According to the OECD, Canada was the third largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows in the first three quarters of 2023 (at US$42 billion), behind only the United States and Brazil. Does that mean Canada is doing well attracting capital, as the federal government has argued? Not really. Not if you consider outflows, too.
We are not quite a quarter of the way into the 21st century, but already a few clear structural trends have emerged, even if it is impossible to predict the next “black swans” — radically unpredictable events with far-reaching consequences – that might occur. Here are four of the trends.
Since 2000, Europe has stagnated on many fronts — anemic growth, a crashing birth rate, military disinvestment — from which countries such as Belgium and Germany have still not emerged. Perhaps most worrying of all, according to criteria such as patents, capital investment, and stock market giants such as GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), Europe has stopped innovating. People innovate in the United States; they still innovate in Asia, but in Europe – hardly at all. If you add to this the European Union’s obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of “energy transition”, it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.
The federal NDP has warned its Parliament Hill staff to prepare themselves for the possible sudden termination of the party’s supply-and-confidence deal with the Liberals — a bipartisan cooperation agreement which may be holding off an early election.
A senior NDP source who was not authorized to speak publicly told CBC News the party held a meeting Tuesday to tell staffers that, with negotiations with the Trudeau Liberals on pharmacare dragging on, the deal could be headed for an early grave.
Garbage Fake News.
Karolina Shiino, the Ukraine-born winner of last month’s Miss Japan contest, has relinquished her title, the contest organizer said Monday, following a magazine report that she was having an affair with a married man.
It is the first time a Miss Japan winner has relinquished their title. The organizer said the post will be vacant for the year.
h/t Sweetpea
Dumber than we can imagine.
Justice Samuel Alito hinted Thursday that former President Donald Trump’s removal from the ballot in Colorado could spell trouble for President Joe Biden.
Jason Murray, the lawyer for the six voters seeking to preclude their fellow Americans from voting for Trump in the Centennial State, attempted to make the disqualification case Thursday to the U.S. Supreme Court. It did not go well.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is trash-talking BCE Inc.’s widespread layoffs, calling the cuts a “garbage decision.”
Trudeau says he’s furious over Bell Media’s decision to end multiple television newscasts and that the corporation should know better.
The outlet made program cuts Thursday after its parent company announced job reductions and the sale of 45 of its 103 regional radio stations.
I’m sure Bell will maintain their current high standard of sycophantic coverage.
You knew it was coming. The 25th Amendment exists for a reason. It’s time to dust it off and use it.
A Toronto mother involved in a case of Inuit identity fraud has pleaded guilty in a Nunavut courtroom, according to her lawyer.
John Scott Cowan said Karima Manji, the mother of Amira and Nadya Gill, entered the plea Friday morning and took “full responsibility for the matters at hand.”
What a joke.
Federal immigration authorities caught and released a Pakistani man who illegally crossed the southern border and whose name appeared on the terror watchlist, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Stop calling me a white woman! My name is Lisa….
I don’t play into this divisive game.”
She lost two months’ pay to take this stand.
This is the speech that all political and institutional leaders are too cowardly to make. https://t.co/tzn9x5nyyo— Jim McMurtry (@JimMcMurtry01) February 8, 2024
No one expected coalition negotiations for possibly the most right-wing government in modern Dutch history to succeed without any hiccups (read: serious roadblocks.)
Among the most obvious obstacles was Geert Wilders’ flexible take on the Dutch constitution and the rights of minorities.
The fossil gallery at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa is temporarily closed after some specimens got caught in the splash-back of pink paint sprayed by an activist at a replica dinosaur skeleton.
Climate protester sprays paint on dinosaurs at Nature Museum of Canada
byu/TrafficNo1254 inottawa
CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said Thursday on “Anderson Cooper 360” that voters will remember President Joe Biden calling Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi “the president of Mexico” in a press conference where he was addressing his age and memory after Special Counsel Robert Hur decided not to charge the president for keeping classified documents.
Hur said Biden was an “elderly man with a poor memory.”
Canada has long been a draw for people from India’s Punjab province seeking new opportunities elsewhere. But has the Canadian dream soured?
It’s hard to miss the ardour of Punjab’s migrant ambitions when driving through its fertile rural plains.
Billboards promising easy immigration to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK jut out through ample mustard fields.
Off the highways, consultancies offer English language coaching to eager youth.
