Kurl: Trudeau looks like a sad clown after trying some budget magic

You couldn’t blame Prime Minister Justin Trudeau if he’s been feeling as downcast and rejected as a hapless magician hired for the children’s party. I mean, what hasn’t he done for the young folk?! In a series of spending and program announcements this month all aimed at Millennials and Gen Z adults, he’s performed the political equivalent of pulling rabbits out of his top hat, making animal balloons, doing the never-ending handkerchief trick with his sleeve, with the grand finale of releasing doves. And what’s the audience reaction? They’re on their phones, watching YouTube videos of Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre.

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Alberta Draws Academia Into Its Fight With Justin Trudeau

Federal funding promises can shape how much, or how fast, provinces advance their own agenda items, and Alberta wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to know that his to-do list will have to wait.

Premier Danielle Smith announced that the province would take steps, through a bill introduced this month, to reinforce the work that she contends is most important to Albertans and to her United Conservative Party government. This latest attempt to square off with the federal government in Ottawa continues to deepen her party’s view that Mr. Trudeau, a Liberal, has thrust his ideological agenda onto Albertans.

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Months after they were promised, Ottawa still hasn’t imposed sanctions on violent Israeli settlers

The Government of Canada has announced multiple rounds of sanctions against various parties in the Middle East since October 7. On Friday, Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly announced sanctions against Iran’s minister of defence and its general staff.

On February 3, she announced that Canada would impose sanctions on both leaders of Hamas involved in the October 7 massacre and extremist Israeli settlers involved in violent attacks on Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.

But there’s an important difference between the sanctions announced against Palestinians and Iranians and the ones announced against Israelis — the ones against Israelis have not been gazetted and therefore never took effect.

Joly’s appointment is an embarrassment to all sides in the current conflict.

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Many Canadians have heard enough from Justin Trudeau, but for a few dumb Americans it’s a different story

Many Canadians have heard enough from Justin Trudeau, but Americans are a different story

Talking to Americans got a lot of laughs when comedian Rick Mercer was doing his TV shows two decades ago. For Justin Trudeau right now, talking to Americans is part of a serious communication strategy, aimed at putting the Canadian prime minister in front of wider audiences.

Trudeau has been doing a flurry of podcasts in recent days, two of them based in the United States: one for the Freakonomics series, another for the Vox news program, Today, Explained. One of my colleagues joked this week that this is the Liberal reply to Pierre Poilievre’s fondness for slogans: when the Conservative leader goes short and snappy, Trudeau goes long form.

Talking to Americans to win Canadian hearts and minds says even your bought media is tired of the charade.

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‘It’s clear’ Mark Carney wants Trudeau’s job and should appear at Commons committee: Conservatives

OTTAWA — Conservatives are hoping to grill former central banker Mark Carney during a House of Commons committee meeting on the carbon tax and affordability, arguing that he may be a future contender for leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

Even though Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has repeatedly said he is staying on as leader of his party, the ongoing speculation about Carney’s political prospects has only intensified in recent months, and more so after he delivered a speech Monday evening during which he criticized the federal budget.

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Nearly 23% of the Canadian population reported food insecurity in Trudeau’s Canada

Nearly nine million Canadians lived in food insecure households in 2022, with 22.9 per cent of the population reporting some form of food insecurity, according to a Statistics Canada report released Friday.

The data agency wrote in its annual Canadian Income Survey that 8.7 million people lived in households that reported some kind of food insecurity.

That was an increase of almost 1.8 million people from the previous year, when the rate was 18.4 per cent. It marked the second consecutive year of increases since the pandemic began.

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Trudeau’s Canada: Standard Of Living Declines As Real Capital Output Plummets

Real output per capita has fallen to seven per cent below its long-term trend since the pandemic, resulting in a decline of roughly $4,200 per person, according to a new report by Statistics Canada.

To reverse the trend, GDP per capita, a metric used by economists together with other economic indicators to evaluate a country’s standard of living, would need to grow at an average yearly rate of 1.7 per cent, authors Carter McCormack and Weimin Wang found.

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Home ownership is only for the rich in Trudeau’s Canada say 80% in new poll

Is home ownership only for the rich now? 80% say yes in new poll

The cost-of-living crisis facing Canadians is only getting more bleak, according to new polling that shows everything from buying a first home to affording groceries has gotten harder in the past year.

On Friday, Ipsos polling conducted exclusively for Global News showed that four in five Canadians (80 per cent) now feel that owning a home is only for the rich. That’s 11 points higher than a similar poll from just over a year ago in March 2023.

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Food banks are on the brink in Trudeau’s Canada

Canadian food banks are on the brink: ‘This is not a sustainable situation’

Food banks in Canada are being pushed to the brink with high demand and donations not keeping pace. Experts say it’s unsustainable.

The last four years have been financially tumultuous for Canadians. A global pandemic and rampant inflation have led to high grocery prices, with more and more people finding themselves unable to afford the basics.

But what happens when donations to help are not keeping up with demand?

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Opposition Parties Demand Assurances Locals Will Have Jobs Protected at New EV Plants

The Conservatives and the New Democrats have both called on the Liberal government to assure local Canadian workers that their jobs will be protected at new electric vehicle plants, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a $15 billion deal with Honda on April 25.

Tory MP and industry critic Rick Perkins commented earlier this week on foreign workers being employed in EV plants that have been heavily subsidized by Canadian taxpayers, citing a report from Canada’s Building Trades Union (CBTU) that claimed foreign replacement workers were being employed at electric battery plants in southern Ontario.

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Lower Income Canadians Face Highest Marginal Effective Tax Rates: Report

Canadian families with modest incomes face the highest marginal effective tax rates, with those earning between $30,000 and $60,000 hit hardest, according to a newly released report.

Marginal effective tax rate (METR) measures the personal income taxes paid both federally and provincially as well as the reductions in government benefits linked to income.

Households earning $30,000 to $60,000 face marginal effective tax rates near or above 50 per cent, said the report published by the Fraser Institute.

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Honda deal is good publicity for Liberals, but who will buy all those EVs?

The largest deal in Canadian history. That’s how Premier Doug Ford has described a recently inked agreement between Ontario, Ottawa and auto giant Honda, officially announced Thursday.

Under the terms of the agreement, Honda will pump billions into building an electric vehicle assembly plant. For the automaker, the plant would be the first of its kind in Ontario; for the province, the third after automakers Stellantis and Volkswagen inked similar agreements last year. In touting the virtues of the agreement with Honda, the Premier said, “everyone’s going to benefit.”

But that’s not true. Not everyone. The move saddles Canadians with a product for which enthusiasm is tepid at best.

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GOLDSTEIN: When it comes to Jew hatred, the Liberals are paralyzed

Today, a simple question for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Does he agree with his anti-Islamophobia adviser, Amira Elghawaby, that the only problem with what we’ll laughably call a “pro-Palestinian” demonstration in Ottawa last weekend was that, as she put it on ‘X’, “a few individual protesters engaged in problematic speech?”

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