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Here’s why young Canadians are pessimistic about the federal government

Published

3 months ago

4 minute read

From the Fraser Institute

By Jake Fuss and Grady Munro

A new poll shows that the share of Canadians feeling pessimistic about the federal government has reached a new high. This should come as no surprise. Years of poor policy has left Canadians with a stagnant economy and declining living standards. And despite the Trudeau government’s recent focus on younger generations, young people appear the most pessimistic of all.

According to the poll conducted by Nanos, 39.8 per cent of Canadians feel “pessimism” towards the federal government—representing a seven-year high. On the flip side, 7.6 per cent feel “satisfaction,” a seven-year low.

More broadly, 68.7 per cent of respondents reported negative feelings (“anger” or “pessimism”) towards the federal government while just 16.3 per cent reported positive feelings (“optimism” or “satisfaction”). The remaining 15.0 per cent either weren’t sure or were simply disinterested.

Again, it’s not surprising that the majority of Canadians report negative feelings about Ottawa, in light of the Trudeau government’s fiscal and economic mismanagement.

For example, due to record-high spending, the Trudeau government will run its tenth-consecutive budget deficit in 2024/25 at a projected $39.8 billion. These deficits have contributed to a remarkable rise in federal government debt since Prime Minister Trudeau first took office. From 2014/15 (the Harper government’s last full year) to 2024/25, federal gross debt is expected to have approximately doubled to $2.1 trillion. And the Trudeau government has no plans to change course. Deficits are expected to continue until at least 2028/29, and projections suggest gross debt will increase an additional $400.1 billion over the same period.

What have Canadians gained from all this spending and debt?

Through the implementation of sweeping programs such as $10-a-day daycare and national dental care, the Trudeau government has expanded its role in the lives of Canadians. But because the government has chosen to use taxpayer dollars to provide services that were already offered privately, many Canadians have less choice of how to best to use their hard-earned money due to the imposition of higher taxes. Indeed, 86 per cent of middle-income families now pay more in taxes than they did in 2015, adding to the cost of living.

At the same time, Ottawa and some provinces have spent tens of billions on corporate welfare with the promise that it will promote economic growth. But over the last decade the economy has posted its worst performance since the 1930s, and Canadian living standards have been in a historic decline since mid-2019.

Finally, the burden of government debt and poor economic prospects may be why younger generations are feeling the most pessimistic. Indeed, among survey respondents aged 18 to 34, 41.3 per cent were “pessimistic” about the federal government while just 5.3 per cent were “satisfied” (the largest and smallest shares, respectively, relative to all other age groups). Despite the Trudeau government’s rhetoric about “generational fairness,” younger generations face a disproportionately higher tax burden in the future due to debt accumulated today. Meanwhile, according to long-term projections, Canadian living standards will fall further behind comparable countries (including the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom) over the coming decades.

Canadians are worse off today than they were 10 years ago, and should expect higher taxes and relatively little improvement in their living standards in coming years due to poor government policy. Is it any wonder they’re feeling pessimistic?

Authors:

Jake Fuss
Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute
Grady Munro
Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute
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Firm tied to voter registration ‘scheme’ goes dark

Published on November 2, 2024

By

From left, Lancaster County Commissioner Alice Yoder, Lancaster County District Attorney Heather Adams, Commissioners Ray D’Agostino and Josh Parsons. The officials held a press conference on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, to discuss voter registration fraud detected in the county.

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Everybody Votes runs an office in Lancaster County, where election workers recently found suspicious registration forms among a batch of 2,500 applications delivered last week. Investigators there said at least 60% of those reviewed were fraudulent.

The media and consulting firm linked to fraudulent voter registration forms in Pennsylvania earlier this week has gone dark as of Saturday.

Field and Media Corps – the website and social media accounts of which are now defunct – is an Arizona-based company that contracts with Everybody Votes to run a canvassing operation in Pennsylvania and other states that target low-income minority residents unregistered to vote.

The Monroe County District Attorney’s Office confirmed Wednesday that 30 registration forms contained fraudulent information, including an application submitted on behalf of a dead resident.

Everybody Votes runs an office in Lancaster County, where election workers recently found suspicious registration forms among a batch of 2,500 applications delivered last week. Investigators there said at least 60% of those reviewed were fraudulent. So far, the campaign has not been tied directly to the investigation.

Not so in nearby York County, where law enforcement continues reviewing another delivery from the operation leading up to the Oct. 22 deadline to register.

On Wednesday, the America First Policy Institute, a conservative-leaning research nonprofit,  demanded a federal investigation into the company.

“Where there’s fire, there’s fire,” said Hogan Gidley, vice chairman of the institute’s Center for Election Integrity. “Thousands of instances of reported voter registration fraud have now been confirmed throughout Pennsylvania.”

He described Field and Media Corps, established in 2017, as a “high-powered left-wing organization” that may have launched similar “schemes” across the country that require state-level investigations.

“Submitting fraudulent registrations right at the voter deadline to overwhelm election officials is exactly the kind of scheme that the Department of Justice should be using their force and resources to stop,” he said.

Evidence also exists that Everybody Votes is linked to a left-wing super political action committee intent on expanding registration numbers for Democrats in battleground states.

According to public tax records shared with The Center Square, The Voter Registration Project, also known as Everybody Votes, describes itself as a public charity that helps low-income minority citizens register to vote and provides technical assistance to voter registration drives.

The organization reported $45.8 million in total revenues in 2022, a “substantial portion of which comes from a governmental unit or the general public.”

