I am Groot

This seems like a handy topic to toss this into. Canada's violent crime rate has been rising over the past decade. It WAS falling up until about 2015, but has been rising steadily since then FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON. The media is mostly in denial, but it's true. This DeepDive checks Statistics Canada to find out what’s actually happening. To do so, it explores an oft-ignored metric: the violent crime severity index, which accounts for both the amount and relative seriousness of crime. The analysis shows the naysayers are wrong: Violent crime severity increased considerably in every province and nearly every major city over the last decade. In most provinces, the past few years have produced the highest levels of violent crime severity recorded at any point since the index began in 1998. https://macdonaldlaurier.ca/why-violent-crime-is-surging-in-canada-dave-snow-in-the-hub/

Just how bad are NATO's armies? Well, the central ones are pretty godam bad. Given the relative sizes of their economies, one might conclude that Russia would quake before the military might of Europe’s Nato members. Russia, the ninth-largest economy in the world, is up against the third, sixth, seventh and eighth in the shape of Germany, Britain, France and Italy. Yet the reality is that, militarily, it is the other way around. Russia has the world’s second-strongest military, while France comes sixth, UK eighth, Italy tenth and Germany 12th. To put a few figures on it, Russia has 1.32 million active service personnel, 560 fighter aircraft and 3,941 tanks ready for deployment. For Britain, the corresponding figures are 141,000, 67 and 187; for France 264,000, 178 and 342; and Italy 165,000, 62 and 142. As for Canada, it ranks a lowly 28th, despite being a G7 nation with the world’s tenth-largest economy. It has 63,000 troops, 50 fighter aircraft and 56 tanks – all to defend a landmass that is larger than that of the US. Looked at from a military perspective, it is not hard to see why Donald Trump is considering incorporating Canada into the US. After all, Canada’s vast Arctic frontier is virtually a demilitarised zone. https://archive.is/VxHUx

The bureaucracy of purchasing for the military got even more complex when Carney, instead of trying to reform existing agencies, simply added another. How much of our money for 'defense' gets eaten up by all these bureacrats who accomplish mostly nothing? Carney’s strategy in making sure this actually gets done is a familiar one: create a new agency (in this case, the Defence Investment Agency) headed by a suit (investment banker Doug Guzman) whose job it will be to streamline processes and deliver results. That’s in addition to the existing entities charged with the work of defence (the Department of National Defence), subsidizing defence (the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development) and purchasing the tools necessary for defence (Public Services and Procurement Canada). In addition to those, columnist Tasha Kheiriddin pointed out earlier this week, within the federal ecosystem are also the Defence Advisory Forum, the Science and Research Defence Advisory Council, BOREALIS (the Bureau of Research, Engineering and Advanced Leadership in Innovation and Science), the Canadian Defence Industry Resilience Program and the Northern Operational Support Hubs Program. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/np-view-carneys-defence-plan-puts-bureaucracy-first

Immigration was supposed to be a boon to our economy. It's been increasing since the late 70s. And yet somehow, our economy just keeps getting worse and worse. Liberal apologists will blame things like moving factories to Asia, and automation. But that happened everywhere. Why are things worse in Canada? Could it be the combination of sky-high immigration with an ever-burgeoning public sector that eats up more and more resources and requires higher and higher taxes while producing ever more restrictive regulations on business and industry/

That happened in the US too. Explain why their productivity has risen so much faster than ours. In fact, explain why Canada's is the lowest in the OECD.

Canada has a productivity crisis. We've known that for some time. Now, Carney is finally going to do something about it! In true bureaucratic fashion, he's commissioning a study! Yayyy! That'll take care of the problem! Oh, and uhm, it's a fifteen year long study, soooo yeah, don't expect anything to come of this anytime soon. We have known what drives productivity for decades, and we have spent those decades either ignoring the evidence, making minor adjustments or – in some cases – actively doing the opposite. I say this as someone who has spent the better part of two decades studying these questions. It’s not that we lack answers or that we’ve exhausted all the policy options and come up short. It’s that we lack the political will to act on the answers we already have. The evidence has been sitting on the shelf for years. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has produced it. The Bank of Canada has sounded the alarm, calling this a “break the glass” moment. Statistics Canada has documented it in study after study. Our economic institutions have catalogued, repeatedly, the same structural failures: a complex tax system that punishes investment, entrepreneurship and growth; a regulatory apparatus so stifling and unpredictable that capital flows elsewhere; protected oligopolies in key sectors (telecom, airlines, banking and agriculture) that face little competitive pressure to innovate; strained trade and transport infrastructure that can’t move our goods to global markets or people efficiently within our borders; an immigration system that drifted toward low-wage temporary workers who substitute for capital, displacing the high-skilled talent that complements it; and a public sector growing in size but declining in effectiveness and productivity. The cumulative result is a decade of economic stagnation. From 2014 to 2024, Canadian labour productivity grew at just 0.3 per cent a year on average – less than a third of the American rate. Our GDP per hour worked has fallen to 60 per cent of the U.S. level from 67 per cent – and the business investment crisis driving that gap has only deepened. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-productivity-crisis-urgent-problem-canada-economy/

