Category: nannystate

Dairy Farmers Uber Alles!

Canada’s Bolsheviks nannystate New Governor 37 Comments

It’s no surprise that the US sees Canadian supply mismanagement as a major trade irritant; I sincerely hope they don’t back down in trade talks this time around.

Washington’s trade representative says a coming review of the Canada-U.S.-Mexico trade deal will hinge on resolving concerns about Canadian policies on dairy products, alcohol and digital services.

Like clockwork, the water carriers for Big Dairy are falling in line:

Carney said Canada has been clear about its intention to protect the supply management of agricultural products. “We continue to stand by that,” he said at a news conference in Ottawa with Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

Money For Nothing

Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing nannystate 5 Comments

Yet another example of what happens when a bunch of politicians scream “emergency” and a gullible John Q. Public largely falls for it. This reminds me of a Seinfeld episode where Kramer tries to explain to Jerry what happens when a company makes a bad investment decision: “They just write it off, Jerry!”

Ontario wrote off more than one billion items of personal protective equipment at a cost of $1.4 billion since 2021 and is now burning expired products, the province’s auditor general found.

The province signed long-term contracts for PPE between October 2020 and April 2021 that locked it into buying 188 million surgical masks annually. Yet it only distributed 39 million of those masks last year, or 21 per cent.

Union Mentality

Canada’s Bolsheviks entitlement generation nannystate 20 Comments

The last time I checked, the NFU was down to a handful of members and were being led by “farmers” so far outside the mainstream that they hardly qualified as such. I don’t know what’s worse: that these clowns are demanding a form of UBI for farmers, or that a mainstream media outlet reports on it so uncritically.

Farmers want Ottawa to set up a 10-year pilot project that would ensure they receive an annual income of at least $50,000, a rate that would rise by inflation every year.

David Thompson, executive director of the union, says a guaranteed income would help stabilize farmers’ incomes, which are often unstable.

Now they’re channeling Zoran Mamdani and this nonsense gets breathlessly regurgitated by the same bunch of toadies.

One resolution calls for the union to lobby the federal government to introduce legislation that would put a cap on the profits of major grocery chains that control the lion’s share of the market.

Another resolution calls on union to create a national coalition pressing the federal government to purchase food directly from farmers to be sold at cost in a “network of national/provincial/municipal public grocery stores.”

The Cheque Is In The Mail

Cronies entitlement generation It's Probably Nothing nannystate 19 Comments

I’m suspicious about the impact of these measures for a few reasons: voluntary departures come with severance; government retirement plans often require funding out of general revenue so early retirement just means more losses to cover; many eliminated jobs are potential positions as opposed to actual ones, and the timeline is an entire decade.

He said the company will use “attrition first” to downsize from the roughly 62,000 people it employed at the end of last year.

The company expects to shed 16,000 employees through retirement or voluntary departures by 2030, with an additional 14,000 leaving by 2035.

Quantum Shift?

47 nannystate There Goes The Narrative 29 Comments

If Kamala Harris were proposing that the federal government take ownership stakes in private companies, I can hazard a guess that Republicans would loudly oppose it. What’s going on with a party that has traditionally opposed government ownership of the means of production?

The Trump administration is in talks with the likes of Rigetti Computing (RGTI), IonQ (IONQ) and D-Wave Quantum (QBTS) to take equity stakes in them in exchange for federal funding, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Wishful Thinking

Canada’s Bolsheviks Gradually Then Suddenly nannystate 28 Comments

At this point, I doubt that any measures are going to amount to anything other than flogging a dead horse.

Ottawa said the corporation is losing about $10 million per day, despite providing a $1-billion injection earlier this year to keep it operational. Since 2018, Canada Post has accumulated more than $5 billion in losses including more than $1 billion last year alone.

But Canada Post’s business model is meant to support communities across the country — especially those in remote locations who are hardest for private firms to reach — rather than chase profits, said Ann Armstrong, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Management and Innovation.

