Liberals set internal goal to narrow polling gap by five points come July: sources

Trailing badly in the polls, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has set an internal goal of narrowing the Conservative Party’s double-digit lead by five points every six months.

According to two sources with direct knowledge of the strategy, the Liberals are taking an incremental approach to climbing out of their deep hole in popularity. By July, the sources said, the Prime Minister’s Office is expecting to see the first material change in polling.

Who believes that a hated punk like Justin could pull that off?

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Liberal government turning to influencers to appeal to Canadian youth

Dennis Mathu and Stephanie Gordon first started posting financial-advice videos on YouTube three years ago — a side hustle that helped to scratch a creative itch.

They never imagined it would lead them down some of the most powerful political corridors in Canada.

Mathu and Gordon — Steph & Den, as they’re known online — were among several content creators invited to Tuesday’s federal budget lockup, where they got early access to Ottawa’s new spending blueprint.

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Liberal MPs fear Justin Trudeau’s budget is a gift to Pierre Poilievre — and that the Grits are shooting themselves in the foot

Worry is starting to set in. Days after Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland tabled her government’s latest budget, with $39 billion in new spending and a $19-billion tax increase to help pay for it, there is concern among some Grit MPs that the Liberals are shooting themselves in the foot.

Some — in Liberal-Conservative swing ridings — worry that blue Liberals who’ve long griped Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spends too much money, will now give Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre a second look.

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‘GETTING WORSE’: Trudeau Liberals blamed for latest line of desperate workers in Toronto

Videos of massive lineups for job fairs and open calls in the GTA are commonplace on social media.

It’s a testament to just how competitive and exhausting the job market has become in recent years.

And the pricks in Ottawa still lie about the need for mass immigration.

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School That Bused International Students to MP Dong’s Riding Vote Invited to Event With Trudeau

MARKHAM, Ont.—The Toronto-area private school whose name came up prominently during the foreign interference inquiry for busing international students to the Liberal nomination vote of MP Han Dong in 2019 was invited to celebrate the Chinese New Year with the prime minister two years later.

The invitation was issued even as the prime minister and Liberal party organizers had been made aware of “irregularities” at the nomination vote by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in 2019. The cited issues included international students being told to support Mr. Dong under “veiled threats” by the Chinese consulate.

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Dominic LeBlanc wants his close friend Justin Trudeau’s job

Behind the scenes, the plot thickens in regards to the future leadership of the Liberal Party. We need only to consider what Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, a very close friend of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is up to.

A former Liberal cabinet minister met with Mr. LeBlanc recently and they discussed plans, I’m told, for Mr. LeBlanc to run to succeed Mr. Trudeau as party leader and become prime minister, should he step down.


Is this more than just wishful thinking?

Will Trudeau run in next election? Mulcair says no

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Housing plans’ impact on Canada’s fertility rate would strain economy, increase social tensions

Modern apartment living.

The federal government’s new budget is largely dedicated to building more homes, faster, so that young workers can afford to own one. The Conservative housing plan claims to do the same, only better.

There is one problem: These plans would further force down Canada’s fertility rate, straining our economy and increasing social tensions.

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Here’s what a ‘fairness for every generation’ budget would have actually included

Canada’s “Fairness For Every Generation” budget was quite clearly designed to promote the perception of fairness, rather than its realization. It’s a marketing document, as federal budgets are, through which a government with a certain degree of gall can claim that “it would be irresponsible and unfair to pass on more debt to the next generations,” while also introducing $52.9-billion in new spending, with the cost to service the national debt ($54.1-billion) now surpassing health transfers to the provinces ($52.1-billion).

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Despite best efforts, Justin Trudeau can’t direct attention away from the carbon tax

Governments often use budgets to change the channel from what their opponents want to talk about to what they want to talk about.

The Trudeau government is no exception. It clearly hopes this week’s federal budget will dampen all the negative chatter about carbon pricing and get people focused on the great plans it has for solving the housing crisis and making life “fairer” for young Canadians.

But here’s a snag: changing the channel is a lot harder when your buddy on the couch grabs the remote and insists on switching back to the programming you want to get away from.

Trudeau has a solution to the housing crisis he created? Bullshit.

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Lunatic Guilbeault to force banks to call carbon rebate a carbon rebate in direct deposits

OTTAWA – Canadian banks that refuse to identify the carbon rebate by name when doing direct deposits are forcing the government to change the law to make them do it, says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.

Guilbeault is taking the stand after Tuesday’s federal budget promised to amend the Financial Administration Act so government payments accepted for deposit at Canadian banks will carry whatever title the government wants.

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John Ivison: The blowback to Trudeau’s investment tax hike could be bigger than he thinks

“99.87 per cent of Canadians will not pay a cent more,” the prime minister said this week, in reference to the budget announcement that his government will raise the inclusion rate on capital gains tax in June.

The move will be limited to 40,000 wealthy taxpayers. “We’re going to make them pay a little bit more,” Justin Trudeau said.

But it’s hard to see how that number can be true when the budget document also says 307,000 corporations will also be caught in the dragnet that raises the inclusion rate on capital gains to 66 per cent from 50 per cent.

h/t DS

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Minister Says He Was Taken Aback After Learning Deadly Viruses Were Shipped From Winnipeg Lab to Wuhan

After learning that samples of deadly Ebola and Nipah viruses had been sent from Canada’s top-security lab in Winnipeg to China, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said his reaction was similar to that of an MP who expressed incredulity upon learning of the move.

“I’m really concerned about the March 2019 incident where [Winnipeg lab scientists Xiangguo Qiu and Keding Cheng] were implicated in a shipment of live Ebola in Hanipah [Nipah] viruses on a commercial Air Canada flight. How the hell did that happen?” NDP MP Charlie Angus asked during a House of Commons Canada-China committee meeting on April 15.

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Recent immigrants think Canada’s immigration targets are too high, prefer Tories to Liberals: poll

Among people who immigrated to Canada in the last decade, more think Canada’s latest immigration targets will bring in too many people, a newly released Leger poll suggests, while fewer recent newcomers think the plan will bring in the right amount of people or not enough.

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