BeaverFever

Why do Republicans always pretend they care about the national debt when EVERY single Republican president runs the debt up massively? Republicans spend their entire lives shrieking and tearing at their clothes about how the debt is going to kill us all and then when one their presidents get elected it’s a drunken debt spree and they’re like “oh well it’s only money and it’s all for a good cause!”

LMAO your blatant partisanship is hilarious amd you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about. I mean conservatives have been complaining since time immemorial that the environmental and indigenous consultation laws are authoritarian and should be repealed. And now you’re saying that bypassing those same laws to the cheers of conservatives is authoritarian. You’re hilarious. He’s said explicitly that to oil and gas pipelines are in scope where it makes sense. Wrong Immigration curb slashes Canada population growth rate to zero Tighter immigration rules have cut off the fuel from the Canadian population growth engine. Tighter immigration rules have cut off the fuel from the Canadian population growth engine. Article content Canada added just 20,107 people in the first quarter, essentially no percentage change to quarterly population growth, compared with an average of 0.3 per cent over the past decade, Statistics Canada data showed Wednesday. Excluding the pandemic, it’s the slowest quarterly rate since comparable records began in 1946, tied with the fourth quarter of 2014. … Carney’s government has introduced a bill with tougher rules on asylum claims, in addition to limits already in place on foreign students and workers. Lawmakers are set to debate the legislation on Wednesday. It’s an apparent move to deter international students from abusing the system and brace for a possible surge of refugees fleeing US President Donald Trump’s crackdown. The government’s current immigration plan aims for a period of flat population growth before a return to a pace of expansion that’s closer to historical levels. https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/immigration-curb-slashes-canada-population-growth-rate-to-zero I don’t think that’s true at all. People are regularly screened and removed That I agree with. But it’s the same small town brach plant mentality that’s been encouraged under both governments it’s not a left/right issue it’s because of our historically colonial mentality and being in a unipolar bubble with USA the world’s largest superpower and economy being our only neighbour So? I didn’t say 100% of our trade would leave the US but there’s lots of room to, especially as the democracies look to reduce their reliance on countries like China for critical minerals and natural resources We have to start somewhere TBH I think it’s the old baby boomers who are holding us back. This is the country that they built. For most of their life they were enamoured of USA and/or UK described Canada as little more than a lesser backwater British or American satellite rather than a “real country”. Younger Canadians are much more more like to believe Canada ought to not take a backseat and they certainly don’t fawn over USA like previous generations did. . T We are the only G7 nation that has free trade with every other G7 nation amd with Trump’s trade hostility amd Russia/China aggression there is more interest in trading with the likes of Canada

Lol you’re such a loser troll. The only thief and liar is TACO Trump who walked back most of his tariff threats over his bullshit fentanyl claims months ago.

Many of those poles would love to put an oil rig, fishing fleet, listening post, rusty old oil tankers and cargo ships, and pipelines in our arctic, mine resources off our sea floor, and through there. Including USA. The global powers have every intention of trespassing across our waters and arctic at will as they please if we don’t secure them. It won’t be an invasion it’ll just be an oil rig with armed men on it and a dare for us to do something about it Don’t be so naive.

The long game is to fundamentally restructure the Canadian economy and diversify away from USA. That will be the ongoing project that will take years. Going back and forth with Trump over exactly how much economic vandalism he is going to commit over the next few months is the short game. Well I don’t think he’s caved in although seemingly he had a give with respect to DST. I don’t think he’s going to give America “whatever it wants” but he never said Canada wouldn’t have to give up anything. It’s a negotiation and negotiations mean give and take. Trump is trying to take our lunch money, we’re not trying to take anything from Trump, therefore a totally unrealistic one-sided Canadian victory where Carney wipes the floor with Trump would only mean things remain the way they were before, with nobody having gained or lost anything. Anything short of that, which is reality, means Canada gives up something vis-a-vis the US and we will need to replace that with domestic trade and increased trade with other countries. We don’t know what’s on the table or where they are, perhaps giving up the DST was the best possible deal. Nothing has been signed yet they’re still negotiating doe the next 3 weeks or so. And we have NO deal at the moment, at least not one that Trump’s honouring. Certainly some of the tariffs he has announced against us this year will come off. Others like aluminum and maybe steel will likely come off, be reduced or discretely poked full of loopholes regardless because USA simply can’t sustain them. USA’s aluminum industry will never be able to support domestic demand, not only do they not have the raw materials but it would take decades of investment and hundreds of billions of dollars to restructure and refurbish not only the US aluminum industry but also the highly fragmented, privatized, politicized and inefficient US electricity market It just ain’t gonna happen.

