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Canadian PoliGAF - 42nd Parliament: Sunny Ways in Trudeaupia

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M

matthewwhatever

Member
Random Human said:
I’m feeling increasingly nervous about what the result is going to be of these NAFTA negotiations.
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I'd assumed that Trump was going to do a few cosmetic changes and declare victory, since anything more would be far too difficult. But now the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has decided they have "no choice but to ring the alarm bells"...and seeing as the Chamber of Commerce tends to be ridiculously over-the-top partisan in their support for the GOP, that's pretty worrisome. I'd hope that someone in the White House realizes that killing NAFTA would tank their economy too, but I'd getting less and less sure of that.

firehawk12 said:
Yeah, the Air India bombing was a story Milewski has been following for decades now. Assuming people do prep for these kind of interviews (can the NDP afford researchers? :p), they should have expected this question. Particularly if they were demanding the questions beforehand.

I don't know, he sounded exactly the same during the leadership debates in terms of giving politician's non-answers and while I was somewhat sympathetic of him then, he simply doesn't have any excuse now. If he wasn't prepared, then he shouldn't have agreed to do the interview in the first place.

Also, I checked because I was confused why Milewski was doing an interview and yeah, he retired last year. I'm not sure if he's been covering for someone for a while (Barton doing the National soon I guess?), or he just appeared to interview Singh, but someone really should have known that he was the Air India reporter who was sued by the World Sikh Organization.
Click to expand...

I mean, the options are either they didn't know that Milewski would be doing the interview (which reflects very badly on Singh's comms team, and doesn't seem likely, seeing as Milewski tweeted that Singh asked for questions beforehand), or they knew Milewski would be doing the interview and didn't think the topic would come up (which also reflects badly on Singh's comms team, since that's the kind of thing you should do homework on before sending your guy in for an interview).
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
Alternate explanation: they asked for the questions precisely because they expected it to come up and wanted to prepare for the exact angle, and the backlash over that forced them into a corner where they had no choice but to agree or lose face since it was suddenly in the public eye.
 
M

matthewwhatever

Member
maharg said:
Alternate explanation: they asked for the questions precisely because they expected it to come up and wanted to prepare for the exact angle, and the backlash over that forced them into a corner where they had no choice but to agree or lose face since it was suddenly in the public eye.
Click to expand...

That's not much better -- if they didn't entirely trust the journalist beforehand, they shouldn't have offered/agreed to the interview in the first place. They could've gone with another outlet, and if "Interview with CBC" was a box they felt they absolutely had to check off, then Singh has been in politics in Toronto long enough that he should know other journalists at the network they could've offered the interview to.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
Oh I'm not saying it's good either, I just think it's more self-consistent and assumes a more reasonable level of incompetence. :)
 
C

CazTGG

Member
matthewwhatever said:
I'd assumed that Drumpf was going to do a few cosmetic changes and declare victory, since anything more would be far too difficult. But now the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has decided they have "no choice but to ring the alarm bells"...and seeing as the Chamber of Commerce tends to be ridiculously over-the-top partisan in their support for the GOP, that's pretty worrisome. I'd hope that someone in the White House realizes that killing NAFTA would tank their economy too, but I'd getting less and less sure of that.
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If anything, the negotiations will continue going into 2018 (since one can only imagine the fire that "he cancelled NAFTA" will hand Democrats for their midterm campaigns if Trump follows through his promise to get a new NAFTA deal by the end of the year) where the U.S. midterms and Mexico's election will cause more than its share of shakeups to each party's respective plans. Remember that the original NAFTA started with Mulroney/Bush Sr./Salinas and went into effect with Chretien/Clinton/Zedillo.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
If you've ever thought I was a blind ndp supporter you were sorely mistaken. I'm in wait and see on Singh. I mostly expect him to be Liberal lite. My main issue continues to be electoral reform, and I see no signs of the NDP intending to continue that fight. And I was pretty fucking right that the Liberals wouldn't bother.

2019 is Trudeau in the bag anyways so most of this doesn't even really matter.
 
K

killer rin

Member
matthewwhatever said:
I think firehawk meant that more from a "my life as an NDP supporter sucks" perspective than a "Ha ha, stupid NDP supporter" perspective.



On the bright side, you'll get to fight the 2019 election in favour of a Netflix tax!
Click to expand...

