General Canadian Politics eh.

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ShatsBassoon

Throwing bombs & banging moms
First 100
Jan 14, 2015
18,555
33,607


Truckers and union representatives in B.C. are calling on the federal government to delay the Port of Vancouver's plan to tighten environmental restrictions on container trucks starting next month.

The new rules mean semi-trucks beyond 10 years old won't be allowed at Canada's largest port as of Feb. 1, as the port moves to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions.

Container trucks with engine and exhaust systems older than a decade will have to be retrofitted or upgraded, otherwise drivers will be turned away.
Carnival cruiselines all like
 

SoupCan

how bout dat
First 100
Jan 18, 2015
2,660
3,193
DBH says today they will review gym openings tuesday, when they are originally expected to open midnight of Tuesday.

So unfair, gym owners going to be blind sides with further closures the day of, this is getting ridiculous. With these restrictions cases are still higher than ever, incompetent government is the new normal
 

BeardOfKnowledge

The Most Consistent Motherfucker You Know
Jul 22, 2015
60,547
56,268
Some of those stats border on fake news. Ontario for example has more ICU beds per capita than the U.K. Alberta has like 4. That in turn drags down the national average. That being said, I've been saying our healthcare system sucks for a long ass time.
 
M

member 1013

Guest
A favourite talking point of conservatives in Ontario has for some time been the claim that we have the highest debt of any sub-sovereign political entity in the world. While technically true, this claim is highly misleading and is used as justification to call for unwarranted and extreme austerity, and will likely be used as justification to implement said cuts over the next 4 years in Ontario. Thus it's important to put this claim into context, to be able to respond to this claim and spot columnists and politicians trying to trick you by leaving out important context. I will mostly be comparing Canada to America, since it's a much more direct comparison, and this is the reference point often used in opinion pieces on this topic, but most of this is equally true if we compare Canada to Europe, Asia, South America, etc.

The reality is that provinces in Canada have a lot of spending responsibilities that are normally borne by the federal government in other countries. Health care is a great example of one of these differences, in Canada each province has it's own health care insurer (OHIP in Ontario), while in America there is only one Medicare and one Medicaid. This means that any debts associated with running a universal healthcare system and keeping it solvent year-to-year or keeping it functioning through a recession will be borne by the provincial governments in Canada, but by the federal government in America. Education is another big burden handled by the provinces in Canada but largely by the federal government in America, and there are many more.

We can easily spot these differences by looking at the budgets of US states vs the budgets of Canadian provinces. Here are some of the budgets as compared to population of the four largest American states by population:

  • California's 2018-2019 budget spends $138 billion USD ($182 billion CAD), and California has a population of 39.5 million people. That's a spending of $4,608/person (in CAD).
  • Texas' 2018-2019 budget spends $217 billion USD ($287 billion CAD), and Texas has a population of 28.3 million people. That's a spending of $10,141/person (in CAD).
  • Florida's 2017-2018 budget spends $89 billion USD ($118 billion CAD), and Florida has a population of 21 million people. That's a spending of $5,619/person (in CAD).
  • New York's 2018-2019 budget spends $98 billion USD ($130 billion CAD), and New York has a population of 19.8 million people. That's a spending of $6,566/person (in CAD).
  • America's 2018-2019 federal budget spends $4.1 trillion USD ($5.4 trillion CAD), and America has a population of 325.7 million people. That's a spending of $16,580/person(in CAD).
Now let's look at Canada's four largest provinces by population:

So with the slight outlier being Texas, American states spend much less than Canadian provinces relative to the size of their populations, and the American federal government spends muchmore than the Canadian federal government relative to the size of their populations. So we can see that comparing the spending of Canadian provinces to the spending of other sub-sovereign entities around the world is not a fair, apples-to-apples comparison.

Now let's look at the debt-to-GDP ratio of Canadian provinces vs American states. Debt-to-GDP ratio is the measure used by all serious economists when discussing debt. It's the metric used to compare debts between countries with differing economies, because comparing simple debt numbers misses out on a lot of context. This is why we don't compare our debts of Canada and Iraq, Mexico and Japan, or America and Indonesia, despite those pairs of countries having similar populations, they obviously differ in their ability to sustain debt. Countries like Japan, Greece, or Italy, which are experiencing extreme problems with debt, have debt-to-GDP ratios around 150% or higher, while countries with fairly stable economies, like Canada, America, or the UK, have debt-to-GDP ratios around 100% or lower.

So we can look at the debt-to-GDP ratios of the same 4 largest states and the same 4 largest provinces, but since, as we saw, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, we can caculate each state or province's share of the national debt of their country (if the national debt was divided up between every person in the country evenly, so: federal debt * [state or province population / national population]) and then add that to their state or provincial debt. This will give us the debt each state or province would have if the national debt was entirely transfered to the states and provinces on a per capita basis. We can call this the "adjusted debt", and then caculate the adjusted debt-to-GDP ratio for each state and province. Then we can compare these numbers to get as close as we can to a true apples-to-apples comparison.

