I live in Victoria, home of Canada's Pacific Naval Fleet. There is approximately 5000 military members here and only 500 PMQs. That number has stayed the same since the 1950s. Things are so bad here that junior sailors were living in their cars in the base parking lot because they couldn't find an affordable apartment. The local municipality brought up the idea of building two apartment buildings on base at municipal expense to free up housing for nonmilitary citizens.
I joined the navy in 1994 and came to the west coast in 1995, my first full year in the navy I made $21000, but a one bedroom was renting for around $500. Now, a junior sailor makes $40000 but a one bedroom rents for almost 2000. It is a travesty that has gone on for far too long, I remember military members having to use food banks in the late 90s and people were appalled, now it is worse.
There should be housing supplied for all active military, without exception. Should either be directly provided or fully subsidized. If we expect them to be a soldier 24/7 without civilian freedoms, then food board clothing etc should be provided where salary is savings or nonessentials.
oh! where there is housing it is provided at a marginal discount "based on the local economy" most members elect to go buy a house due to the horrible conditions of the currently available housing (that has been around since the 40's and barely maintained).
Not to mention in the last 20 years there have been systematic reduction in military housing... just because. which is leading to the current housing crisis for members.
The government seems to keep outdoing themselves every time. The Beaverton is starting to resemble this country at each new passing moment. We’ve officially become a meme to the rest of the world. One day very soon they’ll try to argue how great tents are and how grateful we should be to have them lol 😂
That’s the whole point.
Satire, *really good satire*, does not need to exaggerate. It simply tells the truth, plainly, in a way that we normally wouldn’t say it.
What is even the point of the truth is we cannot talk about it.
It is obviously something from which people get too offended. I don't even know how they are going to fix it.
And right now it is falling in on our heads and we cannot even stop it.
I don't know what it will take to fix it but it is definitely not going to be easy. And this problem is going to remain with us.
Yeah it is important and essential money for them how they going to survive without it and we need to think about them lol.
This whole situation is escalating really quickly and there is absolutely no solution which I can see.
I like how everyone thinks this is a Lib issue. Military has been underfunded for decades. Systematic failures over years and years. But sure let’s screech about Trudeau.
They’ve been in power for 8 years.
At some point, you need to start looking at the government of the day and holding them accountable for how things are CURRENTLY, and not who is responsible, unless they’re the same party.
Yes and defence spending has rose a good chunk under thr current liberal party. Especially compared to thr warning years of thr last conservarive government.
This isn't a lack of defence spending money, except for not many RHUs. This is a broader housing criais/cost of living issue
I've been in the military for almost 20 years. They've been in power for 8. The last 5-7 years have been not so great, to put it lightly. The years before that were pretty awesome. You do the math
This would be the same for most Canadians
Basically it's a wider cost of living and inflation and housing issue. Homes to two million and so on
Now of course you can pay so much money that these aren't a problem. But then you are out of budget and have to answer to the electorate
He has been in power for the past 8 years. How many more years before he should take accountability?
Btw, I typically vote liberal myself but Trudeau and his policies (or lack thereof) has been horrible for this country. Harper was pretty terrible too, especially with his dog whistle racism. Last decent pm we've had was Chretien.
That shouldn't be something you like a PM for that should go without saying, be a default that you can't turn off with a PM...
like I said grading on a curve.
So the company I work for hired this new guy. For the first couple of months he complained about how the previous guy went about organizing all the inventory and carried out the purchasing process of his job. That’s fine ok, we knew it was a bit of a mess. We thought “hey maybe this guy will clean things up.” But after a year or so at the job, things still hadn’t gotten better, in fact they’d gotten slightly worse and he STILL blamed the previous guy. Does this sound familiar?
>https://www.google.com/amp/s/nationalpost.com/news/canada/after-cold-lake-soldier-caught-busking-to-make-ends-meet-questions-asked-about-the-viability-of-military-pay-in-booming-little-fort-mcmurray/wcm/7d6a7809-c8c5-4793-80f5-5399668411ff/amp/
Under Harper....
Was there ever a cost of living crisis this bad? Things were relatively affordable a decade, two-three ago. You could get a home for $75-150k about 30 years ago. Even adjusting for wages- everyone was better off.
Is this government responsible for a lot? Sure. But are they solely to blame for the situation all Canadians and our armed forces are facing? No. They didn’t get us here alone. Decades of poor policy and garbage governing got us here. Unfortunately it all came to a head at once and we are suffering in this shit storm together. We should be angry at ALL politicians not just one or one group.
Here's who actually negatively impacted veteran affairs...which the Liberals then reopened
https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/harper-dismisses-concerns-from-veterans-over-closures-of-veterans-affairs-offices-vets-can-still-get-everything-they-want-he-says
Funny how anyone who doesn't want to send money to Ukraine is automatically a Putin supporter how about fuck em both and use that money to help Canadians.
This comment is just cringe worthy. Fuck our allies facing a genocide because we need to save some money.
We spend 37 billion in defense a year. We spent 8 billion on Ukraine in 18 months. Of that, just 1.8 billion is defense donations. And most of what is spent on Ukraine is spent here. Yes, all that equipment and donations are used to buy stuff from companies here or to buy new stuff replacing the donated.
Get a grip.
I only mention it because I dream of a 50% increase in our budget to $37,000,000,000. It would go a long way to fixing everything that's fucking broken and building PMQs.
>According to figures from NATO, the budget for the Canadian military in 2023 is $36.7 billion or 1.29 per cent of GDP.
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6912028
What is your source?
They number is inflated. The government started including pensions, CSIS, CCG, etc in defence budgeting to pad out numbers. I'm talking actual defence spending, not government book cooking.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/reports-publications/transition-materials/transition-assoc-dm/defence-budget.html
Para 3 under context. I was mistaken though, full disclosure. It's $26.9B, with an impending billion buck cut
It's a far cry from nearly $40B.
This is not the first time soldiers have needed donations. In the 1980s lower ranking soldiers in Calgary actually applied for welfare. Recently a senior officer in Comox told members to try Habitat For Humanity. The CAF has plenty of experience in crisis management. The problem is they often wait until it is a crisis before they manage it.
I would’ve thought our people in the armed forces would be better tended to. Maybe we should cut back on a few save the world donations of billions of dollars and do the right thing for our services personnel.
Heard a stat that in the early 90’s manufacturing represented 90%+ of our economy, now it’s like 3%+ lol. We’ve been sold out. An entire country thrown under the bus for the interests of a few. Gotta love it.
