Stephen Gordon
@stephenfgordon
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Economics professor at Université Laval.
Joined March 2010
I have ZERO patience for Americans whining "I didn't vote for this.". EVERY SENTIENT BEING ON THE PLANET KNEW WHAT YOU WERE VOTING FOR, TRIED TO WARN YOU AND YOU VOTED FOR IT ANYWAY.
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The reason why so many people have recently decided to give the Liberals a second chance is that when they look at the Conservatives they see raving loony nutbars like this.
Mark Carney will NEVER put Canada first. He's a proud GLOBALIST. He's a self-described ELITIST who thinks he's better than you. He calls himself a EUROPEAN. He moved his company to the U.S. and then LIED about it. He's not in it for Canada.
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I'm old enough to remember when you could bring your kids to Parliament Hill on July 1 and not worry about their safety.
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Call me crazy, but I don't think we should get in the habit of giving governments the power to throw people in jail for saying things the government doesn't want to hear.
Ottawa must combat residential school denialism by amending Criminal Code, special interlocutor says
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At least Gordie Howe still holds the NHL record for "Most goals scored by a player who isn't a stooge for an authoritarian dictator".
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I'm not a political strategist, but it seems to me that Canadian voters are less interested in delivering a verdict on the last 10 years of Liberal govt than they are in making sure the next govt is run by people who are best able to deal with whatever crap Trump throws at us.
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This is pathetic.
EXCLUSIVE: Mark Carney faces plagiarism accusations for 1995 Oxford doctoral thesis
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Claim: The only time we talk about guns, abortion and two-tier health care is when the LPC is in trouble in an election campaign.
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Re: "Canada is broken". I am far more interested in proposals to fix it than I am in proposals to punish those who Conservatives have named as enemies. No-one should entrust power to angry people who are driven by a desire to inflict damage and are uninterested in repairing it.
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Hubris is traditionally a Liberal failing, but the greatest example of hubris in Canadian politics may be the CPC thinking their 25-point lead in the polls was due to the popularity of their raving loony nutbar screeds instead of being due to the unpopularity of Trudeau.
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The economic disruptions are due to the virus. The economic disruptions won't go away until the virus is under control. I can't believe that we still have to explain this.
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Elon Musk is that STEM dude who thinks he can out-think social science off the top of his head, because how hard can it be?.
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Why wasn't the CPC plan released on or around Day 1 of the campaign?.
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Pierre Poilievre's pitch is "I hate the same people you do, and I will make them hurt." . That's the only thing the CPC membership hears or cares about, and that's why Poilievre will win the leadership race.
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This raises a really interesting question: How do you win a trade war? . When you think about the answer, it seems pretty clear to me that Canada cannot lose. 1/.
Vance on Canada: "They just don't have the cards. There is no way that Canada can win a trade war with the United States."
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If he becomes PM, Pierre Polievre has promised to do something a PM doesn't have legal authority to do: fire the Governor of the Bank of Canada. I am going to keep jumping up and down about this fact. I will keep jumping on every and all attempts to minimise its importance.
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Note to CPC: When Canadian economists say the same thing, they're not shilling for Trudeau. This is a well-established consensus among economists that crosses party lines and international boundaries.
Um wow. Basically every big deal US economist signed letter calling for carbon tax. Yellen, Bernanke, Greenspan, Volcker - also Summers, Mankiw. 27 Nobel laureates, 15 former Ec Council chairs.
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Conservatives posting this should instead be asking themselves why so many voters prefer jumping into a fire over voting Conservative.
Exclusive footage of Canadians going full liberal again for four more years.
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Note to pundits: Never, EVER take a Fraser Institute 'study' at face value.
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It's been two years, and there are still people who think that the decision to get vaccinated is a purely private decision that doesn't affect anyone else. This isn't 'freedom' - it's narcissism.
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George III was right: Americans are not yet ready to govern themselves.
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Not sure "Betraying Canada to own the Libs" is a winning campaign slogan.
Alberta premier faces backlash for asking America to pause tariffs until after election, @KarenBartko reports. Find out more at
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Elliot McDavid is the voice of Canadian conservatives. It's long past time we stopped pretending otherwise.
