Omnibus: Conservative Leadership Race
- Thread starter mentalfloss
- Start date
Charest sounds a lot like Trudeau because they’re both Liberals. Trudeau being a federal lib & Charest being a provincial lib.
I doubt it. He’s just a distraction. Watch & wait. He’ll fade back to Quebec provincial politics as a Liberal when he gets no traction by trying to parachute into the federal leadership role.
They’re both the same. Just one is a deflection in the Conservative leaders selection, & the other is Justin Trudeau.
Rex Murphy: Pierre Poilievre draws rock star crowds of people tired of Trudeau — National Post
He has the charisma of not being charismatic
On that note, let’s look at Pierre Poilievre the attention he’s drawing from voters instead of former Ontario mayors, etc…
Something almost unforgivable is occurring at his rallies, something surely beyond the foresight of even the country’s most perceptive pundits.
People are showing up to them. In large numbers. Correction, in numbers that would sate the ego of a rock star. Whether it’s Toronto or Lindsay or Vancouver or Kelowna or Vernon, it’s packed halls and overflow crowds. What can this mean? It is certainly not the leadership contest itself, for out of the double handful of other contenders most at this stage can only name two or three, and most of the whole lot can only draw a trickle of supporters to their, almost private, appearances.
What can account for this phenomenon? I would like to put it down to Pierre Poilievre’s instant rejection of the Trudeau carbon tax — a rejection without equivocation. He promises not to pause it, he is not against it because it is coming at a bad, inflationary, time. He’s just against it. And it does amount to something when any political figure outright and without qualification stomps on the cardinal (useless) pillar of this government’s obsessive global warming fixation. It shows a certain clarity of mind and more than a glint of sanity, neither characteristic overabundant in current politics.
It is also a signal, which I hope arches into a full beacon, that the war against the western provinces, which is what in effect the global warming crusade amounts to, will end, that the terrific burdens placed on Alberta and western industry by this manic crusade will be lifted.
However, Poilievre’s rejection of the carbon tax alone is not what explains the multitudes that have gathered in places other than the predictably favourable regions of the country.
There has to be something else. Is it charisma? That peculiar and unaccountable grace of person or manner that singles out certain public figures and wins them special status. We have in fact had a very prominent recent example right here in Canada, though the fund of that particular charisma has been seriously overdrawn of late. It may even, like the budget, be in serious deficit.
Well, Mr. Poilievre has been pointed at in the press for numerous reasons. Some see him as an attack dog. If I may jumble the metaphor that is a hound that will not hunt. He is a precise and logical questioner and performs the role of opposition voice — whenever Mr. Trudeau allows the Commons to function — efficiently and with style. Some others in the press portray him as mean, and they may even believe that. They are mistaking rigorous criticism with an aspect of temperament. But few or none have even celebrated or remarked on his “charisma.”
No. He is not charismatic. And that’s, in this moment, his gift.
Or to state matters another way, he has the charisma of not being charismatic. Bells, whistles, tinsel, glitter and lights are all very fine in their way, and in due proportion. They surely add to any performance. But without the performance, without the actual show itself that is all they are … just bells and whistles, tinsel and glitter, and light on an empty stage. At best, over time, a tiresome irritation, at worst a cheat.
My guess at why Poilievre has caught the moment and draws such eager numbers is precisely that he is not, in the way journalists use the term, exciting. That what some might call dull is actually substance. And substance has been on a long and painful holiday from Canadian politics for half a decade.
Sweet words in a soft voice, pious musings and aching apologies, ever-so-earnest declarations of personal and political virtue — it’s all gotten just a little steamy in the house of Canadian politics. So along comes a grounded, deliberately unflashy, solid-in-his-convictions candidate, and — most important — one who believes that Canada has core values, and should not be the servant of global climatism, and no wonder the crowds show up.
You are of course, entitled to your opinion, as am I not to share it. I look to the sixties as better times to be sure, most people are unaware of the "boiling frog" that has been on the rise since the embracing of neo-liberal economics by the likes of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and our own Brian Mulroney. Neo-liberal economics puts the prime focus of or functioning as a society on the bottom line of the income statement, all else is secondary. This has led to deregulation of the financial sector, which in turn made international trade more simple, along with what can be seen is the exporting of jobs from our manufacturing sector. Add to that job losses from automation and you have a severely weakended manufacturing abse which was once the backbone of the middle class economy. The shrinking of our middle class can be tough to nail down, in part because the actual definition of what constitutes a middle class income varies greatly across the country, but generally speaking, due to the higher costs of education and housing, fewer millennials are able to reach middle class status in their twenties than their baby boomer parents. Incomes for all but the top ten percent have not kept pace with a rising cost of living leaving the purchasing power of our paycheques in a downward spiral.
