1) She increased this year's property taxes by a whopping 7.8%, when Calgarians can already barely make ends meet, while at the same time giving herself a personal raise.
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2) She promoted 'defunding the police' by reducing the policing budget by $20 million and now crime in Calgary is at an all-time high. People are scared to ride the LRT.
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Her first act after getting elected was to declare a "climate emergency" with an $85 billion taxpayer price tag, even though she never campaigned on that, and Calgary's major industry is energy.
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She authorized a blanket re-zoning of nearly every residential neighborhood, damaging property values and quality of life.
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She bungled a great arena deal, and then later replaced it with a terrible one. So now instead of a $2 surtax every time you buy an event ticket, the new charge will be $9.
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She loves to censor speech with selective bans. She enacted bylaws that prevent peaceful protest, especially towards those that have a different opinion than she does.
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She passed a paper bag/napkin bylaw, even though restaurants still haven't recovered from being deemed non-essential during COVID. She against small businesses.
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She charging people a fee to park in front of their own homes. This really hurts the poor, who typically don't live in a house with a garage.
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She turned a peaceful Menorah lighting ceremony, into a divisive political event.
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She's used city facilities for drag queen shows for little kids, advancing her own radical agenda. She banned protests at those shows.
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She refuses to enforce indecent exposure laws. PRIDE parades have become X-rated freak shows. Grown men are exposing themselves to young girls in change rooms at public pools and other sporting venues.
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She's re-introducing fluoride in the water, even though Calgarians don't want that. She used a loophole in a survey to justify this.
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She banned Canada Day fireworks because she viewed that celebration as being "colonialist & racist"
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🧵CCP Investment Inc. is a corporation created 25 years ago to manage the pension money collected by government of Canada. It operates at "arms-length", meaning it's supposed to be independent.
It just released its annual report, and going through it has been a real eye opener. I had no idea just how bad the CPP is.
For starters, this huge organization, bloated with highly paid bureaucrats across all continents, managed to grow our investments by just 8% in 2023. The TSX had the exact same performance in 2023.
I manage my own personal investments through an iTrade account, and I generated 18.58% return in 2023. Any good Exchange Traded Fund offered by most banks with a 0.8% fee would have done equally well.
There are dozens of mutual funds around the world that manage $500 billion dollar portfolio and generate better returns.
Just to put things into perspective, Visa is work $500 billion US. Apple is worth almost $2 trillion.
So why did the government created a separate corporation 25 years ago?
When the CPP was first introduced in 1965, Canada had almost 8 workers for every retiree.
A senior in 1972-1980 was receiving a pension that he/she had barely contributed to.
In those days the money collected through employee/employer contributions in a given year was enough to cover current liabilities, but not future ones.
In other words, workers weren't contributing to their own future pension.
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In the early days of the CPP the government collected money and paid it out in the same year. It wasn't growing a fund for the future, and therefor it didn't need to manage those funds.
But, as the population demographics changed, the government started increasing the contribution rate.
The rate went from 1.8% to 5.95% (blue line) just to account for the fact that we had less workers for every retiree. The government also increased the maximum pensionable earnings (green bars).
At 5.95%, the government was collecting enough to cover the current year's needs, and a little extra for the future. In other words, the government started building a fund for workers. Canadians didn't start funding their own pension until the late 1990.
Most retirees who have received a pension during the last 50 years, did not technically contribute to their own pension.
Live updates on the Alberta NDP leadership debate in Lethbridge.
So far it feels like a meeting of the Assembly of First Nations. We've had the obligatory land acknowledgment and now we're listening to a Blackfoot Elder deliver the opening prayer.
Weirdly, the person introducing him acknowledged that he got paid an honorarium and a few packs of cigarettes).
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Opening statement by Gill McGowan is all about winning over more people to the NDP. We need to be "More Tim Horton and Less Starbuck".
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Sarah Hoffman. I'm big and I'm sassy. I've won 5 times and I'm unapologetic about being a NDP member.
Annual inflation for that time period averaged 2.18% per year. In other words, the 2023 budget of $68.3 billion, outpaced the inflation adjusted budget of $29.1 billion (see table below) by more than 2:1.
Keep in mind that governments in Canada are amongst the biggest contributors to inflation. If our governments kept spending and borrowing under control, inflation could easily be less than 1.5% annually.
This is a plot of Canada's per capita carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions up to 2021. Emissions peaked 18.5 tonnes/person in 2000, and have been in decline ever since.
Under Harper, Canada's emissions dropped to 15.5 tonnes/person. That's a 16.2% reduction in 10 years, down to pre-1970 levels.
Trudeau introduced his carbon tax in 2016, and it's fair to say that it did nothing for 3 years. The reduction that occurred in 2020 and 2021 is entirely due to COVID and the slow down in the economy. Canada's emissions currently sit at 14.3 t/yr/person, and are increasing slightly.
Trudeau's plan calls for an increase in the carbon tax rate to a whopping $170/tonne by 2030. It's currently set at $65/t. An individual that emits 10 tonnes/year would still face a $1,700 tax bill in 2030.
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No other country gets more revenue from a carbon tax than Canada does.
Last year the Federal government collected an estimated $5.4 billion in Carbon tax.
Note: That's the equivalent of a 1% GST
Last year the tax was $50/tonne. It increased to $65/tonne this past April.
It's set to increase by $15/tonne/year until 2023.
2024 $80/tonne of CO2
2025 $95/tonne
2026 $110/tonne
2027 $125/tonne
2028 $140/tonne
2029 $155/tonne
By 2030 Canadians will be paying $170 per tonne of emission of an invisible, odorless, unreactive gas that is essential for life on this planet.
Remember the joke about "selling ice to Eskimos"? Well guess what folks?
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Canada's share of Global CO2 emissions is decreased from 1.67% in 2010 to 1.47% in 2021.
Most of our apparent reduction is because other nations (like China & India) are increasing faster than us, so our share keeps getting smaller.
Are we seriously going to tax ourselves to death and destroy our economy just so we can reduce our global share to from 1.47% to 1% ??
Weekly deaths in Alberta are still trending higher than statistically expected. Here's data up to Sept 2, 2023. (updated Nov 9, 2023). The orange line is the number of weekly expected deaths. This fluctuates, and usually goes down in the summer months. The blue line is the actual number of weekly deaths. Between 60-85 Albertans more than normal are dying every week. That's a 10-12% increase since the COVID vaccine roll out.
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Here's the same data, but I plotted "actual" minus "expected", which is excess deaths. The trend has been going up for 2 years. That's after we rolled out the vaccine. What's causing an extra 80 people to die every week in Alberta? Draw your own conclusions.
P.S. It's not COVID, long-COVID or heat pumps.
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COVID vaccine uptake this campaign is much lower than previous campaigns. Less than 35% of those over the age of 70 have received a COVID booster. It falls off dramatically for younger Albertans. It's less than 10% for everyone under the age of 40.