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Folks, the Fraser Institute is run by hacks. No serious person pays any attention to the crap they squeeze out.
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Am dreading the choices before me in the 2025 federal election:. - A LPC that is long past its 'best before' date.- An agressively stupid CPC that talks only to its aggressively stupid base. - An agressively stupid NDP that talks only to its aggressively stupid base.
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CPC strategists seem to think that the marginal/median Canadian voter is a middle-aged white Albertan man who works in the oil patch and is consumed with an inchoate hatred of Justin Trudeau, and that they need to persuade him to vote Conservative,.
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Anyone else noticed Mark Carney does *not* like it when someone questions his judgment? . Every time it happens - career decisions, asset disclosure, fiscal projections, whatever - he bristles, goes into "How DARE you question me?" mode and stumbles.
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Has a prominent Conservative said words to the effect of "We blew our chance to win this election and we have to rethink our strategy"?. Or are they still blaming everyone else but themselves?.
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I voted for Stephen Harper's CPC 4 times, I desperately want a new party to replace the Liberals, and I'm not a raving lunatic. If Pierre Poilievre loses this, it will be at least partly because he has gone out of his way to attack and piss off people like me.
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One on hand, I'm a trained economist and I know very well that relatiatory tariffs hurt Canadians more than anyone else. OTOH, I'm a Canadian and we can't just sit there and do nothing in the face of unprovoked aggression.
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Dear CPC:. Be less stupid. Be less hateful. Be something that someone who isn't a fucking sociopath would imagine voting for. Quote Tweet.
Last night Justin Trudeau refused to answer questions about returning ISIS fighters. Is he secretly planning to bring terrorists back to Canada? Share this video to stop Trudeau. #NotAsAdvertised. #cdnpoli #elxn43
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All I know is that I'm not going to take the risk of a US border guard sending me to an El Salvadorean gulag because he didn't like my tweets about Trump.
I just got a notice that an academic conference for 2026 was being moved from the US to Canada because of concerns people have with entering the US. The cell phone searches and random detentions at the border of people with visas and valid reasons to visit are going to have.
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Some personal news: My brother Brian died of suicide on August 10. This is the obituary our sister wrote:.
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Imagine the current federal political landscape if Pierre Poilievre had spent the last 30 months trying to show us that he was a serious person preparing to govern instead showing us that he was a shitposter preparing memes.
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"I would like some private health care; here is my money". "Sir, this is Canada. We insist on public health care.". "Apologies. May I have some public health care?". "No".
Allison was diagnosed with cancer late last year. She was told by the BC Cancer Agency to prepare for end-of-life care. So she decided to seek treatment in the U.S. and is currently celebrating her recent marriage. READ MORE:
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I really can't get past this. The decision to get vaccinated is *not* a purely private one. If the CPC can't see how vaccines are in the public interest, then they should not be trusted with government.
Welcome to Trudeau's "NEW" Cabinet where Liberal Ministers think they should have control over Canadians' personal medical decisions.
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Disband the NDP. It serves no useful purpose.
Singh signals NDP plan to oppose carbon tax, says it puts burden on ‘backs of working people’
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Take a bow, Bank of Canada: you just stuck the soft landing.
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Read the replies. Erin O'Toole is fundamentally a nice guy, and that's why he's no longer leader of the CPC. The CPC is the party of assholes, and Erin O'Toole is the opposite of an asshole.
I want to applaud the people in this video. The bear marching is hard to watch, but each one of them stepped up to serve. Most voices on X have never done that. Drill proficiency can be easily improved with practice, but good character is increasingly very hard to find. 🇨🇦.
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The Liberals' climate change policy has become a grotesque caricature: special treatments and exemptions for regions that vote Liberal combined with special punishments and restrictions for regions that don't vote Liberal.
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When you find yourself rubbing your hands in glee at the prospect of innocent people dying because they live in a province that elected a government you don't like, you need to re-evaluate your life.
