Canada

Labour Minister Randy Boissonnault is considering "a refusal to process in the low wage stream if the abuse and misuse does not improve," said labour ministry spokesperson Mathis Denis.

Considering eh?

When the NDP government came into power in 2017 and committed to raising B.C.’s carbon tax, it made special provisions for industry. Their increased carbon taxes would be fully returned to “best-in-class” companies and through supporting projects advancing industrial decarbonization.

As of April, a new system — the output-based pricing system — is in place.

The name is somewhat confusing, but the key point is that it is a system of managing carbon pricing for big polluters by exempting a portion of emissions from taxation.

This new system exempts 65 per cent of industrial emissions from the carbon tax.

Canadian emissions rose for the third straight year in 2023, according to the seventy-fourth edition of the venerable “Statistical Review of World Energy” report. The reason I’m turning to data in this report is because Canada won't release its 2023 numbers until next year. This delay, which can exceed two years, keeps Canadians in the dark about where we are and where we are headed.

Many of Canada’s peers in the Group of Seven (G7) nations have already published their 2023 emission estimates — including the United States (U.S.), European Union (E.U.), France, Germany and the United Kingdom (U.K.).

So, to try to provide some current insight into where Canadians are now in the climate fight — and what it will take now to hit our 2030 climate target — I’ve gathered all these numbers and created a series of charts.

The dizzyingly steep path to Canada’s 2030 target
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Fossil fuel companies and their industry associations lobbied the federal government an average of five times per working day in 2023, according to a new analysis from Environmental Defence.

The environmental watchdog tracked 31 companies and industry associations over the course of last year and identified 1,255 separate meetings. The top lobbied departments were Energy and Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) and Finance Canada, with 313, 253 and 118 meetings respectively.

It’s no surprise the three departments most responsible for the country’s emission reduction efforts are the target of intense lobbying, according to the study’s lead author, Emilia Belliveau.

For anyone not keeping up, BC is about to have a election in 2 months. The current opposition party/previous incumbent party is currently polled to be almost completely wiped out in the election by the BC Cons. so this seems like a go for broke maneuver.

A B.C. United government would eliminate the provincial income tax on the first $50,000 earned by every British Columbian, Leader Kevin Falcon announced Tuesday.

The move would save British Columbians an average of $2,050 a year each at a time when people are struggling to afford the rising cost of living, Falcon said.

The tax cut would cost the province $5.4 billion in tax revenue, B.C. United says.

Contraceptives and the morning-after pill will be free for women in Canada as part of the National Pharmacare Program.

Daly told the committee that she was seconded to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) while ArriveCan was being developed. She said she had no authority to make decisions about the contracting process and insisted that her role was largely an administrative one.

“The underlying problem here is that the RCMP is presuming that a person who is engaged in environmental activism, necessarily, is a higher risk for engaging in criminal behaviour — that somehow, that you're voicing dissent, that you pose a risk of criminality,” Jack said, “and that that gives the police the authority to be investigating you, following you, collecting information about you.”

THE MEETING HOUSE, formerly one of Canada’s most prominent evangelical megachurches, may now only be able to offer its popular Sunday ministry online instead of in person. In June, in the wake of numerous sexual abuse and misconduct allegations against church leadership and facing several multi-million-dollar civil suits, the church announced that it had been denied abuse insurance coverage and was therefore deciding to “pause” its in-person services, including Sunday worship. Without this insurance, the church has been forced to restructure how it offers ministry—and raises questions about the church’s future.

The moment comes as the Meeting House, which once peaked at more than 5,000 members, nineteen satellite sites, and around 200 “home churches” across Ontario, has been reckoning with accusations that it failed to protect its parishioners, including children, from abuse by church leadership over many years. The ministry became embroiled in scandal in 2021 after a wave of sexual assault and misconduct accusations emerged against former lead teaching pastor Bruxy Cavey, resulting in his resignation from the church in early 2022. That year, Cavey was charged with one count of sexual assault against one woman, and the following year, he was charged with two additional counts of sexual assault involving a separate person. Cavey’s first sexual assault charge was dismissed by a Hamilton judge in July due to delays at court. Proceedings for the two outstanding sexual assault charges are ongoing.

The federal Liberals and Conservatives want to "solve" the housing crisis by making it easier for builders to build new units.

Sadly, with interest rates and construction prices at current levels, it seems unlikely that private companies will be able to provide the 3.5 million houses we need to restore affordability.

