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Is Canada better today then when he started as PM? I struggle to agree that it is. Housing is as bad as it has ever been and the immigration decisions seem to h
by nemo44x 2y ago
Is Canada better today then when he started as PM? I struggle to agree that it is. Housing is as bad as it has ever been and the immigration decisions seem to have been so careless that even people that would agree with immigration as a general principal are horrified by it by and large. The Canadian dollar has collapsed VS the USD.
I guess it always ends bad if you stick around long enough.
- jyscao 2y ago> Is Canada better today then when he started as PM? As you've already concluded, the answer is absolutely not. The Canada I grew up with, and mind you my family are immigrants from the 90s and early 2000s ourselves, is completely shattered.
- Cumpiler69 2y ago>The Canada I grew up with [...] is completely shattered. What happened?
- jyscao 2y agoOne could endlessly go on about the economy/COL, immigration, crumbling healthcare, housing crisis, far-left ideology going mainstream, etc. But I could frame it much simpler than that - Canada, at least in cities of modest sizes and up, is rapidly transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society. An anecdote: my sister is more than 10 years younger than me, she's currently attending the same university as I did over a decade ago; in the span of less than half a year, she's got 2 bikes stolen - her original bike with front wheel removed to bypass the lock in late summer 2024, then the entire lock cut to steal her replacement bike in December; this would be inconceivable to me during my time living in the same town.
- pixxel 2y ago[flagged]
- squigz 2y ago> economy, healthcare costs, housing crisis, and... far left ideology One of these things is not like the others. Could you elaborate on how 'far left ideology' relates to the others in terms of the supposed fall of our country?
- soupbowl 2y agoMaybe he means the extreme levels of immigration that have tossed fuel on the housing and healthcare crisis?
- tensor 2y agoFor context, the liberal party is right of centre these days. We don't even have a "far-left" party. The NDP is solidly left, probably slightly left of what the liberals were years ago when this poster thinks things were wonderful. We do have fringe parties that are far-left, that basically get a handful of votes a year, and we have one far-right party, the People Party of Canada, that gets enough votes to occasionally get some news coverage.
- lioeters 2y agoWhenever I see people using the term "far left", I realize its meaning has been subverted and neutered to mean something else entirely. Same with "woke". It's very Orwellian to see how successfully these words have been distorted to obscure their nature and power.
- AlexandrB 2y agoI think people are talking past each other. Some of these parties are "far left" on social issues while simultaneously being "moderate right" on economic issues. So you can label these parties either way, depending on what's convenient to your argument.
- johnny_canuck 2y agoSuch an odd anecdote given that it wasn't that long ago Igor Kenk was the king of bike theft in Toronto.
- digging 2y ago> One could endlessly go on... Yet, apparently one will instead sidestep the discussion entirely. Frankly the more you've tried to answer the question the less you actually answer it... I don't see how "rapidly transitioning from a high-trust to a low-trust society" or "she's got 2 bikes stolen ... this would be inconceivable to me during my time living in the same town" reflect failures in Canadian government at all, really. Has societal trust actually increased anywhere in the developed world? Sure, our governments have had their share of failures, but it would actually take an extraordinary vision and effort to increase societal trust as technology and population advance. Is it possible your sister had a shockingly unlucky semester? Or that your world model was simply naive and wrong 10 years ago? Hard to say since the anecdote isn't really evidence of anything.
- randomopining 2y agoLook at Japan as a homogenous and extremely (if not the most) high trust society.
- krapp 2y ago>Look at Japan as a homogenous and extremely (if not the most) high trust society. Why does Japan need separate trains for women, and why can the shutter sound on Japanese phones not be turned off?
- jim-jim-jim 2y agoAll countries need this; Japan's just the only one that did something about it. I'm sure NYC ladies would love segregated cars right about now.
- digging 2y agoUm... why exactly am I looking for a highly homogenous society?
- randomopining 2y ago
- steve_adams_86 2y agoThis anecdote could be explained by something as simple as her forgetting to lock her bike consistently, locking it incorrectly, using poor locks, etc.
- VerminOctopus1 2y agoI think any Canadian that identifies as “far left” would find your post hysterical. They don’t even have a party to vote for anymore - best they can do is a begrudging vote for the NDP. This country has been on a rightward shift for decades. e.g. look at the hard push towards privatization of government services in Ontario.
- vizzier 2y agoThe 90s were a demographic golden age for Canada but people get old. This is a problem true of most of the western world and is upstream from almost any other issue.
- papercrane 2y ago> The Canadian dollar has collapsed VS the USD. The CAD is sitting at about $0.70 USD right now, which isn't really outside of it's typical range, and not really unexpected given the difference in interest rate now between Canadian & US interest rates. If you look at historical prices it looks more like business-as-usual, the CAD usually bounces between 0.70-0.80 USD.
