Calls to ‘tax the rich’ often fall on deaf ears – but Canada appears to be listening. The country is set to impose a new ‘luxury tax’ on the sale and importation of high-value cars, planes and boats.
Coming into effect on 1 September 2022, the Select Luxury Items Tax Act is billed as part of the Government of Canada’s commitment to a fairer tax system.
In the 2015 federal election campaign, the Liberals said they would run “small” deficits for three years, before returning to a balanced budget.
That promise was broken almost immediately, with the deficits far exceeding what the Liberals had promised, and with no plan whatsoever to return to balance.
Then, the Liberals responded to the covid-19 pandemic by pushing for draconian lockdowns, while extending support programs long-beyond the initial crisis.
The result was the largest budget deficit in Canadian history, and long-term projections of red ink as far as the eye can see.
After months of dismissing the country’s inflation crisis as a “global phenomenon,” the Trudeau government finally acknowledged the fact that Canadians were struggling with the costs of everyday goods and services. In June, the government unveiled an “affordability plan” to combat inflation – $8.9 billion of government programs.
While finance minister Chrystia Freeland touted the government’s plan as a means of putting “more money in the pockets of Canadians at a time when they need it most,” many economists pleaded with the government to stop spending, arguing that the burden of lowering inflation is falling on the private sector as the government continues to spend at record levels.
Now with a looming recession, many Canadians are looking to their leaders to steer Canada out of its current economic situation. Is Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s gender-balanced cabinet capable of handling a recession? We intend to find out.
We’ll be LIVE for the Conservative Party of Canada’s final leadership debate!
True North’s Andrew Lawton will be hosting tonight’s discussion, and will be joined by Harrison Faulkner, Rachel Emmanuel and Elie Cantin-Nantel.
Only three out of the five leadership candidates will be attending tonight’s debate, as both Pierre Poilievre and Leslyn Lewis declined their invitations. Will this still be a lively and worthwhile debate? Tune in tonight to find out.
Our show begins tonight at 5:30pm ET / 3:30pm MT and we’ll be streaming the debate afterwards, which begins at 6:00pm ET / 4:00pm MT.
A few days ago my wife and I brought her mother, who was suffering from a serious leg infection, to the local ER. We were worried about the possibility of gangrene, which an acquaintance some years back had contracted under similar circumstances, resulting in the amputation of his leg. As expected, the ER was jam-packed, and it soon became clear that my mother-in-law would have to wait at least six and even twelve hours before she could be seen. No triage had been performed to determine rank of urgency. Meanwhile, a youngish man in a wheelchair, doubled over and clutching his chest, was bitterly complaining that he had suffered a heart attack. But he too would have to wait before being attended to — assuming he would still be alive by then.
Investment firms have become the biggest new buyers of U.S. homes — a trend that could make home ownership more difficult for average families.
The idea of big investors buying single-family homes to rent them out is “just in its infancy” in Canada, but is worth watching, according to the president of one of this country’s largest real estate firms. Some advocacy groups fear families can’t compete against money managers with billions in assets.
Mmmmm … Regent Park was one of Canada’s largest social housing neighbourhoods. Now, a studio there costs more than $2,000 to rent
Canada must put China ‘front and centre’ in Indo-Pacific strategy or it risks irrelevance, experts say
The federal government’s forthcoming Indo-Pacific strategy must explicitly recognize and respond to the security threat China poses to the region, experts say, otherwise Canada risks being regarded as irrelevant in a part of the world that is expected to be a centre of economic growth for decades.
The Indo-Pacific region, which stretches from North America to India’s west coast, is home to 60 per cent of the world’s population, and it accounts for 60 per cent of global gross domestic product. About 60 per cent of world maritime trade passes through its oceans, a third of that through the South China Sea, where Beijing has made sweeping territorial claims.
… Two sources with knowledge of the strategy said the first draft, which was compiled by a team from Global Affairs, made no mention of China.
The strategy should have one goal – Make Communist China a pariah state.
If a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, what’s a functional nuclear power station in Pickering worth?
With the CPC releasing Q2 financial numbers, the information regarding the CPC leadership race is quite something.
Unsurprisingly, Pierre Poilievre led with over $4 million raised.
Charest was in second with nearly $1.4 million.
Leslyn Lewis raised over $700,000.
Roman Baber raised over $500,000.
And Scott Aitchison raised just over $360,000.
But the real shock was in total donors – a number more indicative of true support in the party.
In the years following World War I, the Weimar Republic passed strict gun control laws in an attempt to comply with the Versailles Treaty of 1919 – laws that required the surrender of all guns to government.
“The laws remained in effect until 1928, when the German parliament relaxed gun restrictions and put into effect a strict firearm-licensing scheme. These licensing regulations foreshadowed Adolph Hitler’s rise to power.”
In her 2011 book, Professor of Criminal Justice Dyan McGuire wrote that “it is frequently argued that these laws, which resulted in the confiscation of weapons not belonging to supporters of the Nazis, rendered disfavoured groups like the Gypsies, Jews, homosexuals, Poles, and their potential allies defenseless.”
Our closest neighbour to the south has a serious problem – and I’m not talking about racial animus, gun violence or political polarization.
To put it bluntly, a large swath of the U.S. is running out of accessible water. And that is putting the lives of millions of Americans in danger.
Satellite images reveal shrinkage of Utah’s Great Salt Lake
E.M., the woman who filed a lawsuit against Hockey Canada over an alleged group sexual assault by some members of Canada’s world junior hockey team in 2018, says that she has felt “vulnerable and exposed” since news of her allegations became public two months ago.
“This is something I never wanted to draw attention to,” she said in a brief interview with The Globe and Mail on Monday. “I simply wanted consequences for actions and some accountability.”
In the days leading up to the mandate, transportation officials were frantically looking for a rationale for it. They came up short.
On August 13, 2021, the Canadian government announced that anyone who hadn’t been vaccinated against Covid would soon be barred from planes and trains. In many cases, The Backward could no longer travel between provinces or leave the country. If you lived in Winnipeg and wanted to visit your mother on her deathbed in London or Hong Kong or, perhaps, Quebec City, you’d better get jabbed—or resign yourself to never seeing your mother again.
Jennifer Little, the director-general of COVID Recovery, the secretive government panel that crafted the mandate, called it “one of the strongest vaccination mandates for travelers in the world.”
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spent more time in the air in July, 2022 than he did during the entire summer of 2021.
“Data collected from online flight tracker websites show Justin Trudeau spent all but 11 days of July aboard Canforce One, flying a total of 26,238 km across 20 flights, all within Canada,” said the National Post.
Can it be? At the same time that our PM preaches the evils of climate change via carbon emissions, he is Canada’s biggest individual carbon polluter?
