Canadian Federal Politics Thread v5

[chubeyr1]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Skippy = PP’s nickname in the Conservative Party. I think people have randomly called other politicians skippy because they think it sounds funny.

And yeah, I agree. I was just making the opposite point: just because Bill C-11 sucks for just about everyone doesn’t mean PP isn’t scary. People can connect these things and talk about “narratives” if they want, but they literally have zero bearing on each other. PP being so dumb it’s scary doesn’t make C-11 a good bill, and C-11 being a #### bill doesnt make PP some prize winning horse.

You are absolutely right.

Yet the Liberals especially Trudeau should not be in power either. Scandal after scandal. Bill C-11 is a joke against freedom. Have you read about C-96?

I offer no solution here. Just saying casting a vote for either party is not a win. We all lose.

You try to pick the lesser evil.

Sometimes it is hard. I loved PP roasting Trudeau numerous times because he deserved it. Then PP says something utterly stupid. Back to square one.

Trust me I am not arguing who the better party or leader is.

We really try to choose the lesser of two evils.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by chubeyr1

Yet if you invested that money 2 years ago into bitcoin then sold at its all time high it would be worth 2 million dollars.

Cherry picking numbers. You are not wrong, neither am I.

Well, if you bought $100,000 worth two years ago and sold at the peak you’d have about $600,000 actually.

But I believe the point is that suggesting Canadians should invest in things like bitcoin (which, to add another layer, PP holds, so any investment in it benefits him directly) to excuse themselves from inflation is dangerously moronic given the fact that the peaks are more rare than the valleys, and they could easily lose half their investment in any given stretch of a few months.

And that’s really saying nothing about the crypto currencies that have crashed way, way harder.

And the fact that if someone invested $100,000 when PP started advocating for it, they would’ve already lost $40,000. That’s not cherry picking, that’s reality for anyone who was dumb enough to take his advocacy as gospel and invest when he started tooting that horn.

EDIT: saw your follow up, and yeah, I agree, not a lot of inspiring options. Hopefully someone better than PP can take the nomination for the cons but who knows.

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by chubeyr1

You are absolutely right.

Yet the Liberals especially Trudeau should not be in power either. Scandal after scandal. Bill C-11 is a joke against freedom. Have you read about C-96?

I offer no solution here. Just saying casting a vote for either party is not a win. We all lose.

You try to pick the lesser evil.

Sometimes it is hard. I loved PP roasting Trudeau numerous times because he deserved it. Then PP says something utterly stupid. Back to square one.

Trust me I am not arguing who the better party or leader is.

We really try to choose the lesser of two evils.

There is no c-96 bill in the House of Commons right now.

[chubeyr1]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Well, if you bought $100,000 worth two years ago and sold at the peak you’d have about $600,000 actually.

But I believe the point is that suggesting Canadians should invest in things like bitcoin (which, to add another layer, PP holds, so any investment in it benefits him directly) to excuse themselves from inflation is dangerously moronic given the fact that the peaks are more rare than the valleys, and they could easily lose half their investment in any given stretch of a few months.

And that’s really saying nothing about the crypto currencies that have crashed way, way harder.

And the fact that if someone invested $100,000 when PP started advocating for it, they would’ve already lost $40,000. That’s not cherry picking, that’s reality for anyone who was dumb enough to take his advocacy as gospel and invest when he started tooting that horn.

EDIT: saw your follow up, and yeah, I agree, not a lot of inspiring options. Hopefully someone better than PP can take the nomination for the cons but who knows.

Investing in crypto is a volatile market. You can get rich or die trying. You can lose your shirt investing in crypto. Or get rich! I made money.

Certainly not what I would want the government to do. Had some excess funds and played with the market. Yes it is a market. It goes up and down.

If you bought Bitcoin 7 years ago and held it you could be a billionaire today. Yes that is cherry picking numbers. Not a platform I want my government to run on.

Funny we talk about this right now.

What over a year ago we could not give our oil away, yet now Oil is worth a fortune!

Oil is our Bitcoin in Alberta.

We need a better system!

[nik-]

Originally Posted by chubeyr1

Investing in crypto is a volatile market. You can get rich or die trying. You can lose your shirt investing in crypto. Or get rich! I made money.

Certainly not what I would want the government to do. Had some excess funds and played with the market. Yes it is a market. It goes up and down.

If you bought Bitcoin 7 years ago and held it you could be a billionaire today. Yes that is cherry picking numbers. Not a platform I want my government to run on.

Funny we talk about this right now.

What over a year ago we could not give our oil away, yet now Oil is worth a fortune!

Oil is our Bitcoin in Alberta.

We need a better system!

Imagine thinking this.

[SebC]

Originally Posted by Derek Sutton

Buy high, sell low. This is a motto all governments live by.

