PM Justin Trudeau's Canada

[yrt+viva=1system]

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2023/12/05/opinion/young-voters-are-done-justin-trudeau

David Coletto, chair of Abacus, describes this as “inflationitis,” a disease that has already felled the New Zealand Labour Party and threatens the reigns of the Tory government in the U.K. and even François Legault’s CAQ in Quebec. Periods of rising inflation are rarely good for incumbent governments. That’s especially true when they’ve been in power as long as Trudeau’s Liberals.

But there’s also something else going on here that’s unique to Canada. The Abacus poll has the Liberals trailing Poilievre’s CPC by 21 points among voters 30 to 44 years old, and 12 points behind voters aged 18 to 29. For a party whose surge to power in 2015 was animated by enthusiastic younger voters, this is a stunning turn of events. Ironically, the Trudeau Liberals are now most popular among baby boomers and older Canadians.

Young people are the ones who benefit disproportionately from the government’s multibillion-dollar childcare program, and they’re the ones who should be most invested in climate change and the pursuit of solutions. So why doesn’t anything the Liberals do resonate with them? Why don’t they care much about the facts here?

As James Carville might say: it's the housing market, stupid.

The Trudeau Liberals have finally found religion on the importance of this issue, and Sean Fraser, minister of housing, infrastructure and communities, has demonstrated that you can move political mountains when you’re willing to weaponize the power of the federal chequebook. But for all the new housing he’s been announcing, it will still take years before it shows in the data — and the prices people are paying. The recent fall economic update, which gave the government an opportunity to demonstrate its sense of urgency, left most housing advocates conspicuously underwhelmed.
As housing expert and economist Mike Moffatt noted, the federal government is “leaving housing demand from population growth untouched, making minor tweaks that won't go into effect until 2025, refusing to make transformative changes. I am deeply, deeply worried about the mess we're going to be in next year."

But if you’re a young person trying to find housing right now, that doesn’t do you any good — and it doesn’t change the most essential aspect of his argument. Housing is far more expensive today than it was in 2015, and the situation is much more dire and desperate for people who don’t already own a home. As a government, especially after eight years in power, you have to take some measure of responsibility for those outcomes.

That’s what Valiquette and the rest of the Liberal team are up against right now. They’re also up against the growing sense among Canadians that change of some sort is required. Indeed, the Abacus poll showed that 85 per cent of Canadians think we need a new government. In that sort of political environment, the Liberals could be making the most intellectually impressive arguments — they’re not, to be clear — and I’m not sure it would matter all that much. When so many Canadians have tuned out the Liberal government’s communicator-in-chief, there’s not much he or anyone else can say to change their minds.

It’s seems the Liberals have stalled on Mike Moffatt’s recommendations.

 

[kEiThZ]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1732362806282920311

 

[Northern Light]

It’s seems the Liberals have stalled on Mike Moffatt’s recommendations.

I doubt the Liberal party's fortune's can be turned around before the next election.

But if they were looking a policy win, what they need is not something that sounds good, or might even be good long term policy, but something that helps almost immediately.

There are only 3 actions that can materially alter the price of housing in less than 12 months.

1) Ban short-term rentals entirely, make the platforms illegal this will add ~20,000 - 30,000 units of supply nationally, something like 10,000 of that in the GTA.

2) Slash the number of foreign students, that means for this coming school year in Sept. That announcement would need to happen now, paired with some assistance to unis/colleges that would take a body blow to their budget.

Deals w/existing students would be honoured, but zero new students to non-uni programs, cap of 20% foreign enrollment in any program before a new student can be accepted, effective Sept '23. This can be relaxed, if desired once Colleges/Unis meet the threshold of having sufficient on-campus housing for every student who they accept who wants it.

3) Slash the number of TFWs. Excluding farm workers, and those making over 100k per year; Give every TFW 180 days notice effective immediately.

In combination, you could see rents and ownership prices off by 25% by this time next year.

*****

The other things they need to do are to drive up wages:

1) The reduced labour supply measures above will be more effective than any regulation at doing this. It should spike entry level wages by at least 15%; and middle-income wages by 10%

2) Raise minimum wages across the country to at least $20 per hour Canadian, by going to $18.25 on July 1st, 2024, and then to $20 per hour on January 1st, 2025. (This requires the province's to play ball)

*****

Finally, on grocery costs:

1) Either abolish the Dairy Board, or order a rollback in the wholesale price of milk to 2020 levels.

2) Given Direction to the Chicken supply boards to similarly rollback farm prices.

