The Canada Pension Plan has invested more than $7 billion in China, despite Canadian politicians calling out Chinese companies for unfair trade practices and human rights violations,
July 2, 2024 - "The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board disclosed it held $604 million in shares in the Chinese electric vehicle sector, per Blacklock's Reporter. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, meanwhile, blamed Chinese industry for job-killing schemes....
"On June 24, Freeland named the Chinese sector as predatory and announced a 30-day Customs Tariff review of trade practices in the electric auto market. 'Workers and the auto sector currently face unfair competition from China,' said Freeland.
"Stock bought with Canada Pension premiums included $287 million in Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. of Fujian Province, the world’s largest electric auto battery manufacturer. Canadians also own $12 million worth of stock in Great Wall Motor Co., maker of Ora-brand electric cars.
"Other Pension Plan holdings include $116 million in automakers BYD Co., $69 million in Li Auto Inc., $26 million in Chongqing Changan Automobile Co.and $19 million Nio Inc. Millions more were put in battery manufacturers and suppliers including $13 million in Tianqi Lithium Corp., $7 million in Eve Energy Co. and $6 million in Ganfeng Lithium Group. Freeland, in announcing the tariff review to autoworkers in Vaughan, ON, made no mention of CPP investments in Chinese industry....
"The CPP board holds a total $7.5 billion worth of shares in Chinese companies of all types. A parliamentary committee in a report last December 13 had urged the board to pull investments from Chinese companies involved in unethical or illegal practices.
“'There is no legislative or regulatory provision that would prevent investments in the People’s Republic of China (PRC),' wrote the Special Committee on Canada-China Relations. However the Board could 'compile and maintain an official list of companies deemed unsuitable,' said the report on the exposure of Canadian investment funds to human rights violations in the PRC."
Ontario liquor store workers have gone on strike to convince Ontarians to oppose the Ford government's limited privatization of alcohol sales. But shutting down their monopoly and threatening us with a "dry summer" may have the opposite effect.
July 6, 2024 - "In Ontario, LCBO {Liquor Control Board of Ontario] workers are on strike for the first time in the corporation's 97-year history, protesting against the government's plan to open up the alcohol market to private interests. The strike is seen as a fight to protect public services and jobs, with the LCBO generating $2.5 billion in profits annually, which are used to fund healthcare, education, and public services. Critics argue that the government's plan to privatize alcohol sales will lead to a loss of revenue for the province and negatively impact public services."
July 5, 2024 - “'Tonight, Ford’s dry summer begins,' Colleen MacLeod, chair of the union’s bargaining team, said on Thursday ahead of the strike. MacLeod said that if Ontario residents can’t get the alcohol they want this summer, it will be because of Premier Doug Ford. Actually, because of several moves Ford made over the last several years, residents of the province will still mostly be able to get the drinks they want despite the strike.
"Since the depths of the pandemic, any restaurant or bar that sells alcohol has been able to sell alcohol to go. That means every restaurant or bar in the province can act as a de facto liquor store. While in most instances these outlets charge more, there will likely be some enterprising operators who take advantage of the strike to sell booze at a reasonable price.... There are also craft distillers, craft brewers and wineries across the province that can sell their products from their own production facilities. The province will even be promoting locations where residents will be able to find alcohol to purchase from The Beer Store to local Wine Rack locations, local producers to pop-up bottle shops.... Oh, and starting in less than a month, the expansion of sales in grocery and convenience stores will begin.
"Does the union realize that they aren’t fighting a losing battle but a battle the province has already won? Do they not realize that their actions are proving why having a unionized government monopoly of alcohol sales is a bad idea?
"The union relied heavily on the idea that alcohol sales at the LCBO fund health care and education and without the sales coming through LCBO stores, the funding for those services would be lost.... LCBO turns over $2.5 billion to the province each year and that money does help fund services. Yet, if we look at other provinces, we can see that the government can still earn money from alcohol sales without controlling all aspects of the sale, warehousing and wholesaling of the product.
"Quebec has a hybrid model of alcohol sales with beer and wine widely available in private stores while also operating the SAQ, the government-run liquor store chain. Alberta has a fully private model for retail and has for more than 30 years. Both Quebec and Alberta earn significantly more per capita from alcohol via taxes and fees than Ontario does via the LCBO. And often, the prices in those provinces are lower than they are in Ontario.
"If having a government monopoly on booze doesn’t bring consumers lower prices and it doesn’t bring the government more revenue, then what is the point of having one?"
Canada's Parliamentary Budget Office estimates that staffing the bureaucracy needed to enforce the Trudeau government's Online Harms Act will cost $200 Million over 5 years, a number that can be expected to increase.