It kind of gets on my nerves that everyone, including Politicians themselves have chosen to call this type of Tax a Netflix tax. It's even stupider when the tax only targets Netflix, like politicians think it's only Netflix that is dodging taxes on their services. Steam, PSN, Netflix, Crunchyroll. Amazon was a big offender for a long time. Every foreign company that offers digital services within the country gets to skip out on charging taxes and as a result it disenfranchises our local business community because they are now having to compete against a foreign company which has much more resources and an effective 15% discount on their products right off the bat

You would think that would be something Conservatives would be going crazy over. Don't they love local and homegrown businesses?
 
M

Mr.Mike

Member
Why do you people hate movies and TV shows?

But really we should be taxing digital services.

Also we should undo the maple syrup cartel and dairy supply management to stop rent-seeking that raises prices on food. Also we should take steps to increase supply of housing in Toronto and Vancouver as much as possible.

Also stuff like employee discounts should be taxed so that employers aren't incentivised to provide compensation through stuff like employee discounts instead of just paying people more.

Also the Liberals middle class tax cut should be undone. The people who benefit the most from a cut in the 45k to 90k tax brackets will be fine. Put that money into increasing the WITB.

Have any of the NDP candidates proposed increasing the WITB?
 
C

CazTGG

Member
I don't like it any more than anyone else in this thread, especially given how high taxes can be in provinces like Ontario or the maritime provinces (assuming you don't do what i've seen many people do in the Nintendo eShop and just set your province to one possessing the lowest current tax rate whenever possible which...you shouldn't do for obvious reasons) but businesses, be they digital or otherwise, should be charging and remitting taxes on any goods they sell.
 
M

Mr.Mike

Member
CazTGG said:
I don't like it any more than anyone else in this thread, especially given how high taxes can be in provinces like Ontario or the maritime provinces (assuming you don't do what i've seen many people do in the Nintendo eShop and just set your province to one possessing the lowest current tax rate whenever possible which...you shouldn't do for obvious reasons) but businesses, be they digital or otherwise, should be charging and remitting taxes on any goods they sell.
Click to expand...

I actually feel good paying sales tax, especially when buying luxury goods. Like yeah, I don't really need a $100 dollar computer mouse, but at least I'm paying some sales tax here that contributes to a bunch of good stuff.
 
M

mdubs

Banned
killer rin said:
It kind of gets on my nerves that everyone, including Politicians themselves have chosen to call this type of Tax a Netflix tax. It's even stupider when the tax only targets Netflix, like politicians think it's only Netflix that is dodging taxes on their services. Steam, PSN, Netflix, Crunchyroll. Amazon was a big offender for a long time. Every foreign company that offers digital services within the country gets to skip out on charging taxes and as a result it disenfranchises our local business community because they are now having to compete against a foreign company which has much more resources and an effective 15% discount on their products right off the bat

You would think that would be something Conservatives would be going crazy over. Don't they love local and homegrown businesses?
Click to expand...
Who are all of the local homegrown businesses that compete with any of those services?
 
R

Random Human

They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
I just saw a terrible CPC ad on TV with Scheer talking about saving local businesses. Anyone seen this? He looked ridiculous.
 
K

killer rin

Member
mdubs said:
Who are all of the local homegrown businesses that compete with any of those services?
Click to expand...

Hells if I know. But thats not the point. Why would any business set up shop in the industry within Canada knowing that they would be put at a disadvantage compared to if they opened up doors geographically next door and sell to Canadians for free... being able to charge the 15% in retail markup that they wont have to remit. I mean, technically you have Showme and those fucking Robellus services. I hate Robellus as much as the next guy and on several occasions pray they they go out of business because of how scummy they are. But at the same time, on this one small thing they do have a point
God, I can't believe I'm actually defending them
that their online streaming services are at a disadvantage because they have to charge taxes and the other guys dont.

The same argument works for online retailers. USA Online Retails get the pleasure of being able to compete with Canadian ones at an effective 15% discount. Granted the extremely low rate before we have to pay duties helps nullify that. But at the same time the fact that we don't collect taxes from those companies makes it a non-starter to even argue changing how stupidly low our limit is before we start getting duties charged.
 
V

Vamphuntr

Member
It would be doable to update laws to take into account digital services I would think. The really shady thing is that you don't have to pay taxes if the billing comes from outside Canada yet the actual data you stream comes from Canadian servers. It's important to be fair to every retailers and service providers. I doubt many people will drop Netflix if they have to pay taxes on their subscription.

We still get screwed no matter what in the great white north anyway retail wise. I bought a FUji XT1 camera recently and used an American retailer. Even with the USD conversion and duties I saved over 500$ and got a free lens to boot.
 
