Canada’s spiraling extortion crisis targeting Indo-Canadian communities is being driven by international organized crime that has exploited a whole industry of designated learning institutes and immigration consultant shops through massive fraud, coercing vulnerable student migrants into serving in extortion squads that are terrorizing families and businesses, with brazen shootings now occurring on a near daily basis in Surrey, B.C., the epicenter of a national security threat now spreading through communities in Toronto, Edmonton, and Winnipeg, The Bureau’s investigations have revealed.
Gating Your Capital
I like Jeff Snider’s podcasts and in this one he spends the first half talking about Canadian real estate investment funds that are starting to restrict payouts. Given that Canadian real estate values are crashing, if they don’t halt outflows the funds could quickly become insolvent. The Bloomberg article he quotes is behind a paywall, but he conveniently scrolls through it so you can read the whole thing.
“Stung by a deep downturn in the country’s housing market, many of the funds have restricted cash distributions, client withdrawals, or both in a process the industry calls gating. Often the companies don’t say when access will resume, and about 30 billion Canadian, about 21.7 billion US equivalent. Almost 40% of the 80 billion Canadian invested in such funds is now locked up.”
It’s Probably Nothing
Quelle Surprise
Now that the governing party is in disarray, maybe there’s hope for a solidly positive yes vote in a referendum.
Quebec Premier François Legault announced Wednesday that he would resign after more than seven years in power, triggering a leadership race and further upending the province’s political landscape with only months to go before the fall provincial election.
Tough Times
It looks like it’s not just a matter of people being unable to afford coffee at MacDonald’s anymore. The high end consumer looks to be tapped out as well. Maybe they should have hedged with some silver purchases.
The owner of Saks Fifth Avenue is seeking bankruptcy protection, buffeted by rising competition and the massive debt it took on to buy its rival in the luxury sector, Neiman Marcus, just over a year ago.
On a personal note, a salesman from a manfacturing input vendor told me yesterday that one of his clients, a well know agricultural equipment manufacturer in western Canada, is bracing for a 40% decline in sales this year.
Tax Trouble
If the US is going to eliminate income taxes or fund all the things that the administration is proposing, the revenue stream seems to be going in the wrong direction. What’s more is that reliance on tariffs for tax revenue offers a very obvious escape route: if you can produce something with inputs sourced solely in the US, you don’t pay tariffs at all. As that option broadens, tax revenue will logically go down, not up.
The release brings the total revenue collected in 2025 to $264.05 billion. It’s a historically high annual total — but also the second straight monthly decline after Trump dialed back key tariffs last November.
The peak for the year was October’s monthly haul of $31.35 billion. The first decline then came in November, with $30.76 billion in customs duties collected that month.
Hard Times
You know things are getting tough when McDonald’s freezes the price of a small coffee and value meals. In a sagging economy, producers simply can’t jack up prices in the face of consumers without the means to afford them.
She announced Tuesday that McDonald’s Canada will freeze the price of a small cup of coffee at $1 for at least a year and drop the price of its McValue meals to $5 for the same duration.
“Canadians are facing challenges and are insecure financially. What we are doing is listening and giving them what they want,” she said.
Tonight on Unsolved Mysteries
Sun- Canadians fear for their safety, majority targeted in fraud scams: Poll
New data from Angus Reid found that three-in-five (62%) Canadians believe that over the last five years, crime has been rising in the communities where they live
Reality Bites
Doomberg is a podcaster on financial markets whose insights I find quite valuable, although I have yet to understand why he covers his face with a green chicken cartoon. At the 14 minute mark in this interview he gets into the economics of energy and how that’s going to affect the outcome of the war in the Ukraine. In a nutshell, it’s not looking good for Zelensky.
“…once the Ukrainian counteroffensive of 2023 was defeated…it was very clear that this had converted to a grinding war of attrition and Russia was always going to win that war….I’m shocked by this…western techno-arrogance…[Russia] is not a gas station masquerading as a country. It…has a strong manufacturing base, excellent energy resources and a long history of marching east to west.”
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
BOOM!
I pioneered the use of AI Rorschach tests to understand the psychological diagnosis of AI.
I found shocking results: sociopathy, nihilism, and schizophrenia-like traits stemming from toxic training data.
This becomes more an issue as Robots use this AI in the real world. https://t.co/TXJbt8I3FD pic.twitter.com/quOeqFcpKr
— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) January 10, 2026
Elbows Down!
