Posted April 22, 2025 10:21 MST
Updated April 22, 2025 10:21 MST
Thank you for your participation in election 2025. Canada's election occured (occurs) on April 28, 2025. The election is the first opportunity to weigh in on providing the Liberals a mandate to continue to govern the country as it continues it's mission of creating a canada that moves forwards. The Liberals since moving to leader Mark Carney were successfully lobbied to drop the consumer end of the carbon tax, while the carbon tax remains an issue that continues to pass on to consumers indefinitely through the private sector being subject to the same rules that drove gasoline prices up since the overall two part carbon tax was applied. The carbon tax is not the same as an oil revenue tax. In Alberta after Klein had retired, and sent Albertans a check called the prosperity bonus, the oil revenues in Alberta were reviewed. Taxes on oil, refered to as the oil revenues were described as being adjusted to reduce subsidies for the oil companies, and provide the educational and healthcare funding needed to take our province forward into the next century more than less.
Conservatives in Chaos.....
The conservatives are at a bit of a nightmarish place in the campaign. After the full decade of advocating to remove the carbon tax, the liberals had a leader from the UK, return to Canada for the first time since the initial four years of the "great recession". The great recession was started by a housing collapse in pricing. It was blamed on lending requirements, however, it ultimately was a crisis, in that the entire USA was building homes, including second homes with swimming pools that had dropped in price as low as 50,000 dollars from the initial values of closer to 300,000 or half a million american dollars. The real estate prices began to be concerning to the US government whom quickly capped the ability to take out mortgages to solve the problem of having too many houses built.
The reason for the cap on mortages was simple, the homes being build were considered unnecessary compared to having a considerable number of homes being the primary investment outside of the 401 k pensions in the USA, that were to keep all americans properties valued at a price that would help them to retire and have something that could be passed on to their own kids at least theoretically. This came as the George Bush oversupply of money caused by the "Bush Tax Cuts" were to cause a trickle down of the bennefits of a booming economy. Trickle down economics is the slang term used by Hillary Clinton for the most part to describe the recessionary impact of oversupply of cash and economic collapse. The economy began to collapse while George Bush was still in office. This was not shocking, however with a collapse in stock prices related to housing construction, this became a more pressing issue, as the USA had moved towards the 2008 election. A former Bush Rival ran against a party he largely passed bills with, and ultimately, Senator McCain, had provided an abbnormally high level of support verbally for the historic election of Mr. Obama. When Obama had taken office, the Bush bail out bill had already failed to bring an end to the recession, and another bill was seen as needed to pass funding to fight the effects of the recession.
The 2008 crisis began to quickly emerge as a long term issue. Obama began the term by refusing to intervene in bailing out or guarenteeing banks investments, and would not address the actual liquidity oversupply collapsing home owners realestate values. The houses also began to forclose, as companies offering the mortages were struggling, and provided less leway for the growing number of unemployed americans that were starting to lose their jobs in banking and all related economic sections that followed. I was taught that when someone has a job they go and get pizza, and go bowling. the pizza guy has a job. The Bowling alley has someone working to allow for the activity, and shoe rentals, and ultimately 3 people have a job. When the person going to the bowling alley and pizza place loses a job, they stop going for pizza and they stop going for pizza and bowling. All 3 persons mentioned may face a job loss as a result. When economic bailout packages are provided they are meant to allow for more people to go get pizza and bowl. The pizza and bowling are just two examples, but extend to realistic job losses in vehicle sales, home sales, retail sales, banking jobs for investments made with additional money, ect. The one person buying pizza and bowling represents multiple individuals whom do so as well, and the more of them losing their jobs, the quicker the full spectrum of the 3 persons loses their jobs. Now 3 people need jobs. The pizza business closes, and so does the bowling alley. Now the government has 3 jobs to replace, and the businesses themselves that employed these individuals in two cases no longer exist. This was described as why early bailouts were thought at least by Mr. Obama, as early as 2011, would be best to push for, inorder to put everyone back into work.
