Lumber, I really do appreciate you man.
We tend to look at political issues from
very different perspectives. And while political topics tend to get heated or snarky fairly quickly, you always seem to keep a level head & make sound points, and take the time to explain your perspectives even if they go against the grain. So cheers to that
You've posted a few things in the recent past that I've meant to comment on, but the day has slipped away on me...I think if we took a big step backwards & looked at the REALLY big picture, we actually probably agree on more than it seems we do here in the forum.
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Look, I don't totally disagree with you in principle, but I can't not call out hyperbole when I see it.
You're saying NONE of the following was truly intended to help Canadians? I think you might be letting more recent legislation that was enacted in a very tone deaf manor might be clouding your perception.
Canada Child Benefit Act.
Pay Equity Act.
EI Parental Sharing Benefit.
Legalized Cannabis.
Reduced small business federal tax rate from 11% to 9%.
Canada Workers Benefit Act.
Dental.
Pharmacare.
Allow me to clarify some things before I continue...
There are good Liberal MP's who work hard to do what's in the best interest of their constituents, and I respect them.
There are good people who were involved in drafting some parts of the legislation you mentioned, and I respect them too.
I imagine the working class people that get the dry & unrecognized work in government did so with the very best of intentions, and genuinely created it in the way they thought best served Canadians - and I sincerely respect their efforts also.
My criticism of our government lies purely with Trudeau, Freeland, and a few senior cabinet officials.
My criticism is NOT towards the folks behind the scenes that work hard, are enthusiastic, albeit perhaps naive - or the MP's that are down to Earth and work hard on behalf of their constituents, regardless of their party.
It's the key leaders in our government that draw my criticism, and to be honest, my downright hostility.
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So with that said...
No, I don't believe any legislation passed by
this government has ever been for the genuine benefit of Canadians - and quite often I find the legislation is detrimental to the national interest.
With the exception of legalizing Marijuana (which the government benefits from greatly via tax revenue) I find every single piece of legislation this government has passed has served one of 5 purposes...
- Take as much money out of the pockets of Canadians as possible.
(An ever increasing carbon tax, higher income taxes, deferred eligibility for CPP, and monetary policies that keep inflation high. So many clear examples, I'm thinking I don't need to expand too much on it)
- Limit what Canadians can read and/or say online via internet censorship legislation.
(Bill C-11 was touted as being all about promoting Canadian content to the press & the people, but in reality the bill didn't mention a single word about Canadian content even once...curious what the final version of the Online Harms Bill will contain.)
- To massively increase the size of the federal government & all the expenses that come from that
- To centralize power in Ottawa
- To bankrupt the country funding a ton of programs that act as a bandaid for problems caused by Trudeau & Freeland In the first place
I don't know a single person that only pays $10 a day for daycare. But I know we as a country must be paying a lot of money to subsidize daycares now.
The cost of paying for such an expanded government work force is sitting at around $20 billion annually...thats $20 billion just to pay for the expanded government, in addition to the costs the government already had.
i dont know a single person that gets more money from the carbon rebate than they put in. The cost of administering the carbon tax alone is now sitting at $200 million...
$200 million dollars to take your money from you throughout the year, only to give you most of it back come tax time... sheer f**king lunacy
Nobody was ever going to get a carbon rebate for more than they paid into it. That was literally idiot math & a snake oil salesmen scheme to try to trick people into supporting the idea
We already have pharmacare in the sense that drug prices are regulated & subsidized. The Pharmacare bill isn't even a thing - it looks like a bill, but all it does is promise to discuss the idea in the near future. As far as I can see, there isn't anything of substance in it yet.
(Medications here cost a fraction of what they do in the US. For the odd person that requires a rare or unique medication thats cost prohibitive, there are pathways to ensuring they have access to it regardless, etc)
Most people already have a dental plan through their employer or health insurance.
For low income folks who need a dentist, most dentist offices have payment options & can link people to different programs - Alberts Works, for example, can assist people with getting dental care arranged.
For dental emergencies one can also always go to their local hospital. Hospitals do offer treatment & care for dental emergencies, and its from some of the same dentists you'd get a cleaning from...
(I had a tooth somehow cracked & come out halfway through Topgun Maverick, and had to go to the hospital right after the movie. Ended up getting treated by my own dentist, just at the hospital, and it didnt cost me a dime)
Crime is up across the board because of policies that pretty much guarantee people will be released on bail, even when they clearly shouldn't be.
For just one example of how this affects all of us, higher car insurance rates...despite not having any tickets or accidents, I pay more now for car insurance than I ever have in the last decade!
The national debt has doubled under Freeland, and currently sits at $2.14 trillion. .
That is up from the $1.1 trillion debt they inherited.
They've added more money to our national debt than all previous governments combined - the servicing costs on that will prevent that same money from being used things that could actually help the country
*Editing this post for length (I already wrote a novel once for this post and deleted it because it was way too long, and now I've done the same again...
I don't see a single thing that this government has done or is doing that is improving our lives from where they were at when Stephen Harper was PM.
Can anybody name a single part of our lives that were crappy under Harper but are now so much better under Trudeau? (Not including violent criminals, that is...)
I'd take a time machine back to when Harper was the PM any day. When we weren't all paying for other people's kids daycare, imaginary pharmacare, no mandatory vaccinations that were rushed & experimental, no internet censorship legislation, no freezing people's bank accounts, no labeling legitimate protestors as terrorists a media that didn't get a government subsidy in exchange for favorable coverage, a MAID program that was there to help those terminally ill & not as a recommendation if someone has a mental health issue (52,000 people killed & counting), when budgets were balanced & the government had a surplus, when I didn't pay a carbon tax, and we were all a lot less financially stressed, all of us had hope regardless of what our ambitions were, when I wouldn't be labeled as a bigot for asking why there's a fucking drag queen reading stories to little kids, and when the country's morale was a whole lot higher.
Oh yeah...one more thing...
The carbon tax has collected approximately $32 billion dollars since it first came into affect...yet this year we are running a deficit of roughly $40B.
Next year, in 2025, Freeland has "confidently stated" that she will "try" to keep the deficit at only $25B. (Ha! Only...)
My question is - where the f**k is all our money going? (Am I legit missing something?)
Also...Justin's net worth in 2016 was approximately $3.2 million, but now he's worth an estimated $97 million (as of the end of 2023) That's just a wee bit fishy, no?
Sorry, I thought I'd posted this week's ago. Feel free to ignore, time has moved on