Latest news with #GordianKnot
Vancouver Sun
25-04-2025
- Business
- Vancouver Sun
Why experts say federal election housing platforms are varying degrees of unrealistic
All three of Canada's main political parties are promising to get a lot of housing built fast over the next four years as people across the country continue to struggle to afford either their rent or mortgage. But experts believe the goals they have set are varying degrees of fantastical, at least in the short-term. Article content The housing crisis is an intractable crisis with no easy solutions, meaning it is unlikely that any party platform will provide a silver bullet, according to Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. Article content Article content 'It really is a Gordian Knot,' said Yan, referring to the legend of Alexander The Great and the impossible-to-untie knot that he instead cut. 'The solution is then who wields the sword.' Article content Article content The federal Liberals, under Prime Minister Mark Carney, have promised to double the rate of home building through the creation of Build Canada Homes, a government-owned entity that would be tasked with developing housing on federal public land. Article content Other policies put forward by the current governing party include reviving the Multi-Unit Rental Building Tax Incentive, which the Grits say helped build thousands of units of housing in the 1970s, and cutting municipal development costs in half through federal investments in power lines and wastewater infrastructure. Article content Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives have promised to facilitate the construction of 2.3 million homes over the next five years through the selling of 15 per cent of public lands to developers and pre-zoning certain 'shovel-ready zones'. Article content Article content The party has pledged to bring in a number of carrots and sticks for municipalities, including tying infrastructure money to the pace of construction. Local governments that increase home building by 15 per cent annually will receive more federal funding, while those that don't will see their share reduced. Article content Article content The Liberals have also promised to partially axe the GST for first-time homebuyers purchasing properties valued at $1 million or less, while the Conservatives would scrap the tax completely on new rental housing construction, as well as on purchases of new homes worth up to $1.3 million. Article content As for the NDP, Jagmeet Singh's team say they would best both of their opponents through the construction of three million new homes by 2030. This would be accomplished through the replacement of the Liberals' Housing Accelerator Fund with a permanent $16-billion fund split into two parts — the Canadian Homes Transfer and the Communities First Fund. Article content The Canadian Homes Transfer would require all single-family zoning be upscaled to allow for multi-unit buildings and for municipalities to increase density around transit hubs — both measures brought in by B.C.'s NDP government.
Vancouver Sun
25-04-2025
- Business
- Vancouver Sun
'A Gordian Knot': Why experts say federal election housing platforms are varying degrees of unrealistic
All three of Canada's main political parties are promising to get a lot of housing built fast over the next four years as people across the country continue to struggle to afford either their rent or mortgage. But experts believe the goals they have set are varying degrees of fantastical, at least in the short-term. Article content The housing crisis is an intractable crisis with no easy solutions, meaning it is unlikely that any party platform will provide a silver bullet, according to Andy Yan, director of the City Program at Simon Fraser University. Article content Article content 'It really is a Gordian Knot,' said Yan, referring to the legend of Alexander The Great and the impossible-to-untie knot that he instead cut. 'The solution is then who wields the sword.' Article content Article content The federal Liberals, under Prime Minister Mark Carney, have promised to double the rate of home building through the creation of Build Canada Homes, a government-owned entity that would be tasked with developing housing on federal public land. Article content Other policies put forward by the current governing party include reviving the Multi-Unit Rental Building Tax Incentive, which the Grits say helped build thousands of units of housing in the 1970s, and cutting municipal development costs in half through federal investments in power lines and wastewater infrastructure. Article content Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives have promised to facilitate the construction of 2.3 million homes over the next five years through the selling of 15 per cent of public lands to developers and pre-zoning certain 'shovel-ready zones'. Article content Article content The party has pledged to bring in a number of carrots and sticks for municipalities, including tying infrastructure money to the pace of construction. Local governments that increase home building by 15 per cent annually will receive more federal funding, while those that don't will see their share reduced. Article content Article content The Liberals have also promised to partially axe the GST for first-time homebuyers purchasing properties valued at $1 million or less, while the Conservatives would scrap the tax completely on new rental housing construction, as well as on purchases of new homes worth up to $1.3 million. Article content As for the NDP, Jagmeet Singh's team say they would best both of their opponents through the construction of three million new homes by 2030. This would be accomplished through the replacement of the Liberals' Housing Accelerator Fund with a permanent $16-billion fund split into two parts — the Canadian Homes Transfer and the Communities First Fund. Article content The Canadian Homes Transfer would require all single-family zoning be upscaled to allow for multi-unit buildings and for municipalities to increase density around transit hubs — both measures brought in by B.C.'s NDP government.
