• Nik282000@lemmy.ca
      0·
      2 months ago

      What ethical business? Our biggest companies:

      • Brookfield Corporation (finance: produces nothing, extracts value from others and concentrates it in the rich)

      • Alimentation Couche-Tard (kwikie marts: underpays employees, over charges for products, petroleum energy vendor)

      • Royal Bank of Canada (bank: produces nothing, extracts value through fees and fines)

      • Cenovus Energy (oil and gas: oil and gas)

      • Toronto-Dominion Bank (bank: produces nothing, extracts value through fees and fines)

    • tleb@lemmy.ca
      0·
      2 months ago

      Ethical business? Wat? Our economy is propped up by a housing bubble and resource extraction

        • psvrh@lemmy.ca
          0·
          2 months ago

          Compared to almost anyone.

          Canada rolled over and allowed the one sector it had any hope in–resource extraction–to be sold off to foreign investors, first from government control and then from domestic hands. Then it allowed rampant consolidation in the “captive” industries it does have (telecomm, food). Other countries did the same, but Canada rolled over faster and harder than any other western nation.

          Now we’re at the stage where our primary industry is skimming the cream off of the housing market. After that, what? Strip-mining south Asian immigrants for value? Whoops, we’re already doing that, too.

          It’s a sad tale of governments, Liberal or Conservative, selling everything not nailed down in hopes that the magical market fairy would make it better, and then steadfastly refusing to do anything at all, sacrificing current donors’ profits for everyone’s future. Everyone saw this as an issue at least as far back as 1995, but no one was willing to admit that the Reagan/Thatcher (and in our case, Mulroney and Chretien) era of neoliberalism would eventually present a bill. So it was more tax cuts, more service cuts, more selling assets, more emphasis on cash hoarding and more disincentives for investing in business.

  • kbal@fedia.io
    0·
    2 months ago

    There’s way more than enough wealth in this country to go around, if it were evenly distributed.

    • yeehaw@lemmy.ca
      0·
      2 months ago

      Hell it doesn’t even need to be evenly. Just better distribution. Right now it’s like it’s all at the top.

    • HubertManne@moist.catsweat.com
      0·
      2 months ago

      Impossible. You have so few natural resouces and have to import everything. You can’t think your lives would be as kush as japan or soemthing.

      • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
        0·
        2 months ago

        You have so few natural resouces[sic]

        Wait. You’re from the “no child left behind” generation, aren’t ya? Resources is really what we do well. That, and repelling invaders with drunken arsonists.

          • AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca
            0·
            2 months ago

            It’s honestly impressive, most lemmings seem even worse than redditors at picking up sarcasm.

            Fuck the /s tag, all my homies hate the /s tag

            • FeatherConstrictor@sh.itjust.works
              0·
              2 months ago

              I’m autistic and I like the /s tag and other tone markers :(

              I think especially with sarcasm, the internet has such a wide mix of people that sometimes it can be very difficult to tell for sure if someone is being sarcastic or stupid.

              To be fair, I did pick up the sarcasm with decently high confidence in the original comment.

              • AmosBurton_ThatGuy@lemmy.ca
                0·
                2 months ago

                That’s completely fair and a good point that I hadn’t considered. There are a lot of idiots on the internet that would unironically say things a lot of others would only say sarcastically, so I get the need for the /s tag and I’m probably being too judgemental about people that don’t pick up on what I consider to be obvious sarcasm.

                Thanks for sharing your point of view, I mean that genuinely! :)

  • RandAlThor@lemmy.caOP
    0·
    2 months ago

    We’ve needed a better industrial policy/strategy for quite sometime now, way before Trudeau happened. We have been fallen behind in productivity, in investment in research and IP, all leading indicators of creation of wealth and prosperity for decades. We just can’t rely on oil and natural resource booms to keep us afloat economically. None of the prior administrations have brought that, and Trudeau’s hasn’t brought got that vision. Neither does PP quite frankly. He hasn’t said jack that talks to how we’re going to be more competitive, nor does he have the brains for it.

    • kbal@fedia.io
      0·
      2 months ago

      Government isn’t about industrial policy any more, the leaders are all too busy with the latest all-purpose political strategy: Flood the zone with useless bullshit, hope something good happens that you can take credit for.

  • streetfestival@lemmy.caEnglish
    0·
    2 months ago

    So long as we only compare ourselves to the US, we look great on many fronts, and that’s what most Canadian politicians and mainstream media do - which is absurd and serves an agenda. Compare us to all OECD countries (same as or similar to wealthy peers), and we look middling or abhorrent on many fronts. For example, I know we’re almost at the back of the pack of ~40 countries in terms of disability services. I realize the article is probably about economic indicators more so than health and quality of living. My comment is really “who we compare ourselves to matters a lot to the evaluation” and comparisons exclusively to the US are self-serving and of little value

    • RandAlThor@lemmy.caOP
      0·
      2 months ago

      we’re almost at the back of the pack of ~40 countries in terms of disability services

      This is what has fallen behind since Liberals steered towards the center a few decades ago. It’s sad really.