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To summarise:. - The rebate was stupid.- The GST holiday is extremely stupid.- The Liberals chose 'extremely stupid' over 'stupid'. I guess we're supposed to be grateful they didn't choose both. via @nationalpost.
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Because the most pressing crisis in Canada is . (checks notes) . gasoline prices at levels that we haven't seen so low in decades.
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The people who made the Ontario Liberal Party unelectable for at least a generation are now running the Liberal Party of Canada, and they seem to have learned nothing of their experience at Queen's Park.
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Why not just hold a lottery where 3000 people get $4.3 million each ?.
Volkswagen’s massive electric vehicle battery plant is a strong vote of confidence in St. Thomas and in all of Canada. It’s going to create up to 3,000 direct jobs – and up to 30,000 indirect jobs – and provide millions upon millions of batteries to power Canada’s auto industry.
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Liberals are simultaneously congratulating themselves for both introducing and cancelling the carbon tax, and people wonder why I'm so cynical.
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I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure Canadians can withstand a LOT of economic pain before we reach the point where our best option is to beg Trump to annex us. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that Trump doesn't have the leverage to get to that point. 5/.
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So as I said earlier, Trump has already lost this trade war by making it an existential matter for us, while it remains a complete nothingburger for the US. Americans will tire of the trade war long before we do. And so they will lose. 9/9.
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Dear CPC:. This will stick to you like shit to a blanket.
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Gotta say I didn't have "Liberal candidate exhorts supporters to have his opponent killed; LPC HQ says it's no big deal" on my election bingo card.
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Am legit astonished "Over $1.7 million to help Italpasta meet growing product demand and create 10 jobs" is the actual hed. Do they not understand just how insane this is? That spending north of $170k for *one job* is an embarassment, not an achievement?.
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There. Wasn't. Time. To. Put. In. Controls. Do people not remember what was going on in March and April of 2020? The choice was to wait months/years to put together a leak-proof income support program or to shovel $$ out the door ASAP. Option #2 was the right call.
A report by the Auditor General has found that the government’s lax approach to doling out COVID-19 payments resulted in $4.6 billion in overpayments being made to ineligible recipients, and that at least $27.4 billion more payments should be investigated.
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The LPC response to the SNC-Lavalin affair ("Scheer is a Nazi") is everything that is wrong with Canadian politics. The even worst part is that those peddling this line are congratulating themselves for staying positive and taking the high road.
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If you're earning 100-150k, you're not a middle-income earner. You're in the top 10%.
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I need to be persuaded that Trump's tariffs are anywhere near as dire as covid before I sign on to 'pandemic-level of relief'. In particular, I need to be persuaded that this is not yet another costly Liberal gimmick. Fair warning: I'm not going to be easy to persuade.
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On the Harper/Poilievre comparison: Harper was not an intellectual lightweight before going into politics: he had thoughts. I've read his MA thesis; it was a solid piece of work for its time. Poilievre has never demonstrated any intellectual depth, just attack-dog instincts.
My latest, on Tory dreams of a conservative revolution: If Poilievre weren’t so unpleasant, he might get more of a hearing for his agenda
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"I would like some private health care" . "Sir, this is Canada. We insist on public health care." . "Apologies. May I have some public health care?" . "No".
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Once you make it possible to emit greenhouse gases at zero cost, why would anyone spend anything on developing technologies to reduce them?.
Producing clean Canadian resources will displace higher emissions from other foreign countries. Technology, not taxes, is the answer. Sign here to support our common sense plan:
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My New Years resolution: I am going to call out @CBCNews every goddam time they run an article that is more interested in how policy proposals affect the electoral horserace than it is in how they affect Canadians.
Yet another @CBCnews article that is more interested in how economic policy plays in the horserace than it is in how it works for Canadians.
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The NDP is the party of stupid people who think they're intellectuals.
#BREAKING. Tomorrow Justin Trudeau will cave to an NDP demand. A winter GST holiday. What he won't do is make it permanent — an NDP government will. Big win for working people. But the fight isn't over - never backdown.
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Why?.
The federal government and the Canadian dairy industry are vowing to protect the country’s supply management system in the face of threats from the United States.