"Is Our Middle Class Shrinking ?"
Rex Murphy: Pierre Poilievre draws rock star crowds of people tired of Trudeau — National Post
He has the charisma of not being charismaticapple.news
The common denominator when you dig for it always seems to draw us back to the Alberta oil & gas industry. As an economic force it is a huge part of Canada's economic strength, as an environmental risk it is our greatest weakness. It all comes down to personal choice in how much of a trade-off between the two you are willing to support. Is the threat to our collective future worth the short term profits ?
O&G isn't going anywhere. Do you have anything against the use of hydrogen from hydrocarbons?
In a 1992 episode of “Star Trek: The Next Generation,” the Enterprise finds Scotty from the original series suspended in a transporter buffer and brings him back to life after 75 years. While interacting with the crew, the ship’s chief engineer, Geordi La Forge, informs Scotty that he told the captain his current task would take an hour and that it was an accurate estimate. “You didn’t tell him how long it would really take, did ya?” asks Scotty. “Oh, laddie, you’ve got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker.”
Jesse Kline: Liberals' sci-fi budgeting buttressed by the energy industry they have pledged to destroy — National Post
The government could be forced to put the country on red alert if the global economy continues to deteriorate and it presses ahead with its plans to decimate the energy industry
The big question this time around is whether the Liberals’ science fiction-like predictions will continue to work out in their favour. Though the budget forecasts that the deficit and debt-to-GDP ratio will steadily decline over the next four years, an alternate scenario detailed in the document admits that “the economic outlook is clouded by a number of key uncertainties.”
Should we see a long, drawn-out war in Ukraine — which is looking increasingly likely by the day — we could see higher-than-expected commodity prices, inflation and interest rates, coupled with reduced consumption and economic output. This would significantly throw off future budgets, causing the deficit to be over 150 per cent higher than expected by 2026-27.
But in the coming year, the country’s fiscal situation would actually improve, with the deficit falling to $39.5 billion, instead of an expected $52.8 billion, and the debt-to-GDP ratio dropping 2.5 percentage points below what was initially forecast.
This would come about thanks to higher-than-expected commodity prices that would provide the federal government with additional revenues. Such an eventuality would allow Trudeau to play the miracle worker card one more time, but the gains would be short lived. Eventually, global energy prices will stabilize, and Canada will find itself in a situation in which “energy-related investment and exports remain relatively muted,” due to “uncertainty about longer-term demand for fossil fuels.”
This will surely be exasperated by the fact that the Trudeau government has made punishing the energy sector a top priority. Budget 2022 reiterates the government’s recently laid out plans to put a cap on oil and gas emissions and force the industry to reduce its CO2 output by a whopping 42 per cent below 2019 levels.
The budget does include a new carbon capture and storage (CCS) tax credit, which is expected to cost the feds $35 million this year, increasing to $1.5 billion by 2026. But it will not be available to companies looking to use carbon to extract otherwise unrecoverable oil from existing wells, in a process known as “enhanced oil recovery,” which could help reduce emissions while encouraging economic growth.
The money made available for CCS will also be dwarfed by the $8.2 billion the government expects to bring in from its pollution pricing framework, which includes the gas tax and taxes from jurisdictions where the federal government collects carbon tax revenues. That doesn’t include all the carbon taxes the industry will pay to provincial governments, most of which now have their own carbon tax, cap-and-trade scheme or output-based pricing system that allows them to bypass the federal backstop.
To further turn the screws on the industry, the Liberals will be phasing out minimally taxed flow-through shares, which are used to help finance exploration. It’s a measure that is only expected to bring in $9 million over the next five years but will have a significant impact on smaller players. It is yet another example of the federal government imposing additional costs on the industry simply because it doesn’t like fossil fuels.
Instead, the Liberals are betting big on the green transition fuelling the economy of tomorrow. Measures include the Canada Growth Fund, which the government hopes will attract $3 of private capital for every $1 of public money put into it. The Canada Infrastructure Bank will also be tasked with finding private investment in clean energy and other emission-reduction technologies, despite having little success in its previous efforts to entice investors. And, of course, there will be significant new spending on energy-efficient home retrofits, green-energy infrastructure, natural decarbonization measures and electric vehicle chargers.
The environmentalist left has long tried to sell us on the idea that transitioning to a less carbon-intensive future will boost economic output. As we’ve seen over the past two decades, however, most green technologies are not economically viable and are only feasible through massive government subsidies and tax increases designed to make once-cheap fossil fuels more expensive. Far from providing jobs and driving growth, the green transition will continue to be a net drain on society and will ensure the economic vitality of the country will be intimately tied to the government’s continued largesse.
