Liberal (Minority/Majority) Government 2025 - ???

[Deleted member 175000]

Regarding OAS - Gov Can has a new calculator out for it. I ran 3 scenarios across two different programs. Family Net incomes 75k, 100k, and 150k, family of 4 with 5 and 2 yo for CCB vs. retired 69 year old couple for OAS, equal income split in both cases

At 75k
Family gets est. $11,440
Retirees get est. $17,850

At 100k
Family gets est. $9314
Retirees get est. $17,850

At 150k
Family gets est. $ 0
Retirees get est. $17,850


I very much believe in the intent of both programs- but that shit is broken.

 

[Jarnhamar]

You don't agree ?

I'd rather spend my time being upset at Poilievere.

 

[Czech_pivo]

Regarding OAS - Gov Can has a new calculator out for it. I ran 3 scenarios across two different programs. Family Net incomes 75k, 100k, and 150k, family of 4 with 5 and 2 yo for CCB vs. retired 69 year old couple for OAS, equal income split in both cases

At 75k
Family gets est. $11,440
Retirees get est. $17,850

At 100k
Family gets est. $9314
Retirees get est. $17,850

At 150k
Family gets est. $ 0
Retirees get est. $17,850


I very much believe in the intent of both programs- but that shit is broken.

I think that you should factor in the subsidized costs of child care that the families received for the 2yr old. Those are direct subsidizes indirectly paid out the family.

 

[Brad Sallows]

Ottawa's big bet on world's largest cricket farm ran into a simple problem: the 'yuck factor'

Government choosing winners and losers. Film at 11.

 

[Brad Sallows]

I think that you should factor in the subsidized costs of child care that the families received for the 2yr old. Those are direct subsidizes indirectly paid out the family.

Not many families on OAS have two-year old children.

Measuring need is made unnecessarily difficult because many of the people doing the measuring are motivated to situate their estimates. What is really needed are measures that account for all income-after-payouts-AND-benefits across a lifetime.

 

[Czech_pivo]

Regarding OAS - Gov Can has a new calculator out for it. I ran 3 scenarios across two different programs. Family Net incomes 75k, 100k, and 150k, family of 4 with 5 and 2 yo for CCB vs. retired 69 year old couple for OAS, equal income split in both cases

At 75k
Family gets est. $11,440
Retirees get est. $17,850

At 100k
Family gets est. $9314
Retirees get est. $17,850

At 150k
Family gets est. $ 0
Retirees get est. $17,850


I very much believe in the intent of both programs- but that shit is broken.

Not many families on OAS have two-year old children.

Measuring need is made unnecessarily difficult because many of the people doing the measuring are motivated to situate their estimates. What is really needed are measures that account for all income-after-payouts-AND-benefits across a lifetime.

Ture that!

But I'm making the point of if you're comparing a family of 4 vs a couple of retirees, then the looking at direct subsidizes needs to include the 5 or 10$/day government subsidizes being paid indirectly out to the family of 4.

Factor in how much is lost the moment 1 of the retirees dies - OAS is gone, CPP is vastly reduced and in almost all cases where a defined benefit pension is involved, the survivor only receives 66% of the pension going forward.

It also means that the family of 4 at 150k/yr IS getting an indirect subsidize for the childcare fees that they are benefiting from.

 

[GR66]

Ture that!

But I'm making the point of if you're comparing a family of 4 vs a couple of retirees, then the looking at direct subsidizes needs to include the 5 or 10$/day government subsidizes being paid indirectly out to the family of 4.

Factor in how much is lost the moment 1 of the retirees dies - OAS is gone, CPP is vastly reduced and in almost all cases where a defined benefit pension is involved, the survivor only receives 66% of the pension going forward.

It also means that the family of 4 at 150k/yr IS getting an indirect subsidize for the childcare fees that they are benefiting from.

It's almost like we should get rid of all the niche subsidies, benefits and tax credits - and all the bureaucracy required to manage them - an provide a basic minimum income as a safety net to ensure that nobody starves or goes without basic shelter.

 

[YZT580]

110% agreed.

There is currently a bed ridden 90yo woman living in the same house as I am because of a very similar situation.

The senior's home cost, lets say, $1200 a month. Her income as a senior was $1200 a month.

It would have left her broke. So instead she has a worker that comes 4 times a day to help change her, shower her, etc



I understand the government wanting to keep costs under control, so they recoup the cost of staffing/maintenance by charging rent to the seniors.

But what if she didn't have immediate family in town? What if she didn't have $1200 a month coming in from OAS?


