The Senate Liberals’ leader, James Cowan, told The Huffington Post Canada he hasn’t spoken to Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau, who supported the bill in the Commons, but he expects most of the Liberal team in the upper chamber to oppose the bill.
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Originally Posted by MrMastodonFarm
Settle down there, Temple Grandin.
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Thank god there is someone with some reason in this government. Unfortunately, the numbers aren't there unless there are a significant number of Conservative senators voting against it too.
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Johnny eats garbage and isn’t 100% committed.
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I think the wheelchair thing works against Kent Hehr. I'd wonder if party strategists wouldn't want to put him out as their candidate because those unfamiliar with him would think that they were pandering.
It's unfortunate, because he's a good MLA with good values, but the optics might seem cynical.
Maybe I'm just cynical
Interesting, I've always had the opposite view. Frankly people have a hard time remembering politicians (aside from the leaders and people who have really screwed things up), but Kent has that huge advantage where people have seen him around town in his chair. They almost always remember him and to me that is an enormous advantage compared to others. You could be right though, some people might be cynical and think he was just there for the pandering reasons.
Hopefully the debates are better with someone else running them. The last few debates have sucked, the leaders aren't given any time to really expand on issues so all we get is 45 second partisan jabs and talking points. I also think that only parties who have official party status should be in the debates, 5 people is a joke. They could lower party status requirements to having at least 4 seats or 10% of the popular vote in the last election since 12 seats is a bit high of a threshold.
If there are 5 debates (3 english, 2 french) then 2 of them should be CPC, LIB and NDP only, Personally I want to hear from the leaders who have a legitimate shot at running the country.
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Regarding Kent Hehr, I think most voters will fall into two categories: those familiar enough to know that he's not the candidate because of his wheelchair, and those who will never realize that he's in one.
Canada will announce today it will commit to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, an ambitious target made possible in large part by the success of the provinces in reducing their own emissions.
I'm a little unsure about who exactly the federal parties are pandering to these days. Most new immigrants place job availability for themselves and their family above the need to increase immigration, much like many native Canadians. Available jobs are turning to part time or full time outside of large city centres, where new citizens rarely decide to relocate to.
I would support any party that wanted to link immigration rate to the jobless rate, which unfortunately constitutes zero parties.
According to McCallum, the Liberal party would rescind a number of barriers to becoming a citizen that were instituted in the new Citizenship Act. They would repeal the regulation that takes away the 50 per cent credit for time spent in Canada for international students; the regulation that calls for new citizens to sign a declaration that they intend to reside in Canada.
New Canadian citizens living outside of Canada with a Canadian passport makes no sense to me. Repealing the lack of credit to students does.
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The NDP would make family and family reunification the central part of the immigration system, he says. “That is what built our country. We have successes after successes of communities that have flourished and help write the story of Canada essential. The Conservative have sharply changed that direction and we’re going to fix that.”
I don't think that the NDP understands exactly how big some extended families can be. Does this include parents and grandparents of immigrants as well? This would severely limit the access to immigrants without family in Canada.
I thought that the increase to 250K immigrants a year (an arbitrary number) by the Conservatives made little sense, making Canada the largest destination for immigrants against population size the first world. The other parties aren't in opposition to this policy, but want to see who's car is faster.
I assume that they are all afraid of being labelled racists, although in theory immigrants come from all over the world and race isn't the issue?
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“My goal in writing this is to get rid of Harper — before he destroys Canadian democracy,” the former Edmonton book seller, publisher, and well-known provocateur in Canadian politics told the Journal.
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Hurtig contends democracy has been under attack by Harper since 2006 — from muzzling scientists to Harper’s now infamous manual to MPs on how to disrupt parliamentary committees, omnibus bills and audits of long-standing charities.
“Thanks to such tactics, Parliament has become a largely ceremonial body,” writes Hurtig.
There’s another key message, the 82-year-old warrior offers from his Vancouver home.
“I also want to discredit Harper’s claim that he’s a good steward of the economy. His policies have been lousy.”
