Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

As a retaliation for Canada putting a 100% tariff on their EV's, why we are defending Tesla's market for them beats the heck out of me

Fair point, we should absolutely tariff Tesla's at 100% as well. They provide basically zero economic benefits to Canada with direct sales and zero manufacturing, risk Canadians lives with beta software, and buying them directly funds the man who funds the fascists attacking our country. No brainer.


Hi Brupal!

[indes]

We should get rid of the EV tariffs altogether. Why keep EV prices artificially high for Canadians? Vehicle prices are ####ing ridiculous.

[dustyanddaflames]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

with the canola thing, is this something the wheat board would have been helpful in managing and moving to alternate markets, or are farmers able to use other services to do that? I have no idea how this works. Are they better or worse of in a situation like this without the old system?

70% of trade goes through China. There aren’t many other identities ready to absorb 6M tonne of canola seed. Especially right at a time when crops are beginning to come off the field. So no, I don’t believe any identity would be able to manage off loading that amount of canola elsewhere. Maybe a stronger voice to lobby within our own walls, but that’s about it.

I could be wrong, but don’t believe the CWB ever marketed canola either.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by indes

We should get rid of the EV tariffs altogether. Why keep EV prices artificially high for Canadians? Vehicle prices are ####ing ridiculous.

"I want cheap things" isn't always great economic policy.

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

"I want cheap things" isn't always great economic policy.

Sure, but the 100% tariff thing seems pretty counter productive to Canada's zero emission strategy. The Canadian government wants more adoption of EV, but one of the big barriers to entry remains cost. Should they not let less expensive options in as part of that adoption strategy and to also spur more competition with the other car brands? It's not like Canada has any auto brands that need protecting.

If the goal is to continue to have Ontario's auto plants function, then pursuing zero emissions seems counter productive the other way, especially with the US setting their line in the sand to go against anything remotely benefitting the environment. Plus, it's not like they are helping us out with all these tariffs.

Why not open the option to drop those tariffs and see if we can make a deal with Chinese EV companies to have factories here to replace some of the other car manufacturing factories?

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

"I want cheap things" isn't always great economic policy.

It is if you’re committed to increasing adoption of that thing.

“Transition away from combustion engines” and “suppress the supply of cheap EVs” are countervailing policies.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Sure, but the 100% tariff thing seems pretty counter productive to Canada's zero emission strategy. The Canadian government wants more adoption of EV, but one of the big barriers to entry remains cost. Should they not let less expensive options in as part of that adoption strategy and to also spur more competition with the other car brands? It's not like Canada has any auto brands that need protecting.

If the goal is to continue to have Ontario's auto plants function, then pursuing zero emissions seems counter productive the other way, especially with the US setting their line in the sand to go against anything remotely benefitting the environment. Plus, it's not like they are helping us out with all these tariffs.

Why not open the option to drop those tariffs and see if we can make a deal with Chinese EV companies to have factories here to replace some of the other car manufacturing factories?

Cheap is fine and dandy, but do you trust the manufacturer? I don't and neither does the government.

Look at what is happening with other Chinese manufactured electronics. They are being deemed unsafe and needing to be removed from our infrastructure. Whether it is solar panel inverters or Huawei network gear, cyber security experts are finding backdoors and kill switches.

Having cars on the road with backdoors built in that can give control to a potentially hostile foreign government needs to be curbed, whether it's Chinese or American.

Support Project Arrow and get them mass producing Canadian built EVs.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Sure, but the 100% tariff thing seems pretty counter productive to Canada's zero emission strategy. The Canadian government wants more adoption of EV, but one of the big barriers to entry remains cost. Should they not let less expensive options in as part of that adoption strategy and to also spur more competition with the other car brands? It's not like Canada has any auto brands that need protecting.

If the goal is to continue to have Ontario's auto plants function, then pursuing zero emissions seems counter productive the other way, especially with the US setting their line in the sand to go against anything remotely benefitting the environment. Plus, it's not like they are helping us out with all these tariffs.

Why not open the option to drop those tariffs and see if we can make a deal with Chinese EV companies to have factories here to replace some of the other car manufacturing factories?

Zero emmission passenger vehicles are one of the least financially efficient ways to reduce emissions. It's a feel good thing, but pretty low impact. Personal vehicles sit idle 95% of the time. Buy a small efficient gas vehicle or hybrid if it means that much. Subsidizing these for the wealthy is even dumber. It would make way more sense to subsidize businesses who's dirty diesels drive all day long in urban environments, if governments cared about reductions and not feels.

[tonelli 86]

You are correct CWB never marketed Canola. One reason it became a necessity for farms to grow it as it was a “cash” crop where it was sold directly to the buyer and farmers werent waiting on interim and final payments from the wheat board for 18 months from time of sale.

[Geraldsh]

Having one product for one customer never ends well. This applies to many different businesses as well as farmers. Some learn to diversify before going broke.