July 4, 2024 - "An 'opportunity cost.' That’s how Calgary Nose Hill MP Michelle Rempel Garner is describing the Trudeau government’s “Online Harms Act” — otherwise known as Bill C-63 — to regulate social media platforms. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO) it will cost upwards of $200 million to impose what Rempel Garner is calling a 'censorship bureaucracy' to hire 330 people to enforce “yet-to-be defined” regulations regarding the use and management of social media platforms.
"The bill would establish three separate entities:
the Digital Safety Commission, which is mandated to enforce the act and has the power to issue monetary penalties and fines;
the Digital Safety Ombudsperson;
and the Digital Safety Office, which would manage the day-to-day operations of all three.
"Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre on Thursday vowed to kill all three on arrival.
"The bill was ostensibly passed to prevent online harassment, persecution and stalking of vulnerable people in society. But Rempel Garner worries it’s morphed into a law focussed on 'banning opinions that contradict Justin Trudeau’s radical ideology'.... Canadian author Margaret Atwood called the bill 'Orwellian.' Noted American progressive news outlet The Atlantic called it 'Canada’s Extremist Attack on Free Speech.'
In her substack page, Rempel Garner noted 'the mind-blowing cost of the bill could grow.' That’s because C-63 doesn’t directly set out any structure that would allow for the recoupment of administrative expenses.... Worse still, the figures included in the PBO report would be in addition to a still-to-be-costed increase to the workload of the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC), which, under the scope of bill, would be tasked with policing a flood of extra-judicial 'prosecutions' over individual user social media posts....
“'It's unconscionable that the Liberal government would consider dumping $200M and over 300 new staff into an ill-defined new bureaucracy that does little to materially protect Canadians from online harassment when Canada's existing law enforcement officials are begging for support to deal with the crime waves sweeping across our nation,' Rempel Garner said....
"The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is [also] criticizing the bill. 'Today’s PBO report shows the online harms bill will cost taxpayers hundreds of millions and further balloon an already bloated bureaucracy,' said Franco Terrazzano, CTF Federal Director.... For the cost of the online harms bill, the government could instead pay the salary of about 375 new police officers, according to the RCMP’s website. Instead of hiring hundreds of bureaucrats to snoop around social media, the government could hire hundreds of police officers to actually go after criminals,” Terrazzano said."
Three years after Congress authorized $42 billion for Joe Biden's plan to give every American access to high-speed broadband internet, not one American has been connected under the plan.
June 27, 2024 - "One of President Joe Biden's pledges upon entering office in 2021 was to expand Americans' access to high-speed broadband internet.... Contained within the 2021 infrastructure bill, the Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program authorized more than $42 billion in grants, to 'connect everyone in America to reliable, affordable high-speed internet by the end of the decade'.... Brendan Carr, the senior Republican commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), wrote in a post on X .. this month [that] 'Years later, it has not connected even 1 person with those funds'....
"BEAD is administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), an agency of the Department of Commerce. NTIA Administrator Alan Davidson told lawmakers in May, 'with BEAD, this is really a 2025, 2026, shovels in the ground project'....
"In an April 2023 letter to Davidson, 11 Republican U.S. senators warned that 'NTIA's bureaucratic red tape and far-left mandates undermine Congress' intent and would discourage participation from broadband providers while increasing the overall cost of building out broadband networks.' Among several examples, the senators noted that NTIA's BEAD proposal 'requires subgrantees to prioritize certain segments of the workforce, such as "individuals with past criminal records" and "justice-impacted […] participants."' The infrastructure law that authorized the program merely required contractors to be 'in compliance with Federal labor and employment laws.'
"The previous year, in a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, Republican senators warned that the NTIA's proposed BEAD rollout 'creates a complex, nine-step, "iterative" structure and review process that is likely to mire State broadband offices in excessive bureaucracy and delay connecting unserved and underserved Americans as quickly as possible.' In practice, this is exactly what's happening:
"Multiple representatives from the telecommunications industry told MinnPost this week that they had no interest in applying for a piece of Minnesota's $652 million in BEAD grants. Brent Christensen, president and CEO of Minnesota Telecom Alliance, which represents 70 Minnesota telecom companies, said, 'None of them would bid for the federal grants because of the regulations that would come with it — especially the requirement to provide low-cost services to low-income households in exchange for grants that would allow internet providers to build out their networks.'
"MinnPost noted that new state laws also 'requir[e] companies who receive state grants to pay workers a "prevailing wage," a basic hourly rate paid on public works projects to a majority of workers in a particular occupation'.... 'It's becoming clear that it might be too risky to participate in the program,' Melissa Wolf, executive director of the Minnesota Cable Communications Association, told the outlet.
"Fortunately, the private sector is expanding access to broadband on its own: This year, the FCC raised the standard for which it considers 'broadband' to 100 Mbps download speeds and 20 Mbps upload speeds, up from its previous standard of 25Mbps download and three Mbps upload. 'Nearly 88 percent of households already live where at least two competitors offer 25/3 Mbps service, and 85 percent lived where at least one operator offers 100/20 Mbps service and a competitor offers 25/3 Mbps service,' Reason's Ronald Bailey wrote last year, citing an industry group report.... ' According to the OpenVault Broadband Insights report for the first quarter of 2024, 90 percent of all current broadband subscribers have download speeds of at least 100 Mbps already....