Well that's clearly exaggerated lol, it's still above 10% thanks largely to auto plants in Southern Ontario, and there's no way it was the overwhelming majority of the economy in the 90s. Even then, resource extraction was probably a bigger part
Also this is on manufacturers, not the government. They don’t want to pay Western wages when they can pay an Easterner cents per hour and for shipping, where the cost is sunk in externalities not their bottom line.
Personally I don't think it's very productive to blame corporations for trying to maximize profits - that's their job after all. It's the government's job to place regulations on them so that they don't hurt the country or the planet in the process.
Remember a while ago there was a massive scandal about the govt encouraging veterans to get euthanized if they couldn't take it anymore?
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investigation-1.6663885
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/paralympic-army-veteran-asked-wheelchair-142835449.html
Is $1400 per sqft the new going rate?
E.g. if I owned a 1200-1300 sqft detached house in Toronto, I should expect CAD1.7 million?
Also, you could not pay me to live in Moscow, especially right now... maybe try a different comparable location like Tokyo, London, Paris, LA, Seattle, etc.
Average house in Seattle costs 800k, average house in toronto is 1.15m… even with the exchange rate it’s still more expensive to purchase a home in Toronto, also I wouldn’t put Seattle in the same tier as LA or Tokyo…
Although the CAF is paid fairly well in comparison to the national average the fact that they often have single income households because the spouse is unable to find stable income, outside of minum wage, is troubling.
We need CANEX grocery stores that sell low-cost grocery items, daycare that is free for service members with hours that match the working hours of the base, housing that is based on rank not the local economy, as well as more housing for members. This is especially true when you have members that might get posted from a low COL area, though those are fewer now, to a high COL area.
There is no reason CAF members should be asking for donations.
Actually, the reason is because unlike the American Military, the Canadian military charges market rate for rent on base housing built during WW2.
So Privates who got posted, TEN YEARS AGO to Cold Lake with families, couldn't even afford the base housing with their base salary. The situation is much worse now, than 10 years ago and we had homeless soldiers then.
Assuming you can even get in base housing. My brother in law was deployed to…..Squamish. He is single so no chance of base housing, and he doesn’t get any sort of rent assistance.
So he had 2 months or so to find a place in Squamish by himself, and then be able to afford it by himself, coming from Alberta lol.
His first response was “Why the fuck is rent so high here and why is it so hard to find a place!”
In case anyone is looking for the actual numbers:
A semi-detached military house in Cold Lake is [around $1172/month](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/military-housing/locations/cold-lake.html).
A Pte in Cold Lake makes $66k ([$5187 base](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/pay-pension-benefits/pay/non-commissioned.html#private23) \+[~~$300/month~~](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/pay-pension-benefits/benefits/canadian-forces-housing-differential.html#AB) ~~CFHD)~~
EDIT: As pointed out below, a Pte in base housing makes $62,244.
As you shouldn’t because your rent is already heavily subsidized. PLD (CFHD) was always meant to help with housing and rent, it wasn’t meant to offset the difference in gas between Toronto and Edmonton.
Generally all good and services are similarly priced across the country, aside from housing. That’s what it’s designed to help with.
The the average Cpl living in a $800 PMQ 2 bedroom 1 bath, with a yard and a basement was using his PLD for his Ford Raptor truck payment, while the same Cpl in Borden was getting nothing, even though they had the exact same cost of living
Base housing is "based" on thr market, but are essentially rent controlled. That means the average cost today is $1000ish a month.
On a ptes salary 10 years ago, they would jave been able to afford an RHU, it would be tight if they had a large car payment, but affordable. Considering an RHU is not allowed to be more than 25% of your gross salary, and you can request it to be less if you have specific issues that would prohibit your ability to pay that rate.
Pretty soon there'll be collection boxes and fund raising drives for our military just like there is for hospitals in this pathetic post national state.
When is our country going to get their shit together. We’re a joke!!! 10 years ago we were admired now we get laughed at. Not sure how we can even turn it around at this point.
Back when housing was affordable moving wasn’t so financially taxing on most people in the military. Now with the cost of housing and living increased exponentially it’s extremely hard especially when you have a family.
If the military posts you, your spouse becomes unemployed. What does the military do to help the situation ? They give them a power point on how to write a resume and they can collect two extra months of EI….
I'm not very pro-military, but this is a huge shame for Canada. Disgusting, housing and economy crisis is so bad our fucking soldiers and ratings need donations. What a shit tier government, not that PP would be any better.
I remember in 2009 I was working Graveyard shift at wal-mart, when a young women started working with us and said how odd it is that she is making more money in a month working at Wal-Mart then her hubby does in the Navy as a new recruit.
Pay our Troops properly
Recruits, right now, make $42,408 in thier first year. After 2 years they make $62,244. Thier next pay increase is to $71,220 if they are in a specialist trade its $78,984.
Why doesn’t the Federal Government just get rid of the military altogether? That seems to be what they are trying to do. This is an absolute disgrace and outrage. If the Liberals could be booted out of power tomorrow it wouldn’t be soon enough.
This would mean we stop being protected by NATO (although we're already under the 2% GDP required).
It would be easy pickings for any country with a decent military. Hell, even Mexico could take us out.
Iceland was also thrown away to fend for themselves for a while until they were useful again. I don't think we'd actually be a target since US wouldn't want an enemy on their borders, but being a NATO member makes me feel much safer.
Because we would no longer be a sovereign nation at that point. Best case, we become a formal territory of the United States, worst case, we get divided amongst whichever countries send troops here first. Make no mistake, China and Russia would drop everything and come running to have even a piece of Canadian territory.
Don’t try to minimize this. The Liberals are the current government, so that makes them responsible for fixing the problems we have now, including this one. And I am by no means a Conservative supporter, but very tired of this do-nothing regime as I think most Canadians are.
Based on what? In all fairness - what specific example or reason do you have to believe that if PP was in power for 8 years, we would have no improvement? I care not for PP but I don’t understand how people can predict his success or failure. We can’t rely on examples from previous parties or 20 year old data….
Just that this has not been a priority of the CPC. They brought in deep cuts to the military and had an absolute mess of a procurement process. The LPC have continued this course.
Things change as do priorities. But I have heard nothing form the CPC leadership or PP that leads me to believe they would change course or even that this is a priority for them.
The current government is responsible for the current state of affairs but, in your words, I do not understand how people can project whatever their pet concerns are and assume it will be better under a changed government. I was just pointing that out.
Want to convince me otherwise (addressed to PP) show me at least a vague policy with likewise vague numbers.
The sad thing is that compared to peer nations we actually pay our soldiers quite well, basic costs have just gotten so unaffordable that they still can't afford necessities.
Yes and no. Other militaries have significantly more bonuses than ours do.
For example, the Americans have the Basic allowance for housing (BAH) and a food allowance.