There has to be a better way to do this. I can easily see some folks falling thru the cracks who really shouldn't be allowed to fall thru those cracks

It's almost like we should get rid of all the niche subsidies, benefits and tax credits - and all the bureaucracy required to manage them - an provide a basic minimum income as a safety net to ensure that nobody starves or goes without basic shelter.

I will vote for a flat percentage tax starting at a pre-defined value and no subsidies for sure. Would eliminate thousands of accountancy positions, thousands of civil servants and innumerous complaint processes with the CRA>

 

[Navy_Pete]

The project had too many bugs in it, and the costs have been hived off on the taxpayer ...

Ottawa's big bet on world's largest cricket farm ran into a simple problem: the 'yuck factor'​

Almost a year later, questions remain over how much public money was recovered​

The business of insect farming was supposed to grow big and fast.

In London, Ont., that promise took shape in Aspire Food Group Canada. Billed as the world's largest cricket farm, it was a 150,000-square-foot, fully automated facility designed to house billions of insects and produce millions of kilograms of protein each year.

Crickets are touted as a low-carbon protein source, requiring less farmland than traditional livestock and offering the potential to address world food insecurity.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canada-aspire-food-cricket-farm-9.7136152

What's wild about it is their fancy automated systems never worked, and they were at $50 lb for a price point, which is insane.

The article also interviewed another guy with a much lower tech setup that was doing a lot better, with about a third of the footprint, but sounded like he understood both the process as well as the market a lot better.

The whole business sounds a bit like some of the high tech pump and dump schemes, where it looks great on paper, gets lot of investors but doesn't actually work, so the only ones that make money are the ones that get it to IPO and sell off their stock options at a hugely inflated rate before it falls apart.

 

[brihard]

OAS at its current formula is absurd. There’s absolutely no reason high income seniors should be receiving federal welfare. OAS is supposed to be a safety net, not a scaffold. This should be one of the single most obvious candidates for significant government savings.

 

[Halifax Tar]

OAS at its current formula is absurd. There’s absolutely no reason high income seniors should be receiving federal welfare. OAS is supposed to be a safety net, not a scaffold. This should be one of the single most obvious candidates for significant government savings.

I agree with you, but I suspect and suggest that that voting block is too powerful and self centered to support any changes to OAS.

 

[brihard]

I agree with you, but I suspect and suggest that that voting block is too powerful and self centered to support any changes to OAS.

Agreed. Not many of us want to see a change in policy that would run against our own personal financial interests.

 

[daftandbarmy]

OAS at its current formula is absurd. There’s absolutely no reason high income seniors should be receiving federal welfare. OAS is supposed to be a safety net, not a scaffold. This should be one of the single most obvious candidates for significant government savings.

Meanwhile, despite recent (tiny) downsizing efforts, the size of the public sector continues to grow and consume enormous amounts of cash:

More than 1 in 5 Canadians now works for government—and the share is rising​

At 21.8 percent of employment, we are approaching territory last seen before the spending cuts of the 1990s​

When Statistics Canada released the latest Labour Force Survey earlier this month, the headlines were predictable. The unemployment rate fell to 6.5 percent. Overall employment edged down by 25,000. The coverage, as it almost always does, mostly stopped there.

But buried several tables into the same release is a figure that deserves considerably more attention. In January 2026, 4.597 million Canadians worked in the public sector—all employees of federal, provincial, and local governments, government agencies, Crown corporations, and publicly funded establishments like schools, universities, and hospitals.

That represents 21.8 percent of everyone employed in Canada. It is a percentage that has been quietly climbing for five years, and it puts Canada on a trajectory back toward territory last occupied before the fiscal consolidations of the 1990s.

The Carney government’s commitment to reduce federal headcount by 40,000 positions has generated considerable debate. And that discussion is worth having. But it addresses only a narrow slice of a much broader shift, one that the monthly labour force data have been documenting in plain sight.

More than 1 in 5 Canadians now works for government—and the share is rising

1 in 5 Canadians now works for government - the highest rate ever. What does this mean for Canada's economic future?

thehub.ca

 

[dapaterson]

I agree with you, but I suspect and suggest that that voting block is too powerful and self centered to support any changes to OAS.

A promise kept after the 2015 election was to return OAS eligibility to age 65 instead of 67. Unfortunately.

I suspect the most politically palatable option would be to freeze the rate at which reductions to the benefit occur (rather than indexing them to inflation).