Despite huge government “investments” in green technologies throughout the western world, it’s clear that sustainable energy will not provide the power needed to fully displace fossil fuels any time soon — not unless we can secure a supply of dilithium crystals and perfect matter-antimatter reactors, that is. Instead of ensuring the resource industry can continue to drive the economy and provide much-needed government revenue during these turbulent economic times, the Liberals will make Canada’s investment climate even less hospitable, driving energy companies away at warp speed.
The cost of transitioning to a green economy is always front and center when the discussion arises. Perhaps we need to look at the cost of not moving to a more sustainable way of doing things.
The Costs and Benefits of Environmental Sustainability
The Costs and Benefits of Environmental Sustainability
You need to get out more. You are so clueless as to what is really happening.
Take your blinders off when looking around. The real problem is over governance. And the resulting inflation in both the number of government employees and their pay. Case in Point: It took longer for the permitting process to twin TransMountain than it did to design and build the original pipeline. It often takes 4 months just to get a building permit on property you already own around here.
Millennials have several problems, mostly of their own making, the rest caused by an education system that has been over run by ideologues. There are lots of good paying resource industry jobs waiting, a shortage of qualified trades people everywhere but millennials don't want to get their hands dirt, don't want to miss out on city night life, and often as not have degrees that have no value in the job market.
While there may be some instances wher what you say is correct, it is by no means representative of the whole. Post-secondary education has become a "for-profit" operation, moving it out of range of most without the financial means (or their family's) to cover the cost without ending up having to enter the workforce with a crippling amount of student debt. Jobs in the resource sector are nowhere near as pleantifula s they once were, and the competion for the few that are out there is high, often attracting applicants from outside the province. When I was young you didn't worry about finding a job after high school, because you could always go mining or always go logging. Not so these days.
Last edited:
Yeah, resource extraction only gets a body so far.
There need to be changes made in the distribution of wealth, but that won't change the fact that the days when you could strap on some snowshoes and run a trap-line are gone. They. . . will. . . not. . . return.
When I have advice to give, I say "Do you like working with your head or your hands? If the former, go to higher ed. If the latter, go plumber, electrician, carpenter, HVAC. These are good-paying jobs than cannot be outsourced to India, China, or Malaysia. Ditto police, fire, and other government jobs."
Because resources are - for those who don't know - are finite. Nothing is infinite, but sadly too many like to THINK they are, ergo the problem.
I believe it's Makrel, or Herring? Regionally there's a shortage of bait fish which means lobster fishermen will have a harder time getting them; no bait, no lobster. Which has increased the price of it. Of course there are fishermen who deny there's a shortage and they might be right, but they could also be very, very wrong. I don't understand why being cautious is a bad thing, but it seems to be.
Sadly true.
You almost need work in both areas to make ends meet nowadays.
It is left leaning governments like the Federal Liberals and NDP everywhere that have killed off so many resource industry jobs, so one might say that government policy is contributing to the lack of decent jobs. It is also government policy that encourages out of province applicants to the good jobs.
One can hardly call post secondary education for profit when colleges are mostly government owned and one can collect EI while attending trades courses. AS for universities, I would like to see interest free student loans and some grants, based on need for students working towards degrees in Medicine and engineering. I can even see forgiving those loans under certain conditions such as a doctor spending 5 years in a remote community. Anyone pursuing a liberal arts degree can foot the bill themselves.
Resource extraction makes a person over $100 000 a year. Entry level. Just have to be prepared to not being able to go to the bar every night.
True that. More often that not that kind of money comes with a camp job so there is the isolation from friends and family to consider, but for a single person, or someone just getting started in life it's a great way to put together a few bucks for a down payment or whatever. That was standard procedure when I was growing up in the Okanagan, that kind of money just wasn't available without a trade, and even then wages have always been somewhat depressed around here. They call it the "sunshine tax", competition for local jobs with a decent wage were high, and that forced the wages down. Still, that being said, the resource industry is not as strong as it used to be. Automation in the forest, and a bigtime shift to whole log exports has taken that away. Offshore competition and environmental crackdowns have taken a toll on mining too, I'd bet there aren't half the mines operating in BC that there were thirty or forty years ago.
I left the carpentry/cabinetmaking trade in the Okanagan to go mop floors and make beds in oil sands camps. Nothing glamourous to be sure, but six or seven years doing that sure put a different face on my retirement picture. All through that time though I watched wages drop steadily, along with changes in the industry that cut back the manpower needed. It all comes down to money.