Canada Blockade

This post is a brain dump. Here’s a few “hot” items on the menu:

Protesters

I share their frustration. I share their anger. Nobody is happy with what’s going on. Everyone is affected and tired. I get it. Trust me, I want my “normal” life back too. 

But overthrowing the government that was elected four months ago and replacing it with a committee that includes a radical white supremacist group at the head table is not the solution (a point they reiterated this week). Ironically they are using democratic rights, like free speech and the right to protest, to try to remove a democratically elected government with a clear mandate 4 months ago.

We have a right to free speech. We have a right to protest. You have a voice. I’m your ally even if we don’t see eye to eye. Because your rights trump my opinion.

There’s a legitimate discussion to have regarding vaccine mandate for truckers and other measures. We can talk about that. We are looking for a solution to get out of this mess. We need a framework to return to normal. The problem is that protestors are looking for a simple solution to a complex problem.

The part where you lose me is when you use your right to cause chaos and ruin the lives of citizens and workers. Or wave confererate flags or nazi symbols. This does not help your cause. Big crowds always attract morons. The BLM and January 6 people found that out. This was no exception.

“Freedom” doesn’t entitle you to ruin other people’s lives. Your interests don’t supersede the others. Your rights are not above those of society. It’s not about liberty. It’s about them. 

What you are doing is illegal. A 4-year old kid with cancer couldn’t get to his chemotherapy treatment because he couldn’t get to his appointment. Small shops, takeouts, restaurants and large stores can’t open. Brave people who work through the pandemic plus entrepreneurs trying to stay afloat are impacted. Ironic that protestors are willing to trash the income of others.You are turning the population against you. 

Do you know how many people are occupying downtown Ottawa? 250. How many people voted in the last election four months ago? 17 million. Thank god we are not invaded.

Democracy

Democracy is messy. It’s not perfect. It’s frustrating. It’s slow. Nobody ever gets everything they want. You have to compromise. But I will take democracy over tyranny any day. 

Here’s the thing with democracy. If you don’t like the decisions the leaders are making, you can vote them out. And politicians go to bed thinking about how they are going to stay in power and wake up thinking about how they are going to stay in power. And most of the time that means giving people what they want.

Truckers

I like truckers. They are an important part of our economic fabric. They move the stuff we need. It’s hard work that nobody wants to do. They are certainly underappreciated.

The issue is that we have protestors that have hijacked the trucker’s mouvement to push their seditious agenda. Protestors that are ruining other people’s freedom under the pretext of defending it. This is not helping the trucking industry or their conditions.

Trudeau

Politics 101 = the greater the crisis, the greater the opportunity.

Where is our leader? He doubled and tripled down on rhetoric, basically adding fuel to the fire.

It’s in times of crisis we get to see what people are made of. Trudeau clearly failed. Some Liberals have broken rank and criticized Trudeau, saying what a lot of people have been thinking. I know the protesters want Trudeau’s head but with the way things are going I think the real threat is inside the Liberal party. This guy is not a leader and I can see a scenario where the party wants to move away from him, like the Conservatives did with O’Toole.

There’s no clear solution to this crisis. I’m not saying to send in the army. There’s still room for a pacific solution. If there was one the truckers would have been one already. But Trudeau has the space to act like a leader. And he’s not. He should be trying to find solutions and he’s not.

And why do we hear more about the U.S. leaders regarding our domestic crisis?

Conservatives

If you think the Liberals mishandled the crisis, the Conservatives, thinking they had something to gain by supporting the protests, realized they were on the wrong side. What a 180 on their part. They made a serious miscalculation and are now telling protestors to go home. Well except for Pierre Poilievre (it’s because of guys like him the Conservative will never make traction and get elected). It’s not good for the future of this country, the democratic fabric of this country, and the image it projects internationally when you align yourself with a seditious mouvement.

They have realigned their guns. Now all parties and the Liberals now have a united voice on the issue.

As a side note, it’s a sad and confused time for Conservatives. They could be in power. The Liberals and Trudeau provide easy opposition. But yet they can’t get their act together. 