Bill C-5 for example allows Carney to just declare an oil pipeline or other project to be above the law and ignore any environmental concerns, laws or indigenous consultation that gets in the way. His immigration crackdown is another. All rammed through parliament with barely any debate or examination. Conservatives must be creaming their jeans over those. These things are so controversially right wing only a Liberal has the running room to get away with doing them (for now). Because he has a minority government so he has to be bed buddies with someone and the stuff he wants to do is stuff like massively build up defence, build economic infrastructure, exploit national resources including fossil fuels, etc. And he wants to do it all with maximum speed, minimum red tape, minimum consultation, debate etc so that’s naturally more appealing to conservatives and less so to the NDP/BQ What government protection? We are the most foreign owned economy in the G7 and one of the most foreign owned in the G20. High wages is not a bad thing and our wages aren’t necessarily lower. Our lowest paid hourly workers maybe have slightly higher wages but salaries in the US are generally higher and on top of that US employers provide extremely expensive health insurance We are inefficient because decade after decade we’ve doubled down on being a “branch plant” economy that does nothing except export crude raw materials or conduct basic mundane local transactions at the direction of a foreign-headquartered multinational company. So in summary none of what you said explains why we can trade with USA but redirecting trade to Europe and Asia “isn’t going happen” Secondly I would argue that decades of concentrating our trade with USA in particular and generally being indifferent to having a branch plant economy is precisely why our industry is inefficient. Like for decades the government policy was you clock in at the factory, you make your widgets, you clock out and you shouldn’t care whether the factory is Canadian owned or American owned or Japanese owned. But of course, it makes a big difference who owns the factory and makes the decisions on where widgets get made, and who controls the patterns for them. Well years ago Canadian businesses weren’t subject to Trump’s ridiculous tariffs and other that signing the trade deal governments didn’t feel motivated to do much else. Now there’s a ton of trade infrastructure and military equipment in the works and initiatives like ReArm Europe and concerted efforts to secure long-term contracts between Canadian industries and overseas partners. The government can only do so much to help businesses who “have problems because of the Americans” and everyone knows that if they don’t diversify they do so at their own risk. As I mentioned he shifted from saying he was going to use “economic force” to annex us against our will to saying “it takes two to tango” and that he merely thinks it would be a good idea if Canadians chose to join USA. That’s just empty right wing rhetoric.

Its not about being invaded. We have security and sovereignty threats in our arctic and maritime approaches, not least of which is from the Americans. And now of all tomes we need closer economic, security and defence ties with Europe which means investing in European defence

Sorry you already got to enjoy your military budget cuts for the past 35 years. Now it’s time to pay the piper. Literally.

I think they know it’s practically pointless to try and talk sense into Trump given how unhinged, uninformed and untrustworthy he is. They know they have to show Canadians they’re making their best effort and maybe that will mitigate some of their losses but mostly a lost cause and they want to move on to diversifying away from the US, and building up the domestic economy. They’ve said repeatedly they’re not going to endlessly go round and round with Trump and they’re done with the “psychodrama” as Melanie Joly put it. As Carney said, they’ll take all the time takes to secure the best possible deal, but no more.

While some have suggested that Carney was always willing to trade the DST and may have done so to show they’re bargaining in good faith and get trump to “use up” one of his demands (e.g. “we already gave you x now it’s your turn to give up something”), it really doesn’t feel that is how it went down. Best I can tell is that the Liberals thought they had until July 21 to finalize a deal and wouldn’t have to commit to anything before then. But of course the DST would have come into effect before then and they should have expected Trump would make an immediate demand against it even though the negotiation deadline is far away. They could have postponed its implementation just to get it out of the way for now and dangle its cancellation later. Instead they are fully repealing the legislation, not just suspending its implementation or setting the tax rate to zero like the did with the carbon tax and they got for it was resumed negotiation and obnoxious gloating from the Trumposphere so it seems to be a misplay, IMO.