[ThePrince]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Zero emmission passenger vehicles are one of the least financially efficient ways to reduce emissions. It's a feel good thing, but pretty low impact. Personal vehicles sit idle 95% of the time. Buy a small efficient gas vehicle or hybrid if it means that much. Subsidizing these for the wealthy is even dumber. It would make way more sense to subsidize businesses who's dirty diesels drive all day long in urban environments, if governments cared about reductions and not feels.

“Zero emission” is also quite misleading, it’s zero tailpipe emissions because the manufacturing process of the vehicle is considerably more carbon intensive than ICE vehicles. That’s not to mention that much of the power generation required for the electricity to power the cars also comes from fossil fuels, or even the manufacturing process of the renewables used to generate the electricity (solar panels, wind turbines, etc.)

It generally takes a couple years of driving the EV to offset the additional carbon emissions generated by the initial manufacturing process. That also doesn’t consider the environmental and social issues with the mining process required for the construction of batteries, solar panels, etc.

Like you say, overall it’s more of a feel good thing, and while it does make a difference and I do think EVs are great vehicles for the daily driver, the impact is lower than what people generally think.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by ThePrince

“Zero emission” is also quite misleading, it’s zero tailpipe emissions because the manufacturing process of the vehicle is considerably more carbon intensive than ICE vehicles. That’s not to mention that much of the power generation required for the electricity to power the cars also comes from fossil fuels, or even the manufacturing process of the renewables used to generate the electricity (solar panels, wind turbines, etc.)

It generally takes a couple years of driving the EV to offset the additional carbon emissions generated by the initial manufacturing process. That also doesn’t consider the environmental and social issues with the mining process required for the construction of batteries, solar panels, etc.

Like you say, overall it’s more of a feel good thing, and while it does make a difference and I do think EVs are great vehicles for the daily driver, the impact is lower than what people generally think.

Agreed on the current carbon cost to make the cars, which is why it is so important that money is being put into battery technology. If they can move the batteries away from Lithium and toward solid-state or sodium-ion then that would reduce the impact for creating the vehicles.

As for the charging, I used to think the answer was to centralize the energy generation and then transition it from fossil fuels to something cleaner (Fission?). But now I am starting to think that the better play is to decentralize power generation and just put solar panels on everyone's homes. (Enmax currently has internal rules that they want to max out at 10-15% of homes being allowed to have solar)

With the new advancements in solar technology (Perovskite solar cells), the cost and carbon impact to make solar panels will drop dramatically while the efficiency and energy capture will increase. These are exciting discoveries that are being worked on around the world while Alberta (and Canada) are focused on oil and pipelines.

There are a lot of moving parts but you can start to see how things are going to get better dramatically faster as a few technologies move from the lab to mass production. Then the question becomes, how quickly does the fossil fuel industry crater when alternative technologies are cheaper, more efficient, and have almost no pollution??

Side note: with how innovative Canadians and Albertans are, I really wish we could be bragging about making these discoveries here instead of waiting for Japan and Europe to do it.

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by Wolven

Cheap is fine and dandy, but do you trust the manufacturer? I don't and neither does the government.

Look at what is happening with other Chinese manufactured electronics. They are being deemed unsafe and needing to be removed from our infrastructure. Whether it is solar panel inverters or Huawei network gear, cyber security experts are finding backdoors and kill switches.

Having cars on the road with backdoors built in that can give control to a potentially hostile foreign government needs to be curbed, whether it's Chinese or American.

Support Project Arrow and get them mass producing Canadian built EVs.

I guess it depends on who you trust. Maybe it's my Chinese bias, but it it does feel more and more like there's an agenda coming out of the US government using "national security" as a weapon to stifle potential growth from companies outside the US they deem are a threat. Look at how they have weaponized fentanyl as a means to pressure Canada? I have no doubt they're doing the same thing with anything Chinese at this point.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

I guess it depends on who you trust. Maybe it's my Chinese bias, but it it does feel more and more like there's an agenda coming out of the US government using "national security" as a weapon to stifle potential growth from companies outside the US they deem are a threat. Look at how they have weaponized fentanyl as a means to pressure Canada? I have no doubt they're doing the same thing with anything Chinese at this point.

Yeah, that's clearly happening to a large extent. For instance, the "solar panel kill switch" thing that came out a few months ago was, as far as I'm aware, based on there being a disabled radio chip in the inverter. There are tons of situations where manufacturers will use an existing reliable SoC and then disable the parts that aren't needed rather than custom manufacturing a new chip. And there was zero evidence provided that showed that these chips are capable of being functional or communicating in any way.

[Johnny Makarov]

Originally Posted by afc wimbledon

As a retaliation for Canada putting a 100% tariff on their EV's, why we are defending Tesla's market for them beats the heck out of me

the 100% wasn't to protect Tesla. It was to protect the gas manufacturing car production in Ontario. Since Trump is going to screw them over anyways we might as well cut tariffs on chinese evs.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

I guess it depends on who you trust. Maybe it's my Chinese bias, but it it does feel more and more like there's an agenda coming out of the US government using "national security" as a weapon to stifle potential growth from companies outside the US they deem are a threat. Look at how they have weaponized fentanyl as a means to pressure Canada? I have no doubt they're doing the same thing with anything Chinese at this point.

