SKorea approves NKorea deals amid conservative opposition

SEOUL, Korea, Republic Of — South Korea’s liberal president on Tuesday formally approved his recent reconciliation deals with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, triggering immediate backlash from conservatives who called him “self-righteous” and “subservient” to the North.

President Moon Jae-in’s move is largely seen as an effort to show he’s determined to carry out the deals despite growing skepticism about whether his engagement policy could eventually lead to North Korea’s nuclear disarmament.

Moon “ratified” the deals on Tuesday afternoon, hours after his Cabinet approved them during a regular meeting, his office said in a statement.

The back-to-back endorsements came with no prior parliamentary endorsement. In South Korea, a president is allowed by law to ratify some agreements with North Korea without consents from lawmakers.

At the start of the Cabinet meeting, Moon said in televised remarks that the ratification would help further improve ties with North Korea and accelerate global efforts to achieve the “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

The main conservative opposition Liberty Korea Party criticized Moon’s action, saying the deals would only undermine national security and waste taxpayers’ money.

“We deplore the fact that the Moon Jae-in government is weighted toward its subservient North Korea policy and is consistently being self-righteous and lacking communication” with parliament, said party spokesman Yoon Young-seok.

Moon, who took office last year, has said that greater reconciliation with North Korea would help resolve the international standoff over the North’s nuclear ambitions. Moon has met with Kim three times this year, and he shuttled between Pyongyang and Washington to help arrange a series of high-level talks between the countries, including a June summit between Kim and President Donald Trump in Singapore.

Since entering nuclear talks earlier this year, Kim has taken some steps like dismantling his nuclear testing site and releasing American detainees. The United States responded by suspending some of its annual military drills with South Korea but is reluctant to provide the North with major political or economic rewards unless the country takes significant disarmament steps.

Moon’s September deals with Kim were largely associated with the broader agreements struck during their first summit in April. Under the latest deals, the two Koreas are to hold a groundbreaking ceremony on a project to reconnect cross-border railways and roads and push to resume stalled economic co-operation projects. The two sides also agreed to disarm their shared border village, establish buffer zones along the border and withdraw some of their front-line guard posts.

Moon has previously pushed to get parliamentary approval on the April agreements. But conservative lawmakers objected, saying the deals, which had Kim’s vague commitment to denuclearization, would only help the North buy time and prefect weapons systems in the face of international sanctions.

Tuesday’s ratification follows a contentious ruling by Moon’s ministry of government legislation that allowed him to skip parliamentary endorsement on the North Korea accords before ratifying them.

According to the ministry, Moon can unilaterally ratify the deals because they are largely meant to implement the earlier April accords that it says are in the process of getting parliamentary approval. It also cited a law clause that a president can ratify deals with North Korea without lawmakers’ approval if they don’t cause unspecified “significant” financial burdens to the public or require related legislation.

The opposition party disagreed, saying inter-Korean projects stipulated in the September accords would eventually require “tremendous” taxpayers’ money. It also said the deals’ mutual reductions of conventional military strength would weaken the South’s war readiness and its alliance with the United States because the North’s nuclear capability remains intact.

Moon knows how important public support is for his North Korea overture. Most of the detente projects mentioned in his summit deals with Kim were what his liberal predecessors had pursued during a 1998-2008 “Sunshine Era.” Those projects were stalled after conservatives took power in South Korea. Moon now cannot unilaterally revive those projects because of U.S.-led international sanctions.

Hyung-Jin Kim, The Associated Press

The Canadian Press

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Taxpayers Federation calling on BC Government to scrap failed Carbon Tax

Published on January 16, 2025

Todayville

From the Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Carson Binda

BC Government promised carbon tax would reduce CO2 by 33%. It has done nothing.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is calling on the British Columbia government to scrap the carbon tax as new data shows the province’s carbon emissions have continued to rise, despite the oldest carbon tax in the country.

“The carbon tax isn’t reducing carbon emissions like the politicians promised,” said Carson Binda, B.C. Director for the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. “Premier David Eby needs to axe the tax now to save British Columbians money.”

Emissions data from the provincial government shows that British Columbia’s emissions have risen since the introduction of a carbon tax.

Total emissions in 2007, the last year without a provincial carbon tax, stood at 65.5 MtCO2e, while 2022 emissions data shows an increase to 65.6 MtCO2e.

When the carbon tax was introduced, the B.C. government pledged that it would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 33 per cent.

