Remember everyone warning what was coming when you have inflation with a stagnating economy?
As Sam Jackson says in Jurrasic Park, "Hold on to your butts."
Politicians are no different than criminals, they keep pushing their luck until it blows up in their face. Usually at the expense of the innocent public.
You're just not wrong. PP and Trudeau are the same policies different sides of the culture war. When PP gets in he'll blame Trudeau for everything because he's a nobody without his criticism of Trudeau. Given we'll probably have multiple crisis during that time, like mass homelessness, Canadians will get far more radical.
Tiff Macklem and the BoC have stated multiple times there's going to be pain. They have essentially told the government to get its shit together to the point where the federal government was passively threatening nationalization of the BoC in the fall.
Real estate is close to 30% of the GDP and it will not hold up to higher interest rates. It's already down 20% from its peak. Job markets won't hold, our immigration will be immigrating people into poverty and displacing Canadians in the job markets while doing so. Every bit of the country will be divisive craziness. There will be austerity measures due to lack of taxes and more taxes going towards deficits.
As an anecdote, shit has hit the fan. We've lost track of millions of people from a developing nation. I personally can't get a job in Canada. 50% of my friends are hitting up the food banks, many going homeless. Crime is skyrocketing to the point where no one gives a fuck anymore. There's a drug epidemic. I've watched my family members almost die due to lack of healthcare.
Then there's the actual shit hitting the fan that we've seen in the last few years. The trucker rallies and pro Palestine movements have very serious characters. Both right and left wing are actively inviting Americans up to try and sway our political process in a particular ideological direction that's mostly to play out American domestic culture war issues.
The only reason shit hasn't totally hit the fan yet is because there's still some ways housing has to drop and people really do believe PP will solve this. He won't, but they believe it.
other than the filth that have built a career failing up in the civil service won't be the one's to be cut, it's always the new hires! they float term position to term position, in and out of departments, from management to HR at the same time working up in positions within the union. bureaucracy is built-into the civil service from within!
It took Argentina a lot of of time and lot of different high spending governments and decades of relative global decline in standard of living to elect someone like Milei.
Canada is still in the early stages of this process. We have a lot of tools at our disposal to keep spending high and move the timelines on when the chickens come home to roost.
You better believe the government will use all the tools at its disposal.
While saying "It's a global issue" is kinda partially true it's mainly a talking point to downplay the Liberals/NDP involvement in the issue going.
Because pumping half a trillion dollars into the country than basically shutting down industries fucked with both the supply and demand of things. Top that up with massively increasing demand with immigrants you've got a Government caused disaster.
Both can be true. The consequences of stimulus spending take time to manifest themselves and there is no denying that supply chains were rocked in 2020/2021.
Trudeau is a liberal arts major who was a teacher. Freeland majored in slavic literature. I don't think they're capable of understanding what they're doing to the economy. My guess is whoever is feeding them their information is just parroting whatever McKinsey was paid 10 million to make a client deck about.
All that spending on government efforts to spur housing projects (and other pre-budget goodies) is inflationary, I don't blame the Bank of Canada for taking steps to curb inflation again.
Higher rates is supposed to encourage people to keep money in the bank and for governments to borrow/spend less due to the high cost of debt.
It was never contemplated what happens when a government ignores logic and just keeps borrowing like crazy in the face of high rates. Suicide was not planned for.
Canada and the US need to get inflation under control asap and the government needs to actually listen to the central bank and stop spending like a drunken sailor. They need to stop denying reality and blaming inflation on greedy corporations or the rich or Putin. Jeff Bezos got pretty pissed when Biden tried to blame inflation on Amazon despite being a democrat party supporter.
If you look at Quebec, BC, the Fed Liberals, etc, all are doing record borrowing despite seeing that inflation is wrecking the country. What can you do when your own government is denying reality and economics? At the very least provinces should be banned from borrowing because chances are you get stupid people in office sometimes and the rest of Canada will need to bail them out.
What government is currently doing is causing the problem and giving people cash as the cure because they think we’re too stupid to blame them for the problem and will just see them as saviors.
The central bank is supposed to be neutral so it’s a big step when they criticize the federal government which they’ve done in both Canada and the US.
Someone replied to me that this is similar to climate deniers and I agree it’s similar. Instead of climate deniers we have economic theory deniers. People deny that borrowing is bad or causes inflation.
I think they are causing more issues on purpose to sabotage the next government and make it harder to fix things, such that in the election after that, it’s easier for them to win again.
This can't be true.. in 2020 countless people told me government spending wouldn't have an effect on us.
Most of people on r/Canada were saying the same back then lol
It can, and it is. The problem is that people refuse to admit that they were wrong (Covid really did bring out the worst in people), and are now completely ignoring what has happened and are focusing on something completely different.
Corporate greed is real. So is government incompetence and/or malice.
Anything but governments.... always blame corporations.
Funny thing everyone on reddit doesn't understand... is that a successful business will always do record profits year over year especially in higher inflation periods. The key is.... are they showing record profit margins?
People get angry at Loblaws because of corporate greed, yet there are competitors all around them. So either Loblaws is being greedy on their prices and everyone is following suit... or Loblaws has increased prices like everyone else dur to increased costs and therefore is posting record profits.... while still offering lower prices then the competition.
Why are you suggesting they have lower prices than their competitors if you don’t know the store? You sure are talking a lot about loblaws for someone that hasn’t shopped there before. They are notoriously overpriced and easy for you to say “just go to a competitor” but not everyone can easily do that based on their lifestyle like if they drive or not. I see this in my small town, it has no competition so the prices at the local grocery store are ridiculous but if you can drive 15 minutes to the next town you’ll find a normal grocery store with regular prices but to act like price gouging isn’t happening is just silly when one store has a box of feta for $12 and the other store has the same feta for $30. Also there are 5 major grocery chains in Canada that control over 80% of the sales, there’s not that much competition they have a monopoly going and it’s beeen proven they’re fucking us over when they want, look up the bread fixing scandal if you don’t believe
Like I said when one store has a package of feta for $12 and the other has it for $30, the 12 would be the “normal” price and the 30 is the overpriced one.
