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Federal budget fails to ‘break the glass’ on Canada’s economic growth crisis

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From the Fraser Institute

By Grady Munro and Jake Fuss

“You’ve seen those signs that say, ‘In emergency, break glass.’ Well, it’s time to break the glass,” said Carolyn Rogers, Bank of Canada senior deputy governor, in a speech last month while warning that Canadians may see living standards fall if nothing is done to promote economic growth.

In advance of the Trudeau government’s 2024 budget released on Tuesday, many called for the government to finally address Canada’s stagnant economic growth. But despite the growing consensus that this issue represents a national crisis, the Trudeau government simply continued with the same approach that helped get us to this point in the first place.

“You’ve seen those signs that say, ‘In emergency, break glass.’ Well, it’s time to break the glass,” said Carolyn Rogers, Bank of Canada senior deputy governor, in a speech last month while warning that Canadians may see living standards fall if nothing is done to promote economic growth.

Ten days later in a joint interview, former Quebec premier Jean Charest and former federal finance minister Bill Morneau urged the Trudeau government to focus on economic growth in the budget. Specifically, Morneau suggested Canada needs more business investment “from other sources than the government.”

These are just two examples of the growing consensus that Canada is suffering an economic and productivity growth crisis.

Economic growth generally refers to the increase in gross domestic product (GDP), which measures the total output of the economy and is driven by three factors—the labour supply, the capital stock and the efficiency in which labour and capital are used.

Canada’s GDP growth in recent years has been driven almost entirely by the labour supply, as the country has experienced historically high population growth. However, although GDP in aggregate has been growing, GDP per person (a common indicator of living standards) has been declining at an alarming rate. Since the second quarter of 2022 (when it peaked post-COVID), inflation-adjusted GDP per person has fallen from $60,178 to $58,111 in the fourth quarter of 2023—and has declined during five of those six quarters, and now sits below where it was at the end of 2014.

Labour productivity, which is the amount of output (GDP) produced per hour worked, has seen a similar decline. Statistics Canada recently reported that the fourth quarter of 2023 represented the first time productivity increased since the beginning of 2022, and that for the prior six quarters labour productivity had declined or remained stagnant.

The consequence of both declining GDP per person and lower productivity, as Carolyn Rogers warned, is a lower standard of living for Canadians. To reverse this crisis, the Trudeau government must address the cause of Canada’s weak economic growth—a severe lack of business investment.

Business investment provides the capital needed to equip workers with the technology and equipment to become more efficient and productive. Yet according to a recent study, from 2014 to 2021, inflation-adjusted business investment per worker in Canada fell from $18,363 to $14,687.

This decline in business investment is partly the result of the Trudeau government’s disinterest in encouraging entrepreneurship and private-sector business investment. Indeed, the government’s  approach of high spending, more regulation and significant involvement in the economy has done little to foster widespread economic growth.

And by raising capital gains taxes on individuals and businesses, which the Trudeau government did in this latest budget, in the words of former Bank of Canada governor David Dodge, the government is doing “exactly the wrong thing” to boost productivity. Rather, these measures simply provide more reason for people and businesses to invest elsewhere.

This latest Trudeau budget doubles down on a failed approach. Spending is up, government involvement in the economy is increasing, and increased capital gains taxes will only make our investment challenges more difficult. We need a complete reversal in policy to solve our economic growth crisis.

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DEI gone?: GOP lawmakers prep to clean house in federal government

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From The Center Square

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Many of Trump’s cabinet picks so far have also pledged to remove DEI programs from the federal government. These policies can range from training federal employees on “white privilege” to using medical research funds to study racism to awarding federal funds to recipients only as long as they toe the line on DEI orthodoxy.

President-elect Donald Trump’s win and his subsequent creation of a Department of Government Efficiency have galvanized lawmakers to pave the way for legislation to clean out diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, staff and programs that have ballooned under the Biden-Harris administration.

The Center Square was given advance copy of two bills filed Thursday by U.S. Rep. Bob Good, R-La., to end DEI practices at the Department of Housing and Urban Development

The first bill, the Flexibility in Housing Act of 2024, would block a Biden-Harris administration rule at HUD. That rule is about to be finalized and would require HUD grant recipients to implement “equity-driven housing plans.”

The newly introduced bill, however, would block that rule and give power to states and local governments to decide how best to spend the funds.

The second bill, the “No Discrimination in Housing Act,” would prevent large corporations from using DEI programs to get federal tax credits in buying up single family American homes, something many economists say is driving up the cost of homeownership for Americans.

The new bill “would prohibit any entity with a DEI initiative from receiving the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit – thereby ensuring the tax credit is distributed based on merit – not for the advancement of the radical DEI ideology.”

“The Biden-Harris Administration’s radicalization of housing policy prioritizes woke DEI corporations, yet does nothing that will actually drive down the cost of a home in an economy destroyed by Bidenflation,” Good told The Center Square. “My bills aim to restore Trump-era housing flexibility and eliminate the DEI housing policies that prohibit families from pursuing the American dream.”

