I'll believe it when I see it.
Justin Trudeau hints at boosting Canada’s military spending
- Thread starter Maxman1
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Canada’s oil and gas sector barrels ahead with record annual exports - Canadian Energy Centre
‘Every Canadian should be aware that our largest industry continues to thrive’
www.canadianenergycentre.ca
There is no lack of opportunity. There is no lack of money. There is no lack of foreign will.
What there is is a lack of domestic will.
This government does not want to spend on defence.
Brad Sallows
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BoT, like GDP, is a definition, not a measure. The latter includes more activities than the former. What are you trying to measure?
Wealth creation is not zero-sum. From this hint, it's possible to reason why BoT doesn't really matter.
Quirky
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There is a lack of Canadians wanting to work in hard, dirty, and high-paying trades. Get those Arts and Coms degrees while they're hot! I wonder how many people would be out of work if these online "jobs" on youtube and other places where you can show your butthole to the world shut down?
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All measures require a definition. The meter, the gram and the second require a definition, and a standard.
The Balance of Trade, to me represents the rate at which the economies of countries grow. Is the balloon shrinking or expanding? The economy can grow internally, no doubt. But how do you value the goods and services in Canada and compare them to those of the US or China or the UK?
For me the basis of that valuation starts with: If I sold this how much could I earn? And the only way I will know that is by selling it on the open market. My exports. Equally, I learn how much things are worth when I try to buy them.
I can make myself a widget and buy it from myself for a Billion USD. Am I worth a Billion USD? Or am I worth the price someone will pay me for that widget?
Eye In The Sky
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The average Canadian voter cares little about defence. If the government cuts spending and there is no public outcry, none of us should be surprised when defence gets torpedoed.
What the govt needs is some “consequences of its decisions” internationally. We won’t change internally - people care about lack of family physicians, free wifi on public transit and lately, tripping over themselves with woke stuff.
October 2015 was the worst thing that has happened to and in Canada in my lifetime and it began with the “OMG we’re so awesome!!!” walk. I’m done holding my breathe waiting for sanity to return. Look after your family and their future.
What the govt needs is some “consequences of its decisions” internationally. We won’t change internally - people care about lack of family physicians, free wifi on public transit and lately, tripping over themselves with woke stuff.
October 2015 was the worst thing that has happened to and in Canada in my lifetime and it began with the “OMG we’re so awesome!!!” walk. I’m done holding my breathe waiting for sanity to return. Look after your family and their future.
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I agree with you.
I will only say that I am more optimistic now than I have been in a long while. Not because of Poilievre or the CPC or anything of the sort but because I am sensing (and perhaps it is only a hope) that there is a bit of sea-change in the West.
The discontent that is driving youngsters away from the government is not unique to Canada. It is true of the entire OECD. And beyond. The difference between the OECD countries and the rest is that in the rest the governments lack the degree of authority they possess in the OECD countries. The OECD governments, I think, might be starting to clue in that they are at risk of losing that authority. The consent of the governed matters.
In the Canadian context specifically I think that the upper and lower levels are starting to see that the outside world matters.
Chinese, Indian, Russian and Iranian Canadians looking over their shoulders in a place they thought was safe. It isn't.
Canadian business realizing that the US umbrella might not always be there. They might have to buy their own umbrella.
Both Melanie Joly and Bill Blair saying that Justin's assertion on the Nijjar killing needs to be proven.
John Manley calling for Justin to call it a day.
Justin's caucus giving him a bollocking.
Is Poilievre good, bad or indifferent? Trump? Sunak? I don't think it matters. I think that change is coming. And I expect that it will come in a very Canadian manner. Without drums and bugles.
I just spent three days with my new employer in the GTA at meetings and a company Golf tournament. I was very surprised at the vitorol directed towards the Liberals among about 50 residents of the GTA. They are starting to lose hope especially the younger, fully employed, yet renting folks. Some relatively recent immigrants with the company openly expressed doubt on their choice of coming to Canada. The golden mountain no more?
markppcli
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What wildly inaccurate take lol. People don’t want to break their back for minimal return, when I looked into the trades a few years ago they had no work for apprentices because they had so many willing to do it in Alberta. You can’t show your but hole on YouTube btw, and if people are willing to pay you to promote their product in your social media then so be it. I don’t get the idea that that is some how an inferior way to be compensated for your time and effort than sacrificing your body working the trades.
