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David's avatar

Pieter - you must totally reject Stephen Punwasi’s argument regarding Canadian fentanyl superlabs - one of which had 95 million doses on hand. It seems logical you would also deny the existence of phenomenal money-laundering that Canada’s fentanyl manufacturing has allegedly produced - which many experts say is the source of real estate in affordability in major Canadian markets.

What is needed is an immediate election, since Trudeau will soon be gone, and a PM who actually has Canada’s interests at heart to negotiate. Trudeau has strangled Canada with globalism such as net zero. and has facilitated the rapidly growing influence of the Chinese Communist Party over Canada’s government, and resources.

Hysterical overreaction towards America is not called for., and is completely

misdirected.

Canada is a ship that is presently exhibiting a severe list, threatening to capsize. You seem sanguine about it.

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Jan Schneider's avatar

Oh, I think all we are seeing is a political bashing maneuver such that Canada unites under the Liberal brand to fight a common enemy thereby putting Poilievre in line with Trump. It is sad that Trump, IMHO, at the root core, is reacting to the fall of our Canadian Dollar from being roughly at par with the US Dollar between 2007 - 2013 to what it is now. At the time we had a high Canadian Dollar because of our income derived from oil exports and Steven Harper’s fiscal policies. Then in 2015, Justin Trudeau and the Liberals got elected, with the intention to move away from a high income oil export type economy and towards an inflationary debt driven green economy all the while getting a back scratch from the central banks to hide any economic wrongs by further reducing interest rates. Then when interest rates could not fall any further (in Europe they had negative interest rates), a pandemic came out of the blue, so as to rationalize the need for more spending that was otherwise frowned upon. I feel Trump wants a Canadian Dollar at par with the US Dollar and that the Liberals have acted politically in such a way that they have driven the dollar down to 69 cents where it is now. Nobody talks about a 69 cent Canadian Dollar being effectively the equivalent of a 44% tariff on American goods imported into Canada. If one adds the HST/GST/PST to that, then that amount well in excess of 50%. It means that under todays Liberal government we are paying 50% more for American goods that we did under Steven Harper. People are laughing at the Liberal solution to engage in a tariff war causing this current 50% figure to double such that we could almost cut off trade entirely with the United States causing our economy to spiral downwards. This crazy tariff war could echo a historic precedence everyone which is silent on, namely US President Benjamin Harrison and the McKinley Tariffs of 1890, which lead up to the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian Monarchy by the Citizens Committee of Public Safety due to the unemployment which the Tariffs created. We clearly lack leadership in Canada as we clearly have little knowledge of history.

Furthermore, in light of the fact that our Canadian Leaders likely own American securities whereby there is a strong personal motive to devalue our Canadian dollar and in so doing receive 44% greater return on those investments all the while hurting Canadians having to compete with Americans by giving them a 44% discount wanting to buy homes in Whistler and the Sea to Sky region. Trump’s Tariffs at 25% are nothing when compared to the 44% discounts Americans get (when compared with 2007-2013 exchange rates) when paying for Canadian products. Trudeau and the Liberals have just put Canada in a precarious situation due to unfair play.

Trump, IMHO, seems to be echoing Brian Mulroney’s election campaign of 1984 and 1988 whereby our Prime Minister initially wanted to eliminate our income tax system entirely through tax reform which was subsequently watered down due to the opposition to become the GST/HST at much lower but more agreeable rates. I see this Tariff thing evolving to a North American wide Value Added Tax or VAT just like they have in Europe. The VAT in Europe varies between 15% and 27% depending which country the trade is with. It is interesting that Canada is currently looking towards a Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) with Europe, meaning that there exists a tax on Canadian exports of up to 27%, whereas Trumps Tariffs are only 25%.

So again, I see our Liberal and NDP leaders oversimplifying this in an attempt to push the Conservatives in an anti-patriotic pro-Trump stance. Political Chess play, that is all.

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