Canada

Food prices are still far higher than they should be, gas prices continue to rise and rent increases are up dramatically year over year, but the Trudeau Liberals are taking a victory lap.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland held a news conference on Tuesday to take a bow and explain that despite still higher prices, we’ve never had it so good.

When federal public service unions recently threatened a summer of discontent(opens in a new tab), it would have been easy pickings for Justin Trudeau to clear his throat and deliver a heartfelt “fuddle duddle(opens in a new tab)” for and on behalf of hard-pressed Canadian voters.

It wasn’t to be.

Having recently signed generous collective agreements with the major public sector unions, one could have expected Trudeau’s Liberal government to be given a bit of a break, but just the opposite happened.

OTTAWA — Conservatives are calling once more for Greg Fergus to resign as House of Commons Speaker, arguing that an advertisement for an event in his riding used “very partisan, inflammatory language” concerning Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre.

In a new report, a think-tank within Employment and Social Development Canada cites 35 “plausible” global disruptions that could reshape Canada and the world in the near future.

The Policy Horizons Canada (PHC) panel drafted the list and then asked more than 500 stakeholders within and outside government to suggest which ones were more likely, when they might happen and how one might trigger others.

The authors of the report point out that the list is an exploration of theoretical — not guaranteed — threats. They say that even “seemingly distant or improbable” calamities can become reality and thinking about them helps governments create “robust and resilient policies.”

It is the single greatest step the Trudeau government has taken to encourage corporate investment and to boost productivity – and all by letting companies decide on their own where their dollars should best be spent.

Called the Accelerated Investment Initiative and launched in late 2018, the policy aimed to bolster capital investment by speeding up how quickly companies could expense the cost of anything from new factory equipment to new computer systems. The result was a wave of corporate investment without the need for any additional administrative apparatus.