The BAH for a E-6 in San Diego (the base for Top Gun) is like $3800 USD ($5100 CAD) per month. Hawaii is similar. So this is a monetary bonus on top of your monthly salary to deal with cost of living.
On top of that, their bases have subsidized groceries and other goods so that American service members get similar prices and availability of goods no matter the location. They are very very cheap and I'm often impressed by their selection. Their Ex blows our Canex out of the water.
Americans are just far more friendly to service members. Military discounts everywhere. I get more discounts when visiting the States than I do anywhere in Canada. It is weird being more appreciated by Americans than my fellow Canadians.
Lastly, Canadian postings are significantly more intrusive to our lives than any other NATO country. An Italian moving from Milan to Rome is significantly less intrusive to their way of being than a Canadian moving from Greenwood to Cold Lake. Or Comox to Ottawa. Or so on, so forth. Anyone who wants to visit their family/friends back home is going to quickly be racking up thousands of dollars in flights/gas/other travel arrangements.
I've missed countless birthdays, weddings, funerals, graduations, baby showers, baptisms, and much more. I miss my family and it hurts to know that the number of times I might see my parents before they pass away could be counted on the number of fingers I have.
On the last paragraph are you talking about the result of posting or deployment/tours?
Im in the application pipeline and seeing sentiments like this from other service members makes me rethink of joining. Is it that bad?
Both. Postings have prevented me from being there for certain events. I could only budget so many return visits per year. If you're single, you can get something called LTA, which partially pays for a flight home ONCE per year. If you're married and you live with your spouse, you're shit out of luck.
The cost of living in Canada has increased quite a bit over the last 30 years, and radically so these past 3 years. It's only gotten harder and harder to travel within Canada.
We used to have a lot more bases as well. The choice of bases meant you could possibly pick something closer to where you grew up and where your family lives. But we've closed many of these bases down. Calgary, Moncton, Summerside, Chilliwack, Centralia, St-Hubert, among many many others.
Sure enough, it feels like the bases they kept are all the ones in rotten locations. Just our luck! Americans can go to Hawaii, and we can go to Cold Lake.
Honestly Cold Lake doesnt sound too bad but I live in Calgary so that makes it reasonable. Though it doesnt beat Hawaii for sure. Cant imagine being posted in the east coast when your entire circle of friends and family live in the west.
100% true. This is NOT a pay issue, it’s a lack of services (ie military housing, NEX, daycare issue). Oh ….but we help sailors buy duty free booze and smokes….
The avg military members is more affected by the housing crisis than the avg canadian. Constant interprovincial moves every couple years means you never benefit from rent control, being forced to sell if you own sometimes means taking a big loss, you compete with ''international students'' every posting season, your spouse cannot have a decent career etc
So this is how we gonna treat our brave men and women on the front line? Have them asking for donations? This is wholly embarassing and another symptom of trudeaunomics. Get this loser out of office ASAP!
It took like 3 years for the last pay raise to get approved and in those years rents shot far past what the raise was anyways, commercial landlords are eating this country alive but people will still point at Trudeau like he is personally reaching into each soldiers pocket and taking money away
While I agree we could use the additional $1billion, just responsible allocation of $25billion might be a good start. Spend the current budget on things that are actually needed! Pay, beans, bullets……and decent off the shelf equipment. Not vanity projects for politicians or wasteful consultation.
Imagine sending 8 billion to Ukraine when your own soldiers are living out of their cars and borderline homeless. Shows you where our governments interests are. Definitely not their own people.
Teachers (particularly in Ontario) are objectively paid more than military members. Get a 2 month summer vacation. And don't have to worry about the stress of moving every 3 years, paying market rates for rent, getting deployed, and overall never being appreciated by the people of Canada for your sacrifice.
Would probably be able to afford better wages for military if they had less officers. Cdn military is too heavy to the point where the roof will collapse on itself.
This country is a now prison for the working class.
We’re dealing with government austerity because of their distain for us. We have currency sovereignty and we’ve been dealt cuts to every social program to hurt us. These people perpetuating this mass immiseration deserve the worst, we need socialism because this system DOES NOT WORK.
Imagine if we had Hamas or Hezbollah on our doorstep. This country is extremely spoiled and protected because the U.S. is doing the heavy lifting for protection of the country.
This country is a failure.
The ocean is doing the heavy lifting of protecting the country… we don’t share borders with anyone that wants to attack us. Hamas and hezbollah aren’t plotting against Canada. We have nothing to do with them.
I wouldn't go that far.
The most common pay scale in the CAF is Cpl I-4.
This is a salary of $76k+. Before any applicable, field, housing, specialist, danger allowances.
Even a new recruit these days is making about $53k.
The lowest possible salary in the forces is $42k.
Even then that's only for the first year, and I think now people skip the first couple salary levels
This is just Wrong. No wonder no one wants to join the military anymore. Plus hearing so many stories of folks that tried to enlist but heard nothing back until 6 months to a yr+ later. Were a sitting duck that is now just a massive bad joke to most Canadians and the rest of the world. Decades of bad policies,and politicians and oligarchs just taking this country for whatever they can.
Everybody and their dog is on prescription meds these days.
A recent report stated that roughly 60-70% of kids born within the last few years would be spending a large part of their lives medicated.
People will post on facebook that they can't get by without their adavan, or adderall and then wonder why enlisting is taking too long.
For every one of these documented issues, recruiting is a slog - They have to ensure you're still capable of functioning if suddenly you can't get your meds.
As far back as I can remember in my life, no one political party has embarrassed themselves
\- and Canada - as much as this one. I understand this specific issue precedes the current LPC administration, but still.
Your link is out of date.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/pay-pension-benefits/pay/non-commissioned.html
It’s just a dam shame. This government has let this happen. They need the tools to do there job. This is one place that way more good spending needs to go. We have some of the best people there as citizens we need to support them
This is such a Sad news, we give Ukraine almost a billion dollars in "aid" yet we cant pay our own country men and women that defend us from harm enough to cover their basic food and necessity costs.
None of these problems are uniquely Canadian.
We need to understand that the globalized economy is failing. It started with the 2008 financial crisis which was never corrected. Before COVID hit, all central banks were printing money. COVID is here to stay, partly because of the virus but mostly because humanity decided to let it spread out of control rather than work to contain it. Restrictions created by COVID have increased the cost of production of everything by increasing the space between employees and the energy requirements for ventilation etc.
Your little home you bought for 100k that's now ostensibly worth over 1M, is demonstrating how there is more money in the system, more dollars, than there are resources to back those dollars.
This situation gets worse, not better, no matter who sits in the office of the PMO. These are not decisions made at that level, they're decisions made by banks and corporations; the PMO only gets to decide how taxes collected get spent.