That's how you make your campaign donors happy, baby!

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Yeah. We should vote for Skippy. He’s not scary. Plus, when we vote for Skippy, he’ll let us opt of inflation by investing heavily in crypto! What could go wrong?

So Poilievre clearly has promoted usage of bitcoin and crypto in general, something that the general public is frankly scared about, knowing little about it.

Did I miss a tweet where he decided to pledge to the CAD to bitcoin or something, build a crypto reserve at taxpayer's expense and pull an El Salvador?

The only things i can find are alleged remarks he did a month + after bitcoin has been freefalling (which isn't hard when the whole world economy is crashing). And they all seem to misinterpret a shawarma tweet he did and how he bought a shawarma with bitcoin.

Unless he erased his tweets and I'm blind as a bat, I haven't found anything of major substance to be deemed scary relating to bitcoin he said.

I have a pretty poor opinion of bitcoin and crypto in general as an investment, seeing it as an overhyped ponzi scheme, but I see the same with some growth stocks like Tesla.

Tesla is down 40% from the similar time that Poilievre made his supposed remarks. Would buying an EV and promoting Tesla be mocked? Ironically, one of the biggest bitcoin investing companies is Tesla.

And PP has done some pretty stupid stuff of late most notably his reaching out to the freedumb convoy and mocking masks.

But I fail to see what he said or pledged relating to crypto that is scary.

I can tell you what is scary. Total online censorship of words and thoughts that the government does not like or deem harmful (to whom?). Russia has banned the use of the word "war", this type of censorship bill is a slippery slope that is best not to be left to interpretation by government, and there has not been any evidence that we need such a bill to exist.

And Canadians re-elected our government knowing they were going to try to pull this stunt again.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Firebot

So Poilievre clearly has promoted usage of bitcoin and crypto in general, something that the general public is frankly scared about, knowing little about it.

Did I miss a tweet where he decided to pledge to the CAD to bitcoin or something, build a crypto reserve at taxpayer's expense and pull an El Salvador?

The only things i can find are alleged remarks he did a month + after bitcoin has been freefalling (which isn't hard when the whole world economy is crashing). And they all seem to misinterpret a shawarma tweet he did and how he bought a shawarma with bitcoin.

Unless he erased his tweets and I'm blind as a bat, I haven't found anything of major substance to be deemed scary relating to bitcoin he said.

I have a pretty poor opinion of bitcoin and crypto in general as an investment, seeing it as an overhyped ponzi scheme, but I see the same with some growth stocks like Tesla.

Tesla is down 40% from the similar time that Poilievre made his supposed remarks. Would buying an EV and promoting Tesla be mocked? Ironically, one of the biggest bitcoin investing companies is Tesla.

And PP has done some pretty stupid stuff of late most notably his reaching out to the freedumb convoy and mocking masks.

But I fail to see what he said or pledged relating to crypto that is scary.

Suggesting people can “opt out” of inflation with crypto.

Demonising the Bank of Canada and suggesting it stands in the way of freedom and liberty.

Suggesting people would have more control over their money with crypto.

It’s scary because this is a guy who was the finance critic and is gunning for the top job and he’s spreading straight up bad financial information to Canadians. As I already said, if anyone was swayed by his passionate promotion of crypto, they’ve lost 40% of the money they put in. He rambled on about how it’s unfair the Bank of Canada controls our spending power and how inflation is all their fault, and turns around and touts something that would have absolutely destroyed people’s spending power, which would have been completely out of their control.

To the Tesla comment. No? You don’t drive a Tesla because the stock price is high, so why would the stock price going down impact your decision to drive a Tesla? It literally makes zero difference. You buy a Tesla, and the stock could be $1B or $10K and you still have your Tesla which functions exactly the same either way. What was your point there?

And hey, if none of that gives you any cause for concern and PP is all good in your books, great. But C-11 has literally zero relevance to PP and whether he’s good or not. It’s always possible that “the narrative” is just reality, and that both what “the narrative” suggests is bad and what you suggest is bad are both, in fact, bad. It’s not like trust is distributed evenly so that if one politician has 10/100 the other politician must have 90/100. Doesn’t work that way.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Well, Tesla's stock price is relevant to the quality of the experience of owning a Tesla simply because if it's growing you're likely to see more of them and thus more infrastructure to support them. And obviously bankruptcy is a potential concern with some electric makers but I doubt it's an issue for Tesla.

[Ozy_Flame]

There's not enough financial literacy among the common Canadian through education or professional guidance to assume that Canadians can suddenly switch to crypto and expect fantastic returns and a stable economy.

There's not enough financial literacy among Canadians for an economy that isn't based on crypto.

You do not "guinea pig" your entire population to adopt an early technology with wild value oscillations without proven economic controls in place based on historical data and external lessons applied.