I think the better play is to stop relying so heavily on both the US and China and start pushing more research, development, and manufacturing in Canada.

Over this year I think it has been made clear that the US is not the ally it once was and to that end, I would now advocate for disconnecting as much as possible from US power. But I certainly wouldn't turn to China as the solution, I would keep both countries at arm's length.

Some examples of things that need to happen:

1. Eliminate foriegn ownership of land (Hongcouver comes to mind) and resources (Australian Coal mining company in Alberta???)
2. Eliminate foriegn ownership of critical services or communications (American owned Postmedia owns 130+ Canadian media outlets)
3. Develop new supply chain routes that cut out unnecessary foreign influence (why do we buy South American coffee beans exclusively through the US??)
4. Nationalize critical research (power generation, vaccines, military drones, AI)
5. Invest in future technology manufacturing to create long term jobs in markets that are currently relying on legacy industry

That last bullet would be the interesting one. In Alberta, you would want to invest in renewable energy technology manufacturing jobs to replace fossil fuel jobs. In Ontario, you would want to build up Canadian automotive production to replace the legacy automotive production that was so closely tied to the US.

I still think the biggest move the Feds can make is to rip up the US trade agreement that the US is ignoring anyway and stop respecting their intellectual property rights. At that point, any American product could be reverse engineered and start being produced by a Canadian company.

Canadian Twitter?
Canadian Facebook?
Canadian Internet Search engine?
Canadian Insulin?

[Cappy]

Originally Posted by Wolven

I think the better play is to stop relying so heavily on both the US and China and start pushing more research, development, and manufacturing in Canada.

Over this year I think it has been made clear that the US is not the ally it once was and to that end, I would now advocate for disconnecting as much as possible from US power. But I certainly wouldn't turn to China as the solution, I would keep both countries at arm's length.

Some examples of things that need to happen:

1. Eliminate foriegn ownership of land (Hongcouver comes to mind) and resources (Australian Coal mining company in Alberta???)
2. Eliminate foriegn ownership of critical services or communications (American owned Postmedia owns 130+ Canadian media outlets)
3. Develop new supply chain routes that cut out unnecessary foreign influence (why do we buy South American coffee beans exclusively through the US??)
4. Nationalize critical research (power generation, vaccines, military drones, AI)
5. Invest in future technology manufacturing to create long term jobs in markets that are currently relying on legacy industry

That last bullet would be the interesting one. In Alberta, you would want to invest in renewable energy technology manufacturing jobs to replace fossil fuel jobs. In Ontario, you would want to build up Canadian automotive production to replace the legacy automotive production that was so closely tied to the US.

I still think the biggest move the Feds can make is to rip up the US trade agreement that the US is ignoring anyway and stop respecting their intellectual property rights. At that point, any American product could be reverse engineered and start being produced by a Canadian company.

Canadian Twitter?
Canadian Facebook?
Canadian Internet Search engine?
Canadian Insulin?

Hermit Kingdom?

Canada is an export country.

[The Yen Man]

Originally Posted by Cappy

Hermit Kingdom?

Canada is an export country.

Agreed. Canada is a resource rich country that needs to play to it's strengths. Rather than going the extreme of producing stuff ourselves, we just need the country as a united front to tackle how best to ethically extract and transport our resources to other markets.

Way easier said than done, but IMO, a much more realistic goal than to try to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by Cappy

Hermit Kingdom?

Canada is an export country.

Hermit Kingdom? How'd you jump to that? There is a big gap between implementing protective/transformative policies to isolationism.

There are other countries we can work with.

For example: With the carbon taxes in Germany they are looking for cleaner Aluminum production. The cost to ship Aluminum from Canada to Germany appears to be less than the cost of the carbon tax that they have on producers who use fossil fuels to smelt their product (Canadian smelters primarily use hydro power).

If we can move the US down from 80% of Canadian Aluminum to 40% then their tariffs on that product will hurt less.

[Wolven]

Originally Posted by The Yen Man

Agreed. Canada is a resource rich country that needs to play to it's strengths. Rather than going the extreme of producing stuff ourselves, we just need the country as a united front to tackle how best to ethically extract and transport our resources to other markets.

Way easier said than done, but IMO, a much more realistic goal than to try to isolate ourselves from the rest of the world.

Canada already produces things. Go look at the automotive industry in Ontario. It is getting hammered by tariffs and factories are being closed.

Canada should look to reopen those factories as Canada-only car manufacturing and detangle our production and supply chain from the US.

This isn't some new extreme, this is doing stuff we already do but smarter and without foreign influence. Also, it would create and secure jobs for Canadians.