1 yr. ago • 94%

Trudeau announces new measures to deal with housing, grocery prices

https:// www.cbc.ca /news/politics/liberals-gst-rental-apartments-1.6966608

Faced with increasing pressure to respond to widespread concerns about the cost of living and questions about his leadership, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a series of new measures Thursday meant to deal with rising housing and grocery prices.

32 comments

The federal government also announced it will bring forward legislation to empower the Competition Bureau to ensure that corporate mergers and acquisitions do not have an adverse effect on the affordability of goods and services.

I laughed at that part not gonna lie

31
- Ah yes, just like how the CRTC ensures we keep paying some of the highest prices for internet and phone service in the world.
  
  22
- Wait a minute -- what are they doing now?!?
  
  9
  
  Don't worry Rogers, you're safe.
  
  14
- Ah, yes, they'll give the Competition Bureau teeth. Sure they will, the fucking liars.
  
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  Whatever teeth the Competition Bureau has, the Harper-appointed judge on the Competition Tribunal apparently has bigger ones.
  
  4
- It has to be satire.
  
  3
- Yeah, let me check
  
  ...
  
  Yeah, that Harper appointee on the federal court of appeals says no.
  
  1
Nothing with teeth unfortunately. Putting taxes on the corporations will just raise prices. Not very helpful. Getting rid of the GST on new rental units will mean bigger profits for the builders. Nothing here helps the people.

13
- Taxing corporations does not just raise prices for consumers!! This is a hyper conservative worldview, and very convenient to corporations that don’t want their taxes raised. It is also contradicted by literally any first year economics textbook, so I don’t understand why it keeps getting repeated.
  
  Tax changes to encourage rental construction have been advocated by urban economists for years. This particular measure was proposed by the NDP. An affordable rental market actually puts downward pressure on the overall real estate market.
  
  That said, I agree the Liberals aren’t doing enough.
  
  48
  
  Liberals aren’t doing enough
  
  Is this a situation similar to the US where the "progressive" party is not doing enough to help and the regressive party wont help at all?
  
  I take the "something is better than nothing" view on this.
  
  3
- The GST part is to incentivize new construction, and you are right it will increase profits but without increasing prices for the end consumer, on the contrary if more builders see this as an attractive opportunity, there will be more units built which increases the offer and when the offer goes up, the prices goes down.
  
  14
  
  Hopefully it somehow managed to avoid the trend of only building higher end housing to increase those profit margins.
  
  2
Is it strongly worded?

7
All of these problems are symptoms of crony capitalism. He isn't going to fix anything by treating the symptoms. Grocery prices are insane because Loblaws owns everything. Housing prices are insane because landlords own city councils all over the country and refuse to build more housing (and also because of an immigration policy which the Liberals themselves say is intended to prevent wages from rising)

6
The government needed to legislate price caps for key groceries and give the municipalities more control over their zoning and construction. This neoliberal policy bullshit just serves to take money from public coffers and put it in the pockets of the rich.

6
- Permanently Deleted
  
  1
- If you place price caps on a product that are below the point where it is profitable for companies to sell it then they will simply stop stocking them in in their shelves. There is historical precedent, too.
  
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  Profitability has clearly not been a problem for smaller grocers. Why is it only a problem for the big chains?
  
  5
- The government needed to legislate price caps for key groceries
  
  By definition, a shortage occurs when an external mechanism, such as government intervention, prevents price from rising.
  
  Explain to us how creating a shortage of food, of all things, is a good idea. From my point of view as someone who likes to eat, a shortage of food is the scariest proposition.
  
  -3
  
  Costs are driven up by grocery chain skimming. This is most obvious by stepping into any large independent grocer. In Vancouver, these include Foodymart in Richmond and the Crystal Mall produce stands in Burnaby.
  
  3
What needs to happen is some prosecutions of executives and investors for price gouging.

4
Happy to see the Housing Generator fund pay out with some YIMBYism, but imho it doesn't go far enough. I hate and fear Poilievre, but he's right when it comes to the carrot-and-stick approach to municipal governments blocking housing:

They do not deserve the carrot. They deserve the stick. Poilievre, being a gigantic asshole, is much more willing to use the stick.

1
- I don't care what Poillièvre says he'll do. He has a voting history, and his party has a very long history of siding with landlords and CEOs. Anyone who genuinely believes Poillièvre is going to help the little guy and not simply enrich the landlords just because he says he's going to do something is a complete moron. He's voted against it in the past, and he will in the future, because it'll hurt his own bottom line.
  
  4
- I think he is all talk no delivery.
  
  I like some of those things he says, but I don't believe he would actually act on them
  
  3

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