After Premier Kathleen Wynne rammed through new legislation hiking the minimum wage by 21 per cent at the start of 2018, without conducting any impact assessment and going against her old pledge to not raise it above inflation and giving only six-months notice, the CBC had the perfect news report to whip up proletarian anger at the business community, which would deflect blame from the unpopular Liberal premier.
How Low, Señor Maduro?
Venezuela is running out of gas.
Venezuela’s oil production has fallen to levels not seeing since the late-1980s. According to the latest OPEC report, which is based on information provided by the Nicolás Maduro government, the country is producing about 2.3 million barrels of oil per day. In October, it experienced the steepest fall in production of 2017, as only 1.9 million barrels were extracted, 130,000 barrels less than the previous month. The oil industry, however, is still the major source of income as it generates about 96 per cent of the foreign exchange.
Oh, Shiny Prime Minister!
Blacklock (remainder behind paywall):
The Department of Finance in a confidential Access To Information memo says energy consumers in provinces without a legislated carbon tax will pay at least $600 million in higher fuel costs this year. Federal legislation mandating the tax nationwide is due this spring: “The impact on consumers and businesses will depend.”
Dead Rose Country
The new measures follow the provincial government’s minimum-wage increase in October, 2017, from $12.20 to $13.60. Chef Mr. Noble expects that increase will cost his business between $50,000 and $60,000 extra in payroll until October, 2018, when minimum wage rises to $15, adding even further costs.
“It’s difficult for me as a small-business owner to keep taking a hit like this,” Mr. Noble said. “All of these increases, we can’t really hand back to the consumer in the form of menu pricing, because we run the risk of completely killing our businesses.”
Ms. Addington said new costs are being “piled on” from every level of government, at a time when businesses can ill afford it. The cumulative costs are taking a toll.
See No Socialism, Hear No Socialism
World Economic Forum: “Venezuela was once twelve times richer than China. What happened?”
Singh really doesn’t like Mulcair.
Also The IHOP compared to Trudeau’s Smitty’s on balancing the deficit. Waffles, everywhere.
“I didn’t expect that the two years that our party was not headed in the right direction could be turned around in just two months … I know the work that I’m setting out so do is not a sprint, it’s a marathon.”
Via foobert.
Not this century.
Western wheat farmers expect an apology — and perhaps a tear — from Trudeau
In 1947, Senator Walter Aseltine calculated that in the first 3½ years of CWB operations, western wheat growers suffered $535 million in lost income. The monopoly was supposed to end after the war, but Ottawa instead entered into wheat agreements with foreign buyers — often at bargain prices.
Prime Minister John Diefenbaker argued at one point that Ottawa’s decision to make western farmers finance war reconstruction was ridiculous. He said that when aircraft and other war materials were sent to Britain, it was never the manufacturers that were expected to pay the cost.
“Why,” he wanted to know, “were farmers being treated so differently and unfairly.”
If there is anything a Liberal hates,
It’s a hunter with a rifle. Gang-bangers with hand-guns, not-so-much.
If the peons won’t let you register them, then you change the law to make all firearms restricted and prohibited.
The online tracker also says the government plans to introduce legislation on firearm safety in the “near future.” The Liberals had promised during the 2015 election campaign to “take pragmatic action to make it harder for criminals to get, and use, handguns and assault weapons,” including repealing legal changes made by the previous Conservative government that allowed some weapons to be transferred without a permit, and requiring “enhanced” background checks for some firearms purchases.
h/t: don morris
The scare quotes are on the wrong words.
Conservatives say ‘Free the beer’ but not the milk
Q: So, your position is, free trade across provincial lines in beer, but not free trade across provincial lines in milk?
A: I think when it comes to marketing boards and supply management, it’s important we don’t go down a route that’s to the detriment of farmers.
Consumers, though, screw them.
The lede should have been “Conservatives”.
The pot on the way to the rainbow.
At this rate the price of a gram is going to be around $35 or so.
The black market is laughing as they watch street dealer futures rise in proportion.
Y2Kyoto: Bigger, Badder
The experience of the Soviets, the only rivals to the Nazis for engineering gigantism, is instructive. In its haste to improve agriculture, USSR implemented irrigation projects that destroyed the Aral Sea. “The Great Plan for the Transformation of Nature, also known as Stalin’s plan for the transformation of nature, was proposed by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union in the second half of the 1940s, for land development, agricultural practices and water projects to improve agriculture in the nation.” The Plan needless to say, did not work.
