One hundred billion dollars in new spending. The promise of a “green recovery.” Money for youth to prevent a “lost generation.” All items in the Liberal budget delivered Monday, and all ready-to-go election slogans. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau may claim he doesn’t want to go to the polls, but he apparently failed to tell that to his finance minister.
With their first budget in two years, with the pandemic as an impetus, the Trudeau Liberals blew billions of additional dollars of borrowed moneyinto the wind as if as it werefree.
Revenues, as in money coming in from COVID-weary and cash-strapped taxpayers, were put off for another day. But it will take multiple decades for the books to ever be balanced again.
Apparently the promised $100 billion in stimulus infrastructure spending wasn’t enough for the federal Liberal government.
Despite warnings by numerous economists, think tanks and even Canada’s Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), Chrystia Freeland’s first federal budget, released Monday, promises an extra $101.4 billion on infrastructure spending over three years and that poses a grave risk to Canada’s fiscal health by massively increasing our debt and by pumping too much printed money into the economy.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is out to bribe voters with $100 billion of our own money in the next election by throwing cash at every voting bloc the Liberals believe they will need to recapture a majority government.
It’s no surprise. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said the Liberals would spend up to that amount over three years to promote economic recovery in her November economic statement.
If the Liberal Party does not regain its parliamentary majority after lavishing $143 billion in new spending on every sub-set of the Canadian population, it should call a royal commission of inquiry.
Chrystia Freeland’s first budget professes to be about finishing the fight against COVID and building prosperity for the future. But the front-end-loaded nature of the expenditure — $101 billion in the next three years — suggests it is much more about crushing the NDP and shaming the Conservatives for objecting to all the lovely, lovely spending in this 724-page leviathan. More anything? More everything.
Globe – Federal budget 2021: Liberals target child care, COVID-19 relief in a wave of new spending, as deficit projected to hit $354-billion
NatPo – Federal budget 2021 pledges $101 billion for child care and stimulus spending to fuel pandemic recovery
Star – Liberals promise $10-a-day child care with a federal budget that looks beyond the pandemic
Global – Canada’s debt set to cross $1 trillion mark as Liberals extend COVID-19 aid in budget
CTV – Budget 2021: Government unveils $101.4B in new spending, with deficit declining
Sun – BUDGET: Liberals extend COVID-19 aid with election top of mind
CBC – Budget vows to build ‘for the long term’ as it promises child care cash, projects massive deficits
Chinese communications giant Huawei was able to eavesdrop on any conversation taking place on one of the biggest mobile networks in the Netherlands.
Hauwei staff were able to monitor all of KPN’s mobile users and eavesdrop on their private conversations – and even knew which numbers were tapped by police or intelligence agencies, according to Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant.
The newspaper cited a report prepared by consultancy firm Capgemini for KPN, which it said flagged that Huawei could have been accessing users’ calls in 2010 without KPN knowing.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will deliver the Liberal government’s first budget in two years on Monday, laying out more than $2 billion for a national child-care program while keeping the federal deficit for the past year under the $400 billion mark, CBC News has learned.
A senior government source who spoke to CBC News Sunday — on the condition they not be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly about the subject — said unlike the way some programs have been announced in past budgets, the forthcoming child-care announcement will not be about striking expert panels, undertaking further study or be entirely subject to negotiations with the provinces.
Federal budget to include digital and luxury levies, but no wealth tax, sources say
OTTAWA — Canada’s first budget in two years, to be presented to parliament on Monday, proposes a sales tax for online platforms and e-commerce warehouses, a digital services tax for Web giants and a luxury tax on items like yachts, government sources familiar with the document said.
It will not include a wealth tax, a levy sought by the opposition New Democrats. Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s budget will need the support of at least one opposition group to pass.
A tax on lux vehicles? I predict an exodus of drug dealers. But at least some parking spots will be freed up in city housing projects.
I can’t imagine Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland rising in the House of Commons on Monday to deliver the Liberal government’s first budget in over two years – 762 days, to be exact – and announcing she’s had second thoughts about the expected $100-billion infrastructure program.
Liberals never doubt their own genius and they have no shame. So it never occurs to them their plans might be wrong. And even if it did, they would never admit it.
OTTAWA — The stage is set for arguably the most important federal budget in recent memory, as the Liberal government prepares to unveil its plan for Canada’s post-pandemic recovery even as a third wave of COVID-19 rages across the country.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland will present the budget to the House of Commons on Monday afternoon, more than two years after the Liberals’ last such spending plan was unveiled.
The differences between then and now can’t be understated, as not only did the Liberals lose their majority government in the interim, but COVID-19 has upended the lives of Canadians everywhere.
Trudeau’s made-in-Canada vaccine roll-out debacle may become the biggest scandal in Canadian history because lives are involved.
As of April 15, 22.7 per cent of all Americans were fully vaccinated (or received two doses) and another 38.6 per cent have received their first dose. That is roughly 251 million doses. By contrast, Canada has only provided 8.5 million doses, most of which will be reduced in effectiveness because of the Trudeau government’s decision to delay the second dose by 16 weeks, contrary to pharma-company instructions.
It was in the power of the federal government to contain the current wave of the pandemic, fuelled as it is by more contagious variants, through border controls or more timely vaccine procurement. But you won’t hear any contrition from the prime minister. When asked during question period Tuesday about his government’s slow vaccine rollout, Justin Trudeau deflected and said the “facts” are that health restrictions are what are needed to blunt the spread of COVID-19. In other words, take it up with the provinces.
Canadians can be grateful Ottawa’s parliamentary secretary for housing isn’t afraid of saying what’s on his mind in front of a microphone.
Liberal apparatchiks must be going squirrely after loquacious MP Adam Vaughan inadvertently outed what has been the party’s real scheme on housing for six years — pushing a policy that only worsens extreme unaffordability in cities like Toronto and Vancouver.
Canada’s immigration policy does not benefit Canadian citizens unless you’re a member of the ruling class. We are a Banana Republic.
Justin Trudeau was slapped down by Downing Street today after claiming Britain is facing a ‘very serious third wave’ – with critics accusing him of a desperate attempt to deflect criticism over his own country’s sluggish vaccine rollout and surging infections.
The Canadian premier referred to the UK’s hugely successful drive, which has 60 per cent of the population given jabs compared to just 20 per cent in Canada, as he sought to justify keeping tough restrictions.
‘Vaccinations on their own are not enough to keep us safe,’ he told MPs in the country’s parliament.
The federal government hopes to convert more than 90,000 temporary foreign workers and graduated international students into permanent residents as part of its ambitious goal of admitting 401,000 immigrants this year, despite borders being closed by the pandemic.
The new measures, announced Wednesday by Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino, will allow 20,000 temporary foreign workers in health care, 30,000 workers in other occupations deemed essential and 40,000 international students who have graduated from a university or college to apply to become permanent residents. There will be separate, dedicated spaces for French-speaking or bilingual applicants residing outside Quebec.