We need all levels of government to start building housing, not just wait for white knights from the private sector to ride in and save our middle class dreams.

Residential property developers are facing rising insolvencies as they struggle with higher borrowing and construction costs – and industry experts warn the trend is likely to worsen as interest expenses remain elevated.

...

At this pace, Canada is on track to reach about 240 real estate insolvencies this year, which would be 57-per-cent higher than 2023 and 13-per-cent higher than 2009, when a wide swath of businesses ran into problems owing to the financial crisis and global recession.

...

And that does not include the number of developers and projects that have been forced into receivership for not paying bills. The Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy does not include receiverships with its publicly available bankruptcy statistics. However, insolvency experts say they are seeing more projects go into receivership.

So far this year, the real estate sector accounts for 55 per cent of the receiverships recorded by Insolvency Insider Canada, a website that tracks the largest insolvencies in the country. That compares to 30 per cent last year and 33 per cent in 2022.

...

Today, the cost of residential construction is 81-per-cent higher across Canada’s major cities compared to 2017 and more than double – up 107 per cent – in the Toronto region, according to Statscan data.

The company at the heart of the travel-nurse controversy is now the subject of a complaint over unpaid wages under New Brunswick's Employment Standards Act.

A nurse who moved to the province from France to work for Canadian Health Labs as a personal support worker says the company turned his life upside down when its contract with the Vitalité health authority expired in May.

Youenn Siviniant was still on the job in mid-June when Vitalité told him to stop coming to work. He is still officially an employee of the company but has not been paid since June 19.

"It further demonstrates the depth of the problem that we're facing with CHL, not just gouging the taxpayers with these exorbitant contracts but also with respect to the way it treats its own employees," said Liberal MLA and health critic Rob McKee.

"That's the problem with privatization."

TLDR: BC NDP gets 68 rental housing built in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Canada for 10 Christy Clark(Previous BC United leader) yoga events i.e ~1.5m and people are not happy.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/ndp-housing-hub-program-under-fire-over-claim-of-affordable-rentals-1.7288112

The NDP government provided a $31.8 million low-interest loan to Vancouver developer Jameson Development Corp. for the 68-unit rental building through the HousingHub program

His ministry said in a statement that the financing used to build the project at 1807 Larch St. will be fully paid back to the province, plus interest

The problem starts here where CBC did a segment that just interviewed a bunch of people to see what bad things they had to say about the project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfpEXRjpybk

Deranged person A)

B.C. Green party leader Sonia Furstenau said that's "infuriating."

"People who need housing are not the people who can afford $4,200 a month in rent," she told CBC News

Deranged person B)

Andy Yan, an urban planner and director of Simon Fraser University's City Program, asked what the public interest was in subsidizing developers who are still charging rents that are out of reach for 75 per cent of Vancouver renters.

"It's an issue of what you're paying for versus what you're getting," Yan said.

The BC Conservative that used to be a Vancouver councilor: I genuinely can't make sense of whatever this person was trying to say. It was pretty much a human equivalent of someone slamming their keyboard a few times.

https://news.bchousing.org/new-affordable-rental-homes-on-the-way-in-kitsilano/

80% of units, totaling 54, will target at- or below-market level rents restricted to middle- income households within the provincial middle-income limits. Floor plans and prices.

20% of units, totaling 14, will be tenanted at moderate-income rent levels and to households earning less than $80,000 per year.

I haven't been able to find the exact figures but I've largely seen numbers like 2-3% better than market rates. I'm going to just be generous and round it up 5% accounting for some level defaults, that's 1.6m to produce 54 market rate rentals plus 14 below market rentals. People spend more than that on a single duplex.

If we scale that out to the original 2B program that would be 3,780 market rentals and 980 below market for only 5% opportunity cost of 2B. As someone who's gone over how hard it would be to build truly low cost housing that about as close as it gets.

$2,000,000,000 * 5% = $100,000,000

$100,000,000 /4,760 = 21k per unit

Canadian b-boy Phil Wizard (Philip Kim) took gold in the first Olympic men’s breaking tournament Saturday.

“I never thought I’d be here in my life,” the 27-year-old said, wiping away tears. He spent the last few sleepless nights “tossing and turning” because he was “stressed out of my mind.”

“I cried yesterday because I was so scared to do this, and, I’m just happy. I’m just happy,” he said.

Hometown favorite French b-boy Dany Dann (Danis Civil) won silver, and American b-boy Victor (Victor Montalvo) took the bronze after taking out Japanese b-boy Shigekix (Shigeyuki Nakarai). These Olympic medals may be the last for breaking, at least for some time — the dance form is not in the lineup of sports for the Los Angeles 2028 Games.

