Poilievre calls on Liberals to exempt all forms of home heating from carbon price

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre is calling on the Liberals to exempt all forms of home heating from the carbon price, after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a temporary exemption that only applies to home heating oil.

The federal government announced last week that it is increasing the carbon price rebate for rural Canadians and lifting the carbon price off home heating oil entirely for the next three years.

Poilievre wrote a letter to Trudeau on Sunday urging the government to expand the exemption to all forms of home heating, including natural gas, which is more common in Western Canada.

"In pausing the tax on home heating oil until after the election, however, you plan to keep the tax on lower-emitting natural gas heat for which bills will be jumping even further in mere weeks as it gets colder," wrote Poilievre.

"That is why common sense Conservatives are offering our full co-operation to pass an emergency bill tomorrow to axe the carbon tax on all forms of heat before winter heat bills hit Canadians next month."

#Poilievre #Trudeau

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🇵🇦🇨🇦 Panama announces referendum on mine deal, First Quantum shares sink 28 per cent

🔻Shares in First Quantum Minerals closed down 28% on Monday after Panama's government said it will hold a referendum on whether to scrap a mining contract awarded to the Canadian mining company earlier this month.

The decision from Panama's president to hold a binding referendum on Dec. 17 comes after thousands of people took to the streets to protest the contract finalized on Oct. 20 for the Canadian company's local unit to operate open-pit mine Cobre Panama.

Demonstrations continued on Monday, with protesters criticizing both the deal and the mine's environmental costs and calling for the government to annul the contract.

🔻Panama's government and the company agreed to a contract, that would guarantee Panama annual income of $375 million while allowing First Quantum's local unit to operate the Cobre Panama mine for at least 20 years.

Cobre Panama represents nearly 5% of Panama's gross domestic product and 1.5% of global copper production.

🔎 Source
#Canada #Panama #resources

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📉Canada may have entered a technical recession, early StatCan data show

The Canadian economy may have entered a technical recession, according to the preliminary gross domestic product estimate from Statistics Canada.

The federal agency released its August GDP report on Tuesday, which shows the Canadian economy remained flat in the month, while a preliminary estimate suggests it shrank in the third quarter.

The report says higher interest rates, inflation, forest fires and drought conditions continued to weigh on the economy.

August marked the second consecutive month where growth remained flat, and advance data suggests the economy continued that trend in September.

For the third quarter, Statistics Canada's preliminary estimate suggested the economy shrank at an annualized rate of 0.1 per cent, which would follow a contraction in the second quarter.

A technical recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth, but economists generally look for broader-based weakness to qualify a downturn as a recession.

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Sask. premier will remove carbon pricing on natural gas heating if feds don't expand current exemption

Premier Scott Moe took to X Monday, announcing that the province intends to end carbon pricing on natural gas heating – after the federal government said it will pause carbon pricing on heating oil for the next three years.

“Today I am calling on the federal government to offer the same carbon tax exemption to Saskatchewan families by extending it to all forms of home heating, not just heating oil. It’s only fair to other Saskatchewan and Canadian families,” Moe said in the video statement.

“Hopefully, that exemption will be provided soon. But if not, effective Jan. 1, SaskEnergy will stop collecting and submitting the carbon tax on natural gas – effectively providing Saskatchewan residents with the very same exemption that the federal government is giving heating oil in Atlantic Canada.”

#Saskatchewan #energy

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💰Chrystia Freeland to meet with finance ministers on Alberta’s plan to exit CPP

Provincial and territorial finance ministers will gather virtually with federal Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland on Friday to discuss Alberta’s proposal to pull out of the Canada Pension Plan.

In announcing the meeting, Freeland denounced Alberta’s possible action bluntly in a letter sent to the ministers who will be present for the online gathering.

She wrote about the Western province’s “flawed analysis” of the share of CPP assets it would be ennoscriptd to. “Canadians work hard with the promise that a secure pension will be there for them when they retire – and they know that Alberta’s proposed withdrawal is a threat to the pensions of people in Alberta and across Canada.”

Freeland said she wants the discussions on Friday to speak specifically to the “flaws” underlying Alberta’s proposed exit formula.

Were that formula applied to Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia, Freeland said, some experts have concluded that the three provinces would be ennoscriptd to 128 per cent of CPP assets.

#Alberta #Freeland

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Justin Trudeau and his son Hadrien dressed up for Halloween.

#Trudeau

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Immigrants are leaving Canada at faster pace, study shows

New research suggests more newcomers to Canada have chosen to leave in recent years.

The rate of immigrants leaving the country, or onward migration, has been steadily increasing since the 1980s and is rising among recent cohorts, suggesting newcomers “may not be seeing the benefits of moving to Canada,” according to a study on immigrant retention by the Institute for Canadian Citizenship and the Conference Board of Canada.