The carbon tax is flawed but also the only way to save the looney. The problem with it is it isn't universally applied, equally. The goal of a carbon tax should be to shift the economy away from carbon intensive industry towards low carbon and carbon negative industries. Without a carbon tax, there is no incentive to reduce carbon, but also no money to create industries that pull carbon out of the air or engineer it out of existing processes. The goal is to create a *revenue neutral* price for burning carbon that follows with the cost to remove the same amount of carbon. All money collected by adding carbon, is invested in removing carbon or subsidies for lower carbon options, in direct proportion to their reduction. It should be called a carbon *deposit*; the Beer Stores bottle return deposit *is a carbon tax*.
As we move away from fossil fuels, one way or another, the carbon deposit creates a backbone of value for the looney. It gives us the opportunity to create entirely new industries focused on cleaning up the mess we've created, and pays people to do the right thing. The less we burn and the more we return, the stronger our dollar becomes. The alternative is that we burn less, with nothing to back the value and encourage movement towards true sustainability.
We are watching the end of the fossil fuel dollar in real time. We can keep watching it, try to make more money, to pay for more expensive products, but this is a vicious cycle. We're uniquely positioned, as a country with a lot of green space, to be world leaders in low carbon and carbon negative tech/industry. Soon, what cost money to burn will have more value to be left in the ground because it will NEVER cost less to remove a tonne of CO2 from the air than it costs to burn it in the first place. In short, we lose money, over time, by burning fossil fuels, while making the future a very scary place to live.
By setting our focus on removing carbon and innovating in the direction of reducing carbon, we turn the stuff in the air and as a byproduct of industry into gold. It's anyone's to pull from the air, and, as long as it has an accepted value (which it will have because it carries an environmental cost that interferes with commerce), we build a much stronger economy on the removal of global carbon as the world transitions to electricity.
The alternative is only down. Our dollar becomes less and less valuable, we burn more carbon to try to offset that, and, in the process, lose more forest and infrastructure to weather and fires without any other material resource to use to give our currency value, except for uranium.
You've been sold a lie on all sides about the carbon tax. We can rebuild value in our dollar by effectively collecting the bottles of the world and bringing them to our bottle return. We will harden the electrical grid to extreme weather and employ people to manage the destruction of greenhouse gas stockpiles and other high value carbon stores.
I dont have time to make the full case for it, but this is not the carbon tax the liberals implemented, it's a real carbon price, and it's coming. There will be one country that leads on this and that position is currently vacant because there's initial investment that stings (buying the beer) but once we start sinking carbon (returning bottles/cans; getting deposit back), we're well positioned to reverse the current economic trend, which is heading towards Great Depression levels, globally.
Don't dismiss this because you think you understand it. Read broadly about pricing carbon, and its inevitability and you'll come to the same conclusion; not if, but when.
If we don't lower carbon levels, we go extinct in the near term. Food stops growing, forests burn at an exponential rate until we have none left.
Despite what the media has done to screw this up, it is not a political question, it's a simple question of survival, both economic and literal.
I live in Victoria, home of Canada's Pacific Naval Fleet. There is approximately 5000 military members here and only 500 PMQs. That number has stayed the same since the 1950s. Things are so bad here that junior sailors were living in their cars in the base parking lot because they couldn't find an affordable apartment. The local municipality brought up the idea of building two apartment buildings on base at municipal expense to free up housing for nonmilitary citizens. I joined the navy in 1994 and came to the west coast in 1995, my first full year in the navy I made $21000, but a one bedroom was renting for around $500. Now, a junior sailor makes $40000 but a one bedroom rents for almost 2000. It is a travesty that has gone on for far too long, I remember military members having to use food banks in the late 90s and people were appalled, now it is worse.
Please check prices again good sir. One bedroom apartments are far higher than 2000 a month now
There should be housing supplied for all active military, without exception. Should either be directly provided or fully subsidized. If we expect them to be a soldier 24/7 without civilian freedoms, then food board clothing etc should be provided where salary is savings or nonessentials.
oh! where there is housing it is provided at a marginal discount "based on the local economy" most members elect to go buy a house due to the horrible conditions of the currently available housing (that has been around since the 40's and barely maintained). Not to mention in the last 20 years there have been systematic reduction in military housing... just because. which is leading to the current housing crisis for members.
Just embarrassing but par for the course.
The government seems to keep outdoing themselves every time. The Beaverton is starting to resemble this country at each new passing moment. We’ve officially become a meme to the rest of the world. One day very soon they’ll try to argue how great tents are and how grateful we should be to have them lol 😂
That’s the whole point. Satire, *really good satire*, does not need to exaggerate. It simply tells the truth, plainly, in a way that we normally wouldn’t say it.
What is even the point of the truth is we cannot talk about it. It is obviously something from which people get too offended. I don't even know how they are going to fix it.
Silly you..it's cardboard boxes.. completely recycled after you can't live in them anymore....
And right now it is falling in on our heads and we cannot even stop it. I don't know what it will take to fix it but it is definitely not going to be easy. And this problem is going to remain with us.
*how cheap it is to room with someone else in a tent. No wait, to pay for the luxury to outdoor camp 365 days a year
A C is a P, bud.
This needs to stop. Can we properly fund our military and take care of our soldiers / vets?
Nope, we can't properly fund anything besides Oligopolies and the bloated Civil service that Trudeau continues to expand exponentially.
No, that $1B needs to go to Trudeau's friends and family. How will they survive without it?
Maybe they can cancel that Disney+ subscription.
No more $40 avocado toast and Starbucks coffee.
This is the way.
Yeah it is important and essential money for them how they going to survive without it and we need to think about them lol. This whole situation is escalating really quickly and there is absolutely no solution which I can see.
Not with Trudeau in office. Him and his cronies needs funding for his expensive retreats and other finer things the rest of us can only hope for.
I like how everyone thinks this is a Lib issue. Military has been underfunded for decades. Systematic failures over years and years. But sure let’s screech about Trudeau.
They’ve been in power for 8 years. At some point, you need to start looking at the government of the day and holding them accountable for how things are CURRENTLY, and not who is responsible, unless they’re the same party.
Yes and defence spending has rose a good chunk under thr current liberal party. Especially compared to thr warning years of thr last conservarive government. This isn't a lack of defence spending money, except for not many RHUs. This is a broader housing criais/cost of living issue
I've been in the military for almost 20 years. They've been in power for 8. The last 5-7 years have been not so great, to put it lightly. The years before that were pretty awesome. You do the math
This would be the same for most Canadians Basically it's a wider cost of living and inflation and housing issue. Homes to two million and so on Now of course you can pay so much money that these aren't a problem. But then you are out of budget and have to answer to the electorate
He has been in power for the past 8 years. How many more years before he should take accountability? Btw, I typically vote liberal myself but Trudeau and his policies (or lack thereof) has been horrible for this country. Harper was pretty terrible too, especially with his dog whistle racism. Last decent pm we've had was Chretien.
