Canada

“We put an aggressive tax in place and said, ‘Look, if you’re a foreign buyer, you want to buy, you want to benefit from our public services, from our police services, from our schools, from our hospitals. You don’t get to just buy a property here and pay your income tax somewhere else and not support those services,’” he said, speaking at a news conference on a new liquid natural gas facility in northern B.C.

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Tom Davidoff, a professor in the University of B.C.’s Sauder School of Business, has written an upcoming article on the impact of foreign buyers on housing for the Canadian Tax Journal. He applauded B.C.’s decision to tax, rather than ban, foreign investment. The federal government’s ban is set to expire in 2027.

The paper notes that foreign buyers end up increasing prices in certain sub-markets when they have incentives to buy overseas. But once governments impose transaction fees or empty-housing taxes on those investments, purchases decline, prices come down and locals benefit from seeing more supply.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-premier-david-eby-developers-foreign-investment-housing/

Note, this article is from a few weeks ago

“The Canadian government appears to have pursued a strategy of rushing through a record-breaking number of arms export permit approvals to Israel prior to publicly committing to pause approving any new ones,” Arm Embargo Now explained in their report. “This was then quietly undermined by a series of exceptions and loopholes,” researchers wrote, suggesting “the government’s policy shifts were… aimed at diffusing public criticism while maintaining material support.”

Avoid Paywall

With climate change, it's more likely than you think

Some gardeners may be able to grow palms and even cold-hardy citrus in parts of Canada, according to the federal government's latest Plant Hardiness Zones map — the first update since 2014.

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The plant hardiness zones come with accompanying species-specific models, which provide much more in-depth information for specific plants or treesmThe models look at how specific plants would do under different climate change scenarios.

If we want to advance our economy, we need to embrace EV adoption. We already invested heavily into EV supply chains.

Taiwan's Representative to Canada Harry Tseng (曾厚仁) on Sunday dismissed Chinese ads placed in a Canadian newspaper, calling them a sign of “doubt” in their own claims.

In an interview with the Toronto Sun, Tseng addressed a paid op-ed by the Chinese ambassador to Canada, published in the Hill Times on July 2, titled “The One-China Principle is indisputable, and the victory of WWII [World War II] must not be tampered with.”

The ad, written by Chinese Ambassador to Canada Wang Di (王鏑) drew “a bold, red line under China’s position on Taiwan, continuing China’s tendency toward hard-handed ‘wolf-warrior’ diplomacy,” the Toronto Sun reported.

The Toronto Sun said that “a second ad, published on July 16, reads more like the usual public relations one would expect from a foreign embassy — with Wang celebrating a recent open house and the Ottawa dragon boat festival” in June.

In response to the ads, Tseng said: “If they consider the ‘One China principle’ as universal and accepted by most countries, why on Earth do they need to use this [the ad] to promulgate it?”

“Obviously, they are perhaps doubtful of what they claim,” Tseng was quoted as saying.

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Alan Kessel, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute and a former Canadian diplomat, told the Toronto Sun that the ads were an attempt by Beijing to control the narrative.

“One message implies closer ties, while the other draws a red line around Taiwan, signaling the price of engagement,” Kessel was quoted as saying.

Kessel said that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney should pursue a China policy grounded in “Canadian values” instead of being dictated by “foreign authoritarian sensitivities.”

“That means rejecting coercion, resisting influence operations and affirming that our decisions on Taiwan are not shaped in Beijing, but in Ottawa,” the Toronto Sun quoted him as saying.

Just came across this video. I've never heard of him before, but he seems to focus on facts, which I always appreciate. May showed some promising results in the import/export front for Canada. Hopefully the trends continue.

Buildings are the third-largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canada. In many cities, including Vancouver, Toronto and Calgary, buildings are the single highest source of emissions.

The recently launched Infrastructure for Good barometer, released by consulting firm Deloitte, suggests that Canada’s infrastructure investments already top the global list in terms of positive societal, economic and environmental benefits.

In fact, over the past 150 years, Canada has built railways, roads, clean water systems, electrical grids, pipelines and communication networks to connect and serve people across the country.

Now, there’s an opportunity to build on Canada’s impressive tradition by creating a new form of infrastructure: capturing, storing and sharing the massive amounts of heat lost from industry, electricity generation and communities, even in summer.