M

matthewwhatever

Member
killer rin said:
It kind of gets on my nerves that everyone, including Politicians themselves have chosen to call this type of Tax a Netflix tax. It's even stupider when the tax only targets Netflix, like politicians think it's only Netflix that is dodging taxes on their services. Steam, PSN, Netflix, Crunchyroll. Amazon was a big offender for a long time. Every foreign company that offers digital services within the country gets to skip out on charging taxes and as a result it disenfranchises our local business community because they are now having to compete against a foreign company which has much more resources and an effective 15% discount on their products right off the bat

You would think that would be something Conservatives would be going crazy over. Don't they love local and homegrown businesses?
Click to expand...

Just to be clear, I'm fully in favour of a "Netflix tax" on digital goods & services. I just thought it was funny that Singh's first big policy pronouncement was that he'd tax Netflix, since it seems ready-made for an attack ad.

Also ready-made for an attack ad: his pretty blatant pandering to Bloc Quebecois voters...but I'll leave that one up to gutter_trash to react to.

Mr.Mike said:
Put that money into increasing the WITB.

Have any of the NDP candidates proposed increasing the WITB?
Click to expand...

I attended part of an anti-poverty conference a few weeks ago, and two of the things that the economists & policy specialists in attendance all seemed to agree on were that a) WITB was a really great policy instrument, and b) nobody knows about WITB. To be honest, even after attending that conference, I'm still not sure I totally understand how it works. But I wouldn't be shocked if it becomes more prominent in the coming years.

Looking around, apparently Singh did propose increasing the WITB...but it'd get the extra money from his plan to means-test OAS. So even if that part of his policy may be worth considering, he tied it to a policy proposal that not even his own party endorses, and that'll probably pretty contentious if he tries using it as one of their policy plans in 2019.
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
killer rin said:
It kind of gets on my nerves that everyone, including Politicians themselves have chosen to call this type of Tax a Netflix tax. It's even stupider when the tax only targets Netflix, like politicians think it's only Netflix that is dodging taxes on their services. Steam, PSN, Netflix, Crunchyroll. Amazon was a big offender for a long time. Every foreign company that offers digital services within the country gets to skip out on charging taxes and as a result it disenfranchises our local business community because they are now having to compete against a foreign company which has much more resources and an effective 15% discount on their products right off the bat

You would think that would be something Conservatives would be going crazy over. Don't they love local and homegrown businesses?
Click to expand...

I honestly don't know if I should be happy or sad that Shomi died. :p

The weird thing about Netflix getting the 500 million is that I don't understand why they would give money to an American company when the CBC is always crying about how they're always broke. Is the idea that maybe people in America might watch whatever cheesy CanCon they fund?

matthewwhatever said:
I think firehawk meant that more from a "my life as an NDP supporter sucks" perspective than a "Ha ha, stupid NDP supporter" perspective.
Click to expand...
Yes. lol
 
M

Mr.Mike

Member
matthewwhatever said:
I attended part of an anti-poverty conference a few weeks ago, and two of the things that the economists & policy specialists in attendance all seemed to agree on were that a) WITB was a really great policy instrument, and b) nobody knows about WITB. To be honest, even after attending that conference, I'm still not sure I totally understand how it works. But I wouldn't be shocked if it becomes more prominent in the coming years.

Looking around, apparently Singh did propose increasing the WITB...but it'd get the extra money from his plan to means-test OAS. So even if that part of his policy may be worth considering, he tied it to a policy proposal that not even his own party endorses, and that'll probably pretty contentious if he tries using it as one of their policy plans in 2019.
Click to expand...

I hate this tying specific expenses to specific revenue. Logically there's just no need for it. Although it does make sense in that it's the way people actually think about spending, which is the topic the most recent Nobel in Economics was awarded for.

Anyway, today in Mr.Mike shares tax worksheets.

You start receiving WITB once you earn $3000 of working income, the rest of the numbers grow with inflation and vary based upon marital status, children, province and if you have a disability. Basically the amount of WITB you get grows until you hit a max and plateaus for a while, and eventually you start getting less the more you make, until you don't get any.

ugfpLqi.png


The idea is to help the working poor while encouraging them to work. So if anyone ever asks if the Harper government ever did anything good you can tell them about this. Also the universal child benefit thing that is known to do a really good job reducing child poverty, the one the Liberals re-branded, made more progressive and seem to have claimed as their own. Neither are policies the CPC invented, but they were both things tried elsewhere and shown to work very well and they were implemented here under the Harper government.
 