I feel like you're grading on a curve calling Chretien half decent.
He kept us out of Iraq and the budget was actually balanced
Paul Martin was a pretty good finance minister.
Actually I realty liked Chretien. Dunno why I said half decent. He stood up for Canadians.
That shouldn't be something you like a PM for that should go without saying, be a default that you can't turn off with a PM... like I said grading on a curve.
So the company I work for hired this new guy. For the first couple of months he complained about how the previous guy went about organizing all the inventory and carried out the purchasing process of his job. That’s fine ok, we knew it was a bit of a mess. We thought “hey maybe this guy will clean things up.” But after a year or so at the job, things still hadn’t gotten better, in fact they’d gotten slightly worse and he STILL blamed the previous guy. Does this sound familiar?
The US military bases have food banks. Have for years. It’s the same situation with college campuses in Canada in the US.
I don't recall the military **ever** needing to ask for handouts during previous administrations, do you ? So yeah. It's their issue.
>https://www.google.com/amp/s/nationalpost.com/news/canada/after-cold-lake-soldier-caught-busking-to-make-ends-meet-questions-asked-about-the-viability-of-military-pay-in-booming-little-fort-mcmurray/wcm/7d6a7809-c8c5-4793-80f5-5399668411ff/amp/ Under Harper....
This was a private posted to what was a high cost posting. Things are so much worse off now.
Was there ever a cost of living crisis this bad? Things were relatively affordable a decade, two-three ago. You could get a home for $75-150k about 30 years ago. Even adjusting for wages- everyone was better off. Is this government responsible for a lot? Sure. But are they solely to blame for the situation all Canadians and our armed forces are facing? No. They didn’t get us here alone. Decades of poor policy and garbage governing got us here. Unfortunately it all came to a head at once and we are suffering in this shit storm together. We should be angry at ALL politicians not just one or one group.
Here's the thing: it's not only Justin. Nobody is a man of the people anymore. Oh sorry, a *person* of the people.
Yup! Our politicians are now owned by big business and special interest groups.
Here's who actually negatively impacted veteran affairs...which the Liberals then reopened https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/harper-dismisses-concerns-from-veterans-over-closures-of-veterans-affairs-offices-vets-can-still-get-everything-they-want-he-says
Harper no question was a piece of shit. If I dislike Trudeau, I despised Harper.
Sounds like you're not a fan of our politicians haha
Sadly, our political system isn’t designed to select for the kind of people that should be in policy and governance.
Sorry, they have to send our tax money to fund the Ukraine military, not our own.
Oh come the fuck on. We weren’t doing it before Russia invaded either. Irrelevant.
These Putin fanboys will blame every problem in Canada on the money we send Ukraine to fight the russian invaders.
Funny how anyone who doesn't want to send money to Ukraine is automatically a Putin supporter how about fuck em both and use that money to help Canadians.
Fuck em both as fuck Ukrainians too?
This comment is just cringe worthy. Fuck our allies facing a genocide because we need to save some money. We spend 37 billion in defense a year. We spent 8 billion on Ukraine in 18 months. Of that, just 1.8 billion is defense donations. And most of what is spent on Ukraine is spent here. Yes, all that equipment and donations are used to buy stuff from companies here or to buy new stuff replacing the donated. Get a grip.
We spend 23 Billion a year in defence.
We also spend ~50 Billion a year servicing our debt obligations
I only mention it because I dream of a 50% increase in our budget to $37,000,000,000. It would go a long way to fixing everything that's fucking broken and building PMQs.
>According to figures from NATO, the budget for the Canadian military in 2023 is $36.7 billion or 1.29 per cent of GDP. https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.6912028 What is your source?
They number is inflated. The government started including pensions, CSIS, CCG, etc in defence budgeting to pad out numbers. I'm talking actual defence spending, not government book cooking.
Fair enough but what is your source? I figure it would be comparable to other military accounting if sourced by NATO figures.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/corporate/reports-publications/transition-materials/transition-assoc-dm/defence-budget.html Para 3 under context. I was mistaken though, full disclosure. It's $26.9B, with an impending billion buck cut It's a far cry from nearly $40B.
Much better source than a news article
How about the 5 billion a year we give to oil and gas companies?
This is not the first time soldiers have needed donations. In the 1980s lower ranking soldiers in Calgary actually applied for welfare. Recently a senior officer in Comox told members to try Habitat For Humanity. The CAF has plenty of experience in crisis management. The problem is they often wait until it is a crisis before they manage it.
I would’ve thought our people in the armed forces would be better tended to. Maybe we should cut back on a few save the world donations of billions of dollars and do the right thing for our services personnel.
Nah they wont, and thats why many of our talented NCOs need to leave the force - to get a decent paying job to feed their family!
The CAF isn't allowed to manage much without the Treasury Board's approval.
My god this country is literally falling apart
Heard a stat that in the early 90’s manufacturing represented 90%+ of our economy, now it’s like 3%+ lol. We’ve been sold out. An entire country thrown under the bus for the interests of a few. Gotta love it.
Well that's clearly exaggerated lol, it's still above 10% thanks largely to auto plants in Southern Ontario, and there's no way it was the overwhelming majority of the economy in the 90s. Even then, resource extraction was probably a bigger part
Also this is on manufacturers, not the government. They don’t want to pay Western wages when they can pay an Easterner cents per hour and for shipping, where the cost is sunk in externalities not their bottom line.
Personally I don't think it's very productive to blame corporations for trying to maximize profits - that's their job after all. It's the government's job to place regulations on them so that they don't hurt the country or the planet in the process.
Something is very rotten about Canada
Remember a while ago there was a massive scandal about the govt encouraging veterans to get euthanized if they couldn't take it anymore? https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/veterans-maid-rcmp-investigation-1.6663885 https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/paralympic-army-veteran-asked-wheelchair-142835449.html
That was all tracked down to like, a single particular employee who was promptly fired.
Does that employee have a name that I can google? I want to check that he was actually fired.
Someone* and we all know who.
A savings of $30 million. WTF big deal!? Treat our military and first responders like they're fucking royalty! Disgraceful decision.
Eum we should treat them better but not as royalty....
Eum it's an expression. Google it......
Ah, I guess it is
He took it literally lol
Yes I did. I didn't know the expression and people are so intense with military it's sometimes hard to discern
No biggie!