Unless you're Nicaragua.

Hey Skippy, are we Nicaragua?

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Well, Tesla's stock price is relevant to the quality of the experience of owning a Tesla simply because if it's growing you're likely to see more of them and thus more infrastructure to support them. And obviously bankruptcy is a potential concern with some electric makers but I doubt it's an issue for Tesla.

EV infrastructure isn’t Tesla specific though, so… again. Bad analogy. We recommend cars because of the quality of the car, not the quality of the stock price. Happens to be why the general automotive thread doesn’t read the same as the stock market thread.

Here you are defending the merits of this analogy while you shamed me for my pitch perfect obesity analogy? You have lost your way, brother. You need the guidance of a good man or woman. A breath of fresh mountain air. A glass of warmed milk.

[Firebot]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Suggesting people can “opt out” of inflation with crypto.

Demonising the Bank of Canada and suggesting it stands in the way of freedom and liberty.

Suggesting people would have more control over their money with crypto.

It’s scary because this is a guy who was the finance critic and is gunning for the top job and he’s spreading straight up bad financial information to Canadians. As I already said, if anyone was swayed by his passionate promotion of crypto, they’ve lost 40% of the money they put in. He rambled on about how it’s unfair the Bank of Canada controls our spending power and how inflation is all their fault, and turns around and touts something that would have absolutely destroyed people’s spending power, which would have been completely out of their control.

There's nothing scary about what Poilievre is saying. He's right that crypto offers opportunities to shield yourself from the market, much like buying gold is considered a hedge. Of course the extreme volatility of crypto makes it a very poor investment for anyone risk adverse and I don't agree with his premise and as seen, crypto is most definitely not something you put all your eggs in one basket. I don't find his comments scary however.

And the BoC's head should be fired. To make continuous claims of transitory inflation last year, refusing to heed warning signs while simultaneously opening the floodgates to free cash by stubbornly keeping rates to historic lows, he's now playing catch up by forcing in a hard recession on Canadians to avoid certain economic catastrophe, the genie is out of the bottle. Not only has cost of living gone through the roof, any savings or investments your middle class Canadians have done, from stocks, to real estate, to bonds will be hard hit. Low income Canadians are hit hardest and the worst is yet to come.

“If you’ve got a mortgage of if you’re considering making a major purchase, or you’re a business and you’re considering making an investment, you can be confident rates will be low for a long time,” Macklem said.

Those comments were made less then 2 years ago! He's deliberately caused a new asset bubble and these people bought into this bubble and are screwed now. The damage will be extraordinary.

https://financialpost.com/news/econo...rate-at-0-25-2

“The bank continues to expect CPI inflation to remain elevated in the first half of 2022 and ease back towards two per cent in the second half of the year,” the Bank of Canada statement said.

This? 7 months ago. According to the BoC we should be close to 2% inflation by now. They had plenty of time to move on this but chose to do nothing instead and deny any issue.

The Bank of Canada head literally told people to go out and buy houses and take on historic debt to do it. The BoC directly misled many people into likely losing their houses and lose everything they have in the upcoming years. That's not scary?

Crypto investment most certainly can be part of an investment strategy in the long run, which is currently hampered by bans and limitations by Canadian banks. Is it a good idea to promote it to financially illiterate Canadians? No, but we just had the BoC telling the same financially illiterate Canadians to splurge on housing with debt.

So I don't see his comments as scary. There are much scarier real actions happening right now, including C-11, then a politician promoting crypto.

[chedder]

Crypto is proving that it is definitely not a hedge against the market or inflation. It is mirroring, exactly, the technology space. Except with more volatility. It is nothing like gold, which is an actual commodity.

Fomo and greater fool theory lifted crypto to its highs.

I have no doubt blockchain and cryptocurrencies will play a part in our world. It shouldn't look like a casino though.

[powderjunkie]

Do you think financially illiterate Canadians have any idea what the BoC is, let alone listen to those remarks?

We closed on our first house purchase right around the time those remarks were made (and no, they had zero impact on our decision). At that time, we thought it was more likely than not that the value of our new home would fall, if not crash. The opposite happened...lucky us.

Rates are still fairly low. It looks likely they're gonna continue to rise, but it's hard to say exactly when they'll stop being 'low'.

If the weather forecast calls for 7 days of sun where I'm going for a holiday, it's still on me if I decide not to bring a sweater/rain jacket and end up regretting it.

[BlackArcher101]

Originally Posted by Firebot

Those comments were made less then 2 years ago! He's deliberately caused a new asset bubble and these people bought into this bubble and are screwed now. The damage will be extraordinary.

