Carney's deficit "unsustainable" says report, putting lipstick on a pig, sick and twisted freaks and a few other things...

Canada needs to change course on spending before the deficit trips us up.

It’s a good thing we hired a central banker and economist to be our PM. Think about how much worse the state of Canada’s finances would be without Mark Carney at the helm.

The latest report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer says the projected deficit for the coming year will be $68.5 billion. Or as I point out in my Toronto Sun column on the issue, about 33% larger than the PBO’s estimate of a $51.7 billion deficit in the last fiscal year

Not to scare anyone, but back in December, the fiscal update projected that for the 2025-26 fiscal year we would have a $42 billion deficit. Which means, if the PBO is right, it’s only an increase of 62% over the projection of just 10 months ago.

And no, this isn’t all due to Donald Trump, the PBO reports estimates that taxation will be lower by about $12.9 billion annually as a result of tariffs and trade uncertainty. This is a spending problem that existed long before Trump won the presidency and started making tariff threats.

Companies are looking to spend and invest, we just need to make it attractive for them to do so here. As I was writing yesterday, we aren’t doing that and so Canadian companies are investing billions in the United States.

Do give the column a read, maybe even share it on social media. I encourage the government to act boldly and grow the economy to fix this issue, let’s hope they listen.

A word from our sponsor…

Did you know Canadians pay $20 more per case of 24 cans of beer than Americans? That’s because Canada has the highest beer tax in the G7. 46% of the price of beer is government taxation. And every April 1st, the federal government automatically hikes that tax, without a vote. These undemocratic increases drive up costs and make life less affordable. It’s time to stop the automatic beer tax escalator and give Parliament back control. Visit HereForBeer.ca to email your MP and demand change today.

Contact your MP today using this link to tell them annual beer tax increases are not fair.

Putting lipstick on a pig…

Every government tries to spin things to their favour, it’s not a party or partisan thing, it’s just the nature of the beast. In fact, I’d argue we all do this in our respective lives, we put the best spin on our story.

The PBO, Jason Jacques, was at the Commons Operations and Estimates Committee on Thursday delivering a dire message - we are not on a sustainable financial path. Liberal MP Vince Gasparro, a smart and decent guy and I don’t just say that because he used to be on the board of Postmedia, had to try and put lipstick on this pig.

He tried to get the PBO to say Canada is in better shape than other countries. The PBO wasn’t buying, have a watch.

Sick, twisted freaks…

At Georgetown University, a shocking flyer spotted just two weeks after Charlie Kirk’s assassination. “Hey fascist! Catch!” read a flyer posted to a discussion board by the John Brown Gun Club, a left wing gun group.

As the New York Post points out, the group goes one step further than just quoting the engraving that Kirk’s killer put on a bullet.

“The only political group that celebrates when Nazis die,” it added, including a QR code that linked to a webpage apparently connected to the radical club.

And as the Post points out, the John Brown Gun Club is a group of radicals who have been in trouble with the law before. They provide armed security for ANTIFA like protests.

This news also comes as the United States deals with another politically motivated shooting at an ICE facility where a migrant was shot and killed. The killer was against ICE, had said they wanted to hurt the officers, not the migrants but did the opposite.

Comey’s home coming…

There used to be a rule in politics, don’t attack your opponents when you are in power in ways you don’t want to be attacked out of power. Which brings me to James Comey the former FBI director facing an indictment on two counts - “alleged false statements within jurisdiction of the legislative branch and obstruction of a congressional proceeding” according to Fox News.

The Democrats are going to scream about Trump making political hay out of going after his former rivals. Well, if Democrats didn’t want that, they shouldn’t have weaponized the entire justice system against Trump which is what they did.

They have been using the institutions of the United States government to go after Trump since 2016. Some of it might have been valid, most of it was not, but they used the government no matter what.

Now they are getting payback and they don’t like it. Go back to my earlier point on not pushing issues you don’t want to come back on you.

A few things…

It’s hard for me to believe that more media outlets haven’t picked up the Travis Dhanraj story. If this were a story printed by the Toronto Star about someone getting discriminatory treatment at CTV because of their skin colour, every major outlet would have followed it by now.

With Travis, a story broken on the front page of the Sun where he said, “They didn’t get the brown guy they were expecting” and talking about the lack of diversity of opinion…..crickets. They’ve even talked about this issue in Parliament now and most journalists are ignoring it, because in this industry, they all want to be on CBC.

They don’t have ratings, they don’t have fun but the pay is steady and they have right, and by that I mean left, opinions.

Also shocked that the story of Google and YouTube admitting to censorship hasn’t taken off. I wrote about it here yesterday, I did a video for the Toronto Sun, see below, but this is not getting much attention.

I thought we just had a moment standing up for free speech when Jimmy Kimmel was suspended for a few days. These were people who had their accounts frozen or deactivated because the Biden White House complained about them and suddenly the media doesn’t care?

I’ve been fighting the free speech fight for close to 20 years, let me tell you, my colleagues will speak up for free speech on the left, they don’t care if voices that are not of their tribe are censored.

Did you know Canadians pay $20 more per case of 24 cans of beer than Americans? That’s because Canada has the highest beer tax in the G7. 46% of the price of beer is government taxation. And every April 1st, the federal government automatically hikes that tax, without a vote. These undemocratic increases drive up costs and make life less affordable. It’s time to stop the automatic beer tax escalator and give Parliament back control. Visit HereForBeer.ca to email your MP and demand change today

Contact your MP today using this link to tell them annual beer tax increases are not fair.