- srid 2y agoCAD was actually on parity with USD between 2007-2012.
- papercrane 2y agoYes, but that was a very unusual time and can be attributed to the US financial crisis. In addition to money fleeing the US, the Canadian and US interest rates diverged to strengthen the Canadian dollar.
- glitchc 2y agoThat's actually bad for the economy. Canadian companies benefit from the lower dollar as goods are often sold in USD, but wages are paid in CAD. 0.75 to 0.8 is the historical benchmark for the exchange rate.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- maeil 2y agoCan you name a similarly wealthy country that is actually better today than it was on the date he started as a PM? I can't. Seems like something else has been going on. Potentially you could name Ireland, by becoming a tax haven, screwing over everyone else instead.
- laidoffamazon 2y agoAmerica is, especially since 2021 but nobody wants to believe it.
- mlekoszek 2y agoNot sure why the parent comment is being downvoted. By most sources, the States has been the exception and not the rule post-pandemic. * https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/why-is-the-u-s-gdp-recovering-faster-than-other-advanced-economies-20240517.html https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/notes/feds-notes/why-... * https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-recovery-from-covid-19-in-international-comparison/ https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-recovery-from-covi...
- maeil 2y agoBecause even HN, by nature, is still an incredibly US-centric place. And has historically been a very capital-focused place where the stock market and GDP are taken as the only serious indicators by which to measure whether a country is doing well. Both of these points have very slowly been changing here, but the downvotes show it's still largely the same. I spend my time between East-Asia and Europe, with one foot firmly in each of them, giving me a different perspective showing that Canada is the norm, not the outlier, which would be the US if there were to be one. I still didn't expect it though, I thought here people would realize authoritarians aren't being voted in everywhere because the populace think things have been improving.
- laidoffamazon 2y agoThere’s nothing wrong with America that would necessitate the gloom certain less informed quarters of the populace have. Nothing.
- mkipper 2y ago> The Canadian dollar has collapsed VS the USD This might be splitting hairs, but I think this is more about the strength of USD than the weakness of CAD. I don't know that you can say CAD has "collapsed" when every other major currency has seen a similar (or worse) drop compared to USD over the last 10 years.
- johnny_canuck 2y agoIt always is this. Same reason the CAD was at parity during the financial crisis.
- cmrdporcupine 2y agoAfter 2008 we also "benefited" from very high oil prices which drove the dollar higher That high dollar didn't do any positive things for Ontario & Quebec's export oriented manufacturing sector though, which is why I put "benefited" in quotes.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoCanada is definitely worse than it was ten years ago, but all of the major problems are provincial responsibilities: housing, health care, education, policing. The largely conservative provinces have done a very good job of blaming Trudeau and immigration for problems that are entirely their own.
- srid 2y agoOut of curiosity, how is the housing & health care situation in those conservative provinces compared to other provinces (like Quebec, where I live in)?
- soupbowl 2y agoI moved from a liberal province to a conservative province last year. My cost of living is 25% lower, gas is much cheaper and I was able to buy a new beautiful house which was an impossibility in my previous province.
- VerminOctopus1 2y agoWhat province to what province? This is an incredibly shallow observation without more information.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoIt's instructive to compare Vancouver to Toronto. 10 years ago in BC health care was in worse shape and housing was ~2X the cost of Toronto. In the past 10 years BC has had an NDP government and Ontario a Conservative one. Both housing & health care have gotten worse in BC, but at a much lower rate than in Ontario. Today health care in BC is in much better shape than Ontario, and the cost of housing in Vancouver is about the same as it is in Toronto.
- Matthias247 2y agoAre there any numbers/data for the quality of healthcare in the provinces over time? At least for housing I see the average home prices in each category (condos, townhomes, detached) still higher in Vancouver than Toronto (when googling a bit, I found https://wowa.ca/reports/canada-housing-market https://wowa.ca/reports/canada-housing-market with some data. But there's probably lots of real estate related sites with more).
- Hilift 2y agoCanada is in approximately the same unfortunate position of being a supplicant state of the US. This was apparent as far back as 2018 or so. The US "Commerce Department" recommended sanctions on Canada for a trade violation in timber. The worst case sanctions add about $9,000 to the cost of a new single family home in the US. "March 2016, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Obama instructed their respective cabinet members responsible for international trade to explore all options for resolving the trade dispute.[32] Canada's international trade minister, Chrystia Freeland, said that "what we have committed to is to make significant, meaningful progress towards a deal—to have the structure, the key elements there a 100 days from now"." Then: "April 24, 2017, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said his agency will impose new anti-subsidy tariffs averaging 20 percent on Canadian softwood lumber imports, a move that escalates a long-running trade dispute between the two countries... "On April 25, 2017, the Trump administration announced plans to impose duties of up to 24% on most Canadian lumber, charging that lumber companies are subsidized by the government..." Then: "On August 19, 2024, the US raised tariff rates on imports of Canadian softwood lumber products from 8.05% to 14.54%". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_softwood_lumber_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada%E2%80%93United_States_s...