Trump and Carney spoke all weekend including late into Sunday night right before the announcement was made. That’s Trump had to invest so much time and energy right up to the last minute to get this concession suggests is not as one-sided as you suggest. The narrative being spun by conservatives was disputed You have ONE think tank making these claims, which the conservative echo chamber repeated as fact. The Liberal party disputed it. Vassy K didn’t confirm it ahe just reported what OE amd conservatives alleged. Ottawa says most tariffs against U.S. remain, pushing back on earlier report Champagne: The government “temporarily and publicly paused tariffs” on some items for health and safety reasons https://financialpost.com/news/economy/canada-tariffs-us-remain-oxford-report Again, I will repeat that Liberals have said all along that only the American people can reign in Trump, countries can only hope to mitigate their losses but everyone is going to be worse off than when Trump took office : He is erratic and frequently reverses himself on a whim He is not a rational actor His policies (if you can even call them that) are not based on any knowledge or understanding of economics His motives are often unclear and constantly changing based on who is whispering in his ear at any given moment He frequently goes back on his word making any “deals” reached with him not worth the paper they’re printed on. W a compulsive and shameless liar case in point: He already has a trade surplus with UK and they bent over and spread their butt cheeks for him and he still hit them with a universal 10% tariff plus his global steel and aluminum tariffs just because he can. The Liberals’ Trump strategy is to de-risk and diversify away from USA and wait for American people and Republicans who will suffer under his policies to apply pressure. Don’t forget US has midterm elections next year

That’s some selective story telling by Lilley who is shameless propagandist. You’ll recall TRUMP paused and walked back tariffs on us first, and did so multiple times. But you are also missing this:: Canada retaliates against U.S. steel imports after Trump terminates trade talks. The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. But late Friday, Canada retaliated against the U.S. by imposing a quota on some steel imports and a 50% surcharge for imports that exceed the quota. Canada's finance minister said the government was acting to protect its industry from "unjust U.S. tariffs." Canada's government said it "remains prepared to take additional steps as needed." https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna215608 That’s not because of Trump that’s to keep PP and the conservatives onside. And our immigration policy is still pretty different from Trump’s. He is doing a lot of very right wing things to keep their support, even things conservatives couldn’t get away with. Carney has been very clear that the solution is to pivot our economy away from the US. He’s repeatedly pointed to the fact that Trump is unstable and his word is worthless, you manage him as best you can, but the solution is to diversify away from the US. And that’s what he’s been doing with great success, Canada and Europe have now formed the “No Homers Club” with USA shut out As a correction Carney didn’t say open up the free trade agreement now, he said he wants to begin a new comprehensive trade and security framework and that’s what they’re discussing now. The CUSMA renegotiation would then be shaped by that framework On the 51st state Trump’s comments have changed since Carney took office by the way. Trump went from calling the PM governor and saying he was going to use economic force to force Canada to join the US to simply saying he thinks it would be a good idea for Canadians to choose joining USA for themselves. Carney had explicitly said nobody can control Trump’s mouth least of all Trump so we need to move past that and not be distracted. What exactly do you think PP would have done differently?

Well he hasn’t dropped the original tariffs and he has announced new quotas and tariffs on that will affe US steel. What else has Trump gotten from him other than this one thing? It’s Trump that’s been doing all the walk-backs up until now.

Yes, patronage by royalty and lords. You don’t get it. First the point is not for government to only support specific works of art that it has assessed as being commercial successful. Its purpose is to support the arts generally to create a thriving arts scene, from which successful artists will emerge. Your argument is like saying government should not fund youth sports it should only fund specific kids who are definitely going to become pro athletes. But that’s not how you get pro athletes. You get pro athletes by funding sports generally, knowing that 99% of the kids will never go pro but a small minority will. Second even artists who aren’t commercially successful on their own without government subsidies contribute to the arts, for example they might inspire other more successful artists.

