1y ago

'Cuts and be angry, that's not Canada': Trudeau goes hard at Poilievre at Ontario housing event

www.ctvnews.ca 'Cuts and be angry, that's not Canada': Trudeau goes hard at Poilievre at Ontario housing event

Less than a week after naming his new cabinet vowing a renewed focus on the concerns of Canadians, the one name Prime Minister Justin Trudeau couldn't keep out of his mouth on Monday was Pierre Poilievre. At a housing announcement Trudeau brought the Conservative leader up multiple times, from panni...

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Isn't "cuts and be angry" the conservative playbook?
- Totally. The Conservatives have moved on to “Let’s be Republicans” so now the Liberals can be conservatives and we’re not supposed to notice.
  
  I'm not sure this is done with as malicious and conscious intent as your comment seems to suggest though. The Cons are seeing their voter base go hard right into MAGA land, and they know they need to follow to remain being electable. It's pandering to their base that led to the Republicans to end up with nutjobs that make Sarah Palin look moderate, and it's that same pandering the led to Daniel Smith making it to (and holding onto) office. And this voter base shift is also affecting the Liberals - the disillusioned former Conservative voters that didn't jump aboard the choo-choo train to wackoland still demand their voice be heard. So Liberal politicians will have to make more changes to their stances to reach out to them, resulting in a gradual shift right for them as well.
- Always has been.

I can’t believe anyone supports Poilievre. His cartoon libertarianism is so far right, not even Republicans in the US go that far anymore. No serious economist, anywhere on the spectrum, is a libertarian.
- I can't help but laugh each time I see him and his 'new' look. No glasses with jeans/shirt and a sports jacket.
  "He's just like us" - Conservatives probably
  
  it worked for President Zelenskyy - although I think he just stopped dressing up for work and now hangs out in his at-home crummies - and if we ignore the stark differences in character and humanity one could assume it'd work for him too.
- Wanting the government to spend only as much as it earns seems like common sense to me.
  
  Basic macroeconomics: The budget of a sovereign government with control over monetary policy is fundamentally not like a family budget.
  
  it's a noble "father knows best" bit of wisdom, but you'll find ANY person, organization or even government unable to save during 'up' years - in this case because it's criticized for not dumping spare money at some cause - needs to borrow money or run a deficit in the 'down' years or when investing in something with delayed benefits.
  This is actually how banks make money, but it's also a neat-o vehicle for investment. Go read about it!
  This bit of falsely sage advice is a neat-o diversion from the fact that money has been used either to prevent economic collapse during a 100-year pandemic - I know: Milhouse is an expert in managing a country during a global lethal pandemic - or to restart programmes to allow people to work more and generate more tax revenue that were ditched by 'small government / fuck the plebes' administration before, and/or resume maintenance work skipped or killed by those same "looks good this year, fuck the next guy's budget" administrators.
  Technical debt also accrues; and any wealthy barber will tell you to shift expensive debts to cheaper debts; and so we repair bridges with loans because we value the things we'd lose more if we didn't.
  Stop with the "neither a borrower nor a lender be" bullshit that started as an adage to sloppy aristocrats. It's not even a smart rule for a single normal person, let alone a family or a government. It's short-sighted and shallow.

I'm about as anti-Poilievre as it gets but Justin needs to address why so many people are angry rather than say they're un-Canadian. He has done remarkably little to remedy systemic problems in Canada, including housing, which makes the venue for his comments especially tone-deaf.
- The article lays most of it out, but the Federal government really can't do much about housing, since interest rates are set by an independent central bank, and housing development and zoning is a provincial issue. Could you imagine how much Ontario or Alberta would start pissing and moaning if the Feds tried to assert any authority there?
  Apart from something seriously dramatic like changing taxation on mortgage interest (make it deductible on primary residences only, and not additional properties), or creating a heavy wealth tax on additional properties - both of which would be political suicide for any Federal party - the issue isn't something that can be addressed by the Feds. For the record, I think both of those ideas would be enormously beneficial to Canadians who are looking to own homes, as well as address the cost of housing, but the only party that has the will to make real changes like that are the Federal NDP.
  And before anyone jumps on "but what about immigration", the high immigration rates are what helps bring unemployment up, which is desirable during a period where you're trying to squash inflation, and also helps preserve the tax base, since landed Canadians are having less children. Not to mention filling certain skilled labour categories.
  So it's a hell of a Gordian knot, but it certainly has very little to do with the Feds.
  
  Disagree. The main problem is lack of housing. We need to build more, a lot more, and the Feds control CMHC. They've been content to let housing be the biggest GDP item because it serves the NIMBYs who see their overpriced house as an investment (and I say this as a homeowner whose house has appreciated 250% since I bought it)

Bitcoin Milhouse voted against helping all Canadians, again, just to spite Justin Trudeau.
The prime minister criticized Poilievre for opposing the new federal dental care program. Trudeau said that program has allowed hundreds of thousands of families to send their children to the dentist for the first time.
"He chose to vote against, and to stand against and try to block ... in the House, the delivering of dental care for vulnerable Canadians," Trudeau said. "Why would you do that?"
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/poilievre-trudeau-anger-fear-cuts-1.6923410
- Also:
  “That's not Canada. That's not how we build a stronger future. That's not how we've gotten through the challenging times we've had in the past.”
  I agree.
  Now do something about housing, inflation, and the CRTC please.
  
  Inflation isn't something that anyone really gets to "do anything" about. The most successful applied economic model to explain inflation boils down to "when people start talking en masse about expecting inflation, companies take that as license to raise prices." Every other economic model fails to reliably explain, predict, or resolve inflation, including the most popular - changes in interest rates.
  
  Now do something about housing, inflation, and the CRTC please.
  Such as? Inflation is already down to 2.8% which is in the range the BoC follows.
  
  Housing is a provincial issue, there's very little the federal government can do about it.

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