- zahlman 2y agoIf anything, tariffs are proof of independence, not of functioning as a "supplicant state".
- glitchc 2y agoA big reason driving the collapse of the Canadian dollar is the incumbent government's climate change policy. Since being elected to power, the government has regulated, stalled and effectively defunded the fossil fuel industry, accounting for approx. 22-30% of Canada's GDP. That loss of revenue is felt in the dollar exchange.
- Tiktaalik 2y agoThis is not true in the slightest. Beyond the fact that the government went so far as to buy a pipeline to ensure added capacity for Alberta oil sands development, they've been enormously supportive of LNG development in BC, approving many projects and recently going so far as to give a $500M loan toward a project. https://www.ipolitics.ca/news/crown-corp-loans-500-million-for-lng-project-despite-government-promise-to-end-oil-and-gas-financing https://www.ipolitics.ca/news/crown-corp-loans-500-million-f...
- glitchc 2y agoPlease stop spreading lies and FUD. The pipeline buyout was too little too late after the government stalled and delayed permits over never-ending environmental assessments. All in all, the projected cost of capital flight exceeds $30 billion CAD (the article is from 2019): https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/the-30-billion-exodus-foreign-oil-firms-are-bailing-on-canadas-energy-sector https://financialpost.com/commodities/energy/the-30-billion-... The government has openly committed to ending all funding for fossil fuels in 2024: https://www.iisd.org/articles/insight/ending-canada-support-fossil-fuels https://www.iisd.org/articles/insight/ending-canada-support-...
- bryanlarsen 2y ago> the courts stalled and delayed permits over never-ending environmental assessments. FTFY.
- glitchc 2y ago> the courts enforced legislation enacted by the Liberal government. There you go, the truth will set you free.
- Tiktaalik 2y agoDepends on who you're talking to. There are many indigenous communities that now have water that are better off than before he was PM. Speaking for myself I think things in 2019 were better than 2015. The pandemic and things after the pandemic (hi inflation and spiking interest rates) have not been quite so fun but these are global issues and people around the world have had a similar experience. Arguably there is more Trudeau could have done but some things are beyond his reach (eg. Bank of Canada sets interest rates). If you're a person without an established home you own you probably feel things are disastrously worse than 2015 when you presumed that surely eventually you'd own one. If you already own a home you probably care quite a bit less. Housing was deeply dysfunctionally broken in the major cities well before Trudeau became PM in 2015 and the lazy status quo approach of his government ensured that the contagion of housing shortage would spread Canada wide. It's mostly Provincial and Municipal governments that are at fault but plenty of fault for the feds too. Despite the fact that Fed housing policy right now is better than it's ever been the damage has been done.
- RegnisGnaw 2y agoThe problem is that massive spike in immigration under J.T. is making the housing issue worse.
- Tiktaalik 2y agoThat's the rhetoric but I'm not sure it's the reality. At least not where I live. It's a big country so ymmv. In a neighbourhood with a scam college bringing in lots of students yeah sure maybe some distortions of the market were more noticeable as rental vacancy plunged and rents increased. In Vancouver housing prices were already going into their exponential curve in 2014 before this government was even elected or immigration numbers were fiddled with. In the last two years while immigration was increased home prices have been flat. You can have a look at BC Assessment as home values are updated every year. The biggest change comes with 2021 due to ultra low interest rates. As interest rates rose home prices stagnated as expected. Personally I don't see any connection at all between home prices and immigration though I can imagine rental vacancy and rent prices were impacted in some places (particularly smaller town Ontario) due to the reluctance of municpalities and the province to build more homes and the prevalence of exploitative scam colleges).
- RegnisGnaw 2y agohttps://x.com/jayvas/status/1779557729629073660/photo/1 https://x.com/jayvas/status/1779557729629073660/photo/1 That's the problem with J.T., our economic growth has been vastly Government employees.. our private sector is dying..
- adverbly 2y agoHousing has gotten worse in many places. I hate to be repeat a meme but land value tax would fix this.
- bryanlarsen 2y agoOnly the provinces have the constitutional authority to impose a land value tax. (The cities get their property taxing rights from the province).
- adverbly 2y agoDing ding ding! Yes! I find it interesting that the Federal government is getting the majority of the blame for these issues when in reality I feel like provinces should be at fault. Not to say that the federal government is without blame, but I feel like given the current state of healthcare in many provinces, as well as the housing s** show, provincial governments should be primarily held at fault. Zoning/housing, Healthcare, education... Obviously the immigration loop holes have been an issue as well, but these three are provincial.
- 3vidence 2y agoSeems odd though that despite these issues being provincial that every province is seemingly struggling with these issues... Almost like there is a larger macroeconomic force at play.