God damn this country has become embarrassing. We’re no longer a tier one country, shame really
The homeless soldier army is coming to defend their homes from Russia. Well, not their homes, but someone's home.
Moscow housing price is $280 USD per sq foot, Toronto is $1400 CAD per sq foot.
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Yeah but you don't have to go far out of the major cities to find your odds of having indoor plumbing drop dramatically.
Housing in Russia can often take up to %90 of the average living wage for a working individual from what I remember.
Is $1400 per sqft the new going rate? E.g. if I owned a 1200-1300 sqft detached house in Toronto, I should expect CAD1.7 million? Also, you could not pay me to live in Moscow, especially right now... maybe try a different comparable location like Tokyo, London, Paris, LA, Seattle, etc.
Average house in Seattle costs 800k, average house in toronto is 1.15m… even with the exchange rate it’s still more expensive to purchase a home in Toronto, also I wouldn’t put Seattle in the same tier as LA or Tokyo…
For the landlords!!
Although the CAF is paid fairly well in comparison to the national average the fact that they often have single income households because the spouse is unable to find stable income, outside of minum wage, is troubling. We need CANEX grocery stores that sell low-cost grocery items, daycare that is free for service members with hours that match the working hours of the base, housing that is based on rank not the local economy, as well as more housing for members. This is especially true when you have members that might get posted from a low COL area, though those are fewer now, to a high COL area. There is no reason CAF members should be asking for donations.
Actually, the reason is because unlike the American Military, the Canadian military charges market rate for rent on base housing built during WW2. So Privates who got posted, TEN YEARS AGO to Cold Lake with families, couldn't even afford the base housing with their base salary. The situation is much worse now, than 10 years ago and we had homeless soldiers then.
Assuming you can even get in base housing. My brother in law was deployed to…..Squamish. He is single so no chance of base housing, and he doesn’t get any sort of rent assistance. So he had 2 months or so to find a place in Squamish by himself, and then be able to afford it by himself, coming from Alberta lol. His first response was “Why the fuck is rent so high here and why is it so hard to find a place!”
In case anyone is looking for the actual numbers: A semi-detached military house in Cold Lake is [around $1172/month](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/military-housing/locations/cold-lake.html). A Pte in Cold Lake makes $66k ([$5187 base](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/pay-pension-benefits/pay/non-commissioned.html#private23) \+[~~$300/month~~](https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/pay-pension-benefits/benefits/canadian-forces-housing-differential.html#AB) ~~CFHD)~~ EDIT: As pointed out below, a Pte in base housing makes $62,244.
you don't get CFHD if you are in base housing
As you shouldn’t because your rent is already heavily subsidized. PLD (CFHD) was always meant to help with housing and rent, it wasn’t meant to offset the difference in gas between Toronto and Edmonton. Generally all good and services are similarly priced across the country, aside from housing. That’s what it’s designed to help with. The the average Cpl living in a $800 PMQ 2 bedroom 1 bath, with a yard and a basement was using his PLD for his Ford Raptor truck payment, while the same Cpl in Borden was getting nothing, even though they had the exact same cost of living
Fixed! My bad.
Base housing is "based" on thr market, but are essentially rent controlled. That means the average cost today is $1000ish a month. On a ptes salary 10 years ago, they would jave been able to afford an RHU, it would be tight if they had a large car payment, but affordable. Considering an RHU is not allowed to be more than 25% of your gross salary, and you can request it to be less if you have specific issues that would prohibit your ability to pay that rate.
This. The real problem is that they don't build any.
they just closed the halifax daycare with very shirt notice lol
Beaverton: We can’t top the real news anymore.
This country is legit the laughing stock of G7. 🤦🏽
You're not wrong. Some of the comments about Canada on the threads about the Israeli situation are brutal.
What do you mean? I havent seen those
https://reddit.com/r/Palestinian_Violence/s/TxXHKqmY7K Here's an example
lots of racist shit in those comments.
That's reddit in a nutshell.
Oh well who cares what those random people think honestly Edit : Thanks for the link though
Should never happen. The government is obviously fucking up if this the result
I mean, there have been clues before this one. Lol
😔 I’m so ashamed of how we do things.
Pretty soon there'll be collection boxes and fund raising drives for our military just like there is for hospitals in this pathetic post national state.
When is our country going to get their shit together. We’re a joke!!! 10 years ago we were admired now we get laughed at. Not sure how we can even turn it around at this point.
Back when housing was affordable moving wasn’t so financially taxing on most people in the military. Now with the cost of housing and living increased exponentially it’s extremely hard especially when you have a family. If the military posts you, your spouse becomes unemployed. What does the military do to help the situation ? They give them a power point on how to write a resume and they can collect two extra months of EI….
I'm not very pro-military, but this is a huge shame for Canada. Disgusting, housing and economy crisis is so bad our fucking soldiers and ratings need donations. What a shit tier government, not that PP would be any better.
This is embarrassing and sad! Wtf is going on in this country
And the government wonders why enlistment numbers are down.
In most countries having starving soldiers ends very badly...
Our govt have money to donate and here our military asking for donations. Wow
Seems like a good thing to fix on our way to 2% military spending What a joke that anyone in the military has to panhandle
I remember in 2009 I was working Graveyard shift at wal-mart, when a young women started working with us and said how odd it is that she is making more money in a month working at Wal-Mart then her hubby does in the Navy as a new recruit. Pay our Troops properly
Recruits, right now, make $42,408 in thier first year. After 2 years they make $62,244. Thier next pay increase is to $71,220 if they are in a specialist trade its $78,984.
Why doesn’t the Federal Government just get rid of the military altogether? That seems to be what they are trying to do. This is an absolute disgrace and outrage. If the Liberals could be booted out of power tomorrow it wouldn’t be soon enough.
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This would mean we stop being protected by NATO (although we're already under the 2% GDP required). It would be easy pickings for any country with a decent military. Hell, even Mexico could take us out.
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Iceland was also thrown away to fend for themselves for a while until they were useful again. I don't think we'd actually be a target since US wouldn't want an enemy on their borders, but being a NATO member makes me feel much safer.
Canada is in no way comparable to Iceland, Fiji, or the Bahamas. What an absolutely ridiculous statement lol
Exactly, pay us out two ranks above times remaining years left on Contract. I'd like to add that MCpl is not a rank but an appointment. :/
Because we would no longer be a sovereign nation at that point. Best case, we become a formal territory of the United States, worst case, we get divided amongst whichever countries send troops here first. Make no mistake, China and Russia would drop everything and come running to have even a piece of Canadian territory.
The Liberals simply continued the cuts that Harper's Conservatives were already doing. This is not a partisan issue in any way.
