The Business Council of Alberta wants to fix the productivity problem through immigration instead of having businesses actually fixing their lack of reinvestment directly.

The causes of the low productivity of Canadian companies are well known and documented: they invest little, spend less on research and development than those in other rich countries, and have a low propensity to innovate. These behaviours tend to limit their productivity gains and, consequently, restrict the growth of the Canadian economy.

https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/april-2023/the-low-productivity-of-canadian-companies-threatens-our-living-standards/

MMP is difficult to explain to anyone uninterested in electoral reform, ie the majority of voters. Include things like party lists and members at large, and you can get some pretty significant drawbacks. There was also the more likely possibility of constitutional issues than with STV or ranked ballot, given the seat allocations outlined in the constitution.

Ranked or STV are easy to explain, ranked especially. Ridings and the ballots don’t even need to change. Instead of an X, put numbers in the circle. Easy-peasy to explain.

No. That’s a completely reductivist take. They gave it a shot, the NDP were MMP or bust, the CPC got the others to agree to a referendum that they knew would fail. At that point the project was dead.

No, not the committee, in the electorate.
You can get a small majority to support switching away from FPTP. Then the supporters split into MMP, Ranked, STV, and a number of hybrid systems. That’s the primary reason why it has repeatedly lost at the provincial level.

Anyone with experience in politics knows why the Liberals did what they did.

IF the Liberals had pushed through the legislation, the CPC and Bloc were both going to portray it a Liberal power grab, and that message would definitely get traction. The CPC had already said they’d revert back to FPTP, and the Bloc was making noises that they’d back them up.

That’s why the Liberals went out of their way to do what they did. What they didn’t expect was the NDP going all or nothing on MMP, a system that laypeople find difficult to understand, and certainly not one to be explained easily in a sound bite.

Internal Liberal polling, not the dog and pony online poll, found that most people didn’t care, but could easily be convinced it was a power grab. They were putting a lot of effort in something that had no upside, but a pile of potential downside.

They cut their losses, and aside from online forums, paid little price for it.

No, he didn’t. This is the fantasy narrative that election reformers tell themselves.
The reality is that these efforts always blow up because there is never a consensus on what to change it to, and the general public just doesn’t care.

And with the blowback they got for their efforts, they won’t touch it again for at least another 15-20 years. The CPC would never even consider it. The NDP are as far from power as ever being essentially dead east of Ontario, and spotty through the rest of the country.

So people can sulk if they want to, but it’s going to be status quo for the foreseeable future.

So just like now then. The Liberals are backed by the NDP and maintain power.

Germany has been dominated by two parties since the war under MMP. And proportional representation has done absolutely nothing to inhibit the right wing authoritarians coming into power in much of Eastern Europe, and making gains in Western Europe.

In Israel, Netanyahu’s Likud control government with the support of 24% of the electorate in the last election. He had to put together a dog’s breakfast of even more extreme parties to do it, but that’s always a possibility in that sort of system.

Comments from people who have never had real exposure to the political system are useful as tits on a fish.
Being an MP or MLA is an absolute grind. Even more so now with myriad anonymous threats being levied at not only you but your family. They have some reimbursements, but inevitably end up spending some of that pay on expenses.

And for the most part, they aren’t rich.

Here is the list from Manitoba MPs:

Niki Ashton NDP university lecturer
James Bezan CPC Rancher, crop adjuster
Ben Carr Lib Teacher, consultant
Raquel Dancho CPC –
Terry Duguid Lib Non-profit organizer
Ted Falk CPC Construction company owner
Leah Gazan NDP Lecturer
Kevin Lamoureaux Lib ATC assistant & Military
Branden Leslie CPC –
Larry Maguire CPC Farmer, Lobbyist
Dan Mazier CPC Pres Keystone Agricultural Producers
Marty Morantz CPC Lawyer
Dan Vandal Lib Middleweight Boxer, Social worker

Bezan (CPC), Falk (CPC), Maguire (CPC), Mazier (CPC) and Morantz (CPC) are pretty well off. The rest are doing okay, but hardly rich.
Dancho (CPC) and Leslie (CPC) went from school right into politics.

A former MP that I new pretty well was a teacher and served on a small city council, an unpaid position in those days, before getting into federal, and then provincial politics. He was the hardest working person I knew.

He got calls at all hours as a federal MP regarding garbage pickup and street plowing FFS. Some constituents were completely clueless as to what level of government does what. He’d listen and try to direct them to the right people, and the only thing he got in return was abuse.

