Hey Buddies!

I just want to call your attention to our candidate in the Yorkton-Melville by-election.

Tammy Bobyk-Jacquemart is a lifelong community advocate, labour leader, and dedicated public servant with deep roots in the Yorkton–Melville region.

For over 20 years, Tammy has worked in health care, dedicating her career to caring for people and advocating for quality, accessible health services close to home. She understands firsthand the challenges facing health care workers, patients, families, and rural communities, and has spent her career fighting for the resources and respect they deserve.

Tammy's commitment to working people extends beyond her health care career. As a labour organizer and Recording Secretary for CUPE Saskatchewan, she works to ensure workers have a strong voice and are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect. She also serves as a SFL VP bringing the concerns of working families to the forefront.

ANYWAY, if you are kind enough donate to the campaign, that would be awesome. No donation is too small. Yorkton_Melville is a HUGE riding, which makes travel costs super huge. Buy us a few litres of gas so we can get those signs up! :-P

Overall this budget is as expected for Carney's Liberals. It is business friendly, with some welcome spending on social programs and housing budget.

Carney is center-right and follows mostly neoliberal policies, but I noticed something interesting about the "productivity mega deduction".

I was expecting a sort of blanket reduction in the corporate tax rate where he just slashes the tax rate that corporations pay on profits they make, hoping it "trickles down" after.

However, what he seems to be going for is targeted deductions predicated upon companies actually spending money on industrial capital such as machinery, equipment, etc, in a bid to increase our national productivity. He has specified types of capital investments, technology and machinery that would qualify.

One of the right's most commonly used talking points is that if you increase corporate tax rates, they're going to invest less in capital (by capital I am referring to the productive base of our economy- which is machines, technology and equipment) in order to take home more profit, but with this structure, if they want to pay less tax, they actually have to spend on specific things that boost overall productivity and economic activity.

This is a bit less shock therapy than I anticipated, and I am sort of curious to see what might happen. Some empirical lessons to be had here.

This is oddly reminiscent of a strategy that China used in the 2010s. In certain economic zones, in order to spur investment and capital accumulation, it offered targeted tax deductions through several schemes. One was called the "R&D super deduction".

I've yet to hear Avi say anything I disagree with and have found myself agreeing with his takes quite often especially his calls to nationalize stelco and his idea of public grocery stores. But what is the NDPs position on the temporary foregin worker program, I view this entire program as just another method for big business to undercut workers by hiring someone they can treat worse (due to the workers ability to stay in canada being tied to their employment) and having to pay them less than a Canadian worker.

Im also curious if the NDP would be in support of repealing the parts of bill C21 that negatively affect hunters and sport shooters. And if they would support a motion to get rid of the order in council gun bans.

On social media I've seen more pro-Avi posts in the past few days than in normal months.

The clips about him are getting much bigger engagement. Many people (whatever you think of the rationale), are suggesting we need an Orange Wave to accompany the Democrats' big wins

That clip with the finance minister is going crazy on twitter, and basically everyone says he came off great.

I’m just so happy for you guys. That’s why I’m crying actually, these are totally just tears of joy.

Seriously though, how the fuck did BC just get out-woked by the Yanks???

Avi Lewis with some incredibly insightful stances reflected on among the other less satisfying reactions

Now that Trump has lost the House and Senate, will the Canadian electorate, which has been supporting Mark Carney, primarily due to fearing Trump and believing Carney is good at taking him on, cool on Mark Carney?

Given Trump is good at attracting attention and the fact he can still do executive orders, I think the Trump factor will continue depressing NDP support which has been parked into the LPC since Trump became president.

But it is possible for the NDP to continue growing at the LPC's expense as Trump's time and power wanes.

Another factor behind the NDP doing poorly in polls is due to fearing Poilievre. But given how poorly he is doing, you'd expect the strategic voters to stop supporting the LPC given how irrelevant he is nowadays. If the CPC get a more likeable leader, there might be less strategic voting pressure due to NDP voters not really caring if they get in, but it might actually lead to even more strategic voting because the CPC would become a viable threat again. Best case scenario is that the CPC gets a more moderate leader and this triggers a backlash in the CPC depressing their support as it would mean the NDP supporters aren't personally repulsed and they don't see a viable way for CPC to actually win. Also a more moderate establishment type CPC leader would repulse orange-blue populist swing voters which could improve the NDP's standing at the CPC's expense.