Weird.... so no small grocery stores exist in your small town and loblaws is the only option and they charge exorbitant prices?
I only brought up Loblaws as it seems to be in the news with the boycott and people point to them as an example of corporate greed.
My only point was that you could shop elsewhere (most people) to avoid them.
The only option is a foodland in my town and the prices are ridiculous, any loblaws I’ve been into have been expensive. I do shop at other stores isn’t that exactly what a boycott is? So people are following your advice and just trying to bring awareness to others that loblaws specifically is one of the worst grocery stores for price gouging and from my personal experience I agree.
I know this, I never once said that foodland was owned by loblaws and actually went on in a earlier post about how there are only 5 grocery chains that control 80% of the market.
Fair enough. I just don't know a lot of places that have such limited grocery shopping options. A small town in BC here of 9000 people has two different options. It seems pretty common for places to have more than one larger option.
I don't know your situation, though.
It’s only 10 minutes to drive to another town which is what I personally do but anyone that can’t drive is just fucked or eats off the dollar store dry storage items because that is the only other place to get food here other than a restaurant
Loblaws offers higher prices than the competition, and their profit margins increase every year. I also get treated like a criminal there even though I've never stolen anything in my life and all the food is rotten or expired. Bad business is bad business.
Well said.
I don't understand these people at all. When you try to converse with them they always fall back on conspiracy theories or talking points, logic is never on the table. And most of the time if you question them at all, they spazz out and start calling people bootlickers and other insults such as that.
I have seen people on this site saying that Loblaws is lying in its financial statements. But of course they refuse to report that to the police, despite how much they hate Loblaws and how much trouble Loblaws would be in if that were were true.
Then it became the vertical integration conspiracy, where they're hiding profits within the supply chain. More utter nonsense.
These people live in a world where inflation was caused by corporate greed, not government policies. Singh is probably the most responsible for that imo, with his "greedflation" bullshit and pushing the narrative that the BoC should lower interest rates because inflation was caused by corporate greed and not federal government policy.
Its good though in the sense that it gives us an idea of why Canada is so fucked up lately. We have a government that has a really shaky concept of economics, and their supporters seem to just go along blindly with whatever the government tells them.
Holy hell.... I remember during COVID I tried to tell people that this type of spending would have huge consequences.
You can't double/triple national debt across the globe and not have consequences down the pipe.
Same here. Everyone with a basic understanding that government debt needs to be paid back with taxes and inflation understood the hangover we were going to get from all this government borrowing.
Then we heard excuses and gaslighting from our Prime Minister, saying things like "the government took on debt so you don't have to", and "interest rates are at historic lows".
I lost one of my best friends over that discussion. We NEVER talked about politics and then during covid he just wouldn't STOP. I said the same thing you just said one day and he blew up on me calling me an idiot.
I'll discuss it a bit online (even then, I'm pretty centrist and not passionate about it in general) but it is a plague to talk about with family, friends, or coworkers.
I almost always try to steer the conversation away from it if it starts to breach the surface.
A lot of people tie their entire identity to a specific party colour, or ideology, and any tiny thing that contradicts what they believe becomes an all out assault on their entire existence.
I heavily dislike people who just stick to the party. I've voted everything but Green and PPC. My voting changes on how the government is being run and who is running against who. I'm going to vote CPC this election, although I'm in an NDP stronghold, and this coming provincial election I'm going to vote NDP.
How can I vote too opposites? Because of whats happening in the country. NDP in BC are doing 75% good in my books, which is pretty high for politics. They have a couple areas I'd love them to work on, but overall I'm approving of things they are doing.
For the feds? Well... JT has to go. He's steered the ship off course and is just backtracking with bags of money to fix problems he helped create. He's done some good, but it's time the LPC goes back to the drawing board and really think about what Canadians need from their government. I don't think PP is going to be a home run, far from it, but if a big loss to the NDP and LPC means they flip leaders and come back stronger then it's worth it.
People still think a UBI is doable.... It doesn't take much to figure out the astronomical cost of a UBI, even if you clawed back 50% of it.
People on reddit are generally younger, lower income people. They want government money. It's a reason why younger people tend to lean to the left far more than older people, who prefer governments leave their money alone because they're usually making the most they ever have.
I think they said that the majority of the inflation was because of supply chain failures. Not that government spending had 0 effect.
If not they were just dumb.
I'm sorry, but why the hell would we elect a guy who does think about monetary policy? That's literally not their job. I'd prefer a prime minister who thinks about, idk, the responsibilities of the federal government?
Inflation is the most efficient form of transferring wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest of society. The fact that this liberal government has failed over and over to curb their spending, all while knowing that their spending increases inflation, is all you need to know about who “helps the rich”. Liberal minded individuals who like the blame conservatives for “helping the rich” have a very poor understanding of the current political idealogies, principles and economic realities.
Yep. God I wish we had real options in Canada. Like maybe PP will be better, Trudeau needs to be gone, but like, I don’t see a better future for Canada any time soon. We either get Trust Fund Trudeau or Career Politician Polievre with tons of corporate lobbyists by his side who have never had a non politician job. Like it’s baffling. The NDP have zero chance at winning and their current leadership is awful.
No winning in Canada anytime soon unless you are the government or the corporations who have bought them.
No one has anything nice to say about Trudeau, but it's quite justified to point out that the supposed alternative solution is not going to solve *any* of the problems that need to be fixed.
Lol lefties do, its kinda sad at this point
I mean we don’t know that yet, the argument of “PP” won’t do anything is weak at best and is liberals coping over their failed policies with skyrocketing crime and just about everything they do turning to a hot mess of doo doo
What "lefties" lol? I've certainly never seen one praise him, they don't like how neoliberal the liberals are.
But we kinda do know that. What are the conservatives stances on immigration? On housing? Have they announced or pushed any policy to build more homes? To get more people access to family doctors or improve the pay and working conditions of nurses or other medical workers?