Corporate taxes used to cover over 30% of government revenue, it’s 10% now. The top marginal income tax rate peaked in the 1960s at somewhere around 80% on income exceeding ~3M/year (today’s money). We’ve had 4 decades of tax cuts while the cost of delivering services has increased more or less with the inflation rate. Private equity funds now have favourable tax treatment, and stock buybacks, previously considered illegal stock manipulation is a common practice. And so on and so forth.

If you want what you had, you have to do what you did.

Two income family with real estate in Ottawa and Calgary, during a big real estate boom, plus being a cabinet minister for much of his twenty years in the House will do that. Given that, his net worth (estimated to be $5M) isn’t extraordinary.

Pierre Trudeau was written off for each of his last three elections. He ended up in power from 1968 until 1984, broken only by the 7 months of minority PC government under Clark.

The Liberals aren’t campaigning, while PP has been burning cash in election mode for months. Once the writ is dropped, it’s a completely different ball game. The Liberals were in third place behind the CPC and NDP when the writ was dropped in 2015. Campaigns matter.

Trudeau’s government isn’t a far right as the Chretien Liberals, let alone the Mulroney PCs.

People forget the cost cutting and devolution of healthcare and other programs that occurred under Chretien in the name of balancing the federal budget, a policy they kept right through the Chretien and Martin years.

They actively avoided getting into social policy reform as much as possible. For example, weed legalization was absolutely shot down by that government. In this aspect they were largely a care-taker government.

Trudeau has expanded public programs, legalized weed, prioritized diversity in cabinet, etc.

That’s been a thing forever in the Atlantic provinces. Fish, forestry, military or move.

I ended up moving from NB in 2009, with the company saying I could move back when work improved. Fifteen years later, I’m still in the West and the people who made the promise are long gone.

I’m hoping to retire and move home in a few years. I’ve had enough.

“Oh, I miss the green and the woods and streams
And I don’t like cowboy clothes
But I like being free and that makes me
An idiot, I suppose”

Every almost every season there are a few fishermen who get lost at sea. The CG and DFO will search for a few days then call off the search. It’s tragic, but it’s the way it is.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/bay-of-fundy-scallop-fishermen-search-chief-william-saulis-1.5843267

Search was suspended after 36 hours. Only one body was found.

The estimate is that 60,000 tonnes of material will need to be sifted through, an effort that will take up to three years and between $84M and $186M dollars, with absolutely no guarantee of success.

It’s a performative act and waste of resources. I’d much rather see the $90M go towards funding for addictions and mental health supports, and for homeless shelters. Care for the living, the dead no longer care.

Alberta currently has the most expensive residential electricity by far at 25.8¢ /kWh for the first 1000kWh including all fees. Saskatchewan is second most expensive at 19.9¢ /kWh.

Ontario is down at 14.1¢ /kWh and Manitoba is at 10.2¢ /kWh. Quebec is cheapest at 7.8¢ /kWh.

https://www.energyhub.org/electricity-prices/

Consider a standard sedan with two axles and a total weight of 2 tons. Assuming an even distribution, each of its axles would bear the weight of 1 ton. Now consider a semitruck with eight axles and a weight of 40 tons – each of its axles would weigh 5 tons. The relative damage done by each axle of the truck can be calculated with the following equation, and comes out to 625 times the damage done by each axel of the sedan.

Considering that the truck has eight axles and the sedan has two, the relative damage caused by the entire semitruck would be 625 x (8/2) – 2,500 times that of the sedan.

https://www.insidescience.org/news/how-much-damage-do-heavy-trucks-do-our-roads

Fairly sure that truckers aren’t paying 2500x what passenger vehicles are paying in taxes/fees.

also from the same article:

“The damage due to cars, for practical purposes, when we are designing pavements, is basically zero. It’s not actually zero, but it’s so much smaller – orders of magnitude smaller – that we don’t even bother with them,” said Karim Chatti, a civil engineer from Michigan State University in East Lansing.

Meanwhile in New Brunswick, NBPower is offering free heat pumps to homeowners with an income below $70k/yr.

https://www.nbpower.com/en/smart-habits/energy-efficiency-programs/ductless-mini-split-heat-pump-program

My ex just had her 30 year old oil furnace replaced. No cost to her. Hers was a whole house unit, not a mini-split. Cost would have been $15k or so.

The feds could negotiate deals with the individual provinces. If your province opts in, they get federal assistance, if they don’t they get bupkis.

There is no requirement for the feds to compensate provinces who choose not to sign on to programs.

The top marginal tax rate in the US peaked in 1951 at 92% on income in excess of $400k (joint filing two income), the equivalent of about $4.7M in today’s money. That should come back.