A 2023 report from Capital Research Center, a conservative nonprofit, says left-wing donors together raised $190 million for the campaign to register 5.1 million voters across the country – all in violation of federal law that bars 501(c)(3) from engaging in such activity.

The strategy, detailed in a 2019 leaked memo from Mind the Gap, the liberal super PAC in question, entices investors by promising a more cost-effective strategy to boost vote counts for Democrats – namely through voter registration drives.

The group pointed to its direct role in flipping the U.S. House blue in 2018 as “proof of concept.”

Detailed further in the report are signed tax forms from donors that link their grants to the Voter Registration Project in direct support of Mind the Gap. The Capital Research Center estimates President Joe Biden collected between 1 million and 2.7 million swing state votes in the 2020 election as a result.

Biden defeated then-incumbent President Donald Trump 306-232 in electoral college votes; the popular vote was Biden 81.2 million to 74.2 million.

Francisco Heredia, who runs Field and Media Corps, told Votebeat earlier this week he’d not heard from county officials in Pennsylvania, but would cooperate with the investigation. He said the company trains workers how to legally complete registration forms and has no tolerance for fraud.

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espionage

Nearly 1,100 known, suspected terrorists apprehended at US northern border, equivalent to U.S. Army battalion

Published on September 1, 2024

By

Foreign nationals illegally enter the U.S. from Canada through the Swanton Sector
U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Swanton Sector BP

From The Center Square

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Canada officials express alarm about terrorism threats, Americans about impact on US

In addition to members of Congress expressing alarm about national security threats at the U.S.-Canada border, members of the Conservative Party of Canada are blaming Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government for being responsible for creating them.

A Canadian House of Commons hearing was held Wednesday to investigate how the Trudeau government granted citizenship to a member of ISIS who allegedly plotted a terrorist attack against Canadians.

An Egyptian father and son were arrested last month for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack in the Toronto area after the father was admitted into Canada in 2018 and granted citizenship in 2024. This was after in 2015 the father allegedly appeared in an ISIS propaganda video, which was shown during the hearing.

Canadian authorities claimed to have thoroughly vetted him before granting him citizenship in May 2024 even though he had aggravated assault charges on his record from 2015 “for the benefit of the Islamic State somewhere outside Canada,” according to the hearing.

Members of the Conservative Party blasted Trudeau and his government, arguing a member of ISIS should not “have been allowed into Canada, let alone granted Canadian citizenship. Canadians deserve to feel safe in their own communities.”

A senior official of the Canada Border Services Agency told MPs that CBSA officers “made the best decisions that we could at that moment in time based on the information we had. Can we do a better job of collectively gathering some of that information? I don’t know. We need to determine that,” CBC reported.

The father and his son, who is not a Canadian citizen, face nine charges, including conspiracy to commit murder for the benefit or at the direction of a terrorist group, ISIS.

The father, Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi, was granted a visitor visa by the Trudeau government in 2018. He later filed a refugee claim, which was granted. Next, he was granted permanent resident status in 2021 and citizenship in May 2024, according to the hearing.

“This was allowed to happen even though Eldidi is alleged to have appeared dismembering a prisoner in an ISIS video published in 2015,” the Conservative Party of Canada said.

Canadian authorities also claimed the video “wasn’t available to officials who were screening” him, CBC reported. Canada’s Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc said there was “no way” Canadian officials could have known about the video.

The video was reportedly posted on Jihadology.net in June 2015, an American-based website that catalogues ISIS propaganda, according to information from the hearing.

In July, the pair were arrested only after French authorities alerted Canadians about alleged terrorist ties, first reported by Global News.

“If not for that late tip from a foreign government, it’s highly likely many innocent Canadians would be dead today,” the Conservative Party of Canada said. “Justin Trudeau has repeatedly claimed that his government has thorough screening at our borders, he has claimed he takes terrorism and national security seriously, but this foiled terror attack shows that this isn’t the case.”

The hearing was held one month after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrested a Canadian woman on terrorism-related offenses. The arrest stemmed “from an ongoing criminal investigation regarding allegations that the individual left Canada and traveled to Syria in 2015 to join ISIS,” the RCMP said in statement.

It was also held after MPs demanded answers about the arrest of a reporter when asking a Canadian minister why the Iranian Islamist Revolutionary Guard Corps hadn’t been designated as a terrorist organization. RCMP security detail reportedly grabbed and arrested the individual; the RCMP officer was reportedly put “under review.”

The reporter “was arrested and accosted on trumped-up charges by the RCMP,” Marilyn Gladu, a Conservative MP, said, adding the Trudeau government “has created a climate where journalists can face criminal charges for demanding answers on critical subjects.”

IRGC is a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization.

Members of Congress have called on the Biden administration to strengthen the U.S.-Canada border after the Trudeau government expanded entry to Gazans after the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, The Center Square reported. The majority of Gazans voted Hamas into power and violent attacks against Jews in America and threats of terrorism have increased. While the Canadian Consul General in New York Tom Clark told The Center Square the Canadian government has “taken every step to ensure the security of Canadians and Americans is in no way jeopardized,” several U.S. and Canadian officials disagree.

Members of Congress have called for stronger security measures after the greatest number of known or suspected terrorists, including an Iranian with terrorist ties, have been apprehended by U.S. officials at the northern border under the Biden and Trudeau administrations since fiscal 2021, The Center Square first reported.

They total nearly 1,100, slightly more than one U.S. Army battalion.

Americans have expressed concerns about why a record number on the U.S. terrorist watch list are in Canada, aren’t being stopped by Canadian authorities prior to attempting to enter the U.S. and question how many more entered the U.S. from Canada who evaded capture.

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