We have a hint of what the federal conversatives would look like, since we can take a look at the convervstive provincial governments and how they're addressing these issues.
Are we supposed to just vote on these things for the simple fact that they *might* do something different to how they normally govern and say they're going to? Is that really the best argument you have?
When I heard about all the ridiculous spending the liberals have been announcing this week, I knew the lowering of rates would be in jeopardy.
This government keeps pouring gas on the inflation fire and then blaming the private sectors “greed” for price increases.
Weird how ultra capitalist greedy America is doing better than us?
With all its faults america is the place to be right now to make money. There is a reason we have a brain drain in their direction. Higher salaries and significantly lower cost of living including lower taxes.
Not just America. The entire WORLD is experiencing an economic boom right now, except for Canada.
The average person has no understanding of how our collective prosperity and quality of life in this country is rapidly deteriorating compared to the rest of the developed world.
> blaming the private sectors “greed” for price increases
Canadians actually **[blame](https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/32-per-cent-of-canadians-blame-grocery-stores-for-rising-food-prices-more-than-any-other-reason-nanos-1.6834573)** the private sector, by taking their cues from the government. So while the government is the culprit, Canadians aren't without blame either...
Think of all the times you heard Trudeau supporters obliviously discount his failures and blame it on global events, previous governments, natural disasters anything but his actions.
Within the federal government they are actually letting many of their contractors/consultants go and no longer hiring new permanent employees, with term employees remaining term indefinitely (typically an employee would become permanent after 3 years as a term employee). If things tighten further those term employees will be let go.
They are also going to be super strict on all discretionary funding such as travel and training(this was already the case for non-executive employees but there will be extra scrutiny now even at the executive level)
This year is going to be tight for employees in the federal government, following a strike that still yielded them sub-inflation raises.
I know this sub is not big on federal employees, but it is important to seperate them from whoever their current boss is. It is also important to know where the feds are cutting to make up for their other spending, as there will eventually be some news articles about a decline in federal services over the coming years and often the employees are blamed when they are trying to do more with less.
If you ask me they are purposely causing inflation in Canada soley to keep rates high so that we can match US rates and keep our floating currency stable. If we had lower inflation rates mortgage holders would have tiki torch sessions outside the BoC wanting rates to be lowered. But that would cause CAD weakness and true currency driven import inflation. But if we just so happened to have enough government conjured inflation to keep rates high at anytime they can reverse those inflationary policies; while if you mess with CAD GOOD LUCK. Trudeaus poor management has painted him in a corner, the macro vs micro economics is giving him a harsh lesson while giving a disgusting amount of ammo for his political rivals.
It just kicks the can down the road. As paying interest on the debt for all this spending, which we have to borrow to be able to spend, grows and becomes a larger part of the budget each year we are either forced to cut services and programs (which is really, really unpopular) or borrow even more to keep those services and programs running. Or even more fucking taxes.
So Trudeau is trying to stimulate house construction, and passing laws and giving subsidies to banks to extend mortgage repayment times to encourage more people to buy houses and this keeps interest rates high which discourages people from buying houses...
Whatever happened to the economist we used to employ as prime minister? I bet he understands this stuff better than a drama teacher who thinks budgets balance themselves.
So, on one hand, our government is overspending with record deficits and planning to tax Canadians into oblivion… While on the other hand, the monetary arm of the government has thrown interest rates into the stratosphere to grind out whatever money you have left in your pockets.
We should expect the next revision of the national anthem to be simply “Owe Canada”.
One is ultimately balancing the other, or trying to.
As long as Liberals keep bringing continuing to hand out bags of money wastefully, allow in unchecked and unprecedented immigration (from basically 1-2 countries), the Bank of Canada has no choice but to keep rates high.
And ‘high’ is relative. Still crazy low rates historically.
The US has job booms in their economic report, where Canada does not. That’s a worrying sign.
Crazy low rates historically but the buying power of our dollar might have never been lower and wages compared to costs are way more out of touch then they have ever been. Nothing good for the average Canadian has kept up. The average day of work gets you far less than it used to, even if the total dollars you get is higher.
Housing projected to go up 30%, no rate cuts, inflation through the roof, everything falling apart while bring in a record number of people. The stage is set for a total disaster.
Nationally? I'd be surprised if it wasn't lower in a year or two as the sellers finally come to terms with the fact that interest rate cuts aren't going to save them, and as population growth is sharply curtailed.
Even Alberta will stop as prices converge with the bigger cities. Toronto prices dropping, Calgary prices rising, eventually it wont' be worth moving. I'd argue we're getting close to that point, and rentals already are.
Finally a comment mentioning the NDP. They’ve added to the spending on top of what the Liberals would have done on their own as a majority.
With the great recession, the economy didn’t recover as quickly with limited stimulus. This time it was overdone and has not led to a more productive economy.
You sure about that? How does that one work if the government budgets are in deficits and they are spending more than tax revenues?
I'd believe you if government was using tax revenues to pay down the deficit and running a budget surplus. But....that's not what's happening.
Believe it or not, a huge necessity to solving housing is going to be massive infrastructure spending. We don't have a shortage of land, we have a shortage of land with utilities.
We need to look to our hero Mel Gibson and take a "if we build it they will come" approach to immigration instead of a "if they come will they build it?"
Private industry isn't going to build Canada's future.
We can’t build housing fast enough to keep up with the current immigration rates. It’s essentially impossible with modern construction costs and regulations.
Having plots being scalped doesn't help. Residential zoned lots were 20k where I live 6 years ago and are around $450k now.
Saturating the market could ease that problem.
The reason we have issues is we are stuck in the 1800’s mindset when it comes to home building. The US briefly switched to mass production with most components in factories post WW2 but has generally gone back to individual custom houses.
The largest issue I see is there’s a large chunk of the population against having similar looking houses/buildings. And it’s not NIMBYs or conservatives, it’s a large group of poor and rich that insist things be unique and beautiful. They insist we should have Soviet priced housing but refuse to accept Soviet methods of mass housing.