Just a correction: the “quota money” doesn’t go to the government. Farmers buy quotas from other farmers. And the provincial dairy boards are not “government” they’re dairy farmers elected by fellow dairy farmers, basically a self-regulating body. I don’t think there’s a difference in how milk tastes, just know that US milk can have artificial hormones in it. The only reason it costs less in USA is because the federal and state governments heavily subsidize farmers. The government gives them “price guarantees” so if the price goes below a certain amount the government pays them the difference. A variety of government departments from defence to education and more also have mandates to buy up and stockpile surplus dairy products. So America doesn’t do it better. Also American farmers dump milk far more often than in Canada, precisely because supply is not centrally managed and subsidies encourage overproduction. In Canada dumping is a last resort and usually due to some temporary disruption like a processing facility being unexpectedly offline. In the Canadian system everything is coordinated from producer to processor to retailer to minimize mismatches One other difference with USA is their dairy tends to come from very massive megafarms doing huge business exporting dairy products all around the world whereas Canada still tends to be primarily family farms All countries have some sort of protection or regulation for things like dairy and eggs.m because of their nature. While most other industries can shut down a factory when consumer demand or prices drop, cows are basically milk factories that can’t be shut down. The milk is coming out of that cow one way or another whether you want to sell it or not. And milk spoils quickly so can’t really be stored if sales are slow this week. Cows are milked 2-3 times a day and the milk has to be on the grocery store shelf a couple days after that. It seems that anywhere that doesn’t use supply management uses government subsidies instead, with the exception of New Zealand, which exports 95% of the milk it produces….that doesn’t seem any better.

Well the breaking news tonight is that Carney has agreed to cancel the DST. I have to say I’m very disappointed. I guess it’s a hill he felt he didn’t need to die on but 11th hour concessions to the fat dumb bully sure don’t look good. He better have gotten something of value for this.

Well said, I will add that the US has its OWN restrictions on dairy imports, above a certain quota they are not just tariffed they’re completely BANNED in the USA. So if a Canadians were dumb enough to want buy America’s artificial growth hormone-filled milk and watch their toddler grow a pair of DD cup breasts we could, if we wanted to pay the tariff. But Americans who want to buy some pure unadulterated Canadian milk are criminals once the quota is reached. And Canada already imports more US dairy products than vice-versa.

Nope that’s not a correct summary. I said it was MAGA, you said its also Dems and I said fine it’s also dems and American politicians on both sides are bought and paid for. That’s all. And now this is all you can focus on because you know you have no other arguments to make on this DST topic. An nowTrump is spouting even more lies about Canadian dairy

It’s not wrong, everything I said about MAGA is correct amd Im willing to acknowledge that it applies to many/most democrats as well. As for everything else, the TL;DR is that 1) EU and UK already have a similar tax 2) it is a Canadian transaction conducted in Canadian dollars with Canadian consumers via Canadian bank accounts. The mere fact that Canada can tax these transactions is self-evident 3) The fact that US firms currently make up the majority of this second is irrelevant, they are competing o tue same terms as Canadian businesses in this space 4) Canada doesn’t have to eat the cost of this tax which they clearly communicated years in advance, nor should it. The government of Canada makes Canadian laws, the government is sovereign and these companies are not equals with whom it has to compromise or offer concessions or obtain their consent. The laws are fair and they received ample notice and accommodations. We have a court system they can avail themselves of if they feel otherwise and unlike the US we truly have a fair and impartial judiciary. Why would Canada absorb costs that this industry could easily afford and were provided significant advance notice of? At tax time do you demand the IRS eat the cost of your taxes simply because you don’t feel like paying although you could easily? Do you do that with any of your other bills? 5) what you don’t understand is that taxes are paid from gross revenue not net profits, meaning they can be offset with tax deductions, credits, write-offs, etc. It is not dishonest to discuss companies by gross earnings in fact EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation and Amortization) is one of the most common ways to value a company. 6) Yes any country can object to some domestic policy of another country and take some action in response. Canada could object to the way USA treats some endangered species on the Gulf of Mexico or the way we think USA treats gay or black people or whatever. And we could announce some punitive action as a result. That doesn’t mean it’s legitimate or appropriate for is to do so.