In the USA, the Democratic party prosecuted debt lenders for predatory practices, claiming that they should not have loaned money to someone simply because they worked a job. The issue was that this practice had been what under George Bush, was allowing for less renters, and more home owners. At the time, in school I was taught the crackdown on mortages would likely lead to only those with homes having a mortage in the future, and most younger persons living at home, or living as permenant renters based on the obama rules put in place later on. Two companies called freddie mack and something else, had been used to bundle some of the forclosed properties. Some banks went under, and many investment banking jobs were lost. These were cited as an issue as well. Part of the move away to a made in China world, was a shift to employment in banking jobs and other university educated jobs. University educated jobs outside of healthcare were refered to as service sector jobs. Service sector job losses were seen as a major problem as they were the government's planned jobs of the future. "Jobs of the Future" was the longer term goal of the US government. Everyone was expected in general to become more educated, and talk of making education free for at least an additional 4 years was in newspaper or online newspaper headlines. With no additional service sector jobs existing, the current path of more students attending school in upper education had been leading to providing a McJobs future, where the same jobs worked for the last century now required a university degree inorder to achieve the same advancement that had been achieved without university. These jobs were low paying, and the companies had relatively low margins. Even with the supply chain goods from China pushing the prices of goods lower, there were less people with jobs potentially able to purchase the now cheaper goods. The margins for the store still had to accomodate rent, development of the stores, maitanance, competition for pricing, staffing, and purchasing of the goods. The margins were lower. As less companies were expected to deliver the goods to increase margins, as occurs at times in more mature markets, the general expectation could be that monopoly protections were necessitated. To keep workers in Mc Jobs they were working in, the monopoly protections were required to prevent layoffs for redundancy that allowed the company to pay it's bills. Even then, there were only so many goods that could be sold before there were no workers left to purchase goods.
Returning to the Democratic Party response, the democratic party of the USA, limited the mortages, sent executives to jail, and as usual, found some misconduct while investigating how the banks and investing firms had lost money. The stock market collapsed, leading to retail forclosures that were severe, and a new Retail Apocalypse. Now there was an issue with many retail companies formerly thriving, now going out of business with the decreased spending, increased forclosures, job losses, and general effects of the recession. The recession was worsened by the artificial banking collapse. Under no circumstances should banks be too small to operate at a government approved loss. Part of what I recall discussing in class, was why the government in the USA refused to have nationalization to cover the unbearably high costs that were unable to be put forward by investments made from already overstreached private business. It was almost unAmerican. That was part of what was wrong. While there were some comments regarding additional losses occuring of health bennefits from some employers, this really was only a small area of democratic concern. The USA compensation packages for employment included better health benefits at different companies, leading to additional services being made avaialable, with shorter wait times. The democrats had their own answer. Obama Care, was put into place.
Obama Care was a really odd bill to have passed. At the time, this was actually one of the stranger bills passed. It limited cross state shopping of insurance, driving up the cost, by reduction of competition for insurance companies to provide better coverage at a lower cost. Obama care also had a section called the individual mandate, which was a tax that was applied. All americans whom did not have a plan that was preexisting would be taxed for not signing up for Obama care. The care was often worse than private insurers initially, and more expensive. This was shy of the benefits offered under the other plan, medicare, that kicks in in cases of inability to pay when there is a requirement of health care, as well as for old age. Obama care did, so long as I recall correctly, extend the age of health insurance for students under their own parents plans up to age 21 or 25 roughly. The Obama care was modified in 2016. The individual mandate tax was removed, and thus it left a plan or compatible plans available to sign up for that partnered with insurers that were largely not profitable. The care now was able to be covered, and existing plans could remain under obama care. Additional efforts to separate the cost of care for those with preexisting conditions remained a republican effort. The Republicans did aim to separate the preexisting conditions groups from the general health care companies budgets, inorder to have the government subsidize this separately at a separate cost, while passing the cheaper remaining insurance group of mostly healthy people cost dirrect to the consumer themselves. This would have meant that the sickest people were still covered, as was deemed morally necessary to do so. The insurance costs however would move to have the healthy group cost divided over the healthy, and not the healthy plus sick to the healthy consumers. That was not a bad thing by any means but was not able to be passed after the Republicans lost their majority in 2018. The remainder of the bill appears to be supported for ammendment under the Trump administration.