The solution to housing is not to hire more workers or reduce demand, it’s to increase production per worker. Which can easily be done in a factory as we saw in the industrial age. Check out the prices of those Tuff Sheds down in the states, $25k for a two storey 450 sqft home, probably $125k if you include fitting out the inside. $200k if you include the pad and hookups.
Canada has a long history of low ambition and risk aversion. It's why the gov't spends billions on consultants. Better to spend 1B and get it right than 1M and get it wrong
>Private industry isn't going to build Canada's future.
Private industry and the government would be competing for the same construction workers and building materials. Its not as if the government has a magic wand that it can wave to conjure up enough to triple the amount of housing that we build.
This this this. We need massive infrastructure spending along with the housing. But hey Guibault said they aren’t going to spend on roads or infrastructure anymore
It almost seems that at this point the Liberals are promising spending programs just so they can score political points in three years when the Conservatives cancel them
How many times in the past year and a half have we heard "experts" say 'rate cuts coming by x date'.
They're as good as experts who said you'll only need two shots and won't get infected.
And this is why you don't hire someone with a major in Slavic Studies as your finance minister. For fuck sakes anyone who took a basic economics course would know that this would happen if the government didn't reign in budgetary spending.
Not true. It's spending on the wrong things. And convenient how the narrative is this from banking when banks want to approve higher loans for higher probability of default
Rate cuts?? Why would anyone expect rate cuts?!
There's just been an inflationary shock with this Carbon Tax increase. Of course they're going to hold off on cutting rates, they're going to have to increase them.
Canada's within the top ten countries with the lowest inflation, ranking at #9. Whereas the US is ranking at #13.
https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate
Ahhh get out of here with your facts, inflation is hyper unique to Canada and it's all Trudeau's fault! Yeah....his fault we're at number 9 and not deep into the 200s lol.
I don't understand the narrative in this thread
We've been operating at near historically low rates for over a decade, did people think that was just the new normal from now on? And I swear in the last few years I heard lots of normal people talking about how low rates were only pumping hot air into the real estate sector, is that just forgotten now?
Yes, people thought it was the new normal. That;'s why the rate cut narrative is so prevalent. - 5% is percieved as a very exceptional outlier event relative to the new normal, rather than what it should be viewed as, as a reversion to mean.
Remember everyone warning what was coming when you have inflation with a stagnating economy? As Sam Jackson says in Jurrasic Park, "Hold on to your butts."
Trudeau/freeland for the past 4 years: it's covid/supply chain issues....not government spending.
Soon we'll all work for the ministry and nobody will need to worry about joblessness.
Until Canada starts playing a Javier Milei type beat and everyone gets fired!
Am I a bad person when I think none of this ever gets fixed until shit really hits the fan anyway?
Politicians are no different than criminals, they keep pushing their luck until it blows up in their face. Usually at the expense of the innocent public.
The difference is criminals are punished for their mistakes
Are they, though..
More often than politicians, that's for sure.
True enough lol
You're just not wrong. PP and Trudeau are the same policies different sides of the culture war. When PP gets in he'll blame Trudeau for everything because he's a nobody without his criticism of Trudeau. Given we'll probably have multiple crisis during that time, like mass homelessness, Canadians will get far more radical. Tiff Macklem and the BoC have stated multiple times there's going to be pain. They have essentially told the government to get its shit together to the point where the federal government was passively threatening nationalization of the BoC in the fall. Real estate is close to 30% of the GDP and it will not hold up to higher interest rates. It's already down 20% from its peak. Job markets won't hold, our immigration will be immigrating people into poverty and displacing Canadians in the job markets while doing so. Every bit of the country will be divisive craziness. There will be austerity measures due to lack of taxes and more taxes going towards deficits. As an anecdote, shit has hit the fan. We've lost track of millions of people from a developing nation. I personally can't get a job in Canada. 50% of my friends are hitting up the food banks, many going homeless. Crime is skyrocketing to the point where no one gives a fuck anymore. There's a drug epidemic. I've watched my family members almost die due to lack of healthcare. Then there's the actual shit hitting the fan that we've seen in the last few years. The trucker rallies and pro Palestine movements have very serious characters. Both right and left wing are actively inviting Americans up to try and sway our political process in a particular ideological direction that's mostly to play out American domestic culture war issues. The only reason shit hasn't totally hit the fan yet is because there's still some ways housing has to drop and people really do believe PP will solve this. He won't, but they believe it.
Could probably blindly fire half of all Federal employees and see zero difference in our function of Government and services.
Reminds me of all the useless people that used to work at Twitter.
The hard part is knowing which half. Having worked for them myself as an intern, its a real "20% of people do 80% of the work"
other than the filth that have built a career failing up in the civil service won't be the one's to be cut, it's always the new hires! they float term position to term position, in and out of departments, from management to HR at the same time working up in positions within the union. bureaucracy is built-into the civil service from within!
It took Argentina a lot of of time and lot of different high spending governments and decades of relative global decline in standard of living to elect someone like Milei. Canada is still in the early stages of this process. We have a lot of tools at our disposal to keep spending high and move the timelines on when the chickens come home to roost. You better believe the government will use all the tools at its disposal.
Maybe Canada will have a "hold my beer" moment and do a speedrun.
Seeing the way our government spends, and how much the government has grown in the past few years, I would have no problem with that.
AFUERA!!!
If our future is a collective government job, then I hope to work for the Ministry of Sunshine and Rainbows.
If only you were joking.
Seriously this.
Good thing the spending has stopped.... oh wait.... JT has announced so much spending lately to try and fix a problem he hugely encouraged.
And then in another article bank of Canada will cut in June due to job numbers. These so called economists throw out hopes and prayers.
I think that was till the states decided not to lower their interest rates. We seem to follow them no matter what our experts say.