The royal patronage is the equivalent of government subsidies today amd happens in every culture. The thing about supporting the arts is that government is not meant to pick and choose specific pieces or styles of art, they’re meant fund “the arts” broadly and generally with rhe goal of creating a vibrant arts scene, nothing more. Vibrant art scenes almost by definition are going to result in some controversial or unconventional art.

Most of the great works of art through history is subsidized at some point, even the stuff that sells on its own is often produced by artists who developed honed their skills on “subsidized” projects. The “subsidized” art is also often the cutting edge content that moves the culture and art scene forward, and only later becomes commercially successful after it catches on with the mainstream. Not to mention that the “art” that “sells” best and easiest on its is often low brow mass market brainrot crap like reality tv. The other thing I find interesting is that many in the “no subsidies for art” crowd are all for subsidies for sports teams which is far less important than arts. Everyone has heard of shakespeare and beethoven (both were effectively government subsidized artists), nobody knows or cares about whatever sports were around back then.

That doesn’t matter. Its not a selective tax that puts them at a competitive disadvantage, that’s all that matters. If an American company buys Tim Hortons Trump doesn’t get to demand we cancel taxes on donuts because its us owned. All cars sold in Canada are owned by American companies so we have to stop taxing those also? You so business in Canada, you pay taxes in Canada, period. It doesn’t matter what country your company is headquartered in. Why is that so hard for you to understand?

False. It is a tax on digital services and applies to all companies, including domestic Canadian companies. He didn’t, blackbird got it wrong, again.

Yes, democrats shill for corporations and big tech too. Everyone knows American politicians on both sides of the aisle are cash-and-carry, especially these days. So if you would like me to retract MAGA I will agree What Im telling you is that a domestic sales tax that applies to all businesses universally is a purely domestic matter if USA or Madagascar or the mayor of Timbuktu think it’s ok. As a sovereign country if we want to put a sales tax on toothpicks we don’t have to look up which country’s businesses make the most toothpicks and then seek for their permission to regulate transactions that occur within our own borders Its not absurd. Sovereign nations are free to set up their own tax regimes and regulate their own markets. US is free to disagree, we disagree with a lot of things the US does internally. We don’t threaten tariffs on USA if they don’t adopt stricter gun control for example. As long as the tax rules don’t privilege or disadvantage a specific country against other foreign or domestic competitors they have nothing to legitimately grieve. I mean if anything given that these US companies already have the majority of the market the tax actually makes it more difficult doe other startups homegrown or foreign to compete since they will be far less able to absorb the cost. Yeah but if you know how businesses operate then you know that they accrue for anticipated future costs even ones that have the possibility of being cancelled. And they knew it was to be effective in 2022 with implementation postponed several times as a favour, it was not a surprise that it would be retroactive to 2022 they knew the whole time. And again $2 billion shared across a number of the world’s wealthiest companies is nothing. Bezos is probably spending more on his wedding right now 😃 It’s not ignorant to state the cost relative to their gross instead of their net. At any rate it is still a drop in the bucket for these companies. BOTTOM LINE: These companies don’t have a god-given right to conduct business in our country tax-free. The entire premise of the Trump tariffs is that everyone must pay for the privilege of accessing the US market so isn’t it ironic that you think these companies should not only have tariff-free but also tax-free access to the Canadian market?

Explain the difference That makes absolutely no sense. The fact they didn’t rollover is proof that they will roll over? What exactly do you think he would do if they were ere actually difficult negotiators? That’s exactly what’s happening right now but you’re suggesting it’s a sign of failure not the road to success. We will see. At some point there will be a “new normal” and I suspect that even if Carney gets 99.99% of what Canadians want conservatives will claim that he caved, bent the knee and sold out. Meanwhile if PP is the PM when things are settled even if he caves to the US on 99.99% of issues conservatives will tout the 0.01% as a landslide victory That’s how that judgment will go, same as it ever does.