3) Break up the grocery oligarchy. Pass a clear law that orders:

Loblaws to divest, completely, Shoppers Drug Mart, Fortinos, Zehrs, T&T, and Arz (they would retain Loblaws/CityMarket/Superstore and NF)

Empire to divest (Farm Boy, Thrifty and Longos) they would retain Freshco and Sobeys.

Metro to divest Adonis

****

For the record, I don't expect to see any of the above happen, though I would be pleasantly surprised if proven wrong.

 

[kEiThZ]

It’s seems the Liberals have stalled on Mike Moffatt’s recommendations.

I've been following Mike Moffat's work for a while. It's really sad that the LPC is choosing to ignore his recommendations, after inviting him to their convention to talk about housing.

Most worrying is that he has warned that because of the substantial increase in students coming in, next summer will be terrible. With higher rent and more families being priced out of the resale market as homes are converted to house students. I expect the LPC to see their poll numbers drop further if this happens. And yet they don't seem concerned at all. At least not enough to change immigration policies.

 

[afransen]

Loblaws to divest, completely, Shoppers Drug Mart, Fortinos, Zehrs, T&T, and Arz (they would retain Loblaws/CityMarket/Superstore and NF)

I have to say, I don't really understand this. Zehrs, for instance, is basically the same thing as Loblaws. If they scratched out the Zehrs name and called them Loblaws they could retain those stores? Zehrs is basically in a distinct geography vs Loblaws, so the two sets of stores wouldn't compete against each other. I can perhaps see market by market imperitives to divest specific locations. For instance, I have three Metros pretty close to my house and no Loblaws or Sobeys. A Longos is being added. Maybe Metro should be required to divest one or two of their locations so they are not crowding out competitor locations

We should probably be thinking more along the lines of disallowing future acquisitions. Trying to untangle previous acquisitions seems a bit unreasonable.

 

[Northern Light]

I have to say, I don't really understand this. Zehrs, for instance, is basically the same thing as Loblaws. If they scratched out the Zehrs name and called them Loblaws they could retain those stores? Zehrs is basically in a distinct geography vs Loblaws, so the two sets of stores wouldn't compete against each other. I can perhaps see market by market imperitives to divest specific locations. For instance, I have three Metros pretty close to my house and no Loblaws or Sobeys. A Longos is being added. Maybe Metro should be required to divest one or two of their locations so they are not crowding out competitor locations

We should probably be thinking more along the lines of disallowing future acquisitions.

We certainly could go market by market, that level of granularity has something to be said for it.

However, I chose brand, because most of the brands do retain an independent management structure; they do share certain functions with their corporate parent (varies by banner), but cleaving them off generally creates only a couple of issues.

In some cases, there may be a need to restore independent warehousing capacity; though this is less of an issue for geographically distinct banners, there is also a need in some cases to disentangle control brands. (ie. removing PC brand from Shoppers). But note that the Longo family remains in charge of Longos for now, and they do not carry any Compliments/Panache product, and likewise Farmboy remains fairly discrete.

So its simply quicker to un-do the mess by banner; it also restores more diverse supply chains.

Trying to untangle previous acquisitions seems a bit unreasonable.

I dunno, its been awhile; but the U.S. took similar steps against monopoly/oligopolies in the past.

The U.S. broke up Standard Oil (what we think of as Esso here. A portion of that survived as Exxon in the U.S. But the U.S. broke it up into 43 discrete companies. (many have since re-merged)

They also broke up AT&T, much of that along regional lines.

Currently the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) has a case against Meta (Facebook parent) seeking to break it up, likely into the discrete entities it acquired such as Instagram and WhatsApp.

 

[Northern Light]

Hmmmm.

I see potentially useful, if belated movement:

From The Star: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada...cle_0b973e50-9521-11ee-b0ba-5b0c543a06c1.html

In respect of limiting the number of study permits, Miller has this to say:

Fun Fact: In the same announcement Miller actually extended the permission to work unlimited hours, while studying full time, til April 30 (it was going to expire Dec 31st)

***

The limits on permits will be the key number, along with what form they take (for instance will they vary by degree/diploma type, and program of study............which they should)

 

[Admiral Beez]

Hmmmm.

I see potentially useful, if belated movement:

From The Star: https://www.thestar.com/news/canada...cle_0b973e50-9521-11ee-b0ba-5b0c543a06c1.html

View attachment 525432

In respect of limiting the number of study permits, Miller has this to say:

View attachment 525433

Fun Fact: In the same announcement Miller actually extended the permission to work unlimited hours, while studying full time, til April 30 (it was going to expire Dec 31st)

***

The limits on permits will be the key number, along with what form they take (for instance will they vary by degree/diploma type, and program of study............which they should)

Trudeau's trying to tamp down the obvious CPC talking points. The colleges will soon be crying poor to their respective premiers. And what about my food wala? Who's bringing my lunch and Amazon packages?