The Independent
19-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Brexit created ‘mind blowing' 2bn extra pieces of paperwork - enough to wrap around world 15 times
Brexit has created a 'mind blowing' nearly two billion extra pieces of paperwork for businesses - enough to wrap around the world 15 times. If they were all laid end to end they would also reach to the moon and half way back again, an analysis of research by the Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade by the Liberal Democrats found. Lib Dem trade spokesperson Clive Jones said it showed the scale of red tape plaguing British businesses since the UK's withdrawal from Europe. He said: 'The Conservatives' botched Brexit deal is suffocating businesses, tying them up in a Gordian Knot of red tape, as they try to export our fantastic British products and produce across the world. These figures are mind blowing.' The party is calling on the government to negotiate a bespoke UK-EU customs union to free businesses from the bureaucracy – which has pushed up prices on the high street. Marks & Spencer recently revealed that it has had to rent a warehouse just to store its piles of Brexit paperwork, that the retailer's chairman said 'nobody looked at in the first place'. Archie Norman said ' it is quite extraordinary… you wouldn't believe it ' that the retailer has to store thousands of pages of documents in a warehouse in the Republic of Ireland for six years after taking food across the border. The official Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) also estimates that the size of the economy over the long term will be four per cent smaller than it would have been without Brexit. The Chartered Institute of Export & International Trade found an estimated 2 billion additional pieces of paper had been used by those exporting to the EU since the UK left the bloc. The Liberal Democrat analysis also calculated that those extra pieces of paper would reach the height of Mount Everest 66,751 times over, have to be extracted from 248,603 trees and be worth £19.5 million in A4 paper alone. But the party said the true cost could be higher as its analysis assumed that each piece of paper was printed just once. Mr Jones said every second spent filling out the forms was 'time that these businesses could be using to think about expanding to help grow our economy. Which we all agree is very much needed.' He added: 'The extra red tape created by the botched Brexit deal is adding more financial strain on businesses as they waste time fumbling through this tangled web of even more red tape. 'The Labour government cannot put its head in the sand and pretend that these barriers do not exist. It is time they face up to reality and realise that unless we put this extra burden of red tape on a bonfire we will not get the meaningful growth needed to rebuild our public services and protect people's finances. That means negotiating a bespoke UK-EU Customs Union by the end of the decade.'
Politico
31-01-2025
- Politics
- Politico
The ways that Trump could snatch a third term
It's the stuff of liberal nightmares and MAGA dreams: Four years from now, Donald Trump once again raising his right hand and taking the oath of office. But it can't happen, right? After all, the Constitution imposes an explicit two-term limit on the presidency — even if those two terms, like Trump's, are non-consecutive. 'No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice,' the 22nd Amendment mandates. Trump is notorious for bending norms. This one would be a difficult hurdle to climb, but if he wants to remain in power, there are ways for him to do so — legal and otherwise. And Trump, of course, already has a track record of trying to remain in office beyond his lawful tenure. For now, it remains a far-off possibility. But it's one that constitutional experts are already thinking about. POLITICO's James Romoser investigated the ways through which Trump could try to seize power once again. Read the story. 'Bobby may play nice; I won't.' Can you guess who said this about Republican Senators on the fence about confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? Scroll to the bottom for the answer.** It's been a head-spinning start to the second Trump administration, as the president and his advisors have moved to 'flood the zone' since taking office two weeks ago. Between the deluge of executive orders, the rollout (and reversal) of controversial new policies and the steady stream of fiery confirmation hearings, it's all too much news for mere mortals to process. Here are some talking points to sprinkle through your weekend conversations to make it seem like you're totally on top of the news. (From POLITICO Reporter Ian Ward). A neo-reactionary wants to chop the Gordian Knot … For over a decade, Curtis Yarvin, an ex-computer programmer-turned-blogger, has argued that American democracy is irrevocably broken and ought to be replaced with a monarchy styled after a Silicon Valley tech start-up. According to Yarvin, the time has come to jettison existing democratic institutions and concentrate political power on a single 'chief executive' or 'dictator.' These ideas — which Yarvin calls 'neo-reaction' or 'the Dark Enlightenment' — were once confined to the fringes of the internet, but now, with Trump's reelection, they are finding a newly powerful audience in Washington. POLITICO Magazine's Ian Ward spoke to Yarvin this week, who told him, 'In almost every way, JD [Vance] is perfect.' Don't get your hopes up about those JFK documents … A close reading of President Donald Trump's new order to declassify documents related to the JFK assassination suggests that Americans who hope they are now only days away from the full truth about Kennedy's death will face disappointment, writes Philip Shenon. The order contains loopholes that could delay the release of any documents indefinitely. And as in his first term, loyal, Trump-named political appointees at the CIA, FBI and elsewhere — not the 'deep state' career civil servants he often denounces — will almost certainly try to persuade him to continue