Economy
The Commons yesterday by a 177 to 146 vote passed cabinet’s half-trillion budget bill. It followed a five-week filibuster by Conservatives.
“We have seen a massive, possibly unprecedented mounting of both public and private debt,” Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre said in Third Reading debate. Poilievre spoke for three hours and 35 minutes and likened deficit spending to a ticking time bomb.
“If someone had a time bomb ticking away under their home, what would they do about it?” Poilievre told the Commons. “Well, if the person did not know it was there they would not do anything at all because they would have no reason to respond. Assuming that the person survived its detonation, they would have to scramble to rebuild their life.”
The 2023 budget spends $496.6 billion. Debt interest charges this year total $43.9 billion, by official estimate. Parliament has not balanced a budget since 2007.
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Read MoreAccording to recently released industry data, Modelo Especial is now the number one beer in the United States, with sales surpassing $333 million for the month of May. Other top sellers include Michelob Ultra ($267.6 million), Coors Light ($241 million), and Miller Lite ($216.4 million). Modelo is a Pilsner-style Mexican lager first brewed in the 1920s. It has been one of the best-selling imported beers in the U.S. for decades. Constellation Brands owns the rights to Modelo in the U.S. The company has faced multiple lawsuits from Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev), which owns Bud Light and also owns Modelo outside of the U.S.
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Read MoreFarmers in Ireland are protesting government proposals to cull livestock – including up to 200,000 cows – in an effort to meet national and European Union goals to reduce methane emissions. According to Ireland’s Independent, up to 65,000 dairy cows and 10% of the livestock herd would have to be removed from the national herd every year for three years at a cost of €200m ($215.2 million) if the farming sector is to “meet its climate targets.”
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Read MoreThe Canada Revenue Agency in Access To Information records scripted a Zoom call with employees by Liberal MP Peter Fragiskatos (London North Centre, Ont.), parliamentary secretary for revenue. Fragiskatos was instructed to tell a “very touching” anecdote about an auditor he never met and praise the Agency’s work.
“Hats off to all of you!” read the script of Fragiskatos’ appearance at a February 24, 2022 videoconference with employees. The occasion was billed as an “employee event for the launch of tax filing season.”
Both MP Fragiskatos and Revenue Commissioner Bob Hamilton were provided scripted questions and answers to avoid spontaneous remarks about the pandemic. “What lessons do you think the Agency learned?” Commissioner Hamilton was asked. “It showed us we could work better and faster,” he replied.
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Read MoreThe latest interest rate hike will see “a lot of people struggling,” Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said yesterday. The Bank of Canada raised its charge on interbank loans from 4.5 to 4.75 percent. The rate was 1.5 percent a year ago.
“I know a lot of people are struggling,” Freeland told the Senate national finance committee. “I know the increase in interest rates, I know a lot of people saw that and said, ‘Oh, what am I going to do with my mortgage?’”
The rate adjustment was the ninth increase in the 15 months since March 2, 2022. The central bank scheduled its next rate announcement for July 12.
“This is a very difficult time for Canadians,” Minister Freeland told reporters immediately following the Bank of Canada announcement. “It is very difficult for middle class Canadians.”
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Read MoreCanada is in the throes of a full-blown housing crisis, yet the federal government has nevertheless introduced a progressively punitive carbon tax that, by decade’s end, could decimate first-time homebuyers’ dreams of homeownership, according to housing experts.
The tax purports to curtail the country’s carbon dioxide emissions with a levy that grew from $50 per tonne in 2022 to $65/tonne this year, and which will surge to $170/tonne by 2030.
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Read MoreThe following article is sponsored by The Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University and written by Jeff Hunt.
In 2020, Donald Trump won only five of 13 Western States. Joe Biden got over one-third of all his electoral college votes from the West. The West has over six million more Democratic voters than Republican voters.
It hasn’t always been this way. At one time, the West was conservative. In 2004, George W. Bush won nine of 13 Western States. When I talk with national conservative leaders about the West, they seem misinformed, stuck in an old era of false conception. Isn’t the West conservative? Well, it was, but today it’s shifting. Even the Los Angeles Times refers to it as the New West. Colorado, for instance, doesn’t have a single state-wide elected Republican, and Democrats hold a super-majority in the Colorado House of Representatives. Colorado Springs, once the hub of the nation’s conservative ministries and leading missional non-profits, for the first time in 45 years, didn’t elect a Republican for mayor.
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Read MoreThe United Kingdom experienced growth of just 0.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2023
The Eurozone has been plunged into a recession after several major member economies witnessed noticeable downturns.
The 20-country bloc, which adopted the continent’s single currency and implemented its centralised policies, experienced a contraction of 0.1 per cent in the first three months of this year.
Brussels’ statistical office Eurostat revealed growth had fallen short of previous predictions of 0.1 per cent.
The most recent plunge marks the second consecutive quarter of contracting growth in the Eurozone.
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Read MoreInheritance tax is one of the least popular levies with UK voters, polling has revealed
Britons have been taking out mortgages in an attempt to utilise an inheritance tax loophole.
Older homeowners can take out mortgages to minimise the amount of cash they need to hand over on their inheritance tax bill.
Borrowers appear to be primarily using the loophole to take mortgages out on a property which is owned outright.
It is then possible to give the cash from the mortgage to their children.
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