“There is something sacrosanct about a postal service,” she said.

“It seems to me the model is perfectly viable and needs to be preserved, if perhaps costs and so on need to be adjusted.”

 

He Admires His Basic Dictatorship

Basic Dictatorship Great Moments In Socialism nannystate New Governor 24 Comments

Juno News;

Prime Minister Mark Carney’s plan to let the Canada Revenue Agency automatically file millions of Canadians’ tax returns is facing backlash from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, which says the month-long consultation preceding the rollout was a “sham” designed to rubber-stamp a power grab by bureaucrats.

The CRA’s consultation ran for only one month, from September 9 to October 9, ending just a day before Carney’s announcement on Friday. The consultation sought online feedback from individuals and organizations about expanding “automatic tax filing” services.

The government says the program, starting in 2026, will help up to 5.5 million low-income Canadians receive benefits they’re missing, such as the GST/HST credit and Canada Child Benefit.

Critics, however, say Ottawa’s timeline shows the outcome was pre-determined.

“Carney plans to give CRA more power with automatic tax filing,” said Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s Federal Director Franco Terrazzano. “Trusting the taxman to do your return is like trusting your dog to protect your burger. CRA acting as both tax filer and tax collector is a serious conflict of interest.”

Terrazzano mocked the idea that meaningful input was possible within hours of the consultation closing. “There’s no way bureaucrats pulled an all-nighter reading through thousands of submissions before sending Carney out to make an announcement the next morning,” he said. “Asking Canadians for their opinion and then ignoring them isn’t a good look. This was a sham consultation.”

The federation argues the plan will give unprecedented control to the same agency responsible for collecting taxes. “The CRA can barely answer the phone, so Carney shouldn’t be giving those bureaucrats more busy work,” Terrazzano said. “The CRA is a bloated mess, and Carney should be cutting the cost of bureaucracy, not scheming up ways to give it more power over taxpayers.”

Related bloated mess.

Circling Le Drain

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism nannystate 17 Comments

One possible reason why gold is setting new records in dollar terms is fear of default; i.e. a growing realization that some governments are on the verge of stiffing their creditors. Today, default is becoming a possibility not just for third world backwaters, but for large economies such as France. The reasons are simple enough, as this video explains. France is spending itself into oblivion thanks to pensions that pay out more in benefits than a working person earns.

Shooting Your Own Foot

Canada’s Bolsheviks I, Napoleon nannystate 10 Comments

In response to the decision to close an Ontario liquor bottling plant, Ontario consumers may soon be unable to buy liquor made in Gimli, Manitoba. So much for inter-provincial free trade.

“A message to all the bigwigs at Diageo: I swear to God, those bottles of Crown Royal are coming off the LCBO shelves. When the last person walks out through that door, we’re going to make sure LCBO takes off their brands because we need to stick together,” Ford said during a union rally in Brampton on Saturday.

Diageo also noted that the company will continue to have a presence in Canada, including their Canadian headquarters and warehouse operations in the Greater Toronto Area.

That Sinking Feeling

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing nannystate New Governor 9 Comments

Not to worry. I’m sure this thing will pay for itself.

Canada recorded a slightly higher C$7.79 billion ($5.59 billion) budget deficit for the first four months of the 2025/26 fiscal year as government expenditures grew faster than revenues, the finance ministry said on Friday.

By comparison, the deficit in the same period a year earlier had been C$7.30 billion, it said in a statement.

 

The Cheque Is In The Mail

Canada’s Bolsheviks entitlement generation Gradually Then Suddenly nannystate 33 Comments

Our family farm used to have mail delivery to the top of our lane but that was discontinued sometime in the early 1960s. After that, we picked up our mail in a small town. In 1970, that post office closed and we used a community mailbox which is still in service to this day. Miraculously, the sky didn’t fall.

