desRow

If you're a billionaire, this budget is Christmas come early. Canadians are struggling with the cost of everything — groceries, rent, medication, and everything in between. But this budget only makes it easier for the same corporations fuelling the crisis to profit even more.

The same guy who was caught fixing the price of bread for years now claims that the big grocers have no control over prices. Give me a break. Canadians aren’t stupid. We see Galen getting richer and richer as grocery costs skyrocket. We know we’re being ripped off. It’s time to break up the Big Grocery Cartel and drive down costs with a national network of public grocery stores that Canadians can actually afford to shop at.

This is private equity, this is what it does. Buy up businesses, run them into the ground, and rip them apart for short-term profit. The developers at BioWare know how to run the studio. They know how to make the games we all love. They should be given the first opportunity - and the federal support - to buy it and run it themselves. And if we want to avoid the Mass Effect effect in Canada, we should be keeping private equity out, not welcoming it in. pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/…

It should be illegal for Israel’s top arms producer to purchase a Canadian company. Elbit Systems is complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. Cancel the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement, enact sanctions and a two-way arms embargo now.

Privatizing airports is a terrible deal for travellers, workers, and the public purse. Around the world, it has led to higher travel costs, fewer jobs and worse working conditions. Private equity moguls and fund managers love it! Once they’re in, they own a piece of a natural monopoly, and they print money for decades. This is a mistake we do not need to make. The alternative to privatizing our airports is to NOT DO IT.

Today’s announcement shows what this federal government will protect above all else: the profits of Big Oil. As we mark the five-year anniversary of a heat dome that killed 619 people in British Columbia – and as many communities across the country are facing extreme weather right now – Canadians deserve leadership that protects us. Instead, this government is doubling down on yesterday’s failed solutions and dragging us into further danger, risk and insecurity. The opaque and confusing public-private partnership ownership structure means it's very likely that we, the public, will not only bear the risks and the damages, but also the lion's share of the costs. Canada’s New Democrats unequivocally oppose this pipeline proposal. If anything, this is a pipeline to the courts. It ignores the federal government’s legal responsibility to meaningfully consult Indigenous nations, including Treaty 8 nations in Alberta, threatens endangered species, and accelerates climate change. It will sow the very divisions the Prime Minister claims he wants to avoid. We do not achieve unity or prosperity from projects that pit communities against one another, all while a handful of oil and gas CEOs walk away with enormous profits. While we're stuck fighting yesterday's battles over pipelines, and the Prime Minister openly admits that our emissions will rise, the rest of the world is racing ahead on renewables. We cannot afford to fall behind while other countries build the industries of the future. Canadians deserve better than being told our only choice is another fight over another pipeline. This country needs an alternative to the Liberal-Conservative consensus that is doubling down on a future of climate-wrecking corporate welfare. New Democrats are ready to build something bigger, safer, and better – a Canada that is a renewable energy superpower, with an east-west clean electricity grid and good green jobs in every region. Lower costs for families with home retrofits and heat pumps for all. Investing in the care economy as a nation-building project. That’s what it looks like to build big things that actually unite this country.

The Liberal government might as well have called its AI strategy “All in for AI”. This is a document that is heavy on hype, but light on the right guardrails that we need to protect people – and to ensure that the benefits of the technology don’t just flow to a handful of tech giants and investors. It proposes a massive boost to business adoption of AI, with no concern for the consequences this will have for workers, especially young workers who are already watching careers vanish before their eyes. This government is imposing a world-changing technology on all of us without any public debate. Instead of putting in place strong regulations to safeguard workers, youth, privacy, and our water and energy supply, they prefer to “move fast and break things” as the Silicon Valley motto goes. That’s why before rushing ahead, with no brakes, we need a robust regulatory framework. Every other industry in this country, from forestry to banking, is regulated. Yet somehow, when it comes to generative AI that is controlled by MAGA-aligned billionaires, the usual rules don’t apply. New Democrats support the development of cutting edge technology. For AI, that looks like responsible machine learning with small, contained datasets and targeted applications. We’re calling for a humans-first AI strategy. One that protects Canadian jobs, data and natural resources. Not a strategy that mimics the worst tendencies of AI chatbots: hallucinating benefits and flattering big tech CEOs by telling them exactly what they want to hear.