The insurance issue is a bit of a mystery. It had little to do with the actual job losses. It needed a government bridging of plans with documentation submitted, and direct funding to the actual ensurer where the job losses led to no insurance. The housing crisis was not left unsolved. The prices rebounded as less people could bid for the houses, and less money was available among the fewer buyers permenantly. The banks were left with parts of their operations changed, and no real net benefit to the banks occured. In 2016, the USA still lagged Canada, whom took 4 years to get out of the "Great Recession", and return to 4 percent unemployment rate. The USA had reduced from 8 percent unemployment, and still continued the program of allowing large financially prosperous organizations to borrow money at very low interest rates. The internet regulations being looked at, in addition to monopoly protections were being viewed as necessary due to companies deliberately losing money, such as amazon, inorder to buy up market space. The disruption of smaller companies had even begun to impact Walmart, whom purchased Jet.com (Amazon Competator), to compete online. Online services such as netflix and others began to also impact the general public as they offered subsidized products that were too cheap to continue later on with the presumptual changes in interest rates. High debt levels were viewed up to 2020 as being a high risk to the American Economy, as the USA continued to recover from the effects of the great recession.
The covid 19 crisis had ended the majority of the comments about the great recession. The unemployment rate hit 15 percent or higher. The entire economy was shut down. The stock market crashed, having the worst day since the great depression. The US government decided to bail out the entire swath of businesses, as did the UK and Canada, whom both coppied the same economic program initially. The US government told companies to keep open, and run the books despite the loss, and they were to recieve and request the bail out available. The requirements were made less stringent, allowing for potential fraud. The Us government decided they prefered to keep the Businesses open regardless, with the President at the time indicating fraud could be looked into later, but was not as important as keeping people attached to an employer, and keeping food and necessities available. 3000 dollar a month checks were being produced at that time roughly in Canada, and something similar in American and British equivalent was provided to those whom were on the shut down unemployment package offered. The US economy sits at roughly 4 percent unemployment since the end of Biden's first term. The transition to Biden occured in 2020, as the economy was back up and running and the last restrictions internationally were beginning to be planned to lift permenantly. The US president that was suceeded by Mr. Biden, fell ill durring the reelection period with Covid 19. This was not cited as being a major news item however. Mr. Biden had returned the USA to 4 percent unemployment by the end of the first term, then was not reelected.
Mr. Trump presently had won election against Ms. Harris, the former Vice President under President Joe Biden in 2024. For the purpose of mentioning the more conveluded appearance of a national security event, a group of organized delinquents had been at the US Government buildings, broke into the buildings, and then threatened to kill politiicans and form their own dictatorship. The event featured the destruction of offices, injuries, and was overall something that appeared to be a terrorist attack. While there are many criticisms of the handling of the either domestic or international terrorist event on US Government buildings in Washington, this had not ended past the date of the government buiding attacks. The election campaign in 2024 featured a minimum of two close call assasination attempts of Mr. Trump, threats of another government building attack, and debates over needing to offer full presidential security to both the democratic and republican front runners. This was not normal politics, and it still appears to be at a high risk of reoccurance in 2028.
Tarriff Time!
The tax cuts put in by Mr. Trump left the economy right before Covid 19 hit, at the lowest unemployment levels in recorded American History. At under 3.5 percent, Dunkin Donuts actually expressed concerns that they were left uncompetative when seeking workers, due to competition for labour. Wages had the first organic wage growth in retail related jobs in 2 decades roughly, and this had meant that those working in malls and shops like Macy's (Conglomerate Department Store), were getting pay hikes and beginning to compete through offering these organic raises in wages. The US Fed had indicated that there were also record levels of hispanic employment , African American employment, and minority employment levels in the USA. Concerns were being discussed at the fed regarding the bennefit system preventing those recieving bennefits working too many hours facing a cap on work to get out of poverty, when the bennefits lost were greater than the wages gained from additional employment. The feds plan at that point was to keep on track with the sub 1 percent inflation with the 2 percent per year inflationary goal as a target, not a necessity, as they continued to keep rates low to "....run the economy hot" as it was described by Jerome Powell. Powell had indicated that so long as the unemployment rate could be pushed lower, that with inflation not running away and still being under the two percent guideline, that he viewed this as a reference of two percent not a tangible requirement. He felt that the USA was getting the results it needed, in having wages go up for Americans whom needed the gains made in wages and employment of "often times marginalized communitites" as Jerome Powell described. It was interesting. Jerome Powell said this was helping to push those that had not seen gains after the great recession hit, or those greatest impacted, finally having something of a recovery for them too. This of course Mr. Powell, refered to as being important.
