Canada has always been an outlier on immigration. That was true long before the Trudeau government. Compared to other rich countries, we had a relatively wide and open door. But around the door were walls, which were also higher than those in Europe or the United States.
Canadians were always concerned about controlling the border, yet very welcoming of immigrants. That sounds like a contradiction. It isn’t. Walls don’t block a door, they support it. No walls? No door.
Canada’s standard of living is in decline, both in absolute terms and compared to our southern neighbour and other wealthy countries. A Fraser Institute analysis shows that real GDP per capita was lower during the pre-recession period 2016-19 than in any similar period since 1985. As of the last quarter of 2023 it was below its value for 2019:Q2. It’s no surprise that 44 per cent of Canadians now say money is their leading source of stress.
The Trudeau government’s pledge to achieve “net zero” greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 is impractical and unrealistic, and its 2030 target of cutting emissions up to 45% below 2005 levels could cause significant damage to the Canadian economy, according to a new study by the Fraser Institute.
Odds are stacked against the governing Liberals, making some MPs “nervous” and “uneasy” about the next election, but caucus members are vowing to go all-in against the federal Conservatives led by Pierre Poilievre.
“We’ve got a year to turn it around. [It] means that the campaign is going to matter,” said four-term Liberal MP Sean Casey (Charlottetown, P.E.I.) in an interview with The Hill Times. “It means that people are completely disengaged. It means that we’re long in the tooth, and the political pendulum is swinging against us. … We can’t give up, and I owe it to the people I represent, we owe it to Canadians to keep plugging, to keep a positive message, and to keep working. I mean, I don’t know what the hell else you can do.”
OTTAWA — Justin Trudeau is running out of time.
He has trailed in polls by double digits for nearly a year, and the outlook for the once popular prime minister is so grim that some old guard Liberals have been grumbling that maybe he should just step down and give someone else a shot.
After testifying in the SNC-Lavalin affair, Butts had been licking his wounds and reconnecting with his family after the brutally long hours he had worked in the PMO. His wife, Jodi, joked she should send Jody Wilson-Raybould a present to thank her for engineering her husband’s exit from politics. But on a trip to Tuscany to celebrate their twentieth anniversary, he told her he thought he should go back for the 2019 campaign. She reluctantly agreed. “You know what? If you don’t go back and they lose, you’re going to blame yourself for the rest of your life. So just go do it. But you’ve got to promise me on election night it’s all over.”
By 2021, Ryan Fehr had grown tired of renting.
Fehr, 40 and a single dad, had just broken up with his girlfriend. He found there was no limit on how much landlords could raise the rent in Calgary, and he yearned to put down some roots in a house, especially for his then-two-year-old son, whom he had with his previous partner. It was also the middle of a pandemic. House prices were falling. Fehr felt he had a shot at earning his place in the vaunted club of homeownership.
Dozens of foreign workers protesting changes in P.E.I.’s immigration strategy have entered the fourth day of a hunger strike in downtown Charlottetown.
The provincial government is cutting back on the number of workers it is nominating for immigration this year, from about 2,100 to about 1,600 — with a big drop in the number of hospitality workers in particular. More than 800 were nominated last year, and the plan is to nominate just 200 this year.
The United States’ ambassador to Canada, David Cohen, says Canada is becoming “the outlier” in NATO following a bipartisan letter from 23 American senators calling on Ottawa to meet the two per cent of GDP defence spending target.
“At the end of 2024, the way projections are looking, Canada will be the only country in NATO that is not spending at least two per cent of its GDP on defence and does not have a plan to get there,” Cohen said in an interview with The West Block host Mercedes Stephenson.
“Canada has moved within NATO from being a bit of an outlier to being the outlier in the entire alliance.”
But we have Trannies galore in the pipeline! Don’t we?
The Conservatives and Bloc Québécois have forced a meeting of a House of Commons committee to investigate the Liberal government’s refusal to turn over cabinet documents on foreign interference to a public inquiry into foreign meddling in Canadian democracy.
The Globe and Mail reported Thursday that the federal government is facing pushback from Justice Marie-Josée Hogue for citing cabinet confidentiality in redacting records provided to the public inquiry investigating interference by China and other hostile states in the 2019 and 2021 elections.
My Theory: People have tuned out the Foreign Interference inquiry knowing that those who perpetrated these traitorous acts will suffer exactly ZERO consequences.
A Ukrainian family that came to Canada to escape the war is having second thoughts about their new home because of the economic situation.
The Sadovnyks are reconsidering life in Quebec, just outside of Montreal, for financial reasons.
“They like it here but it’s just a question of money,” family friend Oleg Koleboshyn told CityNews.
“They wanted to move to Canada. It was an opportunity for them.”
At least they can return to the Ukraine. Most Canadians have no place to go!
JERUSALEM — Israelis are more divided than ever before, but are united against the idea of their highly unpopular prime minister standing trial over his prosecution of the war in Gaza.
On Monday, International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he’s seeking arrest warrants, not only for three Hamas leaders who orchestrated the barbaric October 7 massacre — in which 3,000 terrorists flooded across the border with Gaza, raping, torturing and slaughtering 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage — but also for the two men charged with ensuring such atrocities never happen again: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
A good way to understand what drives Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a book written almost three decades ago by the great American conservative thinker Thomas Sowell titled, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy.
It wasn’t nice.
“Mr. Speaker, the Conservative leader is wearing more makeup than I am today,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said of Pierre Poilievre earlier this week in question period.
Her words were not technically as “unparliamentary,” as when the opposition leader called the prime minister “a wacko” or when Poilievre said “WTF” in the House, and then tried to convince the speaker he meant “where’s the funds?” — an acronym the Conservative party is now using to sell T-shirts.
But Speaker Greg Fergus reprimanded Freeland: “We do not comment on the appearance of members.”
… Not only did the central core resemble a ghost town – mostly because thousands of civil servants, backed by powerful unions, refuse to return to their office desks – but many of the walking routes I used to take through downtown have morphed into a distressing obstacle course of homeless people camped out on the sidewalks. In fact, the last time I felt like that – and I’ve been to some of the meanest cities in the world – was in Pretoria, South Africa, around the time of the BRICS summit last year, when a wrong turn to the diplomatic quarter brought a few anxious encounters. On many strolls through my former home, I shook my head in disbelief thinking, “This isn’t the Ottawa I know or love.”