Their association with the Freedom Convoy will deepen and intensify the rift on the political right. As such, it’ll repel many centrist Canadians, 90% of whom think vaccines are the best idea to stop people from dying and overwhelming hospitals.

Dictatorship

It’s actually painful and embarrassing to write. I deleted it. Then rewrote it. Then delete it. Then I wrote it again.

No, Canada is not a dictatorship. It’s insulting to people actually living under real dictatorship.

Still not sure? Go to China or Russia and try to have a convoy of 4 trucks together hooking for “freedom”. You will be scrubbing the floor in a Siberian gulag just thinking about it. In Kazakhstan the police have orders to shoot protesters on sight. If you want to protest inhumane conditions, the list is long. 

Do you really think Trudeau is a dictator? Come on. He would be the world’s worst dictator. Dictators are mean, tough, and crush dissidents. Right now Trudeau is hiding.

Do you know who wins while we fight over stupid matters? They do! We look pathetic. We have free speech. A world without it is a tyranny. 

Patriots

Camping downtown Ottawa doesn’t make you a patriot. Honking your truck doesn’t make you a patriot. Having a tantrum because you need to prove a vaccine doesn’t make you a patriot. Harassing volunteers trying to feed the homeless doesn’t make you a patriot. A patriot doesn’t block roads so a 4-year old with cancer can’t get treatment. A patriot doesn’t desecrate the National War Monument. A patriot doesn’t turned the statue of Terry Fox into an anti-vax, anti-medicine monument.

Here’s a real patriot:

Canadian Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

The people in the ground paid the ultimate price for freedom. The vaccine is a small cost for freedom. How ironic that their freedom to be in Ottawa protesting the government was paid for by the blood and death of that soldier & every other unknown soldier.

A real patriot stands up for what is right. A real patriot put their life on the line for a cause much bigger than himself. A real patriot respects the people that have fought and died for Canada. A real patriot doesn’t associate with Nazis waving swatikas. Real patriots fight them.

Generations of Canadians have fought and died for our rights, including free speech. Just keep that in mind before urinating on it.

Vaccine

Can you still get the virus? Yes. Can you still transmit it? Yes. But that’s not how vaccines work. It never did. The vaccine works. We have data. Good data. Who dies? The old and the unvaxx. Getting vaccinated means you don’t take a hospital bed. Hospital resources that should go to people that really need it.

You heard people saying that that covid is only a sore throat. Well that is the vaccine at work. My mom got it and thank god she’s vaccinated because she’s what you call vulnerable. She checks all the boxes. She’s triple vaxxed, got it, had a cough for a day, and didn’t clog up the health system. Thank you vaccine.

We should embrace the marvel of modern medicine and science. It’s amazing what we can do. The things that people would have wished for in the past. But nope, there’s a 10% that still cling to crystal therapy.

The thing you heard a lot last year from the vaccine skeptics is we don’t know what it does long term. They said millions would have died in the next year. Well it’s been over a year, I got three doses and I’m well enough to write this.

Restrictions

90% of the population is vaccinated. Yet, restrictions are imposed on 90% of the population because 10% don’t want to get vaccinated. And that’s frustrating because the unvaxxed 10% doesn’t care about restrictions and as a result the 90% is penalized.

The unvaxxed are the most vocal group about getting out of this mess but take actions further stay in this mess. If there’s anyone that should throw a fit, it’s the 90%.

It’s your right if you want to get vaccinated or not. Getting vaccinated is a small cost for liberty. But keep in mind that actions have consequences. 

How Will This Play Out?

Allow me to speculate.

The problem Trudeau has is that he has a few, narrowly circumscribed bases of power that are enough to get elected but not enough to govern against the will of the people. Those are very different things.

So that leaves him with very serious limits on what he can accomplish in this situation. The truckers were smart to organize themselves locally and create many small spots of trouble. Similar to an insurgency. Local decentralized warfare that relies on local support. Basically the government is playing whack-a-mole.

The question is how long can the truckers last?