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Each time the LPC plays the "You're stuck with us because otherwise the white supremacists win" card, the odds of my voting NDP increase.
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Disband the Conservative Party of Canada. It is beyond saving.
"Don’t take the left-wing media narrative as fact. Please check out smart, independent, objective organizations like the Post Millennial, or True North," Scheer says. "There are other places to get information. Let’s stop being the silent majority.".
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Lots of reactions to this. My takes:.1) No, we`re not facing a banking crisis. 2) SK problems started when potash prices fell. 3) AB problems started when oil prices fell. 4) Blaming Trudeau for the fall in oil and in potash prices puts you in the crazy *and* stupid category.
Mortgages more than 90 days in arrears. I decided to break SK out with AB this time, and . wow.
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How did we get to the point where applying GST/HST/TVQ to Netflix is called a 'Netflix tax'??. What we had before was a 'Netflix tax exemption'. It's a service, just like so many other services. It doesn't deserve preferential tax treatment, no more than cinema tickets do.
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Spare a thought for the hard-working and conscientious professional economists employed by the federal Department of Finance and whose advice was shitcanned by their boss at the behest of the economic illiterates who run the PMO.
Starting tomorrow, all Canadians will get a tax-break. You will save on everything from snacks and prepared foods to kids’ clothes, diapers, and even Christmas trees. We are putting more money back in your pockets.
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Trump set himself up to lose this trade war by explicitly making the stakes existential for Canadians: he wants to weaken us to the point where we're begging him to annex us. 4/.
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I get that the carbon tax is unpopular, and in a democracy, unpopular ideas rarely become the basis for policy. What I vociferiously reject is the proposition that the carbon tax is a bad idea *because* it is unpopular.
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This election is so stupid I had to block a goddam sock because it kept showing up in my feed.
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Conservatives must be *so* proud that hospital staff across the country are frightened to go to work.
BREAKING: All hospital workers in Vancouver have received memos from their health authorities telling them to hide inside and avoid showing any signs they’re healthcare staff during an anti-vaxx/restriction convoy tomorrow.@CTVVancouver #vanpoli #canpoli .
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I wonder how many pipeline opponents realise that the pro-pipeline argument isn't about extracting more oil. It's about getting more $$$ for the oil that's already being extracted.
'It's a transfer of wealth we don't need': Frank McKenna on the 'Brink's trucks'-worth of Canadian energy money headed Stateside
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Dismantling the dairy and poultry cartel is the biggest win the feds can get during the next Trump administration:. - Trump will see it as a win for the US, and he likes wins: he'll be less inclined to punish us in other files.- It's a clear win for Canadian consumers.
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Climate change is the defining collective action problem of our time. Saying Canada shouldn't do anything because nothing we can do can affect the global outcome isn't a response. It's a re-statement of the seriousness of the problem.
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If your argument for electoral reform is that the current system sometimes allows your political opponents to win, perhaps you haven't quite grasped what it means to live in a democracy.
Doug Ford’s PC win tonight in Ontario proves the major fault in our electoral system.
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Wanted: A federal opposition party that isn't completely stupid.
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There are a lot of people who I had thought were not-insane Conservatives who have decided that they prefer remaining Conservatives to retaining their sanity. Am pruning my list of people I'm following accordingly.
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Canada's economic future may depend on our ability to adopt the New Zealand model of being able to prosper despite being thousands of kilometers away from foreign markets. Because clearly we can no longer get by on being next door to the largest and richest market in the world.
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For you would-be clever folks wondering how taxes affect the climate, here's the mechanism:. 1) Taxes affects human behaviour. 2) Human behaviour affects the climate.
If the carbon tax really does end up going down and politicians genuinely care about minimizing costs on individuals then we're pretty much giving up the fight on climate. The entire point of a carbon tax is that it is the single lowest cost way to reduce emissions.
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Disband the Conservative Party of Canada. It is beyond saving.
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No, you're getting accused of misleading the public because you're misleading the public. For example:
10/ It’s irresponsible for them to suggest that because we put out opinions, information, and ideas that question the Liberal dogma that somehow we are misleading the public.