So here are the numbers for America:

America's federal debt = $22,500 billion USD ($29,710 billion CAD)

America's GDP = $18,600 billion USD ($24,560 billion CAD)

America's federal debt-to-GDP ratio = 121%

California's state debt = $153.6 billion USD ($202.8 billion CAD)

California's state GDP = $2,600 billion USD ($3,433.8 billion CAD)

California's state debt-to-GDP ratio = 5.9%

California's share of US population = 12.1%

California's share of US federal debt = $2,722.5 billion USD ($3,595.5 billion CAD)

California's total adjusted debt = $2,876.1 billion USD ($3,797.65 billion CAD)

California's adjusted debt-to-GDP ratio = 110.6%

Texas' state debt = $52 billion USD ($68.7 billion CAD)

Texas' state GDP = $1,600 billion USD ($2,110 billion CAD)

Texas' state debt-to-GDP ratio = 3.3%

Texas' share of US population = 8.7%

Texas' share of US federal debt = $1,957.5 billion USD ($2,584.7 billion CAD)

Texas' total adjusted debt = $2,009.5 billion USD ($2,653.4 billion CAD)

Texas' adjusted debt-to-GDP ratio = 125.6%

Florida's state debt = $34.4 billion USD ($45.4 billion CAD)

Florida's state GDP = $926 billion USD ($1,222.7 billion CAD)

Florida's state debt-to-GDP ratio = 3.7%

Florida's share of US population = 6.4%

Florida's share of US federal debt = $1,440 billion USD ($1,901.4 billion CAD)

Florida's total adjusted debt = $1,474.4 billion USD ($1,946.8 billion CAD)

Florida's adjusted debt-to-GDP ratio = 159.2%

New York's state debt = $139.6 billion USD ($184.3 billion CAD)

New York's state GDP = $1,500 billion USD ($1,980 billion CAD)

New York's state debt-to-GDP ratio = 9.3%

New York's share of US population = 6.1%

New York's share of US federal debt = $1,372.5 billion USD ($1,812.3 billion CAD)

New York's total adjusted debt = $1,512.1 billion USD ($1,996.6 CAD)

New York's adjusted debt-to-GDP ratio = 100.8%

Source for American GDPs

Source for American state debts

Source for American national debt

And now here are the numbers for Canada:

Canada's federal debt = $631.9 billion CAD

Canada's GDP = $2,000 billion CAD

Canada's federal debt-to-GDP ratio = 31.2%

Ontario's provincial debt = $312 billion CAD

Ontario's provincial GDP = $794.8 billion CAD

Ontario's provincial debt-to-GDP ratio = 39.3%

Ontario's share of Canadian population = 37.5%

Ontario's share of Canadian federal debt = $237 billion CAD

Ontario's total adjusted debt = $549 billion CAD

Ontario's adjusted debt-to-GDP ratio = 69.1%

Quebec's provincial debt = $203 billion CAD

Quebec's provincial GDP = $394.8 billion CAD

Quebec's provincial debt-to-GDP ratio = 51.4%

Quebec's share of Canadian population = 22.6%

Quebec's share of Canadian federal debt = $142.8 billion CAD

Quebec's total adjusted debt = $345.8 billion CAD

Quebec's adjusted debt-to-GDP ratio = 87.6%

British Columbia's provincial debt = $69.4 billion CAD

British Columbia's provincial GDP = $263.7 billion CAD

British Columbia's provincial debt-to-GDP ratio = 26.3%

British Columbia's share of Canadian population = 12.7%

British Columbia's share of Canadian federal debt = $80.3 billion CAD

British Columbia's total adjusted debt = $149.7 billion CAD

British Columbia's adjusted debt-to-GDP ratio = 56.8%

Alberta's provincial debt = $45 billion CAD

Alberta's provincial GDP = $314.9 billion CAD

Alberta's provincial debt-to-GDP ratio = 14.3%

Alberta's share of Canadian population = 11.3%

Alberta's share of Canadian federal debt = $71.4 billion CAD

Alberta's total adjusted debt = $116.4 billion CAD

Alberta's adjusted debt-to-GDP ratio = 37%

Source for Canadian GDPs

Source for Ontario's debt

Source for Quebec's debt

Source for British Columbia's debt

Source for Alberta's debt

Source for Canada's debt

As we can see, once the different balances of the burden of social spending between state/provincial governments and federal governments are accounted for, allowing us to actually make an apples-to-apples comparison, Canadian provinces are not remotely as indebted as American states.
 

SoupCan

how bout dat
First 100
Jan 18, 2015
2,660
3,193
Idiotic mandate on truckers and now snowing a shitton in the east, how much does the cost of everything go up?
 

jason73

Yuri Bezmenov was right
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
72,781
134,158
Idiotic mandate on truckers and now snowing a shitton in the east, how much does the cost of everything go up?
Looks like Bonnie Mengele is going to announce the restriction that expire tomorrow are going to be extended the indefinitely