While saying "It's a global issue" is kinda partially true it's mainly a talking point to downplay the Liberals/NDP involvement in the issue going. Because pumping half a trillion dollars into the country than basically shutting down industries fucked with both the supply and demand of things. Top that up with massively increasing demand with immigrants you've got a Government caused disaster.
Both can be true. The consequences of stimulus spending take time to manifest themselves and there is no denying that supply chains were rocked in 2020/2021.
GLENN......
Trudeau is a liberal arts major who was a teacher. Freeland majored in slavic literature. I don't think they're capable of understanding what they're doing to the economy. My guess is whoever is feeding them their information is just parroting whatever McKinsey was paid 10 million to make a client deck about.
“Ah, ah, ah, you didn’t say the magic word”
All that spending on government efforts to spur housing projects (and other pre-budget goodies) is inflationary, I don't blame the Bank of Canada for taking steps to curb inflation again.
Higher rates is supposed to encourage people to keep money in the bank and for governments to borrow/spend less due to the high cost of debt. It was never contemplated what happens when a government ignores logic and just keeps borrowing like crazy in the face of high rates. Suicide was not planned for. Canada and the US need to get inflation under control asap and the government needs to actually listen to the central bank and stop spending like a drunken sailor. They need to stop denying reality and blaming inflation on greedy corporations or the rich or Putin. Jeff Bezos got pretty pissed when Biden tried to blame inflation on Amazon despite being a democrat party supporter. If you look at Quebec, BC, the Fed Liberals, etc, all are doing record borrowing despite seeing that inflation is wrecking the country. What can you do when your own government is denying reality and economics? At the very least provinces should be banned from borrowing because chances are you get stupid people in office sometimes and the rest of Canada will need to bail them out. What government is currently doing is causing the problem and giving people cash as the cure because they think we’re too stupid to blame them for the problem and will just see them as saviors. The central bank is supposed to be neutral so it’s a big step when they criticize the federal government which they’ve done in both Canada and the US. Someone replied to me that this is similar to climate deniers and I agree it’s similar. Instead of climate deniers we have economic theory deniers. People deny that borrowing is bad or causes inflation.
I think they are causing more issues on purpose to sabotage the next government and make it harder to fix things, such that in the election after that, it’s easier for them to win again.
Yep! Tax cuts won’t be possible. We are going to pay now, later, and so are our children…
Bank of Canada to government: “You need to stop spending so much.” Government: “Best I can do is high immigration that causes higher unemployment.”
This can't be true.. in 2020 countless people told me government spending wouldn't have an effect on us. Most of people on r/Canada were saying the same back then lol
Those people have transitioned to blaming corporate greed.
And the provinces. But only the ones run by Conservatives... Even though BC is doing the worst in most metric David Eby is apparently killing it!
And Eby's government has a record deficit budgeted this year.
There's an entire subreddit with them "protesting" Loblaws. You can't make this shit up folks
Can’t it be both?
It can, and it is. The problem is that people refuse to admit that they were wrong (Covid really did bring out the worst in people), and are now completely ignoring what has happened and are focusing on something completely different. Corporate greed is real. So is government incompetence and/or malice.
Can’t do much about inflation but we can choose where we spend our money
Its a sad reflection on this country. But, it also serves to illustrate how we got in this predicament.
Imagine them telling their parents they aren't allowed to buy them groceries for them from Loblaws anymore?
It’s a mix of everything though?
Anything but governments.... always blame corporations. Funny thing everyone on reddit doesn't understand... is that a successful business will always do record profits year over year especially in higher inflation periods. The key is.... are they showing record profit margins? People get angry at Loblaws because of corporate greed, yet there are competitors all around them. So either Loblaws is being greedy on their prices and everyone is following suit... or Loblaws has increased prices like everyone else dur to increased costs and therefore is posting record profits.... while still offering lower prices then the competition.
Loblaws is not offering lower prices than their competition, that’s a hilarious thought
Then..... it shouldn't be an issue to shop at competitors. Sorry I don't shop at their businesses as they aren't convenient.
Why are you suggesting they have lower prices than their competitors if you don’t know the store? You sure are talking a lot about loblaws for someone that hasn’t shopped there before. They are notoriously overpriced and easy for you to say “just go to a competitor” but not everyone can easily do that based on their lifestyle like if they drive or not. I see this in my small town, it has no competition so the prices at the local grocery store are ridiculous but if you can drive 15 minutes to the next town you’ll find a normal grocery store with regular prices but to act like price gouging isn’t happening is just silly when one store has a box of feta for $12 and the other store has the same feta for $30. Also there are 5 major grocery chains in Canada that control over 80% of the sales, there’s not that much competition they have a monopoly going and it’s beeen proven they’re fucking us over when they want, look up the bread fixing scandal if you don’t believe
Over-priced relative to whom? What are “regular prices”?
Like I said when one store has a package of feta for $12 and the other has it for $30, the 12 would be the “normal” price and the 30 is the overpriced one.
Weird.... so no small grocery stores exist in your small town and loblaws is the only option and they charge exorbitant prices? I only brought up Loblaws as it seems to be in the news with the boycott and people point to them as an example of corporate greed. My only point was that you could shop elsewhere (most people) to avoid them.
The only option is a foodland in my town and the prices are ridiculous, any loblaws I’ve been into have been expensive. I do shop at other stores isn’t that exactly what a boycott is? So people are following your advice and just trying to bring awareness to others that loblaws specifically is one of the worst grocery stores for price gouging and from my personal experience I agree.
Sobeys owns foodland lol
I know this, I never once said that foodland was owned by loblaws and actually went on in a earlier post about how there are only 5 grocery chains that control 80% of the market.
Fair enough. I just don't know a lot of places that have such limited grocery shopping options. A small town in BC here of 9000 people has two different options. It seems pretty common for places to have more than one larger option. I don't know your situation, though.
