Category: Canada’s Bolsheviks

Stranded Assets

Ownership without the right to sell an asset means that you aren’t actually the owner of that asset; you’re a serf.

There’s a case to indefinitely keep the Trans Mountain pipeline in government hands, possibly alongside Indigenous partners, say the leaders of its operator and financial overseer.

“It has incredible value,” said Wademan. “There’s absolutely a case to be a long term holder … I personally would love to see it owned by Canadians.”

The Sinking Blowhard

I’ve got a better idea as to how the Ontario Tories can regain their lead: get Dougie to resign. If he still wants a career in politics, he can run federally for the Liberals. Somehow I doubt they’d want him.

Now Ontarians have both a prime minister who speaks like a Conservative (sometimes) but spends like a Liberal, and a premier who speaks like a Conservative (until recently) and also spends like a Liberal. What can Doug Ford do to reverse his drop in the polls? Maybe he could try talking — and more importantly, spending and governing — like a real Conservative.

Circling The Drain

Unaffordable housing creates a lot more problems than declining provincial education funding as families move to cheaper abodes. But then again, the same people bemoaning this problem are likely the same ones who cheered for zero percent interest rates that sparked the housing bubble to begin with.

Families aren’t just moving to a different neighbourhood; they’re leaving the region entirely. Driven by a cost of living that has become unsustainable for many young parents, the “Surrey dream” is being packed into moving trucks and headed further east — out of the valley and, in many cases, out of the province.

Paleolithic Justice

Comments about raping those you dislike would normally get political leaders fired, but then again, this is Canada, and certain racially defined “elders” can say whatever they like.

During the session, Belleau recounted comments she said she directed at Frances Widdowson at a campus encounter in late 2025. “I told her: ‘I wish our people could grab you, drag you over to the Kamloops residential school, put you into the basement, speak our language to you — nothing but Secwepemctsín — beat you, rape you, hurt you,’” she recalled at the UBC event.

Faint Hope

So Canadians rewarded Carney with a majority government so that he can try to backfill a hole previously created by his own party?  Note that this is merely a discussion forum as opposed to the implementation of any actual business plans. The mind boggles.

A recent report from RBC says that last year was Canada’s first to attract more than $100 billion in foreign direct investment since 2015.

More than $1 trillion in foreign investment exited the Canadian economy between 2015 and 2024, what the report calls the “largest capital exodus in Canadian history.”

Alarming The Warming

Now that Carney has a majority, expect his government to start taking these fools seriously again.

“It feels to me like this (climate) has been somewhat deprioritized. And that’s why we’re going to, as an industry, keep it at the top of the table,” Rowan Saunders, the CEO of the country’s fourth-largest property and casualty insurer ⁠Definity, said in an interview.

“We’re at a point now in Canada where we can have what used to be a year’s worth of severe weather losses happening in a single day. And ​we don’t have the level of public investment commensurate to that reality right now,” said David Leibl, vice president of sustainability and corporate affairs at Winnipeg-based insurer Wawanesa. “We ​need to close that gap.”

Slush Funds For All

Well, slush money for Montreal at least. It’s anyone’s guess why a port currently at 72% capacity really needs to expand, but we can dream, can’t we?

Nathalie Pilon, the chair of the Port of Montreal’s board of directors, said the expansion is needed, despite a recent decline in overall cargo traffic she attributed in part to U.S. tariffs. She said the port is at around 72 per cent capacity now, and that problems arise when 85 per cent is attained.

You’d think that having a four lane highway across the country might be a priority too, but roads to the Arctic seem to be the all the rage now. Mexico’s got a better road network than Canada at this juncture.

The prime minister said construction on another project, the Mackenzie Valley Highway in the Northwest Territories, would begin this summer

New Nation, Same As The Old Nation

It’s pretty much a slam dunk that Carney will have a majority after the April 13th by-elections, considering that two of the seats are in very safe Liberal territory. If so, how long will it be until he reverses course on his Conservative Lite approach to governance? Consumer carbon taxes, anyone? How about “Investments” in EVs and high speed rail?

If the Liberals win two of the three byelections, they will hold 173 seats, or 174 seats if they win all three byelections, which would let them pass legislation without needing to rely on the Speaker or on any other parties to support them.

 

Making History

This is not the kind of history that any level of government should be making. But I guess it’s okay, as long as we call the spending “investment”.

The New Brunswick government says its investments in health care have helped push the budget into a record deficit. Introduced on Tuesday, the budget’s $1.4-billion deficit is the largest in the province’s history, according to Finance Department staff.

Speaking of investments

The federal government is putting $200 million toward a Canadian-owned launch pad so it can send satellites into orbit without the assistance of other nations or other foreign third parties.

 

Carney’s Canada

The Food Professor- What many Canadians may not realize is how deeply our country relies on rules and regulations. While regulation is necessary, the sheer volume has become problematic.

According to Statistics Canada, federal regulatory restrictions increased by 37% between 2006 and 2021. This surge has been linked to a 1.7-percentage-point decline in GDP growth, along with decreases in business investment, productivity, employment, and the rate of new business formation.

The Hub- It’s time to rein in Canada’s red tape state: DeepDive

Ontario Is For The Birds

Where would society be without the Chimney Swift and the derelict industrial chimneys that they call home? How dare those evil contractors disturb a nesting site!!

Marble Arch and Adam Watson significantly damaged the chimney’s function as a habitat for the Chimney Swift by carrying out demolition work during the birds’ migratory season, and by leaving a large hole in the side of the chimney for the remainder of the 2020 season.

 

Circling The Drain

Is the federal NDP a political party or a suicide pact?

the all-anglophone field stumbled through November’s French debate in Montreal. Interim leader Don Davies even jokingly called the Franglais-filled evening a morale booster for the Bloc Québécois.

Activist and filmmaker Avi Lewis comes into the debate as the clear frontrunner…. He’s also driven much of the conversation with progressive proposals like a public option for groceries, national wealth tax for the top one per cent of Canadians and a so-called Green New Deal to transition fossil-fuel workers to sustainable industries.

 

Circling The Drain

It’s probably not a good idea to stick a thumb in the eye of your biggest trading partner over Cuba, but what else would you expect from the NDP? Failed political parties tend to have a lot in common with failed states.

Last week in the House of Commons, NDP interim leader Don Davies urged the government to “support Cuba in the face of aggressive U.S. imperialism,” arguing this would give heft to Carney’s speech at the World Economic Forum that urged middle powers to stand up to intimidation by superpowers.

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