These two bills, first obtained by The Center Square, are in line with Republicans’ renewed push to eliminate the hard left turn toward DEI policies taken in the last few years of the Biden-Harris administration.

Those policies have been under the microscope for years, but Trump’s win gives Republicans hope they can be undone.

Many of Trump’s cabinet picks so far have also pledged to remove DEI programs from the federal government. These policies can range from training federal employees on “white privilege” to using medical research funds to study racism to awarding federal funds to recipients only as long as they toe the line on DEI orthodoxy.

The latest high-profile examples of controversial DEI spending involves the Federal Emergency Management Administration. Amid the scandal of its handling of Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, reporting has shown that FEMA lists DEI and equity as it number one priority.

U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Texas, introduced the Dismantle DEI Act, which advanced out of the House Oversight Committee, which would eliminate DEI programs in the federal government and return to a “colorblind” approach.

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion – these are words that, on the surface, seem to represent ideals we can all support,” Cloud said. But when these principles are redefined and implemented as an ideology within our federal government, they take on a meaning that diverges from their original intent.”

A recent report from Do No Harm documented about 500 examples of DEI programs across many agencies choosing to reward some Americans over others.

“Under the guise of progress, this ideology seeks to categorize individuals based on immutable characteristics rather than valuing the content of their character or their individual achievements,” Cloud continued.

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‘Context Of Chemsex’: Biden-Harris Admin Dumps Millions Into Developing Drug-Fueled Gay Sex App

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation 

By Owen Klinsky

The Biden-Harris administration is spending millions funding a project to advise homosexual men on how to more safely engage in drug-fueled intercourse.

The University of Connecticut (UCONN) in July announced a five-year, $3.4 million grant from the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) for Assistant Professor Roman Shrestha to develop his app JomCare — “a smartphone-based just-in-time adaptive intervention aimed at improving access to HIV- and substance use-related harm reduction services for Malaysian GBMSM [gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men] engaged in chemsex,” university news website UCONN Today reported. “Chemsex,” according to Northern Irish LGBTQ+ nonprofit the Rainbow Project, is the involvement of drug use in one’s sex life, and typically involves Methamphetamine (crystal meth), Mephedrone (meth), and GHB and GBL (G).

Examples of the app’s use-cases include providing a user who has reported injecting drugs with prompts about ordering an at-home HIV test kit and employing safe drug injection practices, UCONN Today reported. The app is also slated to provide same-day delivery of HIV prevention drug PrEP, HIV self-testing kits and even a mood tracker.

“In Malaysia, our research has indicated that harm reduction needs of GBMSM [gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men] engaged in chemsex are not being adequately met,” Shrestha told UCONN Today. “Utilizing smartphone apps and other mHealth tools presents a promising and cost-effective approach to expand access to these services.”

Homosexuality is illegal in Malaysia and is punishable by imprisonment, according to digital LGBTQ+ rights publication Equaldex. Drug use, including of cannabis, is illegal in Malaysia, and drug trafficking can be a capital offense.

The NIH disbursed $773,845 to Shrestha in July to conduct a 90-day trial testing the efficacy of JomCare among 482 chemsex-involved Malaysian gays. It also provided Shrestha with $191,417 in 2022 to “facilitate access to gender-affirming health care” for transgender women in the country.

“Gender-affirming care” is a euphemism used to describe a wide range of procedures, including sometimes irreversible hormone treatments that can lead to infertility as well as irreversible surgeries like mastectomies, phalloplasties and vaginoplasties.

Shrestha has a track record of researching mobile health (mHealth) initiatives for foreign homosexuals, co-authoring a 2024 study entitled, “Preferences for mHealth Intervention to Address Mental Health Challenges Among Men Who Have Sex With Men in Nepal.”

The proliferation of LGBT rights has been a “foreign policy priority” under the Biden-Harris administration, a State Department spokesperson previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation, with President Joe Biden instructing federal government department heads to “to advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons.”

“Around the globe, including here at home, brave lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) activists are fighting for equal protection under the law, freedom from violence, and recognition of their fundamental human rights,” a 2021 White House memorandum states. “The United States belongs at the forefront of this struggle — speaking out and standing strong for our most dearly held values.”

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Nov. 12 that Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy would collaborate to establish a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), with Musk claiming the agency would feature a leaderboard for the “most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.” Some DOGE cuts could come from LGBTQ+ programs, such as a grant from the United States Agency for International Development to perform sex changes in Guatemala and State Department funding for the showing of a play in North Macedonia entitled, “Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.”

“The woke mind virus consists of creating very, very divisive identity politics…[that] amplifies racism; amplifies, frankly, sexism; and all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite,” Musk said at an event in Italy in December 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It actually divides people and makes them hate each other and hate themselves.”

Shrestha and the NIH did not respond to requests for comment. When reached for comment, a UCONN spokeswoman told the Daily Caller News Foundation that, “specific questions about the grant and the decision to award it to our faculty member should be directed to the NIH, since that’s the funding agency.”

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