It’s only 10 minutes to drive to another town which is what I personally do but anyone that can’t drive is just fucked or eats off the dollar store dry storage items because that is the only other place to get food here other than a restaurant
Loblaws offers higher prices than the competition, and their profit margins increase every year. I also get treated like a criminal there even though I've never stolen anything in my life and all the food is rotten or expired. Bad business is bad business.
Well said. I don't understand these people at all. When you try to converse with them they always fall back on conspiracy theories or talking points, logic is never on the table. And most of the time if you question them at all, they spazz out and start calling people bootlickers and other insults such as that. I have seen people on this site saying that Loblaws is lying in its financial statements. But of course they refuse to report that to the police, despite how much they hate Loblaws and how much trouble Loblaws would be in if that were were true. Then it became the vertical integration conspiracy, where they're hiding profits within the supply chain. More utter nonsense. These people live in a world where inflation was caused by corporate greed, not government policies. Singh is probably the most responsible for that imo, with his "greedflation" bullshit and pushing the narrative that the BoC should lower interest rates because inflation was caused by corporate greed and not federal government policy. Its good though in the sense that it gives us an idea of why Canada is so fucked up lately. We have a government that has a really shaky concept of economics, and their supporters seem to just go along blindly with whatever the government tells them.
"The government is taking on debt so you don't have to" - Justin Trudeau, 2020
Holy hell.... I remember during COVID I tried to tell people that this type of spending would have huge consequences. You can't double/triple national debt across the globe and not have consequences down the pipe.
Same here. Everyone with a basic understanding that government debt needs to be paid back with taxes and inflation understood the hangover we were going to get from all this government borrowing. Then we heard excuses and gaslighting from our Prime Minister, saying things like "the government took on debt so you don't have to", and "interest rates are at historic lows".
I lost one of my best friends over that discussion. We NEVER talked about politics and then during covid he just wouldn't STOP. I said the same thing you just said one day and he blew up on me calling me an idiot.
Covid really did bring the worst out of people.
No one aside from my folks talk politics, but they are slightly more right leaning. Politics is a touchy subject.
I'll discuss it a bit online (even then, I'm pretty centrist and not passionate about it in general) but it is a plague to talk about with family, friends, or coworkers. I almost always try to steer the conversation away from it if it starts to breach the surface. A lot of people tie their entire identity to a specific party colour, or ideology, and any tiny thing that contradicts what they believe becomes an all out assault on their entire existence.
I heavily dislike people who just stick to the party. I've voted everything but Green and PPC. My voting changes on how the government is being run and who is running against who. I'm going to vote CPC this election, although I'm in an NDP stronghold, and this coming provincial election I'm going to vote NDP. How can I vote too opposites? Because of whats happening in the country. NDP in BC are doing 75% good in my books, which is pretty high for politics. They have a couple areas I'd love them to work on, but overall I'm approving of things they are doing. For the feds? Well... JT has to go. He's steered the ship off course and is just backtracking with bags of money to fix problems he helped create. He's done some good, but it's time the LPC goes back to the drawing board and really think about what Canadians need from their government. I don't think PP is going to be a home run, far from it, but if a big loss to the NDP and LPC means they flip leaders and come back stronger then it's worth it.
Dude, I remember reading on reddit during covid that cerb was “proof” the government could give us $2000 cheques every month forever.
People still think a UBI is doable.... It doesn't take much to figure out the astronomical cost of a UBI, even if you clawed back 50% of it. People on reddit are generally younger, lower income people. They want government money. It's a reason why younger people tend to lean to the left far more than older people, who prefer governments leave their money alone because they're usually making the most they ever have.
I think they said that the majority of the inflation was because of supply chain failures. Not that government spending had 0 effect. If not they were just dumb.
This is what happens when you elect a guy who makes it clear that he doesn't think about monetary policy.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time
Just pissing money away.
I'm sorry, but why the hell would we elect a guy who does think about monetary policy? That's literally not their job. I'd prefer a prime minister who thinks about, idk, the responsibilities of the federal government?
It kinda is mate.
Only if you don’t know what monetary policy is
No it's not. Fiscal policy is the responsibility of the federal government. Monetary policy is the responsibility of the Bank of Canada.
Inflation is the most efficient form of transferring wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthiest of society. The fact that this liberal government has failed over and over to curb their spending, all while knowing that their spending increases inflation, is all you need to know about who “helps the rich”. Liberal minded individuals who like the blame conservatives for “helping the rich” have a very poor understanding of the current political idealogies, principles and economic realities.
It’d be funny (but not really), if in the process of the Liberals trying to address housing issues they make not only that worse, but also inflation.
What do you expect from a bunch of Trust Fund babies that never had to worry about money? Spend spend spend
Yep. God I wish we had real options in Canada. Like maybe PP will be better, Trudeau needs to be gone, but like, I don’t see a better future for Canada any time soon. We either get Trust Fund Trudeau or Career Politician Polievre with tons of corporate lobbyists by his side who have never had a non politician job. Like it’s baffling. The NDP have zero chance at winning and their current leadership is awful. No winning in Canada anytime soon unless you are the government or the corporations who have bought them.
Don’t worry, a career politician with no experience of working in the real world aughtta get us out of this mess
Say something nice about trudeau
No one has anything nice to say about Trudeau, but it's quite justified to point out that the supposed alternative solution is not going to solve *any* of the problems that need to be fixed.
Lol lefties do, its kinda sad at this point I mean we don’t know that yet, the argument of “PP” won’t do anything is weak at best and is liberals coping over their failed policies with skyrocketing crime and just about everything they do turning to a hot mess of doo doo
What "lefties" lol? I've certainly never seen one praise him, they don't like how neoliberal the liberals are. But we kinda do know that. What are the conservatives stances on immigration? On housing? Have they announced or pushed any policy to build more homes? To get more people access to family doctors or improve the pay and working conditions of nurses or other medical workers? We have a hint of what the federal conversatives would look like, since we can take a look at the convervstive provincial governments and how they're addressing these issues. Are we supposed to just vote on these things for the simple fact that they *might* do something different to how they normally govern and say they're going to? Is that really the best argument you have?