The report, published Tuesday, underscored the risks of Canada failing to meet expectations of newcomers, who are facing worsening housing affordability, a strained health-care system and underemployment, among other issues.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has been using immigration to rapidly add more workers to stave off economic decline from an aging population.

#immigration

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Trudeau’s immigration minister Marc Miller on Pierre Poilievre: “He is kind of a guy when you are around him, you kind of want to check for your wallet afterwards.”

“[Poilievre] is very very dangerous for the state of democracy,” he adds.

#Poilievre

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Manitoba joins carbon tax exemption fray, seeks 'greater fairness' from Ottawa

Manitoba's new NDP finance minister is looking for "greater fairness" in the application of the federal carbon tax — but promises to work collaboratively with Justin Trudeau's Liberal government to make that happen.

Finance Minister Adrien Sala says he wants to know whether the prime minister will extend the same carbon-tax breaks to Manitobans as he effectively did for residents of Atlantic Canada when he announced a three-year carbon-tax exemption on home heating oil.

Last week, Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith called on Ottawa to apply the same exemption to natural gas, used by a majority of residents in their provinces for heating.

#Manitoba #Alberta #Saskatchewan

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💉COVID-19 passports did little to convince people to get vaccinated in Quebec, Ontario: study

COVID-19 vaccine passports in Quebec and Ontario did little to convince the unvaccinated to get the jab and did not significantly reduce inequalities in vaccination coverage, a new peer-reviewed study has found.

The passports, which forced people to show proof of vaccination to enter places such as bars and restaurants, were directly responsible for a rise of 0.9 per cent in the vaccination rate in Quebec and 0.7 per cent in Ontario.

All 10 provinces and Yukon introduced vaccine passport systems in 2021, justifying them as a tool to avoid further generalized lockdowns and increase vaccination rates, though some provinces allowed people to show a recent negative COVID-19 test instead of proof of vaccination.

The passports were discontinued across Canada by the spring of 2022.

#Quebec #Ontario

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Canada to level out number of new permanent residents in Canada in 2026

The federal government plans to level out the number of new permanent residents to Canada in 2026 in reaction to crunch on housing and other services, the immigration minister announced Wednesday.

Immigration Minister Marc Miller tabled new targets for the next three years in Parliament, which call for the number of new permanent residents to hold steady at 500,000 in 2026.

The plans show that the targets for 2024 and 2025 will increase as planned to 485,000 and 500,000, respectively.

#immigration

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🩺 Canada's public health agency lost $150 million on an unfulfilled contract last year

The Public Health Agency of Canada is refusing to disclose any information on how it lost $150 million in taxpayers’ money for an unfulfilled contract with an undisclosed vendor last year.

Information about the loss is buried within the government’s 2022-2023 public accounts which were tabled on Oct. 24 and detail its financial operations during the previous fiscal year.

Deep within the roughly 1,000-page, three-volume document, buried in the “losses of public money due to an offence, illegal act of accident” section, is a line that details the staggering loss of public funds by PHAC.

The agency disclosed that an “unfulfilled contract by a vendor” led to a $150-million loss, none of which it ever expects to recover.

#healthcare

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New Quebec immigration plan will force some temporary foreign workers to pass French exam

Quebec wants some temporary foreign workers to pass a French test to renew their work permits. Premier François Legault announced the measure at a Quebec City news conference on Wednesday as he presented the government's updated immigration plan.

"The message will be very clear as much for students as for workers," Legault said. "In the future, if you want to come to Quebec for more than three years, if you want to be received as a permanent immigrant, you need to speak French."

The immigration plan, which includes lower than anticipated target numbers for new Quebec immigrants, and the new rules requiring temporary foreign workers to pass a French test are part of the government's plan to stop what Legault and his ministers describe as the decline of the French language in Quebec.

Legault's CAQ government had previously anticipated increasing the number of permanent immigrants it would accept to 60,000. But, in the updated plan presented on Wednesday, they set their target number at 50,000 for 2024 and 2025.

#Quebec #immigration

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🇨🇦🇦🇫Canada admits nearly 40,000 Afghans, willing to take more

Canada is on the brink of fulfilling its commitment to accept 40,000 Afghans before the end of this year.

The pledge, made by Ottawa in August 2021 when the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan, was driven by concerns for the safety of Afghans who had collaborated with Canadian programs and the former Afghan government.

In the past two years, Canada has successfully assisted the resettlement of at least 39,730 Afghans, as reported by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada.

More than half of these refugees have been admitted under a humanitarian program specifically tailored for human rights activists, journalists, religious and ethnic minority groups, and LGBTI individuals.

