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Out here, alongside all the farming, there are a lot of machine shops, welding shops and electrical shops in need of skilled labour. Not to mention qualified diesel mechanics and people that can rewind motors.
Trudeau Popularity - or not (various polling, etc.)
- Thread starter daftandbarmy
- Start date
Out here, alongside all the farming, there are a lot of machine shops, welding shops and electrical shops in need of skilled labour. Not to mention qualified diesel mechanics and people that can rewind motors.
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RangerRay
Army.ca Veteran
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IIRC, WAC Bennett back in the day built a lot of infrastructure and nationalized many things like hydro, ferries and rail for the express purpose of developing BC outside the Lower Mainland. The private sector was unable or unwilling to do it so Wacky got ‘er done. Dams were built, rail lines and highways went to places served previously by wagon road, and mills and mines sprang up. Then people moved to the “hinterland” to find opportunities.
Now we seem to have reversed the process.
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Don’t forget the Parairies…One advantage to growing up in a small town is that every town with a Canadian Tire or Princess Auto feels like a big city!
Brad Sallows
Army.ca Legend
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You must come from an alternate universe. CP and CN and the Trans-Canada weren't BC projects. The old BCR wasn't exactly a great idea. Remote areas weren't served by "wagon roads", they were served by logging roads, which were constructed and maintained by logging companies. The men of my grandparents' generation who worked in the forests and mines and mills and at sea weren't employed by the province of BC. The few things done by the provincial government are by no means the whole picture.
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How many of those jobs require certification from collages in the high cost of living cities? How many places will hire someone with no prior skills/training and teach them, then sponsor them through the official training processes?
There is no simple solution, and it isn't the same job market we entered 20+ years ago.
Let's also not forget the the GoC is artificially devaluing labour through the temporary foreign worker program. Why pay Canadians a competitive wage when you can import cheap labour from China or elsewhere?
Haggis
Army.ca Veteran
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It's almost like they don't want to get re-elected. Climate czar Guilbeault says post 2030 carbon tax hikes are a possibility. Or does Team Red have a box of silver bullets to ensure them a win in 2025?
RangerRay
Army.ca Veteran
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I wasn’t talking about those projects.
Potato patahto. They were paved and turned into highways, increasing access to markets and labour. The highways minister of the time, Flyin’ Phil Gagliardi had a glove compartment full of speeding tickets “test driving” those highways.
I never said they did. But the province did improve access to their markets and provided lower cost hydro electricity for those mills and mines.
Agreed.
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RangerRay
Army.ca Veteran
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Here’s The Line’s take:Note that the RCMP document referenced below was available on Scribbed until about 15 minutes ago. (This isn’t going help Mr Trudeau on the old popularity score). Edit: the document is posted again.
Secret RCMP report warns Canadians may revolt once they realize how broke they are
The RCMP report authors warn that whatever Canada’s current situation, it "will probably deteriorate further in the next five years."nationalpost.com
Secret RCMP report warns Canadians may revolt once they realize how broke they are
Right from the get-go, the report authors warn that whatever Canada’s current situation, it 'will probably deteriorate further in the next five years'.
Secret RCMP report warns Canadians may revolt once they realize how broke they are
Police move in to clear downtown Ottawa near Parliament hill of protesters after weeks of demonstrations on Feb. 19, 2022. PHOTO BY COLE BURSTON /The Canadian Press
Article content
A secret RCMP report is warning the federal government that Canada may descend into civil unrest once citizens realize the hopelessness of their economic situation.
“The coming period of recession will … accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations,” reads the report, entitled Whole-of-Government Five-Year Trends for Canada.
“For example, many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live,” it adds.
The report, labelled secret, is intended as a piece of “special operational information” to be distributed only within the RCMP and among “decision-makers” in the federal government.
A heavily redacted version was made public as a result of an access to information request filed by Matt Malone, an assistant professor of law at British Columbia’s Thompson Rivers University, and an expert in government secrecy.
Describing itself in an introduction as a “scanning exercise,” the report is intended to highlight trends in both Canada and abroad “that could have a significant effect on the Canadian government and the RCMP.”
Right from the get-go, the report authors warn that whatever Canada’s current situation, it “will probably deteriorate further in the next five years.”
