All Things Trudeau, Chapter 2

[Catsumi]

Why pay taxes??

[nucksRnum1]

Why pay taxes??

It's for the grandchildren that people bemoan will have to pay for their largesse. But consciously not enough funding to pay off anything at all. A generation of people who snip and say "you fix it!"

[Babba_not_Gump]

I thought conservatives didn't like government interference or socialism?

A few hundred of our Army come to BC to assist.
That's government interference, socialism?

[hobbyguy]

1998. Does it matter?

Point is E. Canada received lots of immediate assistance. 15,000 vs 300 troops

Rather an unfair comparison.

1. The ice storm had 4.5 million people in the doo doo.
2. The ice storm was far, far more widespread in its devastation covering 3 provinces, most of Quebec, a big chunk of Ontario (about 1 million people affected) and parts of New Brunswick.
3. There was much more that the military could do to help, and the much more that lined up with the capabilities of the military.
4. The damage from the BC floods is actually quite localized by comparison. Essentially Sumas prairie, Merritt, Princeton, Spences Bridge. Yes, the damage to the highway system is more widespread, but there is little the military can do to assist with that situation.

There is a viewpoint that the military should have a better/larger disaster relief force, with more equipment etc. to deal with domestic situations. Well, that gets expensive. Ice storms require set of skills/equipment "a", wildfires set "b", flood relief set "c", earthquake relief set "d" etc. We do have Lentus as permanent disaster assistance avenue for provinces to access. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-nat ... entus.html - you will note that its scope is relatively limited compared to say, the US FEMA operations.

Regardless, the number of people deployed is determined by the request from the province given the scale/type.scope of the disaster and capabilities of the military to help.

For reference, the 2021 FEMA budget was set at USD $5.65 billion - that assumes expanded funding for major disasters "beyond average that is NOT included". Complain about paying taxes? Yup, we could have a similar disaster relief force...but are you willing to pay more taxes to fund it?? FEMA, because of economies of scale, is more efficient than we could have in Canada, so the relative hit on taxes would be higher. Plus FEMA relies heavily on the national guard. The national guard in the US typically has a budget of USD $7-8 billion.

Then consider that Canada's 2019 deficit was about $25 billion CAD. The US federal deficit for 2019 was $984 billion USD = roughly $1.25 trillion CAD. I use 2019 because the pandemic spending is a completely nutso situation. The US is about 9 times as populous as Canada, so relatively Canada's 2019 deficit is about 1/5 th the size of the US deficit....

I think we can agree that governments ought to try to stay at relatively close to balanced budgets. And yes, that's a weakness of the Trudeau Liberal government, they have not addressed the structural revenue deficit that was created by their predecessors. Perhaps made a small dent in it, but not enough as that would require more taxes - which are politically unpopular.

So we can't afford to have a FEMA tyupe operation, unless we pay a lot more in taxes. Hands up everyone who wants to pay a bunch more taxes at this time. That's the essential problem.

IF Trudeau had run an election campaign on raising taxes, my guess is that somebody else would be PM. Realistically, if we want a FEMA type operation, we would have pay significantly higher taxes and the government would be by someone else who did not campaign to raise taxes to pay for a FEMA type operation - and so Canada has a weaker response to disasters than the US.

So criticizing Trudeau for the modest federal disaster support is really a criticism of our own bias against paying more taxes. Betcha a national referendum on paying more taxes would be a massive fail!

[PoplarSoul]

1998. Does it matter?

Point is E. Canada received lots of immediate assistance. 15,000 vs 300 troops

Rather an unfair comparison.

1. The ice storm had 4.5 million people in the doo doo.
2. The ice storm was far, far more widespread in its devastation covering 3 provinces, most of Quebec, a big chunk of Ontario (about 1 million people affected) and parts of New Brunswick.
3. There was much more that the military could do to help, and the much more that lined up with the capabilities of the military.
4. The damage from the BC floods is actually quite localized by comparison. Essentially Sumas prairie, Merritt, Princeton, Spences Bridge. Yes, the damage to the highway system is more widespread, but there is little the military can do to assist with that situation.