Omer Aziz is the author of Brown Boy: A Memoir and a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University.

For much of the past decade, I spent time going back and forth between the United States and Canada. It used to be the case, especially after the election of Justin Trudeau in 2015, that when returning to Canada I was greeted by good news. The country was imbued with a sense of optimism. The beginnings of an economy that worked for everyone. A renewed confidence on the world stage. The country felt ready for the future.

After the election of Donald Trump, landing in Toronto or Montreal was accompanied by a sigh of relief. At least up here, institutions were seemingly working. At least up here, the populist wave had not crashed onshore just yet. Up here, the economic game did not seem so rigged. How brief that moment was.

Those years seem so long ago. The Canada of 2024 feels like a different country.

When I returned to Canada in late 2023, I was shocked by what I saw and heard. It felt as if almost everyone I encountered now, of all ethnicities, backgrounds and ages, were angry. Friends complained about the impossibility of buying a home − homes that had been affordable when their parents came to Canada. Family members worried about car thefts and other crimes. People were making plans to leave − even those who had recently arrived.

Nor was this limited to my immediate circle. In conversations at the local YMCA, the coffee shop and around Toronto, there was a genuine, visceral frustration. People felt stifled by the dismal state of the economy and the poor state of housing. They were working harder and, thanks to inflation, making less. The price of food (and everything else) was rising. They worried about their kids’ safety. There was a ceiling on their ambitions. The political leadership of the country had failed them, time and again, and was now unable to address ordinary people’s concerns.

At first, I thought some of this might be hyperbole. But then, after being back here for some time, I saw it myself. Driving through the Greater Toronto Area, I saw how much more congested everything had become. There were too many people with too few places to live. The increasing number of homeless people on the street. The rise in violent crime. The staggering toll of the opioid crisis. The unprecedented wave of international students, many of whom were sold a bill of goods that turned out to be faulty. The hangover from COVID-19 restrictions, almost a form of national PTSD. The pervasive feeling that success is out of reach in Canada, and even if you work hard and are successful, the government will come collecting more than they need − and then proceed to waste it, overspend it or lose it.

What I realized soon thereafter was that this country was witnessing a systemic political failure, a complete inability of politicians to get change done in ways that manifested at the dinner table. An extreme form of PR and image-management had begun to take over delivering on policy in concrete ways − and the entire country was noticing. Nor was this an accident, the unfortunate consequence of polarization or inequality, but the deliberate result of multiple policy failures − as well as failures of will.

I realized that this systemic government failure amounted to something worse than just incompetence or ineffectiveness. It was a betrayal of the Canadian dream.

What is the Canadian dream? It was a promise − less individualistic and gun-friendly than the American version, but no less ambitious. To me, the dream promised that every person here could have a decent shot at life, one that was better than that of their parents. There was emphasis on community and a strong focus on order and good government. The compact included the payment of higher taxes, and in exchange, the existence of world-class social institutions delivering for ordinary people. The immigration system worked because the same contract existed with immigrants − that they would work hard, play by the rules, become part of Canadian society through legal means, and in return, would become citizens of a highly functioning democracy where a good life was, if not guaranteed, then within reach.

The dream was based on fairness, on merit, on policies that worked. It promised breathable air and the bountiful resources of the second-largest country on Earth. It promised the principle of equality of opportunity, promised safety and peace and responsibility. It promised leaders who put the national and long-term interests of the country above their own partisan needs. The dream now feels like it’s on life support.

Canadians are not fools; their discontents have good reason. “Canada’s per capita GDP has been shrinking 0.4 per cent a year since 2020 − the worst rate for any developed country in the top 50,” noted the esteemed investor, Ruchir Sharma, in May. Investment and job growth is driven mostly by the government, while “private sector action is confined to the property market.” So the government spends, is unable to restrain itself or get results, while speculation and real estate investments drive the economy. Along with the systemic political failure, this may be an economic crisis in the making.

For many Canadians, the cost of living has become unaffordable. The average price of a house in the GTA is $1.1-million, and Metro Vancouver is around the same. There are certainly cheaper places to live, but the average cost of a rental in Canada has reached record highs − more than $2,100 a month. According to one major study, Canada needs to build an additional 3.5 million homes by the end of the decade and is currently only building around 200,000 a year.