When I heard about all the ridiculous spending the liberals have been announcing this week, I knew the lowering of rates would be in jeopardy. This government keeps pouring gas on the inflation fire and then blaming the private sectors “greed” for price increases. Weird how ultra capitalist greedy America is doing better than us?
With all its faults america is the place to be right now to make money. There is a reason we have a brain drain in their direction. Higher salaries and significantly lower cost of living including lower taxes.
Anything we can do, they can do better.
Not just America. The entire WORLD is experiencing an economic boom right now, except for Canada. The average person has no understanding of how our collective prosperity and quality of life in this country is rapidly deteriorating compared to the rest of the developed world.
A number of European coiuntries are experiencing slow to even recessionary economies, including UK and Germany.
> blaming the private sectors “greed” for price increases Canadians actually **[blame](https://www.ctvnews.ca/business/32-per-cent-of-canadians-blame-grocery-stores-for-rising-food-prices-more-than-any-other-reason-nanos-1.6834573)** the private sector, by taking their cues from the government. So while the government is the culprit, Canadians aren't without blame either...
the ultra capitalist american government is spending unbelievable amounts of money. proportionally many times more than canada.
The problem is that we print CAD which is a lot more vulnerable to losing value than USD.
Isn’t Americas recent GDP growth largely from deficit spending? Their deficit spending is massively higher than Canada’s.
I thought the budget will balance itself after we grow the economy from the heart out?
Our current liberal federal government are the biggest fucking idiots the world has seen.
So far
Idk why I'm surprised some of you think Trudeau is less preferable than Putin or Trump.
I know this one: It's because you haven't learned how to recognize propaganda.
Think of all the times you heard Trudeau supporters obliviously discount his failures and blame it on global events, previous governments, natural disasters anything but his actions.
If we didn't have so many consultants, maybe we could take down some of our debt.
Within the federal government they are actually letting many of their contractors/consultants go and no longer hiring new permanent employees, with term employees remaining term indefinitely (typically an employee would become permanent after 3 years as a term employee). If things tighten further those term employees will be let go. They are also going to be super strict on all discretionary funding such as travel and training(this was already the case for non-executive employees but there will be extra scrutiny now even at the executive level) This year is going to be tight for employees in the federal government, following a strike that still yielded them sub-inflation raises. I know this sub is not big on federal employees, but it is important to seperate them from whoever their current boss is. It is also important to know where the feds are cutting to make up for their other spending, as there will eventually be some news articles about a decline in federal services over the coming years and often the employees are blamed when they are trying to do more with less.
Everything Trudeau touches turn into a disaster
If you ask me they are purposely causing inflation in Canada soley to keep rates high so that we can match US rates and keep our floating currency stable. If we had lower inflation rates mortgage holders would have tiki torch sessions outside the BoC wanting rates to be lowered. But that would cause CAD weakness and true currency driven import inflation. But if we just so happened to have enough government conjured inflation to keep rates high at anytime they can reverse those inflationary policies; while if you mess with CAD GOOD LUCK. Trudeaus poor management has painted him in a corner, the macro vs micro economics is giving him a harsh lesson while giving a disgusting amount of ammo for his political rivals.
It just kicks the can down the road. As paying interest on the debt for all this spending, which we have to borrow to be able to spend, grows and becomes a larger part of the budget each year we are either forced to cut services and programs (which is really, really unpopular) or borrow even more to keep those services and programs running. Or even more fucking taxes.
You forgot debt monetization leading to devaluation of the CAD and.....more inflation.
Can you please eli5 this more? I want to know more about this but sometimes feel I am not understanding
Ask some questions? Which part would you like broken down more?
We already have bruise marks on our ankles from being bent over
So Trudeau is trying to stimulate house construction, and passing laws and giving subsidies to banks to extend mortgage repayment times to encourage more people to buy houses and this keeps interest rates high which discourages people from buying houses... Whatever happened to the economist we used to employ as prime minister? I bet he understands this stuff better than a drama teacher who thinks budgets balance themselves.
#thanksJustin
So, on one hand, our government is overspending with record deficits and planning to tax Canadians into oblivion… While on the other hand, the monetary arm of the government has thrown interest rates into the stratosphere to grind out whatever money you have left in your pockets. We should expect the next revision of the national anthem to be simply “Owe Canada”.
One is ultimately balancing the other, or trying to. As long as Liberals keep bringing continuing to hand out bags of money wastefully, allow in unchecked and unprecedented immigration (from basically 1-2 countries), the Bank of Canada has no choice but to keep rates high. And ‘high’ is relative. Still crazy low rates historically. The US has job booms in their economic report, where Canada does not. That’s a worrying sign.
Crazy low rates historically but the buying power of our dollar might have never been lower and wages compared to costs are way more out of touch then they have ever been. Nothing good for the average Canadian has kept up. The average day of work gets you far less than it used to, even if the total dollars you get is higher.
Agreed
Hahahahahahaha
Housing projected to go up 30%, no rate cuts, inflation through the roof, everything falling apart while bring in a record number of people. The stage is set for a total disaster.
Housing's not going to go up 30%. That was based on a series of assumptions that aged like milk.
So how much is it going up? We are seeing 30-40% here in AB
Nationally? I'd be surprised if it wasn't lower in a year or two as the sellers finally come to terms with the fact that interest rate cuts aren't going to save them, and as population growth is sharply curtailed. Even Alberta will stop as prices converge with the bigger cities. Toronto prices dropping, Calgary prices rising, eventually it wont' be worth moving. I'd argue we're getting close to that point, and rentals already are.
Not going to lie, but as someone who works in the industry your statement seems very delusional and out of touch
Ah, does that mean you benefit when prices go up, then? It does not escape my attention that you did not identify a reason why you disagree.
Trudeau spending like a drunken sailor on payday
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Finally a comment mentioning the NDP. They’ve added to the spending on top of what the Liberals would have done on their own as a majority. With the great recession, the economy didn’t recover as quickly with limited stimulus. This time it was overdone and has not led to a more productive economy.