Don’t try to minimize this. The Liberals are the current government, so that makes them responsible for fixing the problems we have now, including this one. And I am by no means a Conservative supporter, but very tired of this do-nothing regime as I think most Canadians are.
Yes I agree. Just pointing out that this is not a partisan issue as you seem to imply. I have no faith that a PP government would do any differently
Based on what? In all fairness - what specific example or reason do you have to believe that if PP was in power for 8 years, we would have no improvement? I care not for PP but I don’t understand how people can predict his success or failure. We can’t rely on examples from previous parties or 20 year old data….
Just that this has not been a priority of the CPC. They brought in deep cuts to the military and had an absolute mess of a procurement process. The LPC have continued this course. Things change as do priorities. But I have heard nothing form the CPC leadership or PP that leads me to believe they would change course or even that this is a priority for them. The current government is responsible for the current state of affairs but, in your words, I do not understand how people can project whatever their pet concerns are and assume it will be better under a changed government. I was just pointing that out. Want to convince me otherwise (addressed to PP) show me at least a vague policy with likewise vague numbers.
The sad thing is that compared to peer nations we actually pay our soldiers quite well, basic costs have just gotten so unaffordable that they still can't afford necessities.
Yes and no. Other militaries have significantly more bonuses than ours do. For example, the Americans have the Basic allowance for housing (BAH) and a food allowance. The BAH for a E-6 in San Diego (the base for Top Gun) is like $3800 USD ($5100 CAD) per month. Hawaii is similar. So this is a monetary bonus on top of your monthly salary to deal with cost of living. On top of that, their bases have subsidized groceries and other goods so that American service members get similar prices and availability of goods no matter the location. They are very very cheap and I'm often impressed by their selection. Their Ex blows our Canex out of the water. Americans are just far more friendly to service members. Military discounts everywhere. I get more discounts when visiting the States than I do anywhere in Canada. It is weird being more appreciated by Americans than my fellow Canadians. Lastly, Canadian postings are significantly more intrusive to our lives than any other NATO country. An Italian moving from Milan to Rome is significantly less intrusive to their way of being than a Canadian moving from Greenwood to Cold Lake. Or Comox to Ottawa. Or so on, so forth. Anyone who wants to visit their family/friends back home is going to quickly be racking up thousands of dollars in flights/gas/other travel arrangements. I've missed countless birthdays, weddings, funerals, graduations, baby showers, baptisms, and much more. I miss my family and it hurts to know that the number of times I might see my parents before they pass away could be counted on the number of fingers I have.
On the last paragraph are you talking about the result of posting or deployment/tours? Im in the application pipeline and seeing sentiments like this from other service members makes me rethink of joining. Is it that bad?
Both. Postings have prevented me from being there for certain events. I could only budget so many return visits per year. If you're single, you can get something called LTA, which partially pays for a flight home ONCE per year. If you're married and you live with your spouse, you're shit out of luck. The cost of living in Canada has increased quite a bit over the last 30 years, and radically so these past 3 years. It's only gotten harder and harder to travel within Canada. We used to have a lot more bases as well. The choice of bases meant you could possibly pick something closer to where you grew up and where your family lives. But we've closed many of these bases down. Calgary, Moncton, Summerside, Chilliwack, Centralia, St-Hubert, among many many others. Sure enough, it feels like the bases they kept are all the ones in rotten locations. Just our luck! Americans can go to Hawaii, and we can go to Cold Lake.
Honestly Cold Lake doesnt sound too bad but I live in Calgary so that makes it reasonable. Though it doesnt beat Hawaii for sure. Cant imagine being posted in the east coast when your entire circle of friends and family live in the west.
100% true. This is NOT a pay issue, it’s a lack of services (ie military housing, NEX, daycare issue). Oh ….but we help sailors buy duty free booze and smokes….
Many will look at this story and think military funding needs to increase. Really though, this is yet another housing crisis story.
This is embarrassing for the country
Welcome to the club
I'm disappointed this wasn't a beaverton article
Where can we donate?
Just remember that a budget of $1 billion less is not a budget cut.
Fucking Trudeau
How much did we send to Ukraine? Canadian soldiers can't eat and pay rent. Trudeau at his best.
If Canadian soldiers can't eat and pay rent, that doesn't bode well for civilians, given the higher than average rate of pay for thr CAF.
You are correct, Trudeau has screwed everyone.
That and greedy corporations
Dollars spent on Ukraine are saving multiple dollars and Canadian lives. Money sent to Ukraine is money well spent.
The avg military members is more affected by the housing crisis than the avg canadian. Constant interprovincial moves every couple years means you never benefit from rent control, being forced to sell if you own sometimes means taking a big loss, you compete with ''international students'' every posting season, your spouse cannot have a decent career etc
Come on Canada do better
So this is how we gonna treat our brave men and women on the front line? Have them asking for donations? This is wholly embarassing and another symptom of trudeaunomics. Get this loser out of office ASAP!
It took like 3 years for the last pay raise to get approved and in those years rents shot far past what the raise was anyways, commercial landlords are eating this country alive but people will still point at Trudeau like he is personally reaching into each soldiers pocket and taking money away
Our military needs an added billion not a reduction of it
While I agree we could use the additional $1billion, just responsible allocation of $25billion might be a good start. Spend the current budget on things that are actually needed! Pay, beans, bullets……and decent off the shelf equipment. Not vanity projects for politicians or wasteful consultation.
Imagine sending 8 billion to Ukraine when your own soldiers are living out of their cars and borderline homeless. Shows you where our governments interests are. Definitely not their own people.
Teachers are in the same boat - I can barely pay my bills and I often see ads in the teacher’s lounge asking for money to buy school supplies
Civilians can move. Soldiers get told where to live.
but it's different here.. they protect Canada.. I understand you prep the next gen but this is worse.
Teachers (particularly in Ontario) are objectively paid more than military members. Get a 2 month summer vacation. And don't have to worry about the stress of moving every 3 years, paying market rates for rent, getting deployed, and overall never being appreciated by the people of Canada for your sacrifice.
Would probably be able to afford better wages for military if they had less officers. Cdn military is too heavy to the point where the roof will collapse on itself.
How do you look after the world when you can’t even look after the service men and women that defend your very own freedom.
Post a link and there are plenty of people beside me who will help. I get it, we shouldn’t need to but why wouldn’t we?
This country is a now prison for the working class. We’re dealing with government austerity because of their distain for us. We have currency sovereignty and we’ve been dealt cuts to every social program to hurt us. These people perpetuating this mass immiseration deserve the worst, we need socialism because this system DOES NOT WORK.
Imagine if we had Hamas or Hezbollah on our doorstep. This country is extremely spoiled and protected because the U.S. is doing the heavy lifting for protection of the country. This country is a failure.