To make matters worse, immigration − an exclusively federal jurisdiction − has gone unchecked, which is a disservice to both the country and the legal immigrants who have been here for years. Canada’s immigration system used to be the envy of the world − focusing on merit, on the needs of the labour force, and on a generosity of spirit that was practically unrivalled. Canada will always be pro-immigration, but there needs to be a responsible conversation on the subject, not using it to divide people or sing one’s own moral praises.

In Canada, the social contract for years allowed more immigration to grow the economy, but this came with stringent criteria for who should be admitted. Today, there are more than 900,000 international students in Canada, a 170-per-cent increase over the past decade. Some of these students have been scammed by for-profit colleges. Others have been affiliated with fake schools, using their student visas as loopholes in the immigration system. The social system was unprepared for such an influx, though certain institutions benefited: colleges and universities got more fees; politicians touted rising immigration numbers; the landlord class got an endless supply of perpetual renters. Without any housing available, this has left the country unprepared to deal with multiple, overlapping economic and social crises.

Whether for immigrants or those born in Canada, the same reality unfolds. We have created an entire generation of permanent renters, people who will work and struggle and maybe build some limited wealth, but will never be able to own property. Keep in mind that more than half of Canadians are living paycheque-to-paycheque. Many in my generation have been entirely shut out of prosperity − betraying the promise of progress for millions.

One sees neighbourhoods plagued by drug abuse and crime. Statistics Canada has reported that we are witnessing a 16-year spike in violent crime. The homicide rate in Canada today is the highest it’s been since 1992. And Canada maintains one of the laxest criminal justice systems in the Western world, one where someone can cause the death of another and leave prison after six months. If America went too far in the direction of mass incarceration, Canada overcorrected in the opposite direction with mass leniency. One thing, though, is still a constant: The disproportionately largest victims of violent crimes, and specifically homicide, are Indigenous people and racial minorities.

At some point, one would think that the deaths of so many innocent and vulnerable people would elicit outrage − yet life goes on as normal. Each life is precious, and when violent criminals get off easy, or without punishment at all, they learn the terrible lesson that this country does not take its own laws seriously, so why should they? When the law loses its power to deter crime, either because of prosecutors not moving forward with cases, or because of a general laissez-faire attitude toward violent crime happening in other neighbourhoods, it is the marginalized who are harmed most.

Yet, Canadians cannot even read or share news on social-media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. It is an Orwellian experience − in the literal sense − to see one’s own articles censored and silenced in a country calling itself a democracy. This is the result of an ineffectual attempt by the Canadian government to force the biggest social-media company on the planet to pay for articles. Either Canada should not have taken on such a fight, or if it did, should have dealt more tactfully and strategically with a company known to leverage its strength.

Normally, in a democracy, social ills can be addressed by public officials. But Canada’s own political institutions have been riven by corruption and personal ambition. And now also potentially by foreign influence. Each controversy and scandal leads people away from crucial time and policy attention that could have been spent on fixing the country’s major issues. At the parliamentary level, most members of Parliament are so frightened of speaking for themselves that they are rendered powerless. This defies the very essence of the British parliamentary system, upon which Canada’s system is based, which empowers MPs to speak on behalf of their constituents and represent their true voice in the people’s chamber.

Parliamentary committees no longer perform their functions, serving rather as poorly rehearsed theatre. Question Period involves many questions and few substantive answers. We are witnessing this systemic political failure in real time, with institutions and leaders no longer responding, or able to respond to the citizenry. This is not a failure of marketing or communication; it’s a failure of leadership and vision. The excesses of superficial progressivism have been laid bare. Cultural virtue-signalling at the expense of substantive economic progress has corroded the values of progressive politics. It was easy to blame Donald Trump when he was president; it’s much harder to deflect criticism now.

The social situation deteriorates. The housing shortage is chronic. Economic stagnation is severe. The political crisis may be even worse. At this moment, there is a backlash building. Evidence for this is everywhere − most recently in the riding of Toronto-St. Paul’s, which just elected a Conservative MP for the first time since 1988 − and it would be wise for leaders in office to take notice. They should admit something went wrong, re-examine old assumptions and pivot. There must be a positive vision for Canadians, bringing in new voices and faces, and grounded in a common purpose that unites all people around the shared values of hard work and equal opportunity. Most importantly, politicians should dispense with their scripts and level with Canadians about the challenges ahead.

Canada is not broken; it is wounded. But the potential inherent in this country is enormous. Its future must be reclaimed and won soon, or lost for good.

TLDR: No.