Conclusion

Are you tired of the pandemic? Yeah, me too. Everyone is. One dose, two doses, three doses. Remote learning, zoom, vaccine pass.Nobody likes this stuff. It’s stressful. But that pales in contrast to those who have had to lock up their restaurants and failed small businesses whose dreams and savings are now dashed. Or the 35,000 Canadians that died.

The path through this mess is 1) working together 2) through science and medicine. Not through playing soldier under the guise of ‘freedom’.

I Wonder Why We Have a Real Estate Bubble in Canada

What real estate bubble? Thanks to @BCAppelbaum for the find. Although his find does not necessary points to the real estate situation in Canada, it sure does fit. Who cares about math right?

“A collection of six modern two bedroom condos. 90% sold 1 left”.

Election Guide: Everything you need to know about the parties’ platforms

Canadians have been called to vote on October 19. It’s still early in this long race and the National Post has put together this nice electoral guide. It gives you a general sense of where each party stands. It’s great for people who don’t have the time to follow all the little intricacies of the campaign. I’m sure some stuff will change during the race and whoever wins the election won’t be able to keep all their promises or go through with their full agenda. Guide: Everything you need to know about the parties’ platforms, from taxes and terrorism to the environment

A quick read of the guide reveals that there’s a lot of cross-overs between the Liberals and the NDP’s platforms. There’s some slight differences but they generally stand together on a lot of stuff. Since Thomas Mulclair (former Liberal) took over the party after the late Jack Layton he has steer the party to the center-left with the goal of making more appealing to a wider voting base. The NDP and the Liberal should form a coalition since they are fighting for the same voting base and basically splitting the vote.

The other puzzling thing is they all promise to balance the budget. How? The NDP and the Liberals pledge not to raise taxes (well just on some people) and to increase spending on social programs. The Conservative can hardly balance it after all the cuts and shenanigans they pulled but the NDP will? Trudeau was on the radio to other day and he couldn’t answer the question on how he will balance it.

I’m not sure who I’m going to vote for at the moment. In political speak I fall in the “undecided” voter base. There’s a party in leaning towards but that can change. You have to earn my vote. Each party has their strengths and weaknesses. The Conservatives have a strong leader but he’s out of touch with the Canadians. Harper lacks transparency and seem to have steer the country in a direction that I don’t like. Being a “Canadian” met something and it took a beating under his reign.  We loss some international goodwill value. He’s also the candidate that I trust the less. But the true is Harper has done much better than the media credit him for. He’s an easy person to attack. The Liberals have the “not ready” Trudeau but are the most balance party. They also have the most depth in terms of personal. If Trudeau wins at least he can count on building a well qualified team to run the country. Regarding the NDP, I like the work Mulclair has done and I think he will be a fine leader. However, I’m not too crazy about certain things on the party’s platform. But I can say the same thing about every party. A lot of stuff is simply there to win votes like “I will balance a budget but I don’t know how”. The NDP also lacks “qualified MPs”. If Mulclair froms a government, who he is going to work with? Most of the NDP’s MPs in Quebec are there by accident, thanks to the popularity of Jack Layton. They didn’t expect to win and a lot of them are a total joke. Half of the slate of NDP MPs are no way qualified to make decisions, I can’t imagine them run a country. Even though I like Gille Duceppe, the Bloc needs a massive turnaround to stay relevant. That’s a preview of the Canadian elections for you.

My predictions: Conservative Minority government or a NDP/Liberal coalition with Mulclair as Prime Minister and Trudeau with a senior cabinet position to get his hand dirty.

Target Canada Totally Missed the Target

After a two year tryout, Target has decided to pull the plug on its $7-billion Canadian operation. That’s not shocking considering they racked up $1.6 billion in losses to date instead of the 2013 profit their financial model predicted. What is shocking is that Sears Canada is still around. Now their “recalibrated” financial model could not find a realistic scenario by which it would be profitable until at least 2021, that’s another six years in the red under what I would assume a best case scenario. The old CEO got axed because of the botched expansion and the new CEO took note and wants to keep his job for more than six years. Now that Target announced its abandoning its Canadian operations, the stock (TGT) was up 8% in pre-market with market capitalization gain of $3 billion. Since a higher stock price is the good news, the terrible news is 17,600 employees losing their jobs. I expect to see that number being reflected in Canada’s monthly job report (To give you an idea, there was a loss of 4,300 jobs in December 2014, so negative 17,600 jobs is a big number in Canada). Target was supposed to bring hope to the people who lost their jobs with the closure of Zellers (Target bought some of the bankrupt Zellers locations.)