The Bank of Canada head literally told people to go out and buy houses and take on historic debt to do it. The BoC directly misled many people into likely losing their houses and lose everything they have in the upcoming years. That's not scary?

Crypto investment most certainly can be part of an investment strategy in the long run, which is currently hampered by bans and limitations by Canadian banks. Is it a good idea to promote it to financially illiterate Canadians? No, but we just had the BoC telling the same financially illiterate Canadians to splurge on housing with debt.

While I agree that they really screwed the pooch here by keeping rates so low for so long, did they really have the option to raise the rates while the USA and everyone else didn't? What would that have done?

I don't agree however that they are purely to blame, misleading Canadians into buying houses etc. That is on those people as well, the BoC simply contributed but are not 100% at fault here. It doesn't take much to realize that things were getting so heated that something was going to fall. Just 3 months ago literally everyone I knew thought I was stupid for not taking money out of my house for reno's, investment cash, etc at time of my renewal. If at any point you believed that housing has nowhere to go but up and rates will always be super cheap.... then I have a bridge to sell you. At what point will people ever accept personal responsibility for their choices? The BoC did not make people do anything, it was their choice to over leverage.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by chedder

Crypto is proving that it is definitely not a hedge against the market or inflation. It is mirroring, exactly, the technology space. Except with more volatility. It is nothing like gold, which is an actual commodity.

And far less security. The average person isn't going get a hardware wallet and take all the precautions for security; they're probably going to buy crypto on an exchange, which has no insurance and can go belly up and at any time, leaving you with nothing.

The fact that a major party candidate is pumping crypto as a current solution to anything for the average Canadian is completely asinine; it's something I'd expect from the PPC. But I guess it fits in with his other craziness like buddying up with the convoy.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by BlackArcher101

While I agree that they really screwed the pooch here by keeping rates so low for so long, did they really have the option to raise the rates while the USA and everyone else didn't? What would that have done?

Yeah, this is a worldwide phenomenon. Canada actually compares favorably to most peer nations right now:

Spoiler!

The idea that bumping up interest rates half a percentage point a few months earlier would have made any material difference is laughable. This is a long-term systemic problem due to a prolonged period of too-low interest rates and the fallout from a pandemic.

[Macman]

And Pierre Poilievre is an MP at this point and not even the PC leader let alone the PM. Seems a stretch to continue giving Trudeau a green light given everything he’s done by saying PP is worse, that’s a terrible analogy/argument.

[powderjunkie]

Originally Posted by Macman

And Pierre Poilievre is an MP at this point and not even the PC leader let alone the PM. Seems a stretch to continue giving Trudeau a green light given everything he’s done by saying PP is worse, that’s a terrible analogy/argument.

Is anyone making that argument?

Trudeau sucks, and it's sad and frustrating that we may go through another election cycle with a menu of turd sandwiches. I won't vote for either of those buffoons.

[Aarongavey]

Originally Posted by Firebot

There's nothing scary about what Poilievre is saying. He's right that crypto offers opportunities to shield yourself from the market, much like buying gold is considered a hedge. Of course the extreme volatility of crypto makes it a very poor investment for anyone risk adverse and I don't agree with his premise and as seen, crypto is most definitely not something you put all your eggs in one basket. I don't find his comments scary however.

It is safe to say that crypto is just a bad investment. No need to qualify it.

And the BoC's head should be fired. To make continuous claims of transitory inflation last year, refusing to heed warning signs while simultaneously opening the floodgates to free cash by stubbornly keeping rates to historic lows, he's now playing catch up by forcing in a hard recession on Canadians to avoid certain economic catastrophe, the genie is out of the bottle.

inflation in 2021 was 3.4%. Excluding energy it was 2.4% which was slightly higher than the 2.3% it was at in 2019.

https://financialpost.com/news/econo...rate-at-0-25-2

This? 7 months ago. According to the BoC we should be close to 2% inflation by now. They had plenty of time to move on this but chose to do nothing instead and deny any issue.

. We are in the first half of the year still. So not sure we should be at or close to 2% right now.

The Bank of Canada head literally told people to go out and buy houses and take on historic debt to do it. The BoC directly misled many people into likely losing their houses and lose everything they have in the upcoming years. That's not scary?

is there an article where Macklem actually is quoted saying what you said he said?

Crypto investment most certainly can be part of an investment strategy in the long run, which is currently hampered by bans and limitations by Canadian banks.

safest play now and for the future is to short crypto, in that scenario it certainly can be an investment play.

Is it a good idea to promote it to financially illiterate Canadians? No, but we just had the BoC telling the same financially illiterate Canadians to splurge on housing with debt.

is there a quote in an article where the BoC said this?

So I don't see his comments as scary. There are much scarier real actions happening right now, including C-11, then a politician promoting crypto.

A politician promoting crypto is just funny while it crashes.