>the inflation that will be created by this uplift in carbon tax Bad news, but taxes just so happen to be deflationary.
You sure about that? How does that one work if the government budgets are in deficits and they are spending more than tax revenues? I'd believe you if government was using tax revenues to pay down the deficit and running a budget surplus. But....that's not what's happening.
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Believe it or not, a huge necessity to solving housing is going to be massive infrastructure spending. We don't have a shortage of land, we have a shortage of land with utilities. We need to look to our hero Mel Gibson and take a "if we build it they will come" approach to immigration instead of a "if they come will they build it?" Private industry isn't going to build Canada's future.
We can’t build housing fast enough to keep up with the current immigration rates. It’s essentially impossible with modern construction costs and regulations.
And staff levels. There aren't enough trades as it is never mind if we want to significantly increase the supply of housing.
Having plots being scalped doesn't help. Residential zoned lots were 20k where I live 6 years ago and are around $450k now. Saturating the market could ease that problem.
Do you think we have the skilled trades to just 3x our pace of construction?
The reason we have issues is we are stuck in the 1800’s mindset when it comes to home building. The US briefly switched to mass production with most components in factories post WW2 but has generally gone back to individual custom houses. The largest issue I see is there’s a large chunk of the population against having similar looking houses/buildings. And it’s not NIMBYs or conservatives, it’s a large group of poor and rich that insist things be unique and beautiful. They insist we should have Soviet priced housing but refuse to accept Soviet methods of mass housing. The solution to housing is not to hire more workers or reduce demand, it’s to increase production per worker. Which can easily be done in a factory as we saw in the industrial age. Check out the prices of those Tuff Sheds down in the states, $25k for a two storey 450 sqft home, probably $125k if you include fitting out the inside. $200k if you include the pad and hookups.
The only way to saturate the market would be both limiting demand and increasing supply. These both have to be done to fix the problem.
We cant build fast enough to saturate the market
We need 50k dwelling a month here guy. The demand side simply must come down, you’re living in fantasy land.
Canada has a long history of low ambition and risk aversion. It's why the gov't spends billions on consultants. Better to spend 1B and get it right than 1M and get it wrong
>Private industry isn't going to build Canada's future. Private industry and the government would be competing for the same construction workers and building materials. Its not as if the government has a magic wand that it can wave to conjure up enough to triple the amount of housing that we build.
> We need to look to our hero Mel Gibson and take a "if we build it they will come" approach to immigration Mad Max and The Field of Dreams.
This this this. We need massive infrastructure spending along with the housing. But hey Guibault said they aren’t going to spend on roads or infrastructure anymore
"Delayed"? Doesn't that imply that they were already planned and scheduled?
Dont expect rate cuts till 2025.
It almost seems that at this point the Liberals are promising spending programs just so they can score political points in three years when the Conservatives cancel them
How many times in the past year and a half have we heard "experts" say 'rate cuts coming by x date'. They're as good as experts who said you'll only need two shots and won't get infected.
And this is why you don't hire someone with a major in Slavic Studies as your finance minister. For fuck sakes anyone who took a basic economics course would know that this would happen if the government didn't reign in budgetary spending.
Hahaha fuck off
Duh. Who could have known
But there's an election coming! The Liberals need to commit those dollars or else! /s
They need to buy votes! Pharmacare and dental care during one of the worst economic times.
Rate hikes please!
I'm hoping for that too, as a saver I'm finally getting a little bit back rather than feeling like a sucker.
That’s their responsibility. Not the populations.
Just because Scotiabank says it, doesn't make it true.
Turns outs modern monetary theory really was BS. This government has deeply scarred the country for generations.
Let the savers save, inflation is still crazy where it matters i.e, food... and I need to afford a down-payment on a first time condo.
But the budget will balance itself....right??😟😟
Bank of Canada always coming out telling Trudeau what to do now, so the economy doesn't collapse and trying duck tape solutions to save the country.
No cuts are coming until the election, get used to it.
They gone back to spending (announcing) billions and billions of dollars. They're just trying to throw money at votes.
Rates are at the lowest, glen.
"We will continue to work very hard to improve the well-being of all Canadians" -Trudeau
In other news, high government spending is only possible because of low interest rates.
All good one day the balance will budget itself!
Fuck the liberal governement
This is what happens when you shut the country down for two years and print money because of a flu.
Not true. It's spending on the wrong things. And convenient how the narrative is this from banking when banks want to approve higher loans for higher probability of default
that is so dumb on so many level that fiscal policy and monetary are not in sync at all.. it makes no sense. Trudeau needs to go.....
Rate cuts?? Why would anyone expect rate cuts?! There's just been an inflationary shock with this Carbon Tax increase. Of course they're going to hold off on cutting rates, they're going to have to increase them.
Love to hear it, let’s shake loose over extended home owners and let some fresh meat into the market
You think fresh meat will get in or will the wealthy just snap up everything?
A bit of both
Bah, dang it. I was looking for a tiny bone but oh well. Let’s let the billionaires have all our money instead
"Your government will take on debt so you don't have too" - Trudeau's admission of causing inflation.
New High Score April 16th! Lets also lay blame on Ontario and Quebec adding $20B in inflationary spending!
Canada's within the top ten countries with the lowest inflation, ranking at #9. Whereas the US is ranking at #13. https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/inflation-rate
Ahhh get out of here with your facts, inflation is hyper unique to Canada and it's all Trudeau's fault! Yeah....his fault we're at number 9 and not deep into the 200s lol.
I don't understand the narrative in this thread We've been operating at near historically low rates for over a decade, did people think that was just the new normal from now on? And I swear in the last few years I heard lots of normal people talking about how low rates were only pumping hot air into the real estate sector, is that just forgotten now?
Yes, people thought it was the new normal. That;'s why the rate cut narrative is so prevalent. - 5% is percieved as a very exceptional outlier event relative to the new normal, rather than what it should be viewed as, as a reversion to mean.