Target’s botched expansion in Canada certainly makes an interesting business school case study. How does such a successful retailer flop so badly? There are a lot of lessons to be learned. I love Target USA and every time me and my wife are in the U.S. me we make a habit to stock up before crossing the border. The goods are cheap and the experience is superior than going to Wal-Mart.

The main lesson here is first impressions. Target Canada got off to a disastrous start that stayed engraved in people’s mind. My wife is the real barometer for a store’s success. I remember how exited she was at the announcement of Target entering Canada. Canadians that were familiar with Target USA were thrilled and the folks that never been to a Target store couldn’t wait to find out what the buzz was about. This was a situation where people were camping out the night before the grand opening. Unfortunately you only get a chance to impress once. After months of making noises Target finally had their grand opening and to put it lightly my wife was ‘’severely disappointed’’. Her experience wasn’t isolated. A lot of people of the Target cheerleaders were totally deflated. While getting a haircut the stranger in the seat next to me was on a rant against Target. He couldn’t understand what the excitement was all about and what’s so great about Target after a lackluster shopping experience.

My wife first she said that prices were much higher. Obviously prices are a huge factor when making decisions. Generally Canadians expect higher prices than U.S. stores, which have been the norm since forever (lower currency, more expensive labor etc…) but in this case prices were higher than other local retailers. My wife’s exercise pants are $10 cheaper at Wal-Mart than Target. Same brand, same good, same color, same everything. Now Target pissed off my wife and the Target “goodwill” took a plunge. Other notable problems are empty shelves due to inventory and operational issues. The empty shelves pictures floating on social media became the unofficial symbol of Target Canada. I never really understood the empty shelves problem that has been plaguing Target since the beginning. It’s terrible for your image. Imagine if you went to a dealership and the cars weren’t painted. Or your hamburger is served with half a bun. It’s not just that it doesn’t feel right, it’s just not right. Is this some kind of catch 22 where Target says “Why stock up the shelves? There’s nobody here.” and the customers says “I’m not going, there’s nothing on the shelves.” Since Target bought some of the old Zellers locations, they inherited some of the bad locations Zellers had like the ones in rundown shopping centers. That part of town where nobody goes.

First impressions are very important (not just in retailing of course). Target Canada did slightly improve after its opening but never enough to recapture the heart of the consumer, or more importantly their wallet. A while back I read a headline that said something along the lines “Canada is not as welcoming” regarding Target’s terrible opening. That headline couldn’t have been any more wrong. It wasn’t like Target was entering a hostile environment. Canadians were hungry for Target’s products. When you compare the situation to Wal-Mart, Target had everything to gain. When a Wal-Mart opens in your town, there’s a protest blocking street and organized groups trying to get it closed. It’s a heated issue. Some people are so anti-Walmart that’s they couldn’t wait for Target to muscle them out. Target was entering a friendly environment with a fan base that was waiting to spend their money but had nothing to spend their money on. Before the expansion, everybody was talking about Target; “Target is great, Target is cheaper, Target is so fun to shop at”. It’s not like Target had to gain their trust and convince customers, they were camping out the night before the opening. When you have a lineup outside before opening, you have achieved the the Pax Romana of retailing. The share of the pie was there for them to grab and Target blew it. Maybe the executives were too arrogant, thinking they could just walk into Canada and have immediate success by taking advantage of their fan club. Consumers have a limited amount of money to spend and there’s plenty of competition for our wallet. Basically Target Canada ended up not being great, wasn’t cheaper, and wasn’t fun to shop at. Now there’s a movement to bring back Zellers.

*Disclosure: I’m not long or short Target (TGT) and I don’t plan on taking a position.