^^^ ok so this Hurtig has said nothing credible in your post except "i don't like Harper bleh" instead of explaining what he doesn't like about his policies. Good one.
^^^ ok so this Hurtig has said nothing credible in your post except "i don't like Harper bleh" instead of explaining what he doesn't like about his policies. Good one.
I attached an article.
He has an Order Of Canada, a boatload of writers awards, and has been a visible part of the Canadian literary scene for half a century. The guy has written a handful of books (Pay The Rent Or Feed The Kids is my favorite), and is releasing a new book on the current state of the federal government.
It's not like I can quote the whole article, or force you to read it apparently.
^^^ ok so this Hurtig has said nothing credible in your post except "i don't like Harper bleh" instead of explaining what he doesn't like about his policies. Good one.
I'm a big fan of Hurtig and have met him a few times. It's purely my opinion, but the National Party he was leader of in 1993 would have been amazing for the country. Of course the problem is that it was going nowhere fast. I've read a few of his books and will likely read this one as well.
While that article doesn't have a lot to say, he has really liberal policies, but with a fairly nationalist tone to them. I also like that he pressed for democracy and democratic reform, which at a national level I think is sensible.
He's a really interesting guy and it's too bad he wasn't able to have more of an impact in his earlier years.
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I agree. I don't like the cost of the TFSA, but I also view the TFSA as a policy for old people - a previous article, and our discussion in the other thread, showed that 71% of the people that max their TFSA is 55 or older. I would bet that less than 5% are 30 and under (if that)
My TFSA is currently maxed so I'm one of the lucky few, but I don't see it as a policy targeted at my demographic at all.
I also agree with your stance on tax credits. However, I am just advocating for it since it's more of a "playing the game" type deal - we're not going to overhaul how politicians act, so might as well get something out of it. Cynical view for sure, but I think it's more realistic. I HATE the social engineering and incentivizing that tax credits do - and they are generally bad policy.
For young people, the RRSP should be ignored and savings should only be put into the TFSA.
In fact there's really no good reason for the RRSP to exist any more.
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You mean by being forced to do a stimulus by the Liberals and NDP, and then taking all the credit through incredibly wasteful TV/Print ads? Less we forget cutting the GST, almost universally agreed as a terrible economic decision, and not balancing a single budget until this year (by dipping into the contingency fund no less).
As a social measure, lowering regressive taxes like the GST is never a bad idea.
Yeah, economists don't like it, but economists also like frictionless economies and I'd think that you'd have a major problem with that.
Not sure what you can say about budget deficits. If it's bad for a federal gov't to have debt when they control virtually every means of taxation, then doesn't that mean that it's even worse for provincial and municipal gov'ts to have debt?
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Is there something in these parties internals that says they need to keep coming up with ways to pander to families with tax credits?
The idea behind tax credits is to specifically lower (or nil) taxes for lower income earners while providing only a modest benefit for higher income earners (which is exactly what they do).
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For young people, the RRSP should be ignored and savings should only be put into the TFSA.
In fact there's really no good reason for the RRSP to exist any more.
I wouldn't go quote that far. Quite a few people save for retirement that way specifically for the tax savings, and a lot of jobs with good pensions are using that RRSP room for that purpose. It's easy to say that they're useless, but there are potentially unintended consequences if the program was just scrapped or ignored entirely.
I would also note that quite a few people use the two accounts very differently. They might use the TFSA for short term savings and the RRSP for the longer term.
I wouldn't go quote that far. Quite a few people save for retirement that way specifically for the tax savings, and a lot of jobs with good pensions are using that RRSP room for that purpose. It's easy to say that they're useless, but there are potentially unintended consequences if the program was just scrapped or ignored entirely.
I would also note that quite a few people use the two accounts very differently. They might use the TFSA for short term savings and the RRSP for the longer term.
The only tax savings you get with a RRSP is not paying taxes on dividends and cap gains.
Once you withdraw money you pay tax on it. Since everybody here agrees that everybody will be paying more tax in the future, you will end up paying more then than now.
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