Yet the mind-boggling goals of the German superproject and even Stalin’s Great Plan pale in comparison to the biggest engineering undertaking of our age: the Paris Climate Agreement. With a 195 signatories the goal of the agreement is nothing less than the modification of the weather system of the entire planet, a much bigger deal than simply damming up the Straits of Gibraltar. It sails serenely on. Most political leaders have signed on to the accord on the same basis that Philippine health authorities agreed to Dengvaxia: rational ignorance. Presidents and prime ministers, incapable of independently judging the technological soundness of the Paris Agreement, must rely instead scientific consensus that it’s good.
Go, Already
…while multilingual greetings may seem like common-sense customer service to Montreal retail workers like Sadat, Quebec’s provincial politicians appear to disagree.
On Thursday, the legislature unanimously adopted a motion calling on store clerks to stick with a simple “bonjour” when addressing customers instead of the hybrid “bonjour/hi” often heard in Montreal.
The national assembly members voted 111-0 in favour of the motion, which is not coercive.
Red Rose Country
Pity the unfortunates who will have to get this house back in order after the Orange Wave recedes.
And the extravagant spending isn’t limited to the Province either.
Theresa May’s Britain
Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch, and it’s not ok to be white.
The [BBC] Newsroom team is offering an exceptional and unique opportunity to train as a broadcast journalist within their expert team. Working with the joint Domestic and World Service Radio Newsroom, in collaboration with Radio 4 sequence programmes, the successful candidate will be given the opportunity to gain varied experience across domestic and World Service digital output. […]
This internship is only open to candidates from a black, Asian or non-white ethnic minority background
h/t Sean M.
Merkel made promises.
Tough talks to form Germany’s next government collapsed Sunday as the four parties in talks failed to bridge a yawning gap over immigration policy.
Via Robert of Ottawa
Red Rose Country
Some lessons need to be learned the hard way, every generation.
“Beer taxes, liquor taxes, the carbon tax, business taxes, for the privilege of operating a business in this city, the hike in the minimum wage we could handle, but then Rachel Notley mandates that on Jan. 1, holiday pay is going up by 25 per cent,” explains Morgan.
Restaurant owners are also hit with new rules that forbid employers or employees to bank hours for a day off in lieu. Now if a waiter works overtime, they must be paid, time-and-a-half, rather than get extra time off later.
“It’s nickel and dime, nickel and dime at the very worst of times,” says Morgan, who is sad for his staff who have yet to find work. “These people in power are bozos, they have no clue what’s going on out here and the pain they’re causing. They just keep on socking it to us.”
Scratch a leftist
A few decades ago, anti-Semitism usually emerged from those on the right. But now, anti-Semitic opinions are often spread by leftish forces.
I think we’ve been using that title for years here….
How deep Señor Maduro?
Venezuela, a nation spiraling into a humanitarian crisis, has missed a debt payment. It could soon face grim consequences.
[…]
Venezuela has no other meaningful income other than the oil it sells abroad. The government, meanwhile, has failed for years to ship in enough food and medicine for its citizens. As a result, Venezuelans are waiting hours in line to buy food and dying in hospitals that lack basic resources.
If investors seize the country’s oil shipments, the food and medical shortages would worsen quickly.
“Then it’s pandemonium,” says Fernando Freijedo, an analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, a research firm. “The humanitarian crisis is already pretty dire … it boggles the mind what could happen next.”
All is unfolding as predicted.
Dead Rose Country
… the New Democrats refuse to make any cuts at all in the public-sector workforce to help reduce their mega-deficits. As Finance Minister Joe Ceci is fond of saying, the government “will not balance the budget by putting more working people on the unemployment line.”
But if you work in an industry the stands in the way of the NDP’s “green energy” dreams, they have no problem at all putting you out of work.
Virtue Signals
Since Thursday, crews have prioritized lights at high-speed intersections from the southbound direction for clean up, since the winds came from the north, the city notes. The work was continuing Saturday.
If you come to an intersection but the lights are obscured, or partially obscured, by snow, officials say you should slow down and — if necessary — treat the intersection like a four-way stop.
Last year, new LED bulbs in Windsor, Ont., were blamed for a crash when a school bus ran a red light and broad-sided a car in an intersection. Six kids, a school staff member and the drivers of the car and bus were taken to hospital. Police said the bus driver claimed the red light was covered in snow.
Somewhere in the bowels of City Hall, they were warned this would happen and they did it anyway.