From any angle you look at it, Canada’s housing market is badly broken.
The promise of home ownership, long the ultimate expression that one had secured a spot in the Canadian middle class, has faded away, not just in the usual suspect cities for real estate exuberance – Toronto and Vancouver – but in towns and communities across the country.
Appointments of judges, arbitrators and, for today’s purpose, human rights commissioners, have real-life consequences. After all, the people who decide things matter.
The Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) already had considerable power before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s new Online Harms Act, amending the Canadian Human Rights Act, made it the arbiter of complaints about online hate speech. Of course, what constitutes “hate speech” remains open for debate.
Calls have intensified for Justin Trudeau to resign as head of the party he almost single-handedly pulled back from the brink after a decimating electoral defeat in 2011.
Still, Trudeau has been steadfast in his intention to lead the party into the next election.
Canada is experiencing a crisis of unaffordable housing. One recent survey concluded that housing in Greater Vancouver was “impossibly unaffordable.” Another survey found that only 23% of British Columbian renters pay less than 30% of their income on rent, almost half spend 31%-49%, and 25% spend more than half of their income on rent.
That raises the question of what is affordable housing.
A man in St. John’s rents office space, but he doesn’t have an office job.
He’s an electrician, driving from gig to gig all day. The office is where he sleeps at night, secretly, because he couldn’t afford to rent an apartment anywhere in the city. For two months during the frigid Newfoundland and Labrador winter, he lived in his truck. Then, in February, he found an office listed for $450 per month.
“I’m 100 per cent doing this clandestinely,” the 37-year-old told CBC News. “I basically have given up on finding anything else.”
Last week saw a flurry of activity from the Canadian government on national security. First, it announced on June 19 that the IRGC — Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — had been formally “listed” as a terrorist entity. Then the Senate approved Bill C-70 calling for the establishment of a foreign agent registry.
New Democrat MP Alexandre Boulerice is outraged that Loblaw Companies and its subsidiaries have received over $10 million in federal subsidies since 2019, while many Canadians struggle to afford groceries.
“Liberals are giving Loblaw millions of dollars in handouts,” Boulerice said in the Commons.
“While ordinary folks are going hungry, CEOs are getting the VIP treatment. Enough is enough.”
Steal bread from the mouths of children for 14 years and you too can be rewarded!
The first Liberal MP to publicly call for Justin Trudeau to step aside for a new leader says he thinks the party can still win the next election — as long as it renews itself.
Wayne Long, the MP for Saint John—Rothesay, sent a letter to fellow MPs Friday arguing that the voters are calling for a change of leader, and adding, “I agree.”
At ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day in France a month ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivered a warning about the state of democracy.
It was, he said on Juno Beach, “still under threat today, … threatened by aggressors who want to redraw borders. It is threatened by demagogy, misinformation, disinformation, foreign interference.”
With Canadians poised to go to the polls in at least three provincial elections this fall, and a federal vote due next year, concerns about the strength of democracy are being raised on multiple fronts.
Only if Junior remains in power.
I consider this piece a public cry for help.
Some folks on our progressive flank, which is my political habitat, have come to believe that our money is their money. The federal government has been raising spending year after year, believing that big problems can only be solved by big government. As a result, the bureaucracy has swelled by a whopping 40 per cent. This can only be described as irrational exuberance.
Ottawa is still reeling from Thursday’s bombshell allegation that then Liberal defence minister Harjit Sajjan personally directed Canadian special forces to rescue more than 200 Afghan Sikhs during the fall of Kabul in August 2021. It was a directive, according to military sources quoted in the Globe and Mail, that diverted critical resources away from the evacuation of Canadian citizens, translators and other Afghans who’d aided Canada’s two-decade-long war effort in the country.
MONTREAL – Quebec Premier François Legault warned Friday there’s a risk of “overreaction” against newcomers if the province maintains its current immigration levels.
Legault told reporters on the Gaspé Peninsula he doesn’t want to see Quebec end up like the United States or France, where the debate on immigration has fuelled extremist views. Recent data show there’s been an increase of more than 300,000 non-permanent residents in Quebec in the last two years, a number Legault said is more than the province can accommodate.
“There’s a risk of reaction or overreaction in the face of impacts on services, on the French language, on housing,” he said. “We have to be balanced in how many immigrants we take in every year.”
OTTAWA – Hot on the heels of the Conservatives’ stunning byelection victory in the riding of Toronto—St. Paul’s, new seat projection data from Nanos Research show ridings considered previously safe for the Liberals are increasingly up for grabs.
“What we’re seeing is the Liberal fortress Toronto basically under siege,” Nanos said. “So maybe Toronto—St. Paul’s is the canary in the coal mine.”
Work is starting on Canada’s newest warship fleet even though government officials acknowledge they don’t have a final cost for the multi-billion dollar project or a final design.
Defence Minister Bill Blair and Vice-Admiral Angus Topshee, the head of the Royal Canadian Navy, announced Friday that construction will begin for a test module for the first Canadian Surface Combatant or CSC. Eventually 15 such warships will be produced to replace the current fleet of Halifax-class frigates.
OTTAWA – Liberal MP Wayne Long has become the first member of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s caucus to call for his resignation.
Long, a New Brunswick MP, penned an email letter to his caucus colleagues on Friday afternoon saying that after this week’s disastrous byelection loss in Toronto—St. Paul’s, it is time for Trudeau to step down.
Another MP from Newfoundland appeared to support his message.
And …
Liberal MP Chahal among nine MPs demanding ‘immediate’ caucus meeting to discuss ‘extremely concerning’ byelection loss