Brad Sallows
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Length, mass (and weight), and time are measures. Meters, grams, and seconds are units. What are you trying to measure?
The BoT does not measure the rate of growth of an economy. It is at best a "distance", not a "velocity", and is not anywhere near to completely encompassing "the economy", if by "the economy" you mean "all the wealth created this year".
If you're looking to measure "your exports" in the sense of all the things you sell, you have to include the value of domestic trade, which is not part of BoT. I would have thought the absence of the value of internal trade would have ruled out BoT in the first place. So, again, what are you trying to measure?
The mere movement of currencies across borders isn't a permanent loss. People holding CAD can entertain themselves watching its value slowly wither away to nothing by inflation, or they can buy stuff, including assets and debt instruments.
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I had a conversation with a neighbour of mine, a female with a young daughter under the age of 2 who's a spec ed teacher and she was going on and on how much she can't stand Trudeau and how she's going to vote for the CPC for the first time in her life. If that doesn't represent a sea of change, I don't know what does.
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A big problem is Canadians aren't as entrepreneurial as people in the USA, we're generally more risk adverse. Our government also does a poorer job of fostering research in industry and supporting small businesses in emerging sectors (through policy or grants). In biotech and tech sectors, when a Canadian company is successful, it's typically bought out by a foreign company. The foreign company absorbs the smaller company with the understanding they keep a facility and jobs in Canada. While it keeps jobs in Canada, the intellectual property is no longer Canadian. See Medicago, Digital Extremes or Ciena (bit of a unique case, but fits the example).
Another example is the cannabis industry. The provincial and federal governments have a stranglehold on that industry and is slowly crushing it. Let me break down where the money goes from an ounce, or 28 grams, of cannabis sold through the Ontario Cannabis Store's online website. The cheapest ounce costs $100 (works very well for our example): ~$25 (25%) of that is the provinces cut and $28 ($1 per gram) of that goes to excise tax leaving $47 for the company in gross revenue. Of course, you have to pay income tax, around $12.70, leaving $34.30 for the company to cover all their expenses for producing 28 grams of cannabis. The model was created before legalization with the assumption that the average price of cannabis would be ~$10/gram forever. Excise tax suddenly takes up a much larger percentage when cannabis is $3.57/gram instead of $10/gram. The provincial government has acknowledged their model is hurting companies, so they dropped their margin from 30% to 25%. The Feds do not care and aren't even entertaining the idea of changing excise tax. There are a lot of other fees cannabis companies pay to the Feds that I won't go into.
From my experience, it appears the Government of Canada doesn't understand how emerging industries work or how to regulate them. If they did, they could collect the tax revenue from these companies over a long period of time, instead of collecting a large amount of tax revenue in a short period of time and bankrupting the industry (which is happening, slowly but surely). The difference between growing industry and selling it off/out as fast as possible. These a much greater economic drivers than individual choices individual people make in their careers. They'll go where the jobs are inevitably.
Happy Guy
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I think that MND Blair is referring to the fact that Fed gov't is trying to use creative accounting / labelling to try to make it look like there is an increase to the Defence budget. For example: military to UKR, humanitarian funding to UKR; humanitarian aid to other foreign countries - effort to keep the receiving nation's gov't stable; anything with other Fed gov't Dept spending with tenuous links to defence will accounted as per part of Defence spending; Cdn soldiers participating on international deployed tours - their contribution to the local economy will be accounted as part of defence spending; and the PM thinking of increasing defence spending will also count. So while in reality there is a $1 B cut to DND, the amount of defence budget will show a sizable increase as a portion of the GDP.
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I was literally just about to write the exact same thing, glad I scrolled through some of the comments before writing my own
Each fiscal year, the DND has to return upwards of a billion dollars a year to the treasury as the funds are unspendable with the current regulations/guidance on DND/CAF self-directed spending
...I know this next part sounds absolutely crazy...but just hear me out...
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And they will deliver a quality product, on time, just as effectively as they did with the last TTC streetcar project and the midrange passenger plane.
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