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💰Toronto Stock Exchange has had 1 IPO this year in historic dry spell

Canada’s largest stock exchange is in the midst of a historic dry spell for initial public offerings and it’s unlikely to improve anytime soon.

Just one company has completed an IPO this year on the Toronto Stock Exchange, and without any last-minute surprises, it will be the first time that’s happened since 1993. Lithium Royalty Corp., which raised $150 million in March, was the largest deal in 10 months and is the lone deal to make it through in 2023.

Canada’s stock market continues to face some serious obstacles. The selloff deepened in October, sending the benchmark S&P/TSX composite index to a one-year low last week.

And while the Bank of Canada kept interest rates unchanged for a second straight meeting last month, the swaps market isn’t pricing a quarter-point cut until the second half of next year.

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Canada adds 18K jobs in October but unemployment rate ticks up to 5.7%

October jobs report showed further signs the economy is slowing down and gave the Bank of Canada more reasons to hold interest rates steady, economists say.

The national economy added a modest number of jobs in October, but the hiring clip couldn’t keep pace with the growing labour force, Statistics Canada said Friday.

Canada’s unemployment rate ticked up to 5.7 per cent in October, up from 5.5 per cent in September.

The country added 18,000 jobs in the month, less than the 64,000 positions added in September. Full-time employment fell by 3,300 positions in October, with 20,800 jobs gained in part-time work.

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🇨🇦🇱🇺💰Tax avoiding Canadian companies transferred $120B to Luxembourg, study finds

A Quebec research institute says some of Canada's biggest companies have transferred billions of dollars in profits to Luxembourg to avoid paying domestic taxes.

The research published today by IRIS says 59 Canadian companies - including 33 headquartered in Quebec - transferred some $119.8 billion in net profits to the European low-tax country over a period of about 10 years.

The companies operate in several sectors including finance, natural resources, food and technology, and include big names such as Thomson Reuters, Alimentation Couche-Tard and Saputo Inc.

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NDP to back Conservative motion calling for carbon tax pause on all home heating fuels

New Democrats are planning to vote in favour of a Conservative motion to exempt all home heating fuels from the federal carbon tax.

"The panicked reaction of Liberals a few days ago, it seemed to be tied to electoral chances more than anything else," the party's House leader Peter Julian said Thursday.

The Liberals have been facing increasing political pressure to extend a carbon tax exemption to fuels such as natural gas and propane after announcing a three-year exemption for home heating oil last week.

#energy

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🏠 Canada’s economy faces $900-billion mortgage renewal shock

The sharp run-up in interest rates over the past 19 months has been painful for consumers, but unless rates drop significantly, almost two-thirds of Canadian mortgage borrowers still face a punishing “payment shock” over the next three years.

Between 2024 and 2026, an estimated $900-billion worth of Canadian mortgages – almost 60 per cent of all outstanding mortgages at chartered banks – are due to renew and could face a sharp increase in payments. Those payment increases range from a weighted average of 32 per cent next year to 48 per cent in 2026.

The biggest shock awaits fixed-payment, variable-rate mortgages set to renew in 2026. A five-year variable mortgage renewing that October would see payments jump 76 per cent if mortgage rates stayed around 6 per cent. A one-percentage-point drop to 5 per cent would ease the payment shock, but only to 63 per cent.

Even if the Bank of Canada were to slash its benchmark rate to 0.25 per cent by that year, payments for variable-rate mortgages as a whole would still shoot up 20 per cent.

#housing

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🏠 Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blames investors for ‘commodification’ of housing

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says investors and corporations have played a significant role in Ontario’s housing crisis.

Recent data from Statistics Canada revealed that as of 2021, 43 per cent of condo apartments and between 14 and 21 per cent of houses in Ontario were owned by investors. In the Greater Toronto Area alone, investors owned 33 per cent of condo apartments and between nine and 16 per cent of all houses.

When asked about the Stats Canada data during a news conference, the prime minister said investors and corporations buying up condos and houses has led to the “commodification” of housing by eating up much-needed supply and driving up prices in the process.

#housing #Trudeau #Ontario

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💨Ontario to add provincial tax to vaping products; meant to discourage youth uptake

The price of vaping products is set to rise in Ontario, with the province planning to add a tax as a way to reduce the prevalence of vaping, particularly among young people.

The combined tax would see manufacturers and importers paying $2 per two millilitres of vaping liquids for the first 10 millilitres, then $2 per 10 millilitres for volumes beyond that.

These types of taxes are fairly new, but have proven effective, said Lesley James, the director of health systems for the Heart and Stroke Foundation in Ontario.

#Ontario

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