M

matthewwhatever

Member
mo60 said:
The mayoral election in Calgary has taken a crazy turn. The potential frontrunner Bill Smith has had to deal with potentially damaging story one after another in the few days or so like this one.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-bill-smith-lawsuit-real-estate-deal-1.4349741

The calgary mayoral race has possibly turned into a tossup or nenshi lead now.
Click to expand...

I think the Calgary mayoral election entered "crazy" territory when the NHL decided to get involved!
 
V

Vamphuntr

Member
firehawk12 said:
I honestly don't know if I should be happy or sad that Shomi died. :p

The weird thing about Netflix getting the 500 million is that I don't understand why they would give money to an American company when the CBC is always crying about how they're always broke. Is the idea that maybe people in America might watch whatever cheesy CanCon they fund?

Yes. lol
Click to expand...

It seems more like pandering to younger voters to me. I'm not talking about teens and young adults only but the average Netflix user that is savvy enough to use a streaming app. I doubt there is a ton of 35 years old and younger that watch more CBC than Netflix. Netflix can also give the illusion of having shows with worldwide renown which is rare for CBC/SRC

I'm expecting the 500 millions to go towards shows that Netflix usually do but shot and produced in Canada instead.

I would think more conservative voters would hate giving CBC more money too. Harper was trying hard to cut them down.


Mr.Mike said:
It occurs to me that transactions on the Steam Marketplace aren't taxed. Are microtransactions in games are taxed?
Click to expand...

Only if the company doing the billing for the microtransactions is in Canada.

--

In other news, La Presse is reporting that the US are trying to torpedo NAFTA with increasing ferocity.

US negotiators wants cars to be sold in the alliance territories to be made of at least 50% parts from the US. They also want a 3 years exit clause that void the agreement if all 3 countries don't all want to keep going after 3 years. They also appear to want to add a Buy American clause that would let them discard bids in order to favor the US market.

Apparently the worst has yet to come. Seems like Trump strategy will be to have such an awful offer that will force Canada and Mexico to pull out so he can blame them and have his way in the case he doesn't get his complete victory.
 
S

SRG01

Member
Vamphuntr said:
In other news, La Presse is reporting that the US are trying to torpedo NAFTA with increasing ferocity.

US negotiators wants cars to be sold in the alliance territories to be made of at least 50% parts from the US. They also want a 3 years exit clause that void the agreement if all 3 countries don't all want to keep going after 3 years. They also appear to want to add a Buy American clause that would let them discard bids in order to favor the US market.

Apparently the worst has yet to come. Seems like Trump strategy will be to have such an awful offer that will force Canada and Mexico to pull out so he can blame them and have his way in the case he doesn't get his complete victory.
Click to expand...

There are too many economic and business interests in the US to let NAFTA fail. If he torpedoes it, then it will be less than two months before Trump is out of office, guaranteed. More importantly, Republican donors will not stand for their businesses being demolished.

The Trump admin is literally digging themselves in a hole with these poison pills. It's a shame that they can't see it.
 
F

firehawk12

Subete no aware
Vamphuntr said:
It seems more like pandering to younger voters to me. I'm not talking about teens and young adults only but the average Netflix user that is savvy enough to use a streaming app. I doubt there is a ton of 35 years old and younger that watch more CBC than Netflix. Netflix can also give the illusion of having shows with worldwide renown which is rare for CBC/SRC

I'm expecting the 500 millions to go towards shows that Netflix usually do but shot and produced in Canada instead.

I would think more conservative voters would hate giving CBC more money too. Harper was trying hard to cut them down.
Click to expand...

I made the joke in the TV thread that the Liberals just paid Netflix 500 million dollars so that they could fund Star Trek for international audiences, since technically it's a Canadian show. :p
 
R

Random Human

They were trying to grab your prize. They work for the mercenary. The masked man.
I just heard on TV there's a "respected" poll showing CPC and Liberals tied federally - anyone know what poll that is?
 
M

matthewwhatever

Member
SRG01 said:
There are too many economic and business interests in the US to let NAFTA fail. If he torpedoes it, then it will be less than two months before Trump is out of office, guaranteed. More importantly, Republican donors will not stand for their businesses being demolished.

The Trump admin is literally digging themselves in a hole with these poison pills. It's a shame that they can't see it.
Click to expand...

It's pretty bizarre. I know that Bannon had visions of transforming the GOP into the party of protectionism, isolationism, and white supremacy, but that just seems like a disastrous idea in a two-party system. The demographics don't support it, and the possible margins of victory leave absolutely zero room for error.