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Dear CPC:. Be less stupid. Be less hateful. Be something that someone who isn't a fucking sociopath would imagine voting for.
The Prime Minister has appointed Omar Khadr's lawyer as a federal judge. This is a man who defended a confessed murderer and terrorist. This is an utter embarrassment for Canada and the Canadian judicial system.
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Every time a government invokes the notwithstanding clause to pass a law, it is saying that the law cannot be justified in a free and democratic society. Invoking the notwithstanding clause is *not* a practice that should be normalised or praised.
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English-speaking Canadians should be absolutely furious with the CBC's economics coverage. The CBC figures they can be stupid b/c they think you're stupid too and don't deserve any better. Look at how they deal with Poilievre's "Housing Hell" video:. 1/.
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This is really amazing. The Liberals and the NDP have gone out of their way to set up a scenario in which they're defending crass, rancid pandering while the CPC is the voice of principled and responsible expertise.
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This just keeps getting worse for the Liberals: . - They're making the stupid GST holiday a priority, and punting on the 'not smart but meh' rebates. - The CPC has taken a position that has the support of pretty much every tax expert.
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Have any of the 53 CPC MPs who had endorsed Poilievre withdrawn their support because they feel that Poilivre crossed a line last night?.
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Economists never said the carbon tax would be costless. What we did say was that the carbon tax was the least-costly option available. If you want to jump up and down about the cost of the carbon tax, please offer a less- costly alterntive, because we can't think of one.
'There is going to be a cost': Federal carbon pricing to generate 'net loss' for most households, PBO finds
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The Canadian economy is of course enormously exposed to the US: 25% of our GDP is exported there. But Trump can't cut US imports from Canada to zero without raising squawks from within. And there are other markets for our resource exports, albeit at lower prices. 6/.
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Pierre Poilievre says he won't take the security briefing because he wants to maintain his right to speak freely. I have questions:. 1) Does anyone think he's lying? . 1a) If so, why?.2) Why do the Liberals want him to take the briefing if not to shut him up?.
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Topic for a think piece: "How Katie Telford killed Canadian Liberalism" . - The OLP and the LPC are all that's left of Canadian Liberalism .- Telford was instrumental in making the OLP toxic in Ontario. - Telford is instrumental in making the LPC toxic at the federal level.
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Lemme tell you about a little something we call the "Bank of Canada".
Today’s inflation numbers show the damage Justin Trudeau’s risky deficits and trillion-dollar debt are causing Canadians.
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In 1995, federal debt service payments accounted for 35% of federal revenues and 6% of GDP. In 2019, they accounted for 6% of revenues and 1% of GDP.
New Bank of Canada Governor wrote in 1995 that high government debt drives up taxes and drives down work and employment. ". distorting effects of taxes are typically substantial." Now, he defends the current government's pro-debt policy. Disappointing.
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It's interesting. Justin Trudeau plans to give $250 to people making $150k, but nothing to retirees or those on disabilty. Hardly a peep from Liberal twitter.
@stephenfgordon It's interesting, Doug Ford plans to give everyone $200, even the rich dudes in Rosemount, Westmount and Bay street. Hardly a peep from the masses.
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This wingnut must not be put in a position of authority.
The “experts” at the Bank of Canada predicted 2% GDP growth for 2nd quarter. We got a 1.1% contraction. Money printing doesn’t boost the economy. It just boosts inflation.
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The CPC decided long ago that they were in the business of extracting money from stupid people, not in the business of offering a credible alternative government.
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The Alberta model for financing their lavish welfare state:. 1) Bet on high oil prices.2) If 1) doesn't pan out, blame Quebec.
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The PMSH Conservatives endured ten years of accusations of hidden agendas, even though they did pretty much what they said they'd do. The PMJT Liberals have played an elaborate hoax on anyone who took their fiscal plan seriously, but no-one seems to mind.
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*Who* assumes this?. Economists have been shouting from the rooftops the exact opposite of this claim since the beginning of the pandemic.
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