More evidence of Canadian exceptionalism. But not something to cheer about.
The unemployment rate rose to 6.8 per cent in December, StatCan said, up from 6.5 per cent in November.
What’s really notable is where the losses are occurring:
The professional, scientific and technical services sector meanwhile shed 18,000 positions to end the year, and the accommodation and food services industry also faced losses.
Regime Unchanged?
Any predictions as to where this is all headed? The top guy got switched out, but other than that the same gang appears to still be in control.
While Machado is a “nice woman,” she lacks support and respect inside Venezuela, Trump said Saturday in a news conference to discuss the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro by US forces. “I think it would be very tough for her to be the leader,” he said. Instead, he said the US plans to work with Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, Maduro’s second-in-command.
The Zero Percent Interest Miracle
Back in the 1980’s it was fashionable to proclaim that Japan, with an allegedly superior mixture of central planning and free markets, would soon own the world. It now looks like they can’t even maintain their own world, let alone anyone else’s. Decades of embracing Keynesian economics have resulted in a very bitter harvest.
Once famously derided for building bridges to nowhere, Japan’s government is now struggling to maintain them.
Even before the quake, Suzu was struggling to carry out routine maintenance of infrastructure due to money and manpower shortages. Over the past 25 years, its municipal tax revenue dropped 43% as the working-age population nearly halved. In the Noto region, the labor force fell by about 30% in the 15 years through 2020, compared to the roughly 10% drop nationwide…
Sparky Car Blues
I suspect the reasons for Tesla’s sales slump have less to do with Elon’s political views and more to do with the fact that the EV market has generally been stoked by hype as opposed to tangible value.
Tesla said that it delivered 1.64 million vehicles in 2025, down 9% from a year earlier.
For the fourth quarter, sales totaled 418,227, falling short of the 440,000 that analysts polled by FactSet expected. The sales total was impacted by the expiration of a $7,500 tax credit that was phased out by the Trump administration at the end of September.
Bad Advice
Who knew that Canada’s problems are the result of not paying people enough not to work?
At the heart of the issue, he said, is Canada’s eroded social safety net, particularly employment insurance (EI), which, along with other social programs, isn’t keeping up with today’s economy.
EI benefits have mostly stayed the same in value and replace roughly 55 per cent of a person’s wages. The benefits are higher than in the United States, but they lag far behind European countries such as Denmark, where they replace 90 per cent of a person’s wages, the Netherlands (70 per cent) and Sweden (80 per cent).
Ready For What? Defeat?
Canada’s top general might want to start a new career in standup comedy. She’s got a few one-liners that are guaranteed to get some laughs.
And like all the militaries in the world … especially when we’re looking at our allies, we’re going to be ready to go as-is.
All of our services right now are crafting and positioning themselves to be able to take the additional number of people coming in. …Everybody is all-hands-on-deck in doing that. It’s quite exciting, I have to say.
Delusional Advice
It’s probably not a good idea to “stand firm” when your feet are in quicksand.
As Canada approaches a review of its key free trade deal with the United States next year, Unifor national president Lana Payne says it’s important to stand firm for a good deal. Payne said it’s important to play hardball, and not allow tariffs to be legitimized in any form. Instead, Canada needs to hold out and let the “self-inflicted wounds” of tariffs create pressure instead.
“We’re seeing that now in the United States where their economy is suffering and worsening by the day,” Payne said in a Dec. 19 interview.
Elbows Down!
Way down. Might as well stick a fork in us. Since GDP is just a measure of all the borrowing and spending in an economy no matter who undertakes it, it’s disturbing that our economy is contracting despite record deficits for all levels of government. The real problem is shrinking private sector manufacturing.
The Canadian economy shrank by a greater-than-expected 0.3% in October, the largest drop in almost three years, on weakness in both the goods and services sectors, official data showed on Tuesday.
The manufacturing sector dropped by 1.5%, partly reflecting a 6.9% plunge in machinery output. Wood product manufacturing dropped by 7.3%…
Fat Cats
Spoiler Alert
White people are in the military ads again…
As Germany considers compulsory military service for the first time in years, the Bundeswehr is courting Gen Zs harder than ever.
Can highly produced military ads boost recruitment and reshape the Bundeswehr’s image, or are they avoiding the hard truths about life in the army? pic.twitter.com/o0DgHUJd5N
— DW News (@dwnews) December 17, 2025