I spent a lot of time writing this brief explanation of the complex dynamics surrounding this country’s fiscal and monetary policy, and why I think the Liberal government doesn’t have the expertise to “get 'er done.” That you think I was defending this government, and the general tone of your reply, shows that it was a complete waste of my time trying to share something I’ve learned.

I won’t make that mistake again.

Holy shit, you’re the goverment. You can print money.

Honestly (and unfortunately) our political leaders do not have the financial literacy or expertise to understand contemporary monetary policy or how our economy works. Frankly, most people do not understand this system because it is made to be intentionally complex and opaque. Nobody has the objective, overall view on all of the interrelated actors/factors that comprise this system. It’s hard for people to accept the fact that our own governments do not fully understand how our economies work, but it’s a fact. This is not just a Trudeau problem.

For example, in a process that is (maybe?) possible and maddeningly complicated (at least in my understanding, which is barely adequate enough to type out here), the Treasury can collaborate with the Bank of Canada to adjust its target reserve funds rate, mitigate the knock-on effects to its Tax and Loan accounts to protect its reserve positions, adopt a non-neutral monetary financing policy (and get the Feds to mitigate the consequences, if they can, to our foreign relations, which would be severe) or use other tricks, increase the monetary financing rate to pre-1982 rates (e.g., around 20-25%), get the BoC to ‘print’ what economists call ‘high-powered money’ and follow Canada’s somewhat unique process of indirectly funding government deficit spending (in this case to to build low-cost housing), all the while trying to balance out the liabilities and fighting like hell against run-away inflation.

Do you understand those steps, the benefits/risks of each, how they relate to one another, and how to implement them? Again, I only barely understand the approach I’ve tried to summarize above, each aspect of which economists of various ideological stripes may/will reject as totally unworkable. I’m certain that I’ve missed critical steps/considerations; I’m just not smart enough to know what I don’t yet know. You can bet Chrystia Freeland, our Minister of Finance, doesn’t understand this process. I bet there isn’t a single member of the Conservative Party of Canada caucus who understands this process. I doubt there’s more than a handful of MPs in Parliament who could even credibly describe the relationship and interrelations between the government and the Bank of Canada, much less how to accomplish the above scenario.

Our government simply does not have the technical expertise required to fix this problem.

Remember his cover of ‘Sweet Child O’ Mine’ by Guns n’ Roses?

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This broadcast is not official. Here’s a RadioReference forum post with the technical details re: how someone can monitor the TETRA system that TTC uses to communicate across its network. This broadcastify feed is picking up the signal from the Birchmount location/frequency.

“We have new people whose life experiences have been radically different than ours. And so for those of us who have been here for decades or a long time, it gives us an insight into how people lived in other parts of the world, and now they’re with us and we want to learn about them. So we are one united community.”

This is such a positive take from someone in leadership re: new immigration to their community. It can be difficult to manage unexpected population growth and the federal/provincial governments offer poor support to growing communities across Canada. Mr. Morrison and his neighbours deserve lots of credit and respect for welcoming new neighbours who’ve been through a lot. They sound like good people.

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Just a reminder that many former government staff, ex-elected officials, family members and acquaintances of current politicians, etc. are now lobbyists and/or investors in the commercial cannabis sector. For example, Smitherman (CEO of CCC) worked for 4 decades in Ontario politics before becoming a lobbyist. As the retailer quoted in this article says, these politically-connected producers are the intended beneficiaries of pricing changes, not the retailers or customers.

Unfortunately, this is standard business practice in Canada: now that they have achieved market dominance over less-connected peers, they look to the government to help protect their profits, which they will use to purchase struggling competitors to further consolidate the industry and allow them to raise wholesale prices in the future. Once only 2-3 major producers remain in the country, they will have spent two decades lobbying the government and can look forward to protectionist government intervention, price collusion, and guaranteed profits, not unlike Rogers/Bell/Telus enjoy today.

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Swiss technology company that focuses on privacy products. Initially funded by a Swiss startup capital firm and now uses a subscription model. ProtonMail is not open source or non-profit, but the product they offer is privacy. Switzerland also has strict privacy laws and resists state-based information requests. Best option is to run one’s own email client server, but simple folks like me don’t have the skills to do so. (FWIW, I use ProtonMail and think it works great.)

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“In my view, a lot of the general associations we have with drinking in public are negative, like drunkenness in public, drinking and driving, like drunken hoodlums, all of these things — which make the news, but aren’t necessarily the only way people consume alcohol in public.”

Dr. Malleck quoted here gets close to the source of the problem, which is classism.

Most mayors, city councilors, etc. are doing well financially and they own their own houses (as well as cottages, investment properties, etc.), so the idea of going to a public park to drink outside with friends seems unusual to them. They view public parks as community spaces, but only within their personal perspectives as homeowners, and therefore what is allowed in parks is restricted to class-based moral sensibilities. It’s easy for Councilor So-and-So to bring her laptop to her backyard garden patio for another Zoom meeting. The line worker who just wants to sit outside with her family after 12 hours inside sorting chicken meat for Councilor So-and-So’s BBQ that weekend… she was an afterthought when it comes to these kinds of public space bylaws.

This disconnect between how municipal leaders and many apartment/condo-dwelling constituents live also explains the conflicts during the pandemic when people wanted to leave the isolation of their apartments for fresh air, but homeowner leaders (with their backyards, cottage retreats, ‘working’ holidays, etc.) told them to go back inside and threatened them with fines.

We do we have these bylaws? Ignorance rooted in class.