The Tarrifs were to be instituted initially, as part of a taxable package that would offset an overall business tax drop. Trump had planned to cut the business tax to ramp up the economic growth, push the unemployment low enough to create wage hikes for minimum wage workers, and ultimately offset this cost of the tax cut with taxes on non american products. This was literally Mr. Trumps 2016 plan. Hit China when it cheats was the 2012 Mitt Romney Plan. The generalized issue was outlined above, and was a multidecade occurance of moving production to cheaper places, while making it more permenant with free trade agreements. Issues with currency devaluations and competative standards of employees in work was also looked at, but never a full consideration of the tarriff agreements. There was a chance that our standards of living could be negatively impacted internationally with less jobs, despite the cheaper goods. The debt from schooling paid back with lower paying jobs also was factored in when I was in class, as being part of what had pushed the standards of living lower for Canadian and developed world workers. Previously University was more limited. More education has been chronically been added for over a century or more. I was taught from what I recall that while there could be coverage of schooling by making schools public just like k-12, there still was an issue of standards of living dropping, working varrying amounts while in school, and how long a household would stay in one place, as kids grew from small babies into very large adults that have their own babies roughly by this time. Infertility occurs and higher rates of genetic malformation occur at age 30 or higher for Women almost exclusively, which presented another challenge to our changing educational impact on standards of living. Other issues could come as the "Jobs of the future" were still outsourceable. In the USA while Trump took office, apple decided to move jobs overseas to Ireland for the cheaper tax rates. This was one of the most if not shocking, appauling examples of what I was taught to expect as early as junior high. Jannet Yellen and some federal reserve bankers discussed that this genuinely was a major issue, and stated that there was a necessity to have no trade with countries unwilling to apply some form of minimum tax among participating countries in a large trade pact. This was a continuation of the standard of living discussions. Mr. Trump highlighted the currancy manipulation and exchange rate manipulation, as China still publicly devalued their currency inorder to push more jobs into being placed permenantly in China.
The made in USA concept to myself is acutally quite interesting. As part of generalized grade 10, I was taught now defunct American Apparel, had been incredible for providing actual jobs in actual manufactering. Jobs making apparel, and furniture had existed at some point. In Canada, most of what had occured had been trade of goods with Britain and the USA. Canada was known for providing resources including fur to England to be turned into hats and coats overseas. Canada having a robust independent manufactering capacity of all goods and services is almost a foreign concept. Increased refinement of oil in alberta was looked into and promoted by Rachel Notley, a former premier of Alberta. It actually is a generally liked idea across any party lines in Alberta, to do something here to create jobs, and be able to sell higher priced products to others. The oil refinement expansion is not however something I am aware of having happened based on news headlines since 2017. I would expect that generally existing plants will be expanded due to support bipartisanly in the Alberta legislature to deliver this result over a long period of time. In the USA, there are still products made in America. Automotive manufactering has appeared to be moving overseas. Before 2016, my impression was that most jobs from automotive industry were expected to no longer exist in the next 50 to 100 years in ontario, and most employees would require being trained to do something else. Often this means something lower paying however, and there is not compatible work outside of the Automotive business. I learnt that despite governments and their intention to have workers transition to other sectors, issues of providing retooling and retraining often result in individuals that are not trained for alternative work to what the government is supporting, die off. Literacy for example was focused on under Ronald Regan, and despite promoting expanding literacy, the majority of the population that was illiterate died illiterate. This was not Ronald Regans Fault but rather occured under all chronic US government timeframes. That is how the workplace transitions do occur. Now with automotive vehicles, this is an area that is actually largely paid for by government subsidies in general. This has not been a very profitable section of the economy. With the desire to reduce the emissions in big cities particularly being valid, efforts to produce vehicles for the wealthy 130,000 dollar a year income Americans has occured since 2008. The electrification of vehicles has been focused on providing high end products to wealthy consumers to reduce CO2 impacts. The effort resulted in Tesla, which is interesting in itself. There are many Tesla competators, and these are generally subsidized heavily, meaning the USA government provides money to the automotive company requiring electric vehicle production, as well as has provided money to the consumer upon purchasing the electric products. These too were made in the USA from Tesla largely, but still began to shift to have more production overseas in Europe, and even China. That mostly took the American marvel back to being another expensive effort to have something for some people, for now. The tesla vehicles are aging. This will be a major hurdle in the future. Oddly enough the average age appears to be 3.5 years old regarding the Tesla vehicles on the Road in the USA. That is a bit of a interesting age to be citing, as the average gasoline vehicle sits at 12.6 years old in the USA. What happened to the other Tesla vehicles? There was not any indication of the vehicles being substantially taken off the road, so it would generally appear that there just are more Tesla products on the road as the company fills its order list that has mostly lagged in fulfilment through vehicle deliveries.
