Tuesday, September 30, 2025

Today's News: Keeping those Elbows Up!


So during the spring we all went a little crazy for "Elbows Up" and Canadian patriotism and all that, and then Carney was elected and for a while there is really seemed like everyone was onside with rapid economic development, accepting Carney's challenge to pull together and carve a new path for the country.
But we were told that it wasn't going to be easy, and turns out that is true, its all challenging and difficult and expensive and unknown.
Easier, really, to just retreat and regroup, just go back to our old ways - inter-provincial fisticuffs and endless development consultations and hold-ups, and everybody hating Ottawa but wanting more money from them. 
So I'm afraid our old patterns and annoyances are reasserting themselves.
Carney's first budget is going to be a test case, not just for him but also for us -- can we actually try to envisage a larger picture, to see what future the Carney Liberals are trying to achieve, and to decide from that whether we can get behind it or not? Or are we going to just nitpick the Liberals to death, along with their budget -- "what about MY program? How dare you give more money to THOSE GUYS instead of to ME? And if THEY got some then I have to get some too because otherwise its UNFAIR!" And "How can we trust them when somebody somewhere might take advantage of us?"
Meanwhile, our political reporters seem to think they should go along with the Poilievre smear campaigns, as though the Conservatives are raising "valid points":
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I'm not saying that political reporters shouldn't criticize Carney or the Liberals. But please don't treat trivial Conservative talking points as though they represent some widely-held or real point of view. Consider, please, the motives - and look a little deeper. 
Like Dale Smith does here: 
Roundup: The supposed fiscal precipice 
...[interim parliamentary budget officer Jason Jacques] was back on TV this weekend, and saying a bunch of alarmist things about how we’re on a “precipice” and so on, which. . . is not what his office was saying just a few months ago. If anything, this is the kind of alarmism that we’re used to hearing from the “it’s 1995 and will always be 1995” crowd, where any budget deficits are treated as some kind of national catastrophe, and that we’re sitting on a “debt bomb,” but we’re not. People are actively forgetting the measures taken to save the economy during the height of COVID, pretending that it didn’t happen, and now they’re downplaying just what exactly the effect that Trump’s tariffs are having on the economy—or the fact that we have managed to avoid a recession so far (not that it has stopped Poilievre from insisting that our economy is “collapsing.”)
Here is what Carney said in London:
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I think most Liberals, and a majority of Canadians, would agree with both of these posts:
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And on a side note, this guy is hilarious:
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3 comments:

Northern PoV said...

Don't cry for poor little Mark.
Lil'PPs silly carnival act gets all the attention, even when reporters question the real Carny.
Keeping the Overton window yanked to the extreme right and ignoring all the valid leftie criticism of of the current gov't is all about manufacturing consent.

Cathie from Canada said...

NPOV, we'll have to agree to disagree about Carney. His ideas may not work completely, but his determination is admirable. Yes, there is valid leftie criticism of what he is doing, but at this moment, disentangling our economy from the US disaster just needs to be our priority.

Purple library guy said...

Well, if Carney wants to square that circle of needing to do a lot of important stuff but not having enough revenue, there is one basic measure that could get it done:
TAX THE RICH.