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers went on strike Thursday after the government announced door-to-door mail delivery would end for nearly all households within the next decade.

Canada Post said the strike will mean mail and parcels will not be processed or delivered for the duration of the strike and no new items will be accepted.

 

Hate Speech?

Freespeechers nannystate 20 Comments

Pam Bondi is probably going to have to walk this statement back. The First Amendment actually protects hate speech, provided that no threat of physical violence was made against a specific individual.  We already have laws against criminal threats, so there’s no need to conflate that with hate speech. You might not like someone’s advocacy of political violence or even assassination, but as long as no identifiable individual was mentioned, you can’t be prosecuted for it. At least not in the United States. And we’re all well aware of what happens in other nations when hate speech becomes a criminal offense all on its own.

“Hate speech that crosses the line into threats of violence is NOT protected by the First Amendment,” Bondi wrote. “It’s a crime. For far too long, we’ve watched the radical left normalize threats, call for assassinations, and cheer on political violence. That era is over.”

Another less than encouraging comment from Bondi, this time over a business that did not want to print some posters for a vigil held to honor Charlie Kirk.

“Businesses cannot discriminate. If you wanna go in and print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute you for that,” Bondi said during a Monday appearance on Fox News’ “Hannity.”

 

Dispatches from the Maple Gulag Truck Stop

nannystate Self Driving Roadkill Surveillance State 1 Comment

In 2 minutes Gord Magill explains every problem with the trucking industry and why 80,000lb+ missiles are being launched into school buses and minivans.

 

The Doctor Will Neglect You Now

Great Moments In Socialism nannystate Tommy Douglas: Not Dead Enough 14 Comments

Best health care system in the world, huh?

The family says he was triaged at 10 p.m., but it would be more than eight hours before he saw a doctor, despite his mother’s repeated requests for help.

“I kept worrying that they’re going to think I’m such a nuisance. And I don’t want them to think that I’d be making such a fuss, and then they ignored us more,” she told CTV News.

 

Circling The Drain

Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing nannystate 11 Comments

The fact of the matter is that John Q. Public is generally okay with the borrowing spree, no matter what the province or level of government. If there’s any negative consequences to an exponential rise in debt, most voters have pushed that concern to the back of their minds.

The province said its deficit is now projected to be $668.7 million for the 2025-26 fiscal year, up from the $549 million forecast in the March budget. Revenues are expected to be $59.6 million lower than forecast in the budget, and expenses are projected to be $60 million higher than the March estimate.

Drunken Sailors

Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing nannystate 13 Comments

The fact of the matter is that most voters only want spending cuts for items that they consider non-essential. Of course, the definition of non-essential varies so widely that the preferences of each voting bloc pretty much creates a log jam effect whereby no significant spending cuts can ever be implemented.

The report, to be released Thursday by the C.D. Howe Institute, says the Carney government’s spending review will only include about one-third of all federal program spending and is expected to save no more than $22 billion by 2028-29. The think tank says that’s less than half the $50 billion in savings that are needed to return federal government coffers to “a fair and prudent path” that would see Ottawa’s debt-to-GDP ratio stop climbing.

The Experts Are Offended

Canada’s Bolsheviks I, Napoleon nannystate Surveillance State 17 Comments

My grandfather’s house, built in 1902, is still standing today despite having been built and later completely remodeled without any building permits at all. Yet statements like “You can’t construct a home without building permits” appear to ascribe metaphysical properties to legislative edicts; not having a building permit is treated as the equivalent of defying the law of gravity. In any case, the reason for skirting building inspection should be obvious: the moment you improve your property, your tax bill goes up.

The owners of a palatial home in West Vancouver, recently assessed at more than $6.7 million, have been ordered to demolish a building resembling a small residence and constructed without permits, at the back of their property.

“I can’t recall ever seeing a case like this,” West Vancouver District mayor Mark Sager told Global News in an interview Monday. “You can’t construct a home without building permits.”

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