In addition to worsening living standards, the RCMP also warns of a future increasingly defined by unpredictable weather and seasonal catastrophes, such as wildfires and flooding. Most notably, report authors warn of Canada facing “increasing pressure to cede Arctic territory.”
Another major theme of the report is that Canadians are set to become increasingly disillusioned with their government, which authors mostly chalk up to “misinformation,” “conspiracy theories” and “paranoia.”
“Law enforcement should expect continuing social and political polarization fueled by misinformation campaigns and an increasing mistrust for all democratic institutions,” reads one of the report’s “overarching considerations.”
Ironically, among the report’s more heavily redacted sections is one carrying the subtitle “erosion of trust.” “The past seven years have seen marked social and political polarization in the Western world” reads a partial first sentence, with the entire rest of the section deleted by government censors.
The censor’s pen also deleted most of a section warning about “paranoid populism.” “Capitalizing on the rise of political polarization and conspiracy theories have been populists willing to tailor their messages to appeal to extremist movements,” reads the section’s one non-redacted sentence.
In terms of declining living standards and inaccessible home ownership, the RCMP’s warnings are indeed in line with available statistics.
Canadian productivity — measured in terms of GDP per capita — has been trending downwards since at least the 1980s. But this has accelerated dramatically in recent years — even as per-worker productivity rises in many of our peer countries.
An analysis last year by University of Calgary economist Trevor Tombe found that if Canada had merely kept pace with U.S. productivity growth for the last five years, Canadian per-capita earnings would be $5,500 higher than they are now.
Meanwhile, housing affordability has reached “worst-ever” levels in most of Canada’s major markets, according to a December analysis by RBC. On average, even condos are now so unaffordable that only 44.5 per cent of Canadian households had sufficient income to buy one at current prices. As for single-family homes, only the richest 25 per cent of Canadian households had any hope of obtaining one.
“Economic forecasts for the next five years and beyond are bleak,” reads the RCMP’s assessment of the rest of the decade, even adding a quote from French President Emmanuel Macron that “the end of abundance” is nigh
Dispatch from the Front Lines: Cosplaying as the country we once were
"What do you mean you can't afford rent? The economy is thriving. Stop reading disinformation, you ungrateful proto-fascist.”
www.readtheline.ca
You might have seen news reports in recent weeks about an RCMP document that lays out some grim, but to our mind realistic, assessments of the challenges facing Canada today, and the ones we are likely to face in the next few years. The document was prepared by a three-member RCMP analysis team and then shared across the federal government. A professor obtained a copy via access to information — we salute you, Matt Malone of Thompson Rivers University — and then shared it with the media. The document is heavily redacted, but still makes for a damned interesting read.
Whole-of-Government Five-Year Trends for Canada
1.32MB ∙ PDF file
Download
We’ve included the document above for your perusal — we reiterate that it is heavily redacted. (We couldn’t help but laugh at how thoroughly redacted the part on public trust is — nothing says “trust” like line after line of redactions). But there’s enough left in the document to be worth considering. Much of it is focused on the likely environmental, economic and geopolitical challenges of climate change, and fair enough, but what really caught our eye was this section, which we’ll quote directly:
"The coming period of recession will also accelerate the decline in living standards that the younger generations have already witnessed compared to earlier generations. For example, many Canadians under 35 are unlikely ever to be able to buy a place to live. The fallout from this decline in living standards will be exacerbated by the fact that the difference between the extremes of wealth is greater now in developed countries than it has been at any time in several generations."
To which we say, huh.
Look, it’s nothing that you haven’t read before, especially at The Line. We’ve been saying much the same for years now. But this ain’t us, your cranky Line editors, saying bluntly that Canadian living standards will decline, and have declined. We can be dismissed, and are dismissed by many, as politically motivated hacks amping up the existential dread to sell more subscriptions. We don’t accept that characterization, but we know full well that that is how some view us.
We’d like to see them dismiss the RCMP in the same way. Really. We’d like that.
