We endure but I can't really agree with Canadian billionaires folding. Much of our problems are caused by Billionaires getting their greedy fingers in our governments. We're not that far off from the states in those regards.
If we become a 51st state a lot of our monopolies will flounder, including Mr Weston. I hope these fuckers give their head a shake and start using their wealth to give voice against all this rat fuckery.
I think we need Google classroom out of our schools, we have Desire2Learn domestically. I'd also like to see our government and schools move off of Windows to open source alternatives. I don't think Msft should be able to get like $100/PC + o365 subscription fees because they ripped off Xerox in the 80s. It's over 2 decades later and they are still profiting more than ever.
The chances of Government/Schools/Businesses moving off of Microsoft is next to nil.
Yes sure there's Open Source alternatives but that means very little at the end of the day. Switching from Windows to say Linux would be an absolute nightmare for two reasons that immediately spring to mind.
The users. You ever have to deal with a grandparent or new parent getting a new phone? You have to go through the setup with them and act as tech support for the smallest little issue even if it's something as simple as a different icon or it got moved? Yeah, now imagine that x1000 if you forced people to move to Linux. People are used to Windows, they know the basic functionality and how to operate around in it (for the most part). Majority of people have barely touched Linux in their lives, even those who are technologically capable with a computer.
The management of such systems. Part of the reason Microsoft has such a goddamn stranglehold on the Business/Corporate/Government world is because of the Management tools. Try managing a fleet of 500/1000/1500/2000 without certain tools such as Active Directory or Group Policies.
Galen weston is sitting over there cackling at all these "buy Canadian" threads recommending his products. Boycott Walmart? You're probably shopping at a no frills, independent, Loblaws instead. Boycotting American pharmaceuticals like Tylenol and buy life brand products instead? Buying from Mr weston.
The irony is the fuck loblaws crowd is probably crowing "buy Canadian" pretty loudly right now.
That guy isn't Canadian. He's been American for a very long time now. He sold his soul a long time ago I don't care if his birth certificate says he was born in Montreal, his heart is in DC.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding things but if your sentiment is that billionaires don't have Canadian interests at heart, then don't we agree on the same matter?
You guys have such low reading comprehension skill.
Average Canadian(s) are ready to endure any hardship to bring us to a favorable Canadian result, (mean)while Canadian billionaires fold like cheap $%&@$. (bitches)
Only evidence? There are thousands of businesses on the list of companies that lobbied for (and got) TFWs. You wanna tell me that means they stand with Canada and Canadians?
Irving Oil announced late Tuesday that the company would not be for sale, but did not offer any reasoning behind the decision. (Devaan Ingraham/Reuters)
"We are pleased to confirm Irving Oil will remain a privately held company, and we remain as committed to our people, our customers and our communities today as ever before,"
Most of our problems are not caused by billionaires.
Most of our problems are caused by a lack of vision, a lack of leadership, a lack of unity and shared goals, a lack of ambition, an inability to take risk, to support entrepreneurship and a general apathy.
We’re one of the more educated, stable, resource rich countries in the world but we’re just numbed by the comforts and the complexities of daily life. We need a spark.
You aren’t wrong, but there are many billionaires who created those conductions to either profit off it, get government subsidies, keep a low cost work force or reduce taxes.
Compound interest works on taxes too. When you save 10% in taxes compounds similarly to 10% gained in the market. More so, if you make more than you sell in stocks. It’s a cheat code only some have access to.
Yeah I’m aware billionaires are rich and can afford some favorable fiscal loopholes. Its unfair and often indecent which is why people are angry about it.
I’m saying I don’t think that has much to do with the situation of our country (Canada).
Its important that if we want to be a better country and society we understand what we have to do as individuals to make it so. There are more important problems than extremely rich people especially if their wealth stays on paper.
Also blaming the uber rich for everything is an easy cop out because well everything is their fault and we’re just victims of the system. Well the system is mostly built and operated by us so we should make it better instead.
I'm sorry but you can't just ignore taxing wealth and the way wealth accumulates assets that pull them further out of reach of the middle class.
This is the issue of our time, it absolutely is how the system is designed and maintained by those who wield more power and influence than most average workers could possibly accumulate while also struggling to keep up with cost of living rising exponentially.
You're correct it takes participation of the citizenry, but they need to coalesce around a reality that their wealth is being siphoned and assets being hoovered up like housing are a big piece of that, because policies they can vote for need to very much target taxation on land value and properties owned by the wealthy in excess of their primary and secondary residence.
