Readers this week discussed ideas for how to improve Canada’s government, the crumbling immigration consensus, the country’s cratering self-employment rates, and Prime Minister Trudeau’s foreign interference testimony.
The goal of Hub Forum is to bring the impressive knowledge and experience of The Hub community to the fore and to foster open dialogue and the competition of differing ideas in a respectful and productive manner. Here are some of the most interesting comments from this past week.
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How to get better—not bigger—government
Monday, April 8, 2024
“[The next election] represents the rare opportunity for the incoming party to use their likely healthy majority to upgrade our stale governance structure.”
— Rob Tyrell
The NDP don’t take themselves seriously, so why should we?
Tuesday, April 9, 2024
“The NDP hasn’t caught up to a world where inequality is as much about housing wealth as it is about income. The shift away from the NDP was largely young, and while you might see that as having soured on social issues, I think it’s also plausibly about the NDP getting the economic issues wrong.”
— Valerie
“Canadians want programs like inexpensive daycare, dental care, and pharmacare, but they have to be willing to pay for it.”
— A. Chezzi
“The NDP has not represented ordinary working people for decades. They represent champagne socialists and government employees.”
— Kim Morton
Canada’s hard-fought immigration consensus is crumbling before our eyes
Wednesday, April 10, 2024
“I do think the immigration consensus is at risk…People won’t focus on an issue if they trust the institution to deal with it, but mismanagement diminishes that trust.”
— Gordon Edwards
“Then there is the problem of national identity. How do we promote a Canadian identity and be multicultural at the same time? Or is our identity going to be a mass of different, and sometimes conflicting, identities all bunched up in one place?”
— Kim Morton
“Blaming immigrants for levels of immigration that are too high, is like blaming the water in a bathtub that is overflowing. The controller of the tap (the federal government) should get most of the blame. The immigrants should get none of it.”
— Paul Attics
The outsized economic effects of Canada’s cratering self-employment
Thursday, April 11, 2024
“The removal of personal responsibility and insistence that no one can succeed without everyone else being dragged backward cannot continue. People who are successful have worked hard and long. The majority of them deserve the fruits of their labour, ingenuity, and sacrifices.”
— Susan
Justin Trudeau’s well-rehearsed testimony reassures no one
Friday, April 12, 2024
“As long as political parties permit non-citizens to become members, work on election campaigns, vote for riding officials, and have a say in choosing party leaders as well as riding candidates, you will have foreign interference. All that it requires is for those individuals to be organized and directed.”
— Michael B
“There has been a lot of focus on Trudeau’s skepticism regarding the intelligence relating to foreign election interference. This is summed up in the statement that ‘Intelligence is not evidence.’ But intelligence is based on evidence, the level of confidence in the conclusions varies with the amount and quality of the evidence intelligence services have been able to gather.”
— Gord Edwards
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