Here’s the bottom line. One of the greatest threats to Canada, and if the RCMP report mentioned it it’s in the redacted parts, is denial. There is a segment of our population that still cannot conceive of how hard life has gotten for some Canadians, and how hard it might get for others, because their own personal circumstances are so cozy. For folks of a certain age and economic class, the problems for young Canadians today are just too far removed from their lived experience to be believed. So what happens is that we get the absurd kind of scenes we’ve commented on before: a young Canadian explains why their life is hard, and the affluent (often but not always older) Canadian blinks in confusion and then points to some very specific economic indicator that has marginally improved over the last 17 quarters, or a survey that ranks Canada Top 3 in the world for spiritual self-actualization or some such. "Look at the chart, kid. Or this global power ranking put together by Plenty-of-Colourful-Listicles.Org, based on a survey of 23 Singaporean high school students. Things in Canada are fine. I haven’t noticed anything going wrong. You must be wrong. Stop reading disinformation, you ungrateful proto-fascist.”
We truly and sincerely accept that these people aren’t bad or cold-hearted. They just don’t know what they don’t know, and whenever they’re told about it, it’s just so wildly off-axis with their own lives and decades of lived experience that they reflexively reject it. We get how that happens. They have a whole-generations-radicalized-by-a-housing-crisis-and-compounding-state-capacity-failures-sized blind spot.
And that’s the tricky thing about blindspots. You have to work very hard to even know that they are there. We’ve been trying to draw attention to this one for years, with some success, but not enough. Maybe the RCMP will have some luck where we have failed.
Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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The logging road network is for the most part owned by the province, they lease the usage rights to companies, who agree to maintain them. A good chunk of the logging roads are maintained by the Province and that is to allow access to the cutblocks. Generally the logging companies build the spur roads, maintain them when in use and deactivate them afterwards. Vancouver Island is a different kettle of fish with much of the forest being owned by a large corporation.
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I have a 75 gallon transfer tank on the way. Once I plumb that into my truck, I'll be filling up in the US. It will save me approx $270 CAD per fill. Gas here currently is $1.50/ltr, heading for $1.65(?). Stateside is $1.07/ltr and unaffected by the carbon tax scam.
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Abacus Data Poll: Conservatives lead Liberals by 18 - 24 Mar 24
From March 16 to 21, 2024, Abacus Data conducted a national survey of 3,550 adults exploring several topics related to Canadian politics and current events as part of our regular national omnibus surveys. In this survey, we oversampled both Ontario and Alberta to get a better sense of what is happening in those provinces. Tomorrow, we will release new polling on the Ontario political landscape.In this edition of our Canadian politics tracking, we report on our usual metrics along with some new data on how Canadians feel about the Trudeau government and the relationship with vote intention.
Conservatives lead by 17 over the Liberals.
If an election were held today, 41% of committed voters would vote Conservatives with the Liberals at 23%, the NDP at 19% and the Greens at 4%. The BQ is at 33% in Quebec.
Since our last survey, the Conservatives and Liberals are down 1 and the NDP is up 1. Since the beginning of the year, we have seen stability in vote intentions with the Conservatives consistently in the low 40s and the Liberals stuck in the low to mid 20s.
Regionally, the Conservatives are well ahead in the Prairies, lead by 11 in BC and 16 in Ontario. In Atlantic Canada, the Conservatives are 17-points ahead of the Liberals while in Quebec, the BQ leads by 7 over the Liberals with the Conservatives six points behind the Liberals at 20%.
Attachments
Quirky
Army.ca Veteran
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They'll just double down on the 'Maga-style politics' from PP and bring something up about abortion. They are done.
ArmyRick
Army.ca Veteran
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My guess is that Trudeau is clinging desperately to the tactics you refer to and is hoping the over emphasis on the meager carbon handouts as a "good thing". I think he may also to try to exploit bill C63 into something for his advantage.
The truth is, like his former provincial pal, Kathleen Wynne, I think all of these games have been played out and he is going to get smoked hard in the election. Canadians are truly sick of him.
Oldgateboatdriver
Army.ca Veteran
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Except it will be treated like any purchase in the US. While CBA doesn't usually bother with vehicles built in tanks, they will not look at that one as part of the vehicle. This means that, unless you can prove to them (either with a customs unbroken seal or a signed and stamped custom statement obtained at the time you left Canada), they will assess a levy on it to cover all Federal and provincial taxes, including excise, gas taxes and the carbon tax. If you fail to declare, they will also impose penalties - just like anything else.
There are no provision that exempt oil/gas/petroleum products from import duties.