 

[afransen]

The U.S. broke up Standard Oil (what we think of as Esso here. A portion of that survived as Exxon in the U.S. But the U.S. broke it up into 43 discrete companies. (many have since re-merged)

They also broke up AT&T, much of that along regional lines.

But Standard Oil and AT&T were far more dominant from an antitrust perspective.

There should be more rhyme or reason to forcing divestment. Is the logic that grocery store chains shouldn't also own pharmacies? Great, then close them in Costco, Walmart, Loblaws, Sobeys, etc. Or force all standalone pharmacy chains to be divested, such as Lawtons Drugs, Jean Coutu, SDM. as well as Rexall to be divested by McKesson (who is the dominant prescription drug distributor in Canada). If not going to that extreme, I can see market-by-market caps on share. If a company's family of stores exceeds a certain share in a given market/trading area, they should be forced to divest locations or pay some penalty. Similar logic can be extended to other chains, like Starbucks, etc. Of course, rules like these may lead to unintended consequences in rural markets where they may be underserved due to marketshare caps.

The alternative to the big grocery retailers is grocery wholesalers like C&S in the US. Small chains won't be competitive from a scale and efficiency standpoint (particularly as the industry moves towards billon dollar highly mechanized warehouses), and will be at a disadvantage when it comes to negotiating with large multinational food processors and CPG companies. I suppose we should be working on breaking up Procter and Gamble, Kraft Heinz, Pepsi Frito Lay, Cargill, etc. etc.

 

[afransen]

Trudeau's trying to tamp down the obvious CPC talking points. The colleges will soon be crying poor to their respective premiers. And what about my food wala? Who's bringing my lunch and Amazon packages?

We'll see some post secondary institutions collapse because of this.

 

[Northern Light]

We'll see some post secondary institutions collapse because of this.

The small, for-profit ones, I have no issue with, let them go.

For otherwise decent colleges and unis, Ontario may just have to step and fund them at the same level as every other province; that would solve the problem.

Either way, it may also result in some conversation (Which I think it should) about whether Nippising and Laurentian and Algoma should all exist separately, or instead consolidate as the University of Northern Ontario (or otherwise under 1 banner)

Separate campuses may be able to maintained, but one administration/payroll dept etc.; and one set of faculty deans would make them much more cost-efficient.

Some other re-arranging may also make sense.

 

[Admiral Beez]

The small, for-profit ones, I have no issue with, let them go.

For otherwise decent colleges and unis, Ontario may just have to step and fund them at the same level as every other province; that would solve the problem.

Either way, it may also result in some conservation (Which I think it should) about whether Nippising and Laurentian and Algoma should all exist separately, or instead consolidate as the University of Northern Ontario (or otherwise under 1 banner)

Separate campuses may be able to maintained, but one administration/payroll dept etc.; and one set of faculty deans would make them much more cost-efficient.

Some other re-arranging may also make sense.

I think the English Unis in Quebec may see this as a double whammy. First the province essentially kicks out Canadian Anglos, and now Ottawa does foreign ones too.

 

[toraerach]

Fun Fact: In the same announcement Miller actually extended the permission to work unlimited hours, while studying full time, til April 30 (it was going to expire Dec 31st)

I'm pretty okay with this. Current students will be able to finish out the academic year without major disruption, and the glut of domestic students entering the summer job market should cushion the blow for employers to a certain degree.

Employers should have been planning for the December 31 expiration. However, from what I'm hearing through the grapevine, many employers are finding the staffing challenges this will create greater than expected. This extra breathing room should help, at least for those organizations forward-thinking enough to tackle the issue.

 

[kamira51]

We're never gonna see that electoral reform right?

 

[kEiThZ]

For otherwise decent colleges and unis, Ontario may just have to step and fund them at the same level as every other province; that would solve the problem.

The public colleges and universites are a massive part of the problem. Virtually every single college in Ontario has contracted some strip mall school in the GTA to provide a program they can sell to foreign students. They do this just to raise revenue. They don't worry about having space on campus to teach them or having housing. Universities and colleges are all creating one year programs targeting foreign students. And these are usually designed to push students through rather than really provide a high standard of education and skills relevant to the Canadian market. Ontario is among the worst. But the problem is definitely national. Just look at the more well known cases of how ridiculous this abuse gets, like Cape Breton University.

Yes, we should close down those for profit colleges. But exempting the public colleges and universities will not solve the problem at all. They'll more than make up for any reduction in the private education sector.

We'll see some post secondary institutions collapse because of this.

If they can't survive without offering sham programs for backdoor PRs, I am not sure those institutions were ever viable to begin with.