Author: Dennis

Covid theater on the Manitoba links

Gain of Function Wuhan Flu 24 Comments

Unlike Ontario, Manitoba still allows golf courses to remain open. In the interests of virtue signalling, one supposes, they are trying to make golfing enough of a nuisance such that people will hopefully be dissuaded from playing.

“If an appropriate banner is in place, such as a plastic shield between the driver and the passenger, two people from separate households can share a golf cart.”

Most, if not all, golf courses in the province have suspended league play as a result of the edicts. The province considers league play a “team” sport even though the players rarely get within six feet of each other. However, league members are still welcome to show up and golf at the regular time at my local course. The only difference is that your scores will not be officially recorded.

Smart bug, that Covid. Who knew it could differentiate between players using an official score card and those that don’t?

Is the prevailing narrative losing momentum?

Great Reset Wuhan Flu 44 Comments

I have to marvel at the fact that this particular story actually made it to the front page of any mainstream media outlet, so maybe there’s hope for this country yet. If only Doug Ford and a few others would get this message and cut out their passive/aggressive posturing. If the op-ed is correct, it will still take a long time to undo the psychological, let alone economic, damage.

North America is now definitively entering the final days of COVID-19. Even in Canada — with ongoing third waves in both Ontario and Alberta — deaths remain way down from their January highs and mass vaccination is rapidly shielding whole sections of the population from lethal harm. But as our pandemic deliverance approaches, physicians and researchers are now warning of a new public health challenge: When normalcy arrives, many may refuse to accept it.

Now, as COVID wanes across the developed world, psychiatrists are warning of a wave of COVID-centric anxiety. “Those with severe health anxiety are likely to become abnormally avoidant, continuing to isolate and practise repeated hand washing, checking their body temperatures, respiratory function, and even testing their ability to smell … over and over again,” reads a paper on “COVID-19 health anxiety” in the journal World Psychiatry.

 

Coming to a province near you

Great Moments In Socialism Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough 25 Comments

If a doctor told you that the best way to treat alcoholism would be to drink even more, it’s doubtful that you would take him seriously. But that’s the equivalent of some of the suggestions being offered to deal with Newfoundland’s current budgetary, or should I say existential, crisis.

Finally, [the Greene Report] recommends a new federal loan facility be established to enable the province to borrow 10 and 30-year bonds at federal rates.

Sources say the plan is to get through the pandemic before turning to a comprehensive plan that takes in health transfers, child care, long-term care and pharmacare.

Unless such plans consider market solutions for these items, it would seem that a Zimbabwe style outcome is now within reach.

How come this debt isn’t paying for itself?

Great Moments In Socialism Great Reset It's Probably Nothing 61 Comments

A debt load of $47 billion for a province of 500,000? A new report is recommending that the Newfoundland government slash health care and education spending while selling off any number of government owned enterprises.

In order to rein in a soaring public debt and end the long pattern of deficit spending, Greene recommended a five per cent reduction in core government spending, and that operating grants for Memorial University and the College of the North Atlantic be slashed by 30 per cent, at a rate of five per cent annually.

Some of her sharpest points were directed at the health system, which accounts for 37 per cent of public spending. The province also spends 24 per cent more per capita on heath than the Canadian average.

Lest anyone think that Newfoundland is alone in this sinking boat, if every provincial government in this country were as honest as this lot when calculating their actual debt burden, most provinces would not be far behind. Most will wind up, eventually, as wards of the Bank of Canada.

Multi-generational unemployment for $200, Alex…

Great Moments In Socialism Let Them Eat Taser Wuhan Flu 28 Comments

Not to be outdone by Sleepy Joe’s faltering stimulus programs south of the border, Shiny Pony and his provincial counterparts demonstrated last month that they can destroy jobs at a blistering clip too.

Ontario, grappling with a vicious resurgence of COVID-19, lost 153,000 jobs while British Columbia, under its “circuit breaker” restrictions, saw a decline 43,000.

Pandemic restrictions that tend to limit high-contact services meant retail, food services, information, culture and recreation sectors were hit the hardest, losing a combined 169,000 jobs in April.

Common sense from south of the border

Wuhan Flu 50 Comments

Judging by what Canadians are allowed to read in the Mainstream Media these days regarding Covid, it’s as if the United States no longer exists. With cases dropping like a stone in nearly every state, one would think that journalists would be interested in finding out why. As Marty Makary of Johns Hopkins points out, the reason is that the United States has basically achieved herd immunity.