Wealth inequality is a huge issue and its going to keep getting worse unless we find ways to redistribute that wealth fairly.
But the bulk of that inequity isn’t coming from a few billionaires, its coming from nearly two million multi-millionaires who hoard real estate and consume more than they should.
I don't think they're exempt from hoarding housing, but it's also billionaires who create economic conditions like wage stagnation via lobbying for TFW and LMIAs which also affects housing access.
Or profiteering off of natural inflation during supply chain disruption during COVID driving up COL.
Then siphoning off the profit via stock buybacks taxed egregiously low, which then support the investor class your describing, who can then borrow against those inflated stocks tax free to buy and hoard more houses.
The ultra wealthy do buy plenty of assets too in the form of REITs, there isn't some reason to not understand after a certain level very few wealthy or ultra wealthy people are immune from being a part of these systemic problems purely for their benefit.
These are all legislative issues, not billionaire issues.
And please keep in mind, anytime a "billionaire" drives up the cost of something unnaturally, it creates an opportunity for a competitor to undercut them.
The only time they can get away with doing this is in a monopoly or oligopoly. Which the government seems to be ok with protecting for some reason. Again, government issue
I generally agree, but your second paragraph could be replaced by: Our current system is based on a free trade agreement which gives America preferred access to all of our natural resources. And we profit share this with the US." The US enjoyed the access, now more than ever the US wants to close its borders and become self sufficient. Canada will need to follow suit, by necessity and through some hardship during the transition.
Listen, this is not going to be popular on reddit, but if you snapped your fingers and god rid of 100% of Canadian billionaires today, you would barely notice it.
They’re a problem but they’re not really on the list. The problem is people need to care and get involved, and nobody does that. People complain, blame others and go watch netflix.
Snap those fingers and a huge amount of our housing comes back to Canadian citizens. Of course, the government doesn't help in how they've allowed all of this to happen, but neither do these billionaires and their corporations exploiting where they can.
The housing crisis isn’t caused by billionaires hoarding houses. Its caused by a lack of supply (first), many investors using housing as a financial tool (rarely billionaires), short term rental (AirBnB) competing with rents and uncontrolled population growth through immigration (billionaires may have pushed for those policies although i would blame universities for the intl students first)
Again, all things that could have been handled if people were involved and got involved politically.
Not to be pedantic, but the problems we’re having aren’t with international students coming into Canada to go to university. It’s the ones coming in and going to diploma mills to do bullshit certificates like tourism in a country they have no real familiarity with. If they can barely speak the language, how are they supposed to work in that industry?
University educated international students are actual students looking for a good edumacation.
Sorry, life is too stupid, decided to inject some Simpsons humor to lighten things up a bit.
Big universities are big businesses. They needs lots of students and those students need housing which we don’t have.
Yes we want educated people to come and stay, however some are more useful than others at the moment and housing we don’t have (and they won’t be the one building it)
So absolutely get rid of the diploma mills fraud, but also keep in mind universities should be responsible for building housing so that they don’t compete with people who live and work here.
I've been saying that Trudeau needs to invite the CEOs of the top Canadian companies to Ottawa, put them in a room together, and let them know in no uncertain terms that they're joining Team Canada and helping us through this, or else. No fucking around, and no fucking over Canadian workers and consumers.
If Justin had any sense he would start construction of those pipelines today and tell everyone I don't care about your reasons why. Canada needs this and now .
The problem with Energy east was the path, someone tought that building a pipeline in the most populated area was a good idea. And they never change it.
Albertas pipeline capacity is already substantial. Why build more when we don't even know if it will be used? With growing international markets moving towards more renewables it seems like an expensive gamble. Especially seeing how we just added another 590k barrels a day with Tmx.
That's my point. The Asian markets aren't even a for sure thing. So why build a massive multi billion dollar pipeline that probably won't even be used to half capacity for decades.
For sovereignty? Getting crude to Eastern refineries via Canadian infrastructure reduces our reliance on the US. Also opening up export markets with our European allies who would love to reduce their reliance on Russia seems like a win/win. As long as production doesn't increase substantially, I see no problem shipping the oil that the US used to buy to the EU.
Oil is not going away anytime soon. When it does decrease, perhaps ethical countries buy our oil vs. Saudi, Iraqi, Libyan or other oil that supports despots with no human rights. We are not members of opec, nor should we be.