From a Canadian perspective, I appreciate that the Trump team is being so transparently, cartoonishly evil in their attempts to kill off NAFTA. I don't think anyone could blame the Liberals for NAFTA dying with the number of painfully obvious poison pills Trump's team keeps trying to stick in there. I mean, I could see the CPC trying to turn it into something, but the rejoinder would be pretty obvious -- something like "We value our trade relationship with the United States, but the demands on the table were simply unacceptable." Like, 50% auto parts in all cars? A sunset clause? There's no way that'd be acceptable to anyone in the country.

Random Human said:
Is Forum respected? I thought they were kind of a joke.
Click to expand...

They absolutely are.

CBC had a good breakdown of the polls a few weeks ago. The gist of it was that certain pollsters (Forum, EKOS, Angus Reid) have been consistently finding better numbers for the Conservatives/worse numbers for the Liberals, while pollsters like Mainstreet, Ipsos and Nanos have had the numbers holding steady (with the Liberals well ahead) for months. I don't want to discount certain polls just because I disagree with them, but when the bad numbers for the Liberals are based on the CPC doing really well with women & younger voters, or on the Greens getting four times the support they did in 2015, I think there's good reason to be skeptical.
 
B

bremon

Member
matthewwhatever said:
I think the Calgary mayoral election entered "crazy" territory when the NHL decided to get involved!
Click to expand...
Weasel Bettman’s opinions would have me voting firmly in the Nenshi camp. We have a beautiful new building in Edmonton but I wasn’t a fan of building that beast either, and his and Katz “show” of going to Seattle had people outraged to a humorous level.

Voting on Monday in Edmonton! I don’t expect we will have a new mayor and that’s absolutely fine by me.
 
S

SRG01

Member
bremon said:
Weasel Bettman’s opinions would have me voting firmly in the Nenshi camp. We have a beautiful new building in Edmonton but I wasn’t a fan of building that beast either, and his and Katz “show” of going to Seattle had people outraged to a humorous level.

Voting on Monday in Edmonton! I don’t expect we will have a new mayor and that’s absolutely fine by me.
Click to expand...

The election is a dumpster fire. It's the first time I've actually been ashamed of my city.
 
M

maharg

idspispopd
This election in Edmonton is basically just a confirmation vote for current council and mayor. There's some stuff around school board trustees and LGBT issues, but that's pretty minor. There aren't even any outright 'bad' options for me there afaik in my district.

Can't really see much coming of it.
 
M

matthewwhatever

Member
SRG01 said:
The election is a dumpster fire. It's the first time I've actually been ashamed of my city.
Click to expand...

Johnny Jew!

If it makes you feel any better, I think municipal politics get embarrassing in every city. Toronto gets mocked for Rob Ford and Mel Lastman, but just off the top of my head, Ottawa had a mayor get charged with bribery just a few years ago, London's mayor had to resign a couple of years ago after being convicted of fraud, and there were a whole bunch of Quebec mayors taken out by a bribery probe not too long ago. I'm not saying that the current election reflects well on Calgary, but every city goes through it at some point, unfortunately.

killer rin said:
He's still trying to go all in on everything
Click to expand...

At some point, he may realize that it's a terrible strategy to try to turn everything into the worst policy/scandal ever, since it means people just tune you out. Opposition parties are more successful when they have an overarching narrative. Going all in on everything makes you sound flailing and desperate.
 
G

gabbo

Member
matthewwhatever said:
At some point, he may realize that it's a terrible strategy to try to turn everything into the worst policy/scandal ever, since it means people just tune you out. Opposition parties are more successful when they have an overarching narrative. Going all in on everything makes you sound flailing and desperate.
Click to expand...

That's their MO.
 
Z

Zzoram

Member
killer rin said:
He's still trying to go all in on everything
Click to expand...

Faux outrage is really irritating me nowadays. There are real issues to get worked up about, so pretending that something minor is the end of the world is grating.

Harper's more robotic style might be better than Scheer because at least he didn't come off as trying too hard to fake it.
 
G

gabbo

Member
Zzoram said:
Faux outrage is really irritating me nowadays. There are real issues to get worked up about, so pretending that something minor is the end of the world is grating.

Harper's more robotic style might be better than Scheer because at least he didn't come off as trying too hard to fake it.
Click to expand...

Harper's 'just human enough' was cold and detached (and creepy when he'd parade out cats), but it felt genuine - he clearly didn't want to fake caring. Scheer has gone overboard trying not to seem robotic at all. And it comes off creepy in a 'The Man Who Laughs' way. Hell, even Patrick Brown managed to seem approachable in his commercials, Scheer could learn from those.
 
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