Look at the facts: About 57 percent of adults are vaccinated and approximately half of unvaccinated people have natural immunity from prior infection. That’s why US cases have been plummeting, down 31 percent over the past 18 days.

Covid policy in Canada is no longer about public health, if it ever was; it’s about narrative maintenance at all costs.

Hurry up and wait!

Gain of Function Wuhan Flu 23 Comments

To deal with the latest surge in cases, rapid Covid tests are finally being made widely available in Canada. About a year later than they should have been, but that’s how centrally planned systems function. Bureaucratic turf wars take precedence over satisfying obvious consumer demand.

The primary obstacle to implementing rapid tests in Canada has been the red tape provincial health authorities have put around using the tests — especially a rule that required the tests to be operated by health care professionals such as nurses. Such a rule makes widespread rapid testing effectively impossible, given Canada’s already limited health care resources.

Another zero percent interest miracle!

Great Moments In Socialism Great Reset It's Probably Nothing 16 Comments

In a normal, growing economy, each generation can expect a higher standard of living than the previous one. In Canada, we seem to be going in the opposite direction of normal. If the trend noted in this article continues, millennials will be lucky to buy a principal residence at about the time they would like to retire.

In the epicenter of the housing bubble, it’s particularly bad for an average income earner:

In Toronto, for example, where the median home price crossed $1 million in the first quarter, it now takes 278 months (23 years) to save up for a down payment. In Vancouver, where the price of a representative home is $1,381,274 and you need an income of $237,201 to afford it, you would have to save for 389 months (32.4 years) just for the down payment.

Buy a horse. You may need one someday.

Shiny Pony You Might Be A Liberal 9 Comments

Generally people think roadways when the topic is infrastructure spending. But if Shiny Pony has anything to say about it, such projects may be consigned to the environmental dustbin.

Ontario’s proposed new mega-project to build a highway looping around the northwest of Toronto has been designated by the federal government for special environmental scrutiny.

The federal government says the provincial project, already facing opposition, needs additional environmental oversight, a designation that will slow the massive construction project or, opponents say, kill it altogether.

Two days drive to get across the GTA? A small price to pay to protect the spotted burble frog:

….this project may cause adverse direct or incidental effects on federally-listed species at risk….

Bubbles in Cottage Country

Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing 23 Comments

It’s not just urban real estate values that are soaring these days. If an economic boom can be conjured up by encouraging people to spend more than they can afford to on a principal residence, think of how much bigger the boom can be when they do the same for a lakeside home.

The Grey Bruce Owen Sound region has seen prices for single-family home jump 33.3 per cent during the period to $432,100, compared to the same period last year, according to CREA. The average price of homes sold in March was a record $646,488, a 44.9 per cent improvement from March 2020.

A voice in the wilderness

Great Reset It's Probably Nothing 19 Comments

This op-ed by David Rosenberg points out the problem with using GDP as the yardstick for measuring economic growth. If you discount the impact of governments borrowing capital that they have no intention of repaying as well as consumers borrowing to buy houses that they cannot afford, the economy is actually shrinking, not growing:

…the Canadian housing market has gone simply insane with ultra-low interest rates, easy access to credit, shifting preferences (work from home) toward more real estate and tremendous speculation. Total residential construction has surged 22.5 per cent in the past year and that has taken the housing share of GDP to a record high of 9.3 per cent — double the historical norm. Strip out housing, and GDP contracted 3.5 per cent in the past year (versus the actual decline of 1.5 per cent); strip out housing and government, and the economic contraction is -5.6 per cent.

One has to wonder what happens to the Canadian economy when the housing bubble finally does pop, the stimulus programs abate, and the commodity cycle runs its course. What is left? The reopening of the economy? I have news for you: If the real estate gravy train ever does end, considering the outsized impact it has exerted on the economy, there is no reopening large enough to offset the housing reversal and all the negative multiplier effects that will reverberate across the entire economy.

And then there is this related issue. Coincidence? I think not.

The One Trick Pony that just won’t die

Let Them Eat Taser Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough Wuhan Flu 23 Comments

It’s back to effective house arrest for every single Manitoban in the latest episode of “Micromanage my Life” starring Brian Pallister and Brent Roussin. Watch as our two anti-heroes impose another round of baffling edicts in an effort to postpone the death of socialized medicine.