One area of interest, I found was at least the Canadian exchange rate being cited by Mr. Trump as being a burden to the USA. I was taught growing up that sometimes we benefit, and other times we pay more for our american products like books. The exchange rate between the USA and Canada largely was something I was taught is similar to penny rounding almost. It happens over time, there was not much more to the exchange rate than that. If the USA has a better economy than Canada, our money buys less USD. If Canada has a better economy, we have closer to equal weight. Many laws do exist to prevent foreign ownership in the USA, including foreign taxes on investment properties existing. This was something of interest when people discussed the US collapse of housing in Flordia and Arizona, where the house was too cheap, but the taxes added up to prevent disadvantaging Americans over Canadians. This was covered in general news papers and on television news outlets.
I am not sure why Tarrifs are actually considered to be suprising to Canadians. First of all, the USMCA did not remove mexico to make the deal bilateral. This left a poor starting place for anyone that expected Trump would be reelectable. Biden kept tarrifs from Mr. Trump, which had been largely what made him successful as president. The idea of taxing companies for moving services to overseas was left in place as well. As a result apple never completed the move to Ireland. One of the major issues Canada is dealing with is a politicization of trade discussions that otherwise needed to focus on how to create American Jobs, and the corresponding changes to importing that should occur by increasing the amount of American goods imported, and employing individuals and infrastructure to import goods and export goods to and from Canada, using American and Canadian workers, instead of international shippers with foreign workers. Looking for additional expansion of rail, product being supplied to the US, a crackdown on American interference in completetion of already Canadian funded pipelines monitarily, should have been added. There should have been mechanisms of the USA literally paying in full for Keystone to have not been completed, and the full expense of the project still left to close up. There is a need to look at removing dutites at the border to allow for higher dollar value of goods with travellers to be bought in the USA as well as bought in Canada to go to the USA customer travelling here. I have no idea why anyone would actually treat mexico like it were an equal partner, having been there in Cancun. It was one of the most horrific experiences I had had. The poverty rate was devastating, and I found it very unenjoyable to be in a place with literal flies in icescream at a 4/5 star resort. The water was not at drinking quality, and price gouging on goods, as well as bartering to sell 15 dollar blankets made in China as Mexican made blankets that were rare was some of the more memorable aspects of the place. The liquor was less cheap than factored in. The cost of the trip more than overweighs the amount of higher end liquor that could be consumed in a developed world country. I was still under 18. I found the country of Mexico was relatively unimpressive. The food was not great. I kept having non stop allergic reactions, and would be told my allergens were not there by one server, then another would state otherwise once I had a rash already and was already reacting. I found that staff were rude, and I was treated quite poorly even when tipping high to literally ask where to get food from at a free buffet, having been given no information. I liked the carribean to be honest, particularly the British parts of the Carribean. while I may not personally have an affinity for Mexico, it was interesting in general. The country had little made in mexico of what was sold to Canadians and Americans as Tourists, leaving little explaination for why the country is part of any manufactered goods trade agreement as a supplier. As reasonable, China dumped cheap products through mexico that could be shipped under Nafta until the amendments passed and Nafta was renamed.