"These advances came from the private sector, without the added expense of $42 billion in taxpayer money. Satellite internet provider Starlink, which is part of SpaceX, claims that its users 'typically experience download speeds between 25 and 220 Mbps, with a majority of users experiencing speeds over 100 Mbps.' SpaceX CEO Elon Musk approvingly reposted an X user who claimed that "for $42 billion they could have bought Starlink dishes for 140 million people.'"
June 13, 2024 - "The federal carbon tax will have a negative economic impact on Canada’s real gross domestic product (GDP) of $25 billion, or approximately one per cent, in 2030 according to the government’s own internal data it released on Thursday. Those numbers, which were shared with the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) last month on the condition they remain confidential, were published as Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre was about to deliver a speech to call on the government to disclose them publicly. The government had previously said it could not release the data because it could contain sensitive information....
"Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) estimates that the real, or inflation-adjusted, GDP in a scenario without a carbon tax in 2030 would be $2,688 billion. With a carbon tax, that number drops to $2,663, which is a difference of $25 billion. That amounts to a 0.92 per cent reduction in real GDP in 2030."
June 13, 2024 - "The Trudeau Liberals after weeks of evasion finally released carbon tax data Thursday morning. The ever-increasing tax has made a $20 billion-a-year dent in the Canadian economy.It results in an additional annual cost of $1,200 per family every year, to continue increasing. By 2030 it will cost Canadians $30.5 billion annually. The Official Opposition is now calling for the resignation of Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault.
"'We just learned moments ago that this country has been keeping a $20 billion secret, said Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre in the House of Commons.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO) revealed that there was a report the government had been covering up, and had gagged him from releasing, about the actual cost to Canadians. Now, the pressure that is weighing heavily on Liberal MPs, the government has finally relented, and released part of the information. It had to be pulled out like a rotten tooth! And rotten it is, $20 billion per year, in lost GDP as a result of the carbon tax. That works out to $1,200 per family in extra annual costs for Canadians.
"Guilbeault 'must resign over (his) $30 Billion carbon tax coverup,' the Conservatives wrote in a statement Thursday after figures were released. He has 'been caught in a lie.
For years, he has told Canadians that the carbon tax was somehow making them richer, while hiding a secret internal report that proved that Trudeau’s carbon tax will cost Canadians $30.5 billion each year, nearly $2,000 per Canadian family, by 2030. As a direct consequence of Trudeau’s carbon tax, life has become unaffordable. Families will have to pay $700 more for groceries this year, while millions of Canadians are lining up outside of food banks. In Toronto, one in ten people are having to rely on food banks to survive.
Guilbeault and the Liberal Government have been lying to Canadians and hiding this inconvenient truth.... He must resign, and if he won’t then Justin Trudeau must fire him and start telling Canadians the truth.
"Franco Terrazzano, director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, told the Western Standard the Trudeau Liberals’ carbon tax is costing Canadians an excessive amount of money and it needs to stop. ''The government’s own data confirms the carbon tax will cost Canada big time,' said Terrazzano.... 'The feds must scrap the carbon tax now.'”
The Libertarian Party of Colorado (LPCO) announced today that the LPCO Board of Directors has voted to give its ballot line to independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
July 2, 2024 -"The Libertarian Party of Colorado Board of Directors passed a resolution voting in favor of a groundbreaking partnership with the independent presidential campaign of @RobertKennedyJr. This collaboration aims to disrupt the entrenched two-party system and provide Colorado voters with a viable alternative in the upcoming 2024 presidential election....
"As part of this partnership, the Libertarian Party of Colorado will place the Kennedy/Shanahan ticket on the Colorado state ballot for president and vice president. This move reflects our commitment to offering voters a choice that transcends the traditional partisan divide and promotes individual liberty, personal responsibility, and limited government.
"Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shares many of the Libertarian Party's core principles, including a commitment to civil liberties, free markets, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. His campaign's focus on ending corporate welfare, reducing government spending, and protecting the environment aligns with our values and resonates with Colorado voters.
"In addition, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a signatory of LPCO’s Presidential Liberty Pledge, affirming his alignment with many of the positions libertarians strongly hold, and its contents will be released at a later date.
"By joining forces with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign, the Libertarian Party of Colorado aims to build a broad coalition of voters who are tired of the status quo and seek a fresh, principled alternative. We believe that this partnership will help us reach new audiences, expand our support base, and make a significant impact on the 2024 presidential election in Colorado.
"We encourage all Colorado voters to learn more about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s campaign and the Libertarian Party's platform. Together, we can break the stranglehold of the two-party system and create a more free, prosperous, and just society."
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