour costs of 150K, overhead is lower but let's leave it at 250K and the profit jumps to 400K. If you are that owner you are absolutely turning down jobs to stay under that 30% threshold to keep the benefit. Think I just made these numbers up? I didn't. I had a company that was very similar to this. We didn't turn down work because our revenue spiked just before the pandemic due to a couple of large contracts so we qualified every month.

CEBA - Where do you start with this joke, there were no restrictions on this. You could have a company that was making a nice healthy profit and still apply for this benefit. Basically you get a loan for 40K, pay back 30K and keep the 10K profit. I applied the first time because who knew what was coming and I might need the money. The second time my bank called to ask if I was applying, I said no, the account manager asked why not? her words "It's free money for you". The companies that really needed the money of course needed a lot more and couldn't just pay it back right away to get the 10K freebie.

CECRA - I can't go into a lot of detail on the commercial rent program, like a lot of businesses I didn't qualify because I was a long term renter who's lease had expired. We were renting month to month on the terms of the previous lease. Lots of businesses do this and they got nothing. I get that they had prevent abuse but it's pretty easy to give the benefit to companies that had been in the same location 3 months (or something like that) prior to Covid.

Sorry for the wall of text. I get that the government had to roll out programs fast but they had enough time to put some simple thought into it rather than just fire hosing money everywhere. Even if you think they didn't have time they surely could have amended the programs months later. Did they have to go into deficit? yes. Did it need to be so massive? no.

If you had posted this even with less detail, then you wouldn’t have got the reaction you got. I think people would agree that especially after the first 3-6 months the programs should have been refined significantly. Not to mention how lazy they have been with going after fraud.

This post has nothing to do with your original statement of are people better off after 600 billion in deficit spending.

[peter12]

It's great to see some of these tax credits come into effect immediately because honestly, this government is on its very last legs.

[Jacks]

Originally Posted by GGG

If you had posted this even with less detail, then you wouldn’t have got the reaction you got. I think people would agree that especially after the first 3-6 months the programs should have been refined significantly. Not to mention how lazy they have been with going after fraud.

This post has nothing to do with your original statement of are people better off after 600 billion in deficit spending.

Maybe look at the post I was responding to.

[Azure]

Interesting how quiet the Liberal supporters in this thread are about what is quite frankly a ridiculous amount of spending at a time when fiscal responsibility needs to be pretty important.

We all know it requires tough calls in order to cut spending, but we can't just keep running massive deficits and pile on the debt while interest rates are high.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by GordonBlue

what hard evidence? All I read is Global spoke with someone, but they didn't actually see any hard evidence.

Don't take lack of evidence as a a replacement for evidence of absence as we know transcripts exists and likely recordings. Both Globe and Mail, and Global were unable to attain the evidence, and one source decided they had enough to run a story while the 2nd was more prudent.

Globe and Mail reported that they were in discussion with this same sources (2 sources corroborated the story, not just one). Globe and Mail was unable to get a hold of transcript for themselves, as such chose not to report the story.

There's a pretty clear attempt by Liberal apologists (yes iggy_oi I will call a spade a spade) to dismiss the Han Dong allegations by dismissing Global's source off as it it was some bloke off the street that went around to sell a fake story rather than a legitimate source with privileged direct access to confidential info that these news organizations could not get a copy of to validate.

This is clearly not the end of the story no matter how some have been desperately trying to brush it under the carpet almost immediately. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new type of leak on the transcripts at an opportune time in the next few weeks (again, assuming the allegations are correct and that the Liberals were not honest in their 'no actionable evidence' claim ).

here is a good editorial the CBC defending their use of anonymous sources for reporting.

https://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/communi...edibility.html

As I mentioned, we don't grant anonymity lightly. It's a principle of good journalism that the public be able to see the person making statements or allegations, so that they can decide for themselves the credibility of that individual. At the same time, some information is important enough that it's worth compromising that principle--somewhat--if that's the only way to get that information before the public.