Don't let it go to your head. I even respond to Gaetan sometimes. It says what it is right up top. Nominal GDP per capita. Remind me who appoints the ethics commissioner.

There is no reason why we still need these agencies. They are a relic of a different time and are of no value. They are also profoundly unfair to those accused, since unlike the accuser, they get no free legal representation and the 'judges' are in almost all cases people way over on the fringe left and tend to side with claimants. And yet they can make hefty punishments against those who offend their sensibilities. Witness that guy in BC who was fined $750k because he believed there is only two genders. And who laid the charge against him? The BC Teachers union. Which is another organization that should not exist.

It's even worse when you realize the guy is bald.

I gather you haven't realized that you can't be discredited when you don't HAVE any credit.

The NDP is dissing food stores and retailers. The Conservatives are dissing the government and its taxes and regulations.

A lot of people are still under the illusion that we only take the best people as immigrants. Nothing could be further from the truth. People apply and supply forms on language, on job skills, and on work history. Those forms are examined by a worker in a cubicle, primarily hired because they are bilingual who has little time to do so. Note that our main source countries are notorious for the use of fake documents, including degrees. There is no interview. There is no test. The only vetting is a form supplied by the applicant that says they aren't wanted by the police. Are they filled with hatred and bigotry, misogyny and homophobia? Are they religious fanatics? Are they lazy and only looking for an easy life? We do not care. Once here, they can collect hefty child benefit cheques as well as welfare. There is no obligation to work. After three years, they can take a test consisting of 25 true/false/multiple-choice questions. No writing is required. There is no interview. There is no obligation to show an interest in integrating. There is no requirement to show economic self-sufficiency. This is the system that admits over 500,000* new permanent residents a year under the Liberal government. * When refugees are included. And they are not vetted either.

The Constitution says absolutely nothing about the grounds for removing citizenship. You're not a judge, so you don't get to make up the law as you go along. If we can remove the citizenship of an immigrant for treason or fraud, then we can do so for other crimes. The UK has now made it ten years before you can apply for citizenship. For migrants (boat people) it's 15 years.

You've been here more than long enough to know that when you put a cite up, you're claiming it. If it's bullshit, you shouldn't have put it up. If you don't even know what it means, that's on you, not him. Every party has lobbyists or former lobbyists in the back room, not to mention in caucus and for the government, in cabinet. Carney himself, when he was CEO, spent much of his time lobbying governments, including China.

It's your cite. And yet you can't tell me what bill they allegedly obstructed or how that bill might have lowered prices. You are not a serious poster.

Mark Carney hired two of the founders and directors of the Century Initiative and then proceeded to tell everyone that immigration would continue to be very high and that he would also be making a bunch more people permanent residents cause uh, business wants it that way.

Please give the name of the bill and explain how it would somehow lower prices.

And this is why our food inflation is the highest in the G7 by a good distance?

So write one. It used to be a part of law that we could remove citizenship from people convicted of treason, espionage, or terrorism. Put it back in place and add other grounds for removal, like conviction of serious crimes. Our immigration law is a bureaucratic mess. It should be rewritten in plain and simple language and passed using the Notwithstanding clause to keep social activist judges away from it.

The Liberals are letting in and accepting asylum applications from people without even bothering to interview them. Why? because it's easier. Negative decisions – rejecting asylum claims – consume time and resources because they must be carefully written in anticipation of appeal. By contrast, positive decisions can be made rapidly and in large numbers. The IRB developed a policy called “File Review,” which allowed asylum claims to be rapidly accepted in large numbers from a list of countries on the basis of the untested written application and documents in each file, and without refugees being questioned at a hearing. The policy appears to have been implemented unilaterally, without the approval of ministers or cabinet. For example, between January, 2019, and February, 2023, 24,599 asylum claimants were accepted without being asked a single question. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-has-a-hidden-asylum-policy-problem/