Have a good weekend,

Brian

Natural Grass-fed Butter in Canada

I’m shopping for grass-fed butter for two reasons.
1) The health benefits are excellent.
2) It definately tastes better.
3) And I want to make my own Bulletproof coffee.

If you are in Canada like me, shopping for natural grass-fed butter is a frustrating experience. Even the fancy hip health stores in urban centers like Montreal and Toronto doesn’t carry any. The main reason lies in our regulatory system and our seasons. Canada is subject to many strict dairy and agricultural laws, import restrictions, and we have a good winter. A snow diet is not considered grass-fed. Forget importing, Canada like other nations are very protective of their dairy industry. If there’s one thing the Bulletproof recipe has no wiggle room for, it’s the butter. It requires that you use organic unsalted grass-fed butter. Anything else other than grass-fed takes the “proof” out of bulletproof.

However, you can work your way around it. First two options are complicated and the third one is realizable.

1) Have a friend that goes to the U.S. and have brings back some. This option is not suitable for the majority of people. First, you need a friend. Second, you need a friend that goes to the U.S. Third, you need a friend that’s willing to bring butter back and that can be annoying. You might have 500 Facebook friends but where are they when you need real grass-fed butter?

2) Another hard way is to contact local dairy farms to see if they have any. Some farm produce some, but quantities can be hard to come by and it’s very seasonal. That option is one of of those hit or miss.

3) You can do what I do. Right now I’m using the L’Ancêtre butter based out of Quebec. In Canada, to have your butter qualify grass-fed, it needs to be 60% grass-fed. L’Ancêtre is at least 60% grass-fed and even more depending on the season. Now 60% is clearly not enough. However there’s a way around it. The key is to get your butter in the summer.Between May and October, cows are outside eating grass. You will notice that the butter is more yellow during that period and that’s a good sign. For the other part of the year, the winter part, the cows are fed a mix of grains depending on the farmer (and cost). That’s supposed to be other 40%. At least with L’Ancêtre, those grains are organic. My recommendation is to stock up the freezer with summer butter which is mostly grass fed. Butter freezes well and can be kept a long time.

Other notes: A lot of people swears by the popular brand name is Kerrygold. Kerrygold is classify organic and grass-fed. However Kerrygold is 90% grass-fed because Ireland has a winter too. By surfing the net, it seems that many are disappointed and feel cheated by the findings.

Lawrence Solomon: Canada needs Quebec

It’s revitalizing the National Post have a positive article about Quebec. In the past the National Post never hesitated to take a couple punch at the province and I am sure they will take a couple more shots in the future. But it’s nice to see a change of tune on in a while. I think the article is pretty reasonable. My favorite part of the article is this:

Quebec has all the ingredients needed to be a prosperous country: a talented workforce, top-ranked universities, advanced industries, abundant natural resources — everything but the good governance required to bring it to Swiss or Swedish levels of economic competence. One day it will acquire that governance and assert its desire for independence.

It’s nice to hear that statement from somebody else because I have said the above argument many times. It’s mind boggling to me that Quebec is behind the other provinces in terms of prosperity. We have all the ingredients to be successful. We have the solution to our problems and we hold the key to our success. The people of Quebec to raise up and live up to its potential.

Here is the full article:

Reposted from The Financial Post
By Lawrence Solomon

Those who think Quebec is dependent on Canada have it backwards; Quebec keeps Canada united

Canada is a camel of a country, an ungainly, confounding confederation of disparate regions that somehow combined to form one of the most successful countries on earth. It is a blessed oddity, “an historic accident” in the appreciative words of former Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau, who also characterized Canada as “a country built against any common, geographic, historic or cultural sense.”

Unlike Canada, Quebec is coherent: geographically, historically and culturally. Although many in English Canada deride Quebec for its dependence on Canada — the equalization payments it receives, its proposal to keep the Canadian dollar following independence — in truth Canada needs Quebec far more than Quebec needs Canada.

Imagine that Quebec voted for independence in a referendum that all agreed was clearly decided. The Canadian dollar would fall, investments would be put on hold, and chaos and confusion would immediately reign. But this immediate fallout would be as nothing once the long- term implications sunk in.

