A blog about taxes, expenditures, and all things in between. Neither pro- nor anti-tax.
Alberta built a bike lane complaint form that can only accept one answer. Here is the evidence that it was designed not to collect. Alberta s government has a new website, and it would very much like to hear your concerns about bike lanes. Not your thoughts. Not your experiences. Your concerns. The word is doing Continue reading A Drop-Down Menu of Grievances
I live in Alberta. I am pissed off. Not about separation, which is stupid, and which I am writing a whole series about, so I will spare you here. Not about the weather, although the thunderstorms rolling through this week have my left eyeball trying to exit my skull and so I cannot sleep.. I Continue reading Proving Your Right To Your Own Body In Alberta
The 2025 federal budget promises $280 billion in new capital over five years, then turns around and squeezes the operating side until it balances by 2028–29. Program spending growth slows from eight per cent to under one. Departments are ordered to claw back $13 billion a year through a Comprehensive Expenditure Review. The message to Continue reading Ottawa Knows the Cost of Everything and the…
On May 29, Canada slipped into a technical recession. On June 5, the people who actually decide these things said not so fast. In between, every politician in the country reached for the definition that flattered them. Here is a number: −0.1%. That is how much Canada s real GDP fell in the first quarter of Continue reading Same Recession, Opposite Jerseys
A Brexit Remainer s Letter Home, Part II In Thirty-Seven Words That Could Break This Country, the first post in this series, I wrote that I had been watching the same fire laid in Alberta that I had watched laid in Britain. Today I want to walk you through the part of the playbook that took Continue reading In 2016 The Brexit Data Scandal Had A Canadian Face. In 2026 Ours Has An American One.
I m Canadian. I m also British and Irish — all three by birth, all three by bloodline. In 2016, my UK citizenship gave me a vote in the Brexit referendum. I voted Remain. I watched the campaign that should have won lose. I watched what came next: the trade wreckage, the labour shortages, the Scotland problem Continue reading Thirty-Seven Words That Could Break This Country: A Brexit Remainer s…
On Tyler Meredith and the beige defence of the conventions that eat us Tyler. I owe you the courtesy of writing this in plain English, because the courtesy you extended to my post on the SEU was a phrase, deployed to deflect, that does not survive a careful read. Just an explanation of the political Continue reading Bitch, please
In the workhouse scene every Canadian schoolchild used to know, Oliver Twist asks for more gruel. He is the smallest in the room, the most vulnerable, the one with the least standing. The other boys, who are equally hungry, push him forward because they are afraid to ask themselves. Oliver walks the length of the Continue reading Please, Ottawa, I Want Some More