“If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it.” This quote describes how a government typically treats businesses in an economy, and the tendency of governments to constantly intervene. It was attributed to former U.S. president Ronald Reagan, who regularly used this quote to illustrate how he believed government interfered far too much in the economy on a regular basis. Looking at Canada today, it appears that Reagan made a good point. 

Back in May, the Carney government announced a strategy entitled “Powering Canada Strong: A National Strategy for an Electrified Canadian Economy.” The plan is to double the capacity of Canada’s electrical grid by 2050. This announcement did not get anywhere near the attention it deserved, especially considering that the cost is estimated at a gigantic $1 trillion. Sadly, our subsidized legacy media does virtually no scrutiny of pretty much any announcement the Liberal government makes, in fear of losing their multi-billion-dollar welfare payments with our scarce tax dollars.

The current Liberal government has a number of pieces of legislation in progress right now that involve issues around the privacy of Canadians. Yet most Canadians seem to be slumbering through this potential landmine with no concern.

The bane of any business community is uncertainty, and Canadian businesses have a great deal of uncertainty to deal with these days. Some of the uncertainty is unavoidable as we have no control over such things as global disputes in the Middle East and Ukraine, which nevertheless affect us greatly. There are other sources of uncertainty which we could control within Canada to a greater degree, but our governments are mostly refusing to do so.

While many federal politicians were debating whether the fact that Canada has just registered two consecutive quarters of economic decline was a “technical recession” or a “real recession,” some Ontario economic data from the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) also had some bad news to report.

It seems we have officially entered the post-truth era. We’ve been heading toward it for some time, but some recent events have shown that telling the truth can actually attract punishment. For a while now, people have been referring to things they call “my truth” or “your truth,” attempting to show that various interpretations of the truth can be acceptable when in reality there is only one version of the truth and everything else is false. 

The Canada Pension Plan is an essential part of retirement income for the vast majority of Canadians. Yet most Canadians are not aware of the many changes that have taken place since the CPP was first created in 1965. For the first few decades of its existence, the CPP was a very boring pension plan that employed just a handful of people, invested Canadians’ mandatory contributions very conservatively, produced modest and consistent investment returns and paid older Canadians a reliable monthly amount. This was a very deliberate plan on the part of governments of the day, as they didn’t believe such an important pillar of Canadians’ retirement should be invested in a risky manner, even if there was the potential for higher rates of return. 

I hope most Canadians were as appalled as I was when I heard the Carney government was going to ground the Snowbirds, the fabulous Royal Canadian Air Force aerobatic team that has existed under the Snowbirds name since 1971.

Since U.S. President Trump’s re-election in late 2024, and his imposition of tariffs on Canadian products, there has been a frenzy of “Buy Canadian” sentiment in Canada.  One would hope that Canadians would always attempt to buy goods made in their own country, but it seems it took their intense dislike for a U.S. President to actually bring them onside with supporting Canada. This consumer sentiment has led to a push by retailers and other businesses to label themselves “Proudly Canadian” and their various products “Canadian Made.” It turns out it’s not actually that easy to know whether you are buying Canadian or not.