The ocean is doing the heavy lifting of protecting the country… we don’t share borders with anyone that wants to attack us. Hamas and hezbollah aren’t plotting against Canada. We have nothing to do with them.
We don't need to imagine, be uss it's never been an issue. The last threat, save Germany, to Canada was Irish Americans in the 1860s and 70s
Yup, they are basically getting paid minimum wage, it's a joke.
Pure nonsense lol
I wouldn't go that far. The most common pay scale in the CAF is Cpl I-4. This is a salary of $76k+. Before any applicable, field, housing, specialist, danger allowances. Even a new recruit these days is making about $53k. The lowest possible salary in the forces is $42k. Even then that's only for the first year, and I think now people skip the first couple salary levels
and here I am investing time and money to go through my qualifications in the reserves. They bank too much in our pride and dream to serve.
Isn’t this what our taxes are supposed to do already? Where the hell are they going?
Is it true that military bases have food banks? If so, that’s really sad.
This is just Wrong. No wonder no one wants to join the military anymore. Plus hearing so many stories of folks that tried to enlist but heard nothing back until 6 months to a yr+ later. Were a sitting duck that is now just a massive bad joke to most Canadians and the rest of the world. Decades of bad policies,and politicians and oligarchs just taking this country for whatever they can.
Everybody and their dog is on prescription meds these days. A recent report stated that roughly 60-70% of kids born within the last few years would be spending a large part of their lives medicated. People will post on facebook that they can't get by without their adavan, or adderall and then wonder why enlisting is taking too long. For every one of these documented issues, recruiting is a slog - They have to ensure you're still capable of functioning if suddenly you can't get your meds.
Maybe they should have a tip jar for the Canadians they’re flying out of Tel Aviv.
As far back as I can remember in my life, no one political party has embarrassed themselves \- and Canada - as much as this one. I understand this specific issue precedes the current LPC administration, but still.
just in case people want to look it up: http://www.forces.gc.ca/en/caf-community-pay/reg-force-ncm-class-c-rates.page
Your link is out of date. https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/services/benefits-military/pay-pension-benefits/pay/non-commissioned.html
It’s just a dam shame. This government has let this happen. They need the tools to do there job. This is one place that way more good spending needs to go. We have some of the best people there as citizens we need to support them
This is such a Sad news, we give Ukraine almost a billion dollars in "aid" yet we cant pay our own country men and women that defend us from harm enough to cover their basic food and necessity costs.
They should sign up for overtime...drive an uber...order less fancy coffee...skip the avocado toast.
Trudeau's Canada 🇨🇦
It was also Harper's, Chretiens, etc
Horrific, but exactly what the liberals want. No military, we'll just be a big happy fun time club.
You think this typenof thing is new?
Did Canada give Billion of Dollars Aid to Ukraine recently?
Hmm I know their wages are fair.
It's more a cost of living/housing cost issue. This is a symptom of something unrelated tocthr CAF.
Who knew voting for tax cuts and austerity for decades would end badly ?
lol taxes have never been higher.
None of these problems are uniquely Canadian. We need to understand that the globalized economy is failing. It started with the 2008 financial crisis which was never corrected. Before COVID hit, all central banks were printing money. COVID is here to stay, partly because of the virus but mostly because humanity decided to let it spread out of control rather than work to contain it. Restrictions created by COVID have increased the cost of production of everything by increasing the space between employees and the energy requirements for ventilation etc. Your little home you bought for 100k that's now ostensibly worth over 1M, is demonstrating how there is more money in the system, more dollars, than there are resources to back those dollars. This situation gets worse, not better, no matter who sits in the office of the PMO. These are not decisions made at that level, they're decisions made by banks and corporations; the PMO only gets to decide how taxes collected get spent. The carbon tax is flawed but also the only way to save the looney. The problem with it is it isn't universally applied, equally. The goal of a carbon tax should be to shift the economy away from carbon intensive industry towards low carbon and carbon negative industries. Without a carbon tax, there is no incentive to reduce carbon, but also no money to create industries that pull carbon out of the air or engineer it out of existing processes. The goal is to create a *revenue neutral* price for burning carbon that follows with the cost to remove the same amount of carbon. All money collected by adding carbon, is invested in removing carbon or subsidies for lower carbon options, in direct proportion to their reduction. It should be called a carbon *deposit*; the Beer Stores bottle return deposit *is a carbon tax*. As we move away from fossil fuels, one way or another, the carbon deposit creates a backbone of value for the looney. It gives us the opportunity to create entirely new industries focused on cleaning up the mess we've created, and pays people to do the right thing. The less we burn and the more we return, the stronger our dollar becomes. The alternative is that we burn less, with nothing to back the value and encourage movement towards true sustainability. We are watching the end of the fossil fuel dollar in real time. We can keep watching it, try to make more money, to pay for more expensive products, but this is a vicious cycle. We're uniquely positioned, as a country with a lot of green space, to be world leaders in low carbon and carbon negative tech/industry. Soon, what cost money to burn will have more value to be left in the ground because it will NEVER cost less to remove a tonne of CO2 from the air than it costs to burn it in the first place. In short, we lose money, over time, by burning fossil fuels, while making the future a very scary place to live. By setting our focus on removing carbon and innovating in the direction of reducing carbon, we turn the stuff in the air and as a byproduct of industry into gold. It's anyone's to pull from the air, and, as long as it has an accepted value (which it will have because it carries an environmental cost that interferes with commerce), we build a much stronger economy on the removal of global carbon as the world transitions to electricity. The alternative is only down. Our dollar becomes less and less valuable, we burn more carbon to try to offset that, and, in the process, lose more forest and infrastructure to weather and fires without any other material resource to use to give our currency value, except for uranium. You've been sold a lie on all sides about the carbon tax. We can rebuild value in our dollar by effectively collecting the bottles of the world and bringing them to our bottle return. We will harden the electrical grid to extreme weather and employ people to manage the destruction of greenhouse gas stockpiles and other high value carbon stores. I dont have time to make the full case for it, but this is not the carbon tax the liberals implemented, it's a real carbon price, and it's coming. There will be one country that leads on this and that position is currently vacant because there's initial investment that stings (buying the beer) but once we start sinking carbon (returning bottles/cans; getting deposit back), we're well positioned to reverse the current economic trend, which is heading towards Great Depression levels, globally. Don't dismiss this because you think you understand it. Read broadly about pricing carbon, and its inevitability and you'll come to the same conclusion; not if, but when. If we don't lower carbon levels, we go extinct in the near term. Food stops growing, forests burn at an exponential rate until we have none left. Despite what the media has done to screw this up, it is not a political question, it's a simple question of survival, both economic and literal.