{"id":14748,"date":"2022-08-21T13:18:01","date_gmt":"2022-08-21T17:18:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/?p=14748"},"modified":"2023-07-24T20:39:30","modified_gmt":"2023-07-25T00:39:30","slug":"summertime-snippets-icymi-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/?p=14748","title":{"rendered":"Summertime snippets: ICYMI news"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Niagara Independent, August 19, 2022 \u2013<\/em> In the dog days of summer many Canadians are trying hard to tune out the news of the nation. Many are taking a hiatus from the headlines, not to refocus on reality until sometime after Labour Day.<\/p>\n

Yet, through the weeks of July and August there have been news items that are sure to impact Canadians. Over the next few weeks, this column will present \u201csummertime snippets\u201d of the more important stuff \u2013 ICYMI.<\/p>\n

(WARNING \u2013 The snippets may cause grief and heartburn. For those who wish to live in blissful denial for the last weeks of the summer, the helpful suggestion is to save these columns and not pull them out until mid-September when you may want to begin to refocus.)<\/i><\/p>\n

Federal Employees Just Keep Getting Richer:<\/b> Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) has uncovered that during the COVID-19 pandemic the number of federal government managers earning more than $100,000 increased by a whopping 66 per cent. There were 45,000 more bureaucrats \u2013 a total of 114,433 \u2013 now making the super-salary of 100K+ (which does not include the value of their perks).<\/p>\n

According to the CTF\u2019s Access to Information<\/i> request, during the pandemic there were 312,825 federal employees who received a pay raise (while working from home). There was no record of an employee receiving a pay cut.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s put this into perspective. The average national income of a full-time working Canadian is $54,630. The average household income in Canada is $92,764 (and after taxes this figure is $76,171). So, these numbers tell us that civil servants make so much more than Canada\u2019s working stiffs that they pull up the average income figure across the country.<\/p>\n

CTF\u2019s federal director Franco Terrazzano neatly summed up this largesse, \u201cWe are not all in this together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Tam Cashes In:<\/b> In a closed-door federal cabinet meeting, Justin Trudeau\u2019s braintrust awarded Canada\u2019s chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam a 22 per cent pay increase with a three-year contract bump from $265,000 to $324,000.<\/p>\n

This is the same Dr. Tam that was out front through 2020 assuring Canadians there was nothing to worry about. It\u2019s the same Dr. Tam that echoed the Prime Minister\u2019s pandemic narrative through the past two years. Obviously, her performance was appreciated by our country\u2019s number one former drama teacher.<\/p>\n

Canada is Now the Second-Most Indebted Country in the World: <\/b>The Fraser Institute released a report in late June revealing that during the pandemic Canada had become the second highest most indebted industrialized country, behind only Japan.<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s spending through 2020 and 2021 was the greatest per capita of any country. Canucks\u2019 gross debt-to-GDP ratio is now 32 out of 33 countries covered by the International Monetary Fund. Canadians will need to bare the weight of this debt for decades, if not generations.<\/p>\n

No Balanced Federal Budget for Two Decades:<\/b> Another report released by the CTF provides the alarming bottom line that it will take the federal government at least 20 years to balance its budget \u2013 and that is a hopeful forecast. When factoring for the government\u2019s total revenue, total spending, budgetary balance, and its interest charges on the national debt, there is little hope to see a balanced budget until 2041. That calculation does not take into account any new political promises.<\/p>\n

The CTF commentary on this: \u201cBut taking another two decades to balance the budget is too long, and even that target won\u2019t be met if interest rates tick up, the economy doesn\u2019t grow every single year, or politicians can\u2019t find the willpower to say \u2018no\u2019 to new spending.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time the feds balance the budget two decades from now, interest charges on the government credit card will have cost taxpayers more than $800 billion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canada Funding the WEF:<\/b> The 2020-2021 Public Accounts of Canada indicate that, in that single fiscal year, Canadians gave more than $1.5 billion to the United Nations in the form of financial support, contributions and grants. The government also slipped $3 million that year to the World Economic Forum (WEF) (yes, that global cabal of multimillionaires who annually jet to Davos, Switzerland to warn the world of carbon emissions).<\/p>\n

There are few records explaining where Canadians\u2019 money went into the U.N. And there has been no explanation from the government on the details of the $3 million payment to Klaus Schwab\u2019s global forum. Perhaps WEF board members Chrystia Freeland or Mark Carney could enlighten us?<\/p>\n

Of interest on the subject of the WEF, the forum issued findings this week from an international survey that showed \u201c70 per cent of adults across 19 countries believe children will be financially worse off than their parents.\u201d Most striking for Canadians is the data: \u201cAt least three-quarters of adults in Japan, France, Italy and Canada say children will be worse off financially than their parents.\u201d Canadians rank among the most negative about the prospects for the next generation.<\/p>\n

If the WEF\u2019s Great Reset<\/i> is to bring about positive change for the world, is it not disconcerting to imagine this change will come at the expense of our Canadian children?<\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s Tree Planting Program:<\/b> Figures recently released indicate that the federal government planted 29 million trees in the second year of Trudeau\u2019s feted national tree planting program. The PM promised $3.2 billion for Ottawa to manage the planting of two billion trees by 2030. A recent Globe and Mail<\/i> editorial explains this commitment will cover an area twice the size of PEI, approximately two per cent of Canada\u2019s land mass. Canada\u2019s forests have more than 300 billion trees and the country\u2019s forest industry presently manages an ample reforestation program.<\/p>\n

Another remarkable fact about Trudeau\u2019s program is the news from the federal Department of Natural Resources that in the first year of the program (when not a single tree was planted), the Ottawa bureaucrats paid $3.1 million for a study to tell them how to plant trees.<\/p>\n

Of course, this absurdity begs a couple of questions for levity\u2019s sake: Just how many Ottawa bureaucrats does it take<\/i> to plant a tree? If the PM plants a tree in Brampton does that offset the carbon emissions used to fly him there for his 30-minute photo-op?<\/p>\n

Next week: More summertime snippets<\/i><\/p>\n

Chris George<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0is an Ottawa-based government affairs advisor and wordsmith, president of\u00a0CG&A COMMUNICATIONS<\/a>. Contact:\u00a0ChrisG.George@gmail.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

LINK: https:\/\/niagaraindependent.ca\/summertime-snippets-icymi-news\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Niagara Independent, August 19, 2022 \u2013 In the dog days of summer many Canadians are trying hard to tune out the news of the nation. Many are taking a hiatus from the headlines, not to refocus on reality until sometime after Labour Day. Yet, through the weeks of July and August there have been…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[85],"tags":[76],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14748"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14748"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15291,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14748\/revisions\/15291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bygeorgejournal.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}