The Eby government plans to increase the B.C. carbon tax again on April 1, 2025. After that increase, the carbon tax will add 21 cents to the cost of a litre of natural gas, 25 cents per litre of diesel and 18 cents per cubic meter of natural gas.

“The carbon tax has cost British Columbians a lot of money, but it hasn’t helped the environment as promised,” Binda said. “Eby has a simple choice: scrap the carbon tax before April 1, or force British Columbians to pay even more to heat our homes and drive to work.”

If a family fills up the minivan once per week for a year, the carbon tax will cost them $728. The carbon tax on natural gas will add $435 to the average family’s home heating bills in the 12 months after the April 1 carbon tax hike.

Other provinces, like Saskatchewan, have unilaterally stopped collecting the carbon tax on essentials like home heating and have not faced consequences from Ottawa.

“British Columbians need real relief from the costs of the provincial carbon tax,” Binda said. “Eby needs to stop waiting for permission from the leaderless federal government and scrap the tax on British Columbians.”

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The problem with deficits and debt

Published on January 13, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill and Jake Fuss

This fiscal year (2024/25), the federal government and eight out of 10 provinces project a budget deficit, meaning they’re spending more than collecting in revenues. Unfortunately, this trend isn’t new. Many Canadian governments—including the federal government—have routinely ran deficits over the last decade.

But why should Canadians care? If you listen to some politicians (and even some economists), they say deficits—and the debt they produce—are no big deal. But in reality, the consequences of government debt are real and land squarely on everyday Canadians.

Budget deficits, which occur when the government spends more than it collects in revenue over the fiscal year, fuel debt accumulation. For example, since 2015, the federal government’s large and persistent deficits have more than doubled total federal debt, which will reach a projected $2.2 trillion this fiscal year. That has real world consequences. Here are a few of them:

Diverted Program Spending: Just as Canadians must pay interest on their own mortgages or car loans, taxpayers must pay interest on government debt. Each dollar spent paying interest is a dollar diverted from public programs such as health care and education, or potential tax relief. This fiscal year, federal debt interest costs will reach $53.7 billion or $1,301 per Canadian. And that number doesn’t include provincial government debt interest, which varies by province. In Ontario, for example, debt interest costs are projected to be $12.7 billion or $789 per Ontarian.

Higher Taxes in the Future: When governments run deficits, they’re borrowing to pay for today’s spending. But eventually someone (i.e. future generations of Canadians) must pay for this borrowing in the form of higher taxes. For example, if you’re a 16-year-old Canadian in 2025, you’ll pay an estimated $29,663 over your lifetime in additional personal income taxes (that you would otherwise not pay) due to Canada’s ballooning federal debt. By comparison, a 65-year-old will pay an estimated $2,433. Younger Canadians clearly bear a disproportionately large share of the government debt being accumulated currently.

Risks of rising interest rates: When governments run deficits, they increase demand for borrowing. In other words, governments compete with individuals, families and businesses for the savings available for borrowing. In response, interest rates rise, and subsequently, so does the cost of servicing government debt. Of course, the private sector also must pay these higher interest rates, which can reduce the level of private investment in the economy. In other words, private investment that would have occurred no longer does because of higher interest rates, which reduces overall economic growth—the foundation for job-creation and prosperity. Not surprisingly, as government debt has increased, business investment has declined—specifically, business investment per worker fell from $18,363 in 2014 to $14,687 in 2021 (inflation-adjusted).

Risk of Inflation: When governments increase spending, particularly with borrowed money, they add more money to the economy, which can fuel inflation. According to a 2023 report from Scotiabank, government spending contributed significantly to higher interest rates in Canada, accounting for an estimated 42 per cent of the increase in the Bank of Canada’s rate since the first quarter of 2022. As a result, many Canadians have seen the costs of their borrowing—mortgages, car loans, lines of credit—soar in recent years.

Recession Risks: The accumulation of deficits and debt, which do not enhance productivity in the economy, weaken the government’s ability to deal with future challenges including economic downturns because the government has less fiscal capacity available to take on more debt. That’s because during a recession, government spending automatically increases and government revenues decrease, even before policymakers react with any specific measures. For example, as unemployment rises, employment insurance (EI) payments automatically increase, while revenues for EI decrease. Therefore, when a downturn or recession hits, and the government wants to spend even more money beyond these automatic programs, it must go further into debt.

Government debt comes with major consequences for Canadians. To alleviate the pain of government debt on Canadians, our policymakers should work to balance their budgets in 2025.