Canada Feds declare war on Doug Ford and the Conservatives in Ontario, opening salvos

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

Now that Doug Ford and the Conservatives demolished the Ontario Liberal Party, grinding it into the dust, from 57 seats down to 7, the Federal Liberals are going to war.  Unless they can in turn demolish Doug Ford, in the next Federal election the Liberals risk being out the door.  The first thing that Ford did was cancel the cap-and-trade system, denouncing it as a tax grab from the pockets of the working people (which it is).  So the Feds came back and said: "OK, so no coin for you out of our cap-and-trade kitty."  Here you go:

"Newly elected Ontario Premier Doug Ford has rescinded the previous Liberal government's regulation that established the cap-and-trade program in 2017, withdrawing from an arrangement with Quebec and California that established a joint carbon market to buy and sell pollution credits.

As a result, Canada has hit the brakes on Ontario's portion of the $1.4-billion climate change fund."

https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/07/05/doug-ford-cap-trade-ontario_a_23475428/?utm_campaign=canada_newsletter

And that is the legacy reality of Ontario today: a beggar Province, its mighty industry all wrecked, and now a Recipient of the "Equalization Fund," which distributes Federal Dollars to the poor Provinces.  Little Tin Cup realities are about to hit the folks in Ontario, as the Feds chop the cash.  Meanwhile, those big nuclear plants just sit there, in a state of limbo, no coin to go fix. 

Edited July 7, 2018 by Jan van Eck
typing error

[Jan van Eck + 7,558]

1 hour ago, mthebold said:

How did Ontario get wrangled into this in the first place?

For the previous fifteen years Ontario was ruled, literally ruled, by the Ontario Liberal Party, which adopted, hook, line and sinker, the mantra of the Greenies that the planet was doomed unless the people of Ontario sacrificed themselves by prostrating upon the big rock, as in ancient Maya, and having their bodies cut open with a knife and the heart ripped out, to appease the volcano Gods.   In this case the appeasement came through an electric-windmill idea that led to grotesquely crippling power bills, collapsing industry, and enriching a very small group that put up these plants with their inflated tie-in rates, and of course the usual solar panels.  ALong came the Feds with the wacky idea of "cap and trade," the latest bright thinking of the Greenies, and now you have this concept that there will be this pig pot of cash  (financed by taxes, including from the people of Ontario) with amounts ladled out in accordance with how much cap-and-trade the Provinces do.  So Ontario did their cap-and-trade, which was going to be even more theft of the public's coin,and finally the people living in Ontario kicked the Liberals out, fat on their rears.  The entire Party got demolished, in the most incredible whipping I have ever seen in politics. 

The first thing that Doug Ford, the new Premier of Ontario, did was to cancel cap-and-trade.  So now Ottawa responds by saying: "OK, so now you don't get the pennies."  And the money taken from Ontario, which is a "beneficiary" Province getting grants of cash from the Feds (financed from the "Donor Provinces," which used to be Ontario) as equalization payments, essentially welfare for being poor. 

You have to keep the politics in context:  go back to 1980 and Ontario was rich beyond belief.  Everybody made money, the big industries were rocking and rolling, and massive hydropower made electricity cheap.  Then they started playing with electric windmills and the whole thing totally fell apart. There is a huge housing bubble, fuelled by very low interest rates for housing mortgages,  and incessant demand due to large levels of immigration and tight restrictions on land use, and when that bursts (and it will), then the reality will seriously sink in.   

The money in Canada is made in three Western provinces:  BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.  The rest are now Beneficiary Provinces, getting these equalization payments due to their poverty. Ontario went from this rich donor powerhouse to some beggar, all due to the grotesque mismanagement of the politicians.  It was amazing to watch. Politicians doing mismanagement is pretty much universal; you don't see it much in places such as Japan, Singapore, and Monaco, but for the rest of the planet, it is universal.  An interesting commentary on political systems, to be sure.