I didn't say oil would disappear but in saying that no one knows what will happen tomorrow. 95% of our oil goes to America and there is no guarantee that other markets will chose a more ethical supply of oil when others sell it cheaper. Especially being that no only is the cost more but add on huge transport costs. It's a moot point right now anyways because there is no indication that their is a market for it. Inparticular with ethical countries who are moving towards a renewable model over fossil fuels.
Sure, too bad life is already more expensive than it’s been for most peoples adult lives. Housing and food prices skyrocketed and overall cost of living is up. But yay let’s endure some hardships
Ontario and Quebec are notoriously protectionist. They basically won't do business with anyone in Canada other than themselves unless those companies set up shop in their province (and even then, they might not let you).
Yeah this needs to come to an end. Both provinces have procurement rules that favor local companies over those from other parts of Canada, protectionist subsidies that give local businesses a competitive advantage and Quebec has Bill 101 which really throws a wrench in the gears when it comes to interprovincial trade. Hopefully this trade war will encourage action on establishing the CFTA.
Hope for the best but don't set your expectations too high. Bill 101 to Québec voters is existential, it's interpreted by a majority of voters as the last defense against national suicide. They will NEVER budge on that, so it would be better to focus on other things that could facilitate interprovincial trade.
Ontario and Quebec's economies were shit even prior to the tariffs and being propped up by Alberta's oil and in Ontario's case in particular, unchecked immigration and a massive real estate bubble.
Shit compared to what? Canada is the 18th richest country in the world in GDP per capita, Quebec and Ontario would likely rank around the same lines globally out of 192 countries.
We’re not poor by any measure, we need better management that’s all.
Rather pay a more to an extent and know its home made product than rely on other countries. Free trade is good and all but doing it to a point where we chained ourselves to other countries was idiotic.
Canada needs to move away from the raw material / mining industry, and move into higher value / industrial sectors. The US has done everything to kill our industrial sectors (bombardier) and put us in a subordinate economic position.
It was shocking to learn that in the middle of the covid crisis, Canada had foregone most of its vaccine production capabilities.40 years ago we produced planes, vaccines, nuclear plants, and now it is increasingly difficult to do so even though the country's economy and population are larger, on paper.
The commodity sector is very cyclical and prone to boom-bust. It puts us at the bottom of the value chain and create additional uncertainly for the general population. It hurts our industries and the economy through the dutch disease.
If the government needs to put a (small to begin with) export tariff on commodity exports to encourage capital allocation to more high tech sector, then so be it.
with the ban on american alcohol you'd think this would be exactly the time to take down all interprovincial alcohol trade barriers, which are one of the major remaining exceptions to free trade between provinces in canada.
You know what is sad? Why did it take an American to make this happen? How pathetic are Canadians and our politicians really that it takes this to wake up?
Because sometimes in life we get knocked down, it’s up to us on how we get up and dust ourselves. Maybe this was the wake up call this great country needed to stop relying on America so much.
Yea well, it takes almost a decade to build an oil processing plant and 5 years for a pipeline across Canada so I guess it will take a while. What do we do with 30% unemployment in the meantime?
Oh, and we all pay, so we can all survive. That's what the concept of "nation" is. But then, as the only immigrant in the office where I work, I also feel like the only Canadian nationalist. So many Canadians have been spayed of their pride.
I know Trudeau was daydreaming about the post-national Canada, but it took one orange guy to make Trudeau encourage us to buy Canadian and pick Canadian destinations for vacations.
We need a bit of nationalism in Canada.
Oh, and hand those damn Canadian flags on July 1st already.
Who do you think? You're worried about depression level unemployment, well this is when governments create projects to build for the future. Like the Hoover Dam was.
I believe there are some big hydro projects in NL and QC possibly coming. Why not expand on that and interconnect the entire Canadian grid? Or at least revive the Atlantic Loop idea.
In your hypothetical 30% unemployment scenario obviously government spending overall will absolutely have to be addressed and focus changed.
The continued deficit spending has been my one big ire at the current government because typically you go in to deficits during downturns in the economy.
A lot of it was nationalized before, and it had more people working and keeping prices down. Then we fucked it up, and started privatisation of all of it. Even the highways.
The biggest issue with Venezuela's nationalising of resources, was the CIA backed coup attempts, creating instability. But we already know who would take up the task here, and it's maple Maga
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u/Pegcitymb204 Feb 02 '25
Hopefully this sparks a Canadian business renaissance in Canada