Canadian governments preemptively made concessions to Quebec to stave off its leaving
The post-referendum negotiations that would ensue would not be limited to the terms of Quebec’s departure from Canada — all the regions and provinces of Canada would examine their own role in the Canada that remained, and jockey for advantage. In the century and a half since Confederation, the provinces have never agreed to so much as free trade among themselves. The odds are slim that they would each put aside their long-standing grievances to happily come together in a lasting new partnership.

Take Newfoundland, which joined Canada only in 1949 and then only narrowly, after two bitter referenda, and on the expectation of being on the receiving end of pensions, family allowances and other federal government benefits. Newfoundland— like Quebec a distinct society and every bit a nation — is today a have province that subsidizes the rest of Canada. If Quebec leaves Canada, Newfoundlanders would almost surely agitate for a referendum of their own to revisit their decision to join Canada. Also like Quebec, Newfoundland’s is an export economy that sells mainly to the U.S. — trade with Canada’s other provinces takes a back seat in importance.

Albertans, who write by far the biggest equalization cheques to other Canadians, would also balk at signing on to a renewed Confederation that resembles the status quo — too many remember how the rest of Canada plundered them through the National Energy Program in the 1980s, and too many now resent the way they are being demonized for their tar sands. At a minimum, Albertans would want a new deal that didn’t make them subject to extortion from the very people they were supporting; more likely, they would question the prudence of joining a new untested union of uncertain future when, as an oil and gas exporting economy whose earnings come in U.S. dollars, their future on their own would be far more predictable.

British Columbia, too, that paradise on the Pacific, rich in natural resources, perfectly positioned to capitalize on the fast-growing Asian trade and closer in temperament to Washington State to the south than to Alberta to the east, could also pause at the prospect of re-Confederating.

A wild card in all this would be the U.S. In 1948, despite opposition from both Canada and the U.K., numerous members of Congress were open to Newfoundland joining the U.S. — with 100,000 American servicemen stationed on U.S. military bases in Newfoundland during World War II, the two had become close. Today, the U.S. would be leery of accepting a Canadian province into the union, for fear of upsetting the Republican-Democratic balance in Congress, but the U.S. could decide to make a simultaneous play for right-wing Alberta and left-wing BC — this was the formula that was acceptable to Republicans and Democrats in 1959, when Alaska (then Democrat leaning) and Hawaii (then Republican) joined the union.

The spectre of upheavals, even when viewed as a distant possibility, suffices to scare Canadian governments whenever Quebec separation becomes remotely plausible — they don’t want to come anywhere near these scenarios. For this reason, Canadian governments have consistently, preemptively made concessions to Quebec, to stave off any serious discussion of its leaving.

Trudeau himself anticipated these concessions would be necessary. “The reason we have a united country, the reason why it will stay united, is because the Canadian people everywhere are prepared to pay the price of that in money terms, in tax terms,” he stated in 1968.

Yet money from the rest of Canada may not be enough at some point in the future— when Quebec itself becomes a have province, as Newfoundland and Saskatchewan did in the last decade. Quebec has all the ingredients needed to be a prosperous country: a talented workforce, top-ranked universities, advanced industries, abundant natural resources — everything but the good governance required to bring it to Swiss or Swedish levels of economic competence. One day it will acquire that governance and assert its desire for independence.

The end game for Canada at that point, ironically, could be precisely the kind of EU-style sovereignty-association that Quebec has been arguing for. The alternative — the prospect of a breakup of Canada, with all the unknowns that would engender — would be sufficient to make us all grateful to keep Quebec in the fold, however loosely.

Lawrence Solomon is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute. LawrenceSolomon@nextcity.com

Hockey Bet Cost Canada a 24 of Beer

Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs John Baird, left, gives up a case of Molson Canadian beer to US Secretary of State John Kerry , Thursday April 11, 2013 to pay off an earlier gentlemen’s bet on the IIHF women’s hockey championship which the U.S. won. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Paul J. Richards, pool

Canada lost 3-2 in the gold medal game on Tuesday in Ottawa. On the U.S. side, a case of Samuel Adams was on the line. I thought gambling on sports was illegal in the U.S.???