 

[Deleted member 175000]

I think that you should factor in the subsidized costs of child care that the families received for the 2yr old. Those are direct subsidizes indirectly paid out the family.

Counter- Age amount, Pension Amount, and Income Splitting are all also excluded from my comparison.

 

[Deleted member 175000]

OAS at its current formula is absurd. There’s absolutely no reason high income seniors should be receiving federal welfare. OAS is supposed to be a safety net, not a scaffold. This should be one of the single most obvious candidates for significant government savings.

"But the social contract!"

Fun story- the genesis of both the baby bonus (Familly Allowance) and OAS were in immediate post war era social programs.
At the time, and for decades after they legitimately were seen as part of the social contract, with universal distribution. An argument for universality being to not stigmatize the receipt of the funds- they didn't start as targeted welfare.

Then came the late 80's/early 90's and both programs (parts of the social contract for 40 years) were on the chopping block due to fiscal necessity. As it turned out the Grey Power lobby out performed the Toddler Lobby. One program got axed and turned into a niche poverty averting tax credit, one survived unscathed outside of an increased "Recovery Tax" that didn't kick until 2.5 times the average national annual earnings (at the time)

 

[Czech_pivo]

Meanwhile, despite recent (tiny) downsizing efforts, the size of the public sector continues to grow and consume enormous amounts of cash:

More than 1 in 5 Canadians now works for government—and the share is rising​

At 21.8 percent of employment, we are approaching territory last seen before the spending cuts of the 1990s​

When Statistics Canada released the latest Labour Force Survey earlier this month, the headlines were predictable. The unemployment rate fell to 6.5 percent. Overall employment edged down by 25,000. The coverage, as it almost always does, mostly stopped there.

But buried several tables into the same release is a figure that deserves considerably more attention. In January 2026, 4.597 million Canadians worked in the public sector—all employees of federal, provincial, and local governments, government agencies, Crown corporations, and publicly funded establishments like schools, universities, and hospitals.

That represents 21.8 percent of everyone employed in Canada. It is a percentage that has been quietly climbing for five years, and it puts Canada on a trajectory back toward territory last occupied before the fiscal consolidations of the 1990s.

The Carney government’s commitment to reduce federal headcount by 40,000 positions has generated considerable debate. And that discussion is worth having. But it addresses only a narrow slice of a much broader shift, one that the monthly labour force data have been documenting in plain sight.

More than 1 in 5 Canadians now works for government—and the share is rising

1 in 5 Canadians now works for government - the highest rate ever. What does this mean for Canada's economic future?

thehub.ca

So the US sits about 15% of its workforce working for all level's of government.

If the US included all private colleges/universities into their numbers I wonder what % they would be at. As some Colleges/Universities are public and some are private, it means that some are included as government employees and some are excluded.

Also, US military personal are NOT included in the count as US government employees. Do our numbers include CAF personal?

 

[CBH99]

I will vote for a flat percentage tax starting at a pre-defined value and no subsidies for sure. Would eliminate thousands of accountancy positions, thousands of civil servants and innumerous complaint processes with the CRA>

I hadn't thought of that before...

Probably because I don't even think I understood that first sentence.... Huh???


No sarcasm. I THINK I'm understanding what you are saying, but could you break that first sentence down a bit for me please?



(Sorry, just trying to genuinely follow what's being said & that one popped something in my brain)

 

[HavokFour]

Another round of dropping more Trudeau era hang-on's?

Cabinet shuffle talk intensifies as Carney's Liberals look to a majority - The Hill Times

Prime Minister Mark Carney's cabinet is due for an overhaul, say several Liberal MPs, cabinet staffers, and political insiders, and a potential shift to a majority government would significantly change the political dynamics and would likely be reflected in cabinet.

www.hilltimes.com

 

[The Bread Guy]

Noooooooooot a good look on the coach here ....

Carney won’t say whether Michael Ma will face consequences for China forced labour comments

Prime Minister Mark Carney says Liberal MP Michael Ma has apologized for comments he made last week seemingly questioning the issue of forced labour in China, and would not say whether he will face consequences.

www.cp24.com

Carney attends fundraiser co-hosted by MP who cast doubt on Chinese human rights abuses

PM says Michael Ma apologized, Canada has strong measures to stop goods made with forced labour from entering the country

www.theglobeandmail.com

Carney says Liberal MP Michael Ma remains in caucus after comments on China’s forced labour

Prime Minister Mark Carney said Liberal MP Michael Ma continues to be part of his party’s caucus.

nationalpost.com

(NatPost, Globe & Mail archived links)