Well said as usual.

[The Green Barbarian]

I thought conservatives didn't like government interference or socialism?

Obviously no one with a brain would "like" socialism, that's not even up for debate, but "government interference" is a whole other matter. In times of naturally occurring weather events like floods etc the government should be there to step up and offer resources. In terms of over-bearing regulations etc that help no one other than keeping an army of bureaucrats employed to do nothing, that's a whole different story.

[bob vernon]

Sure. Let's abandon these overbearing regulations surrounding property use and have true freedom. We need to let folks build, and rebuild, on the flood plain. It's so nice to have waterfront property. And let those trailer parks in Princeton and Merritt stay down on the shore. When they flood, we can just use tax dollars to help them rebuild and stay in the same place. Hey, wait a minute. Isn't that socialism?

[hobbyguy]

Half-wits will claim that this is "trolling" about the horrible Liberals, but it will just be apologist trash, as usual.

John Ivison: Liberals so focused on carbon taxes, they missed the flood coming in the back door

Justin Trudeau saw for himself the impact of the atmospheric river that broke rainfall records in British Columbia, leaving dikes breached, homes submerged, highways washed out and livestock drowned.

Another pulse of storms is forecast for this weekend. “We’ll see what God has in store,” one resident told Global TV, stoically.

But as distressing as the flooding has been, the lack of preparation for extreme weather in the province has been just as shocking.

Ed Fast, the MP for Abbotsford, one of the worst affected cities, said all levels of government have been aware for years about the potential for flooding but didn’t act. “We should have seen it coming but nothing substantive was ever done about it,” he said.

As a minister in the Harper government, Fast bears his share of the blame for that inertia.

But the Liberals have been in power for the past six years and for a government that has made climate change one of its top priorities, its policies on disaster mitigation have been nothing short of negligent.

This week’s throne speech committed the Liberals to develop Canada’s first ever National Adaptation Strategy, prompting a question that begs an answer: Why wasn’t such a strategy commissioned after the Fort McMurray fire in 2016 or the spring flooding in Ontario and Quebec in 2017?

What is apparent is that the Liberal government has been almost entirely focused on addressing the politically virtuous battle of reducing emissions, at the expense of the less sexy alleviation of climate change’s ramifications.

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/j ... d=msedgntp

Actually GB, if you researched before trolling, you would find that indeed the Liberals have been offering lots of $$$ for disaster mitigation improvements like raising dikes etc.

https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/g ... 86525.html


" The DMAF was launched in 2018 as a $2 billion, 10-year program to help communities build the infrastructure they need to better withstand natural hazards such as floods, wildfires, earthquakes and droughts. Budget 2021 provided the DMAF with an additional $1.375 billion over 12 years.
For application timelines, please see Disaster Mitigation and Adaptation Fund: Applications process. Eligible applicants include provinces and territories; municipal and regional governments; Indigenous groups including band councils, First Nation, Inuit or Metis; for-profits that partner with another eligible recipient, as well as Canadian public or not-for-profit post-secondary institutions who will work in collaboration with a Canadian municipality.
The DMAF is part of the federal government's Investing in Canada Plan, which is providing more than $180 billion over 12 years for public transit projects, green infrastructure, social infrastructure, trade and transportation routes, and rural and northern communities.
To date, over $1.9 billion has been announced through the DMAF for 69 large-scale infrastructure projects that will help protect communities across the country from the threats of climate change.
"

$ 3.375 billion isn't a massive fund, but it certainly is significant. And yup, Ivison missed that too. And yup, it was your favorite cabinet minister, Catherine McKenna who launched this program.