Let me give you some recent examples of stories that could only be told, in part, by using anonymous sources. A nurse was willing to speak to CBC News about conditions in her hospital. She came forward as part of CBC's "Rate My Hospital" series and could provide important details and insights. But she feared that if her face appeared on camera or her full name was used in a radio or online story, she would face reprisals at work, even the loss of her job.

This past season on the fifth estate, we agreed to conceal the identity of a longtime companion of Luka Magnotta, for the episode "Hunting Magnotta". The source feared retribution and loss of employment if his name and face were revealed His contribution to the show provided unique insight into the cold and narcissistic personality of Magnotta.

In that same piece, we obscured the identities of two people who 'hunted' Magnotta - online sleuths who tracked him and warned authorities about his behaviour. Their condition for participating in the story was to have their identities withheld - it's the only way they can continue to pursue their online work. One had been threatened online by someone she believed was Magnotta, who said he would "find her."

We concluded that in all these cases, the concerns about employment, harassment and safety, were real. Combined with the value of the information we couldn't have obtained in other ways, we felt the measures we took were justified. Some news organizations, particularly in the United States, have banned the use of anonymous sources, but I think our judicious use of them, backed by our extensive system of checks and balances, is necessary for us to provide you with the type and quality of journalism you've come to expect from CBC News.

[iggy_oi]

Originally Posted by Firebot

There's a pretty clear attempt by Liberal apologists (yes iggy_oi I will call a spade a spade) to dismiss the Han Dong allegations by dismissing Global's source off as it it was some bloke off the street that went around to sell a fake story rather than a legitimate source with privileged direct access to confidential info that these news organizations could not get a copy of to validate.

I haven’t seen someone struggle with differentiating opinions from facts to this degree in quite some time. Calling a spade a spade only works when you factually define what the spade in question is, otherwise(and in fairness typically this is the case) that saying is just being used as a means to attempt to add credibility to one’s opinion.

It makes sense for people to question anonymous sources, especially when they haven’t seen any hard evidence and there are potentially political motives at play. Doing that in itself doesn’t make them an apologist, nor does it in any way absolve the liberals from facing any scrutiny. Now if the facts and evidence actually do come out and it turns out that these allegations are true and those same people are saying things like “well it’s not bad because of reasons x, y or z” or “what about Harper, or Duffy, or etc etc?” then I’d be inclined to agree with you should you make that assessment.

With all of that being said, even you would have to admit that there’s clearly some questionable things being reported as being said by these sources that rightfully so should at the very least make people skeptical about the legitimacy and motives of these sources. Specifically I would point to the allegation that Dong said releasing the two Michael’s would make the CPC look good. Now I’m not going to say that he didn’t say that because frankly neither you or I know whether or not he did, but I can say that for the life of me I can’t figure out how anybody could possibly have reached that conclusion and acted on it. If you have a credible explanation for how the liberals getting the Michael’s released earlier would have somehow made the CPC look good I’d be happy to hear it.

This is clearly not the end of the story no matter how some have been desperately trying to brush it under the carpet almost immediately. I wouldn't be surprised to see a new type of leak on the transcripts at an opportune time in the next few weeks (again, assuming the allegations are correct and that the Liberals were not honest in their 'no actionable evidence' claim ).

Credit where it’s due, at least you’re pumping your breaks a little bit here and starting to more clearly indicate when your statements are based on an assumption. Progress is good, I hope you keep it up.

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by Azure

Interesting how quiet the Liberal supporters in this thread are about what is quite frankly a ridiculous amount of spending at a time when fiscal responsibility needs to be pretty important.

We all know it requires tough calls in order to cut spending, but we can't just keep running massive deficits and pile on the debt while interest rates are high.

It was great to see that Canada has the lowest debt to GDP ratio of any G7 country. Obviously that meant they could not spend on everything but they did pick some priority areas.

[TheIronMaiden]

Originally Posted by Azure

Interesting how quiet the Liberal supporters in this thread are about what is quite frankly a ridiculous amount of spending at a time when fiscal responsibility needs to be pretty important.

We all know it requires tough calls in order to cut spending, but we can't just keep running massive deficits and pile on the debt while interest rates are high.

Does the CPC shadow budget offer a solution to national debt?