Trumps tarrifs do protect a significant number of service installation jobs, maintainance jobs, and generally, do provide additional opportunity to adjust the imports of products to have Americans carry goods through the USA, rather than let a country send trucks of goods using foreign workers. This adds jobs at least potentially, but exceeds the benefits of the tarrifs, as this would require legislation beyond the tarrifs. In India, 30 percent of all goods are required to be made in India, as well as 30 percent of all media and digital media content. This is a modern example of a billion person economy taking care of its own billion people, not just those outside of their borders. One issue that most of Canada will have is an issue that was more prone to be taken up by Mr. Trudeau than by his sucessors. Gst is not working. It is not on all goods and services, and it is expensive, hard to raise, has tarrif like impacts on good purchases, and more than less would be better to tack onto the generalized income tax line with abolition of this tax. Pst also looks to be something that needs to be passed on to income tax. The area of concern will be ensuring that all Canadians participate in paying some tax, to feel included. That would be best to add as a line on the income tax, deducted off of the basic income. That way it shows up if noted at all. A basic income is severely popular in Alberta, but not as a replacement for actual programs. This is where an Albertan conservatism growth will likely lead to the implementation of the first basic income in the future. Basic income would allow for everyone to have something to spend at grocery stores ect. Even in cases where a business or stocks indicate a gain or loss or some value of assets, the income would be spendable at the store. A private asset evaluation of value would never have that same capacity. My guess is that this is not really able to be appropriately factored into economic managment fully, as existing goods are not trackable, while new produced goods appear to be heavily monitored by investment bankers, government officials, and are studied at universities across the country. The shorter term impact of the trump tarrifs will be partially an issue with the US causing a quick response rather than waiting to guess whether it will be leagally possible for the trump government to seek reelection or not (likely to be decided by the supreme court). Some politicians (Christiya Freeland) would prefer to or appear to prefer to insult the US president, when the reality is that Mr. Trump made some jokes, had some legitimate interest in keystone being completed, otherwise wanted more security at the boarder, in addition to payment for military services that are not free. Is this great, not really for Canada. At the same time, Keystone would be benefitial, there are needs for local production, and even to have US companies start to make products in Canada too, it would take cooperation to have the US president getting companies to set up shop here for producing our own consumer goods too. This could have been a chance to add something to Canada, and ultimately what Canadians will suffer from will be the impacts of Canada charging Canadians more for US goods. It will be Canada importing products that will cost more due to their decision to try limit the states from selling their products here like they already do. That means in otherwords Canada is to blame for a large chunk of the Christyia Crisis. The decreased sales likely need to have the government run the books for companies that apply for no interest loans that are convertable to grants like could have been done to keep production of all Canadian products and services at Par. We would have been best to look at whether or not we did harm the Us economy and look at where the USA actually hurts canadian standards of livings before the tarriffs were announced, and over the last century not decade. We both need to raise standards of living. We will have other shutdowns in the future that make life easier if we have local production, and we do need to be realistic. There is not a desire to trade with countries that cause a race to the bottom. When a race to the bottom occurs, it means that there will need to be more money there for Canadians to buy goods, even if they did not actually recieve it from working. The basic income is taught as even a possible solution to some of the downside of loss of jobs to China in our classes here in Alberta. Ontario is paid for by Alberta. Ontario needs to work within reality and recognize we are not living in their province, and they will have to pragmatically work towards advancing Alberta's interest, not further their own. Alberta can import from across the US boarder just as quickly for vehicles as we can from Ontario. Alberta could negociate it's own more americanized future, and I would expect that this sentiment will continue to grow. Alberta is not a province full of people that are patriotic to Ontario. Albertans love Alberta and BC. I do beleive that the larger impacts of Ontario being unrealistic are a result of no longer being able to do enough in their own province to keep their own province fully functioning. All provinces should be able to at least consider production of all goods as well, not just Ontario and Quebec. The country is likely to be unable to do so like the 300 million persons in the states does, however Canada could work to milestones along the way. I personally recognize that Canada will continue to match migration numbers fully up to having a population as large as the USA. I would expect Canada to have as many people in it as the USA will in the same timeframe in under a century. Maybe that may not be the case. The current stances federally on immigration will likely bias this direction.