With regard to the specific issue of the Sumas prairie flooding from the Nooksack, the story is complicated. https://fvcurrent.com/article/fraser-va ... ble-dikes/

It seems from that article, the focus has been on diking the Nooksack within Washington state. Might sound good to us, but folks in Lynden, Fernadale, and Bellingham areas would experience worse flooding as the flooding into Canada relieves the pressure on their areas. The Nooksack is also a significant salmon and steelhead river. That adds even more complexity to getting dikes built on the US side of the border, as it brings in a number of environmental concerns. Plus potential tourism concerns. Surprise, surprise, efforts to get dikes built on the Nooksack in the US have done nothing but generate stacks of waste paper.

From what I can gather, because the focus was on the other side of the border, nobody applied for $$ and went to work on fixing dikes on this side of the border. It wasn't because the federal Liberals were not concerned or did not make the money available. This is a made in BC/Abbotsford problem, not an Ottawa problem.

[Babba_not_Gump]

I see Justin has given the green light for Roxham Road to open up. Was it ever closed?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal ... -1.6257868

[The Green Barbarian]

Actually GB, if you researched before trolling,

John Ivison is not "trolling". A well-written thought provoking article that was also well researched, and the furthest thing from "trolling".

It's not hard to criticize the pitiful and horrible performance of our minority Liberal "government". They are unqualified for the job. Dismissing such criticism as "trolling" is juvenile and silly. This is why Justin got his butt handed to him last election, and it would have been far worse had he not had 12 seats handed to him by his Chinese commie-pals.

[The Green Barbarian]

I see Justin has given the green light for Roxham Road to open up. Was it ever closed?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal ... -1.6257868

Got to keep that illegal pipeline flowing. Just another example of the children that our running this country right now.

[The Green Barbarian]

Sure. Let's abandon these overbearing regulations surrounding property use and have true freedom.

I'd prefer to get rid of taxes on fairy tales - axe the carbon tax.

[GordonH]

I see Justin has given the green light for Roxham Road to open up. Was it ever closed?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal ... -1.6257868

Send them directly to lawn outside our jack PM cottage.

US is happy seeing these people leaving.

[hobbyguy]

Actually GB, if you researched before trolling,

John Ivison is not "trolling". A well-written thought provoking article that was also well researched, and the furthest thing from "trolling".

It's not hard to criticize the pitiful and horrible performance of our minority Liberal "government". They are unqualified for the job. Dismissing such criticism as "trolling" is juvenile and silly. This is why Justin got his butt handed to him last election, and it would have been far worse had he not had 12 seats handed to him by his Chinese commie-pals.

Ivison missed the program the Liberals initiated that has been available with billion$ in funding precisely to deal with the problems such as Abbotsford experienced. That Abbotsford and the Fraser Basin Council did not apply for funding and fix the problem despite having been explicitly advised by a provincial engineering report that the dikes were inadequate and would fail in major flood, well that's not on the federal government.

That's an error on Ivison's part. Not fact checking Ivison, especially coming from the right wing that constantly yammers about "fake news" and "biased media" is indeed just trolling as that is the habitual practice the CPC.

Once again here is the key article explaining the lack of action by Abbottsford, the Fraser Basin Council, and the province: https://fvcurrent.com/article/fraser-va ... ble-dikes/

Yup - they all knew of the problem in 2016. Yup - in 2018 the federal government under the Liberals made billion$ available to fix such problems. Nope - they did nothing and in 2021 the dikes failed miserably. Nope - Abbotsford isn't alone, there are many miles of dikes in the lower mainland that are inadequate - and elsewhere in the country - especially with increased storm intensity events induced by man made climate change.

Trying to pin the dike failure on Trudeau is just useless troll spin from the right wing. The Trudeau Liberals had made funding available precisely to avoid such problems, but it is up to provincial and local governments, who have jurisdiction, to apply for the money and take action. It was those lower levels of government that failed to act.

[Gone_Fishin]

The only thing Trudeau cares about is the height of surfing waves in BC's devastating flooding.

He's all over those waves, like white on Rice.