After months of seeing ads on Facebook admonishing the province to bear restrictions for “just a little bit longer”, Manitobans are finding out what “a little bit longer” actually means:

The latest changes to the orders, which include a ban on both indoor and outdoor visits between households, kick in Wednesday and will last at least four weeks, Manitoba’s chief public health officer said Monday.

Under the new orders no indoor gatherings will be allowed, and outdoor gatherings will be capped at 10 people. Faith-based gatherings will be limited to 25 per cent capacity or a maximum of 10 people,…

It’s now illegal for our daughters to visit us at home, even if outdoors, but if we all went to a park, that’s okay. My golf partner can’t visit my house, but it’s perfectly legal for us to sit in the same golf cart on Men’s Night. Oh, wait, I don’t want to give these clowns any more ideas…..

Destroy the village in order to save it

Climate Cult Great Moments In Socialism The Libranos 41 Comments

As Lorne Gunter points out in this concise op-ed, “fixing” the climate with carbon taxes is about as far from win-win as you can get. If you think housing prices are crazy now, just wait until these carbon taxes are fully worked into the cost of a foundation.

Trudeau’s Thursday pledge works out to a reduction from 732 annual megatonnes of greenhouse gases to 439 megatonnes.

To achieve that, not only would Canada have to shut down Alberta’s oil and gas industry, but also the entire country’s transportation sector – cars, trucks, semis, school buses and delivery vans.

And probably any construction that uses cement. A lot of emissions are produced in making cement.

 

Dangerous precedents

Climate Cult Great Reset Wuhan Flu 41 Comments

Anyone half awake over the last year could see this one coming.

Now, spurred by alarming science, growing public fury and a deadly pandemic, government officials, corporate bosses and civil-society leaders are finally waking up to a simple idea whose time has come: climate is everything.

Five years later, the COVID-19 pandemic has given the E.U. the perfect opportunity to accelerate the remaking of its economic agenda with climate at its core—what Sefcovic calls the “new economy of the 21st century.”

The “new economy” will be the negation of the economy.

Listen to the experts…

Unsettled Science Wuhan Flu 63 Comments

Especially doctoral students in the medical field when they weigh in on the subject of  supply chain logistics and commercial trucking.

But if data indicates that truck drivers are a significant source of virus importation, it might make sense to have handovers of freight at the border so the drivers themselves don’t cross over, said McLaughlin.

There are likely some SDA readers out there with experience in the trucking industry who can elaborate on the nightmarish scenarios that might unfold should anyone should actually try what Ms. McLaughlin is recommending.

Unintended consequences

Great Moments In Socialism Wuhan Flu 26 Comments

Buried in this op-ed is the answer to a difficult question that no one, least of all Doug Ford, wants to acknowledge:

“He’s got the science absolutely upside-down,” University of Toronto epidemiologist Dr. David Fisman, chair of the province’s COVID-19 “science table,” told Global News. “We know in Ontario that the huge drivers right now of transmission are workplaces, particularly industrial workplaces, warehouses, Amazon distribution centres, post offices.”

These same “experts”, of course, admonished people since day one to try to do all of their shopping online. You would think they would know that this would exponentially increase demand for output from workplaces which were never designed for social distancing and which just happen to be highly concentrated in the GTA. Coincidence, or just the God complex of the central planners working its magic?

Magical Monetary Theory

Great Moments In Socialism Shiny Pony 20 Comments

While Terence Corcoran is on the money as usual with his latest op-ed, he omits to mention that the Liberals have been aided in their spending spree by an opposition party that has been largely complicit. If O’Toole can jump on the climate change bandwagon as easily as he did, what’s to prevent him from embracing an idea like MMT that seems to be gaining converts?

MMT has not been formally identified as official policy in Ottawa, either by the government or the Bank of Canada — even though Australian economist Bill Mitchell — said to have coined the MMT name — has described Canada as a potential “MMT poster-child.”  There can be no doubt, however, that MMT is an influence inside central banking and government finance circles.

A new report from the C.D. Howe Institute, however, warns that the inflation risk riding behind the massive fiscal expansion will not be so easily tamed.

I have to differ with Corcoran on the latter point: rising consumer prices will be the least of anyone’s worries as the drive for MMT gathers momentum. An exponentially rising debt burden distorts capital markets so badly that the funds needed to replace worn out plant and equipment simply become unavailable, having been hoovered up by net worth taxes, high speed rail networks and artists’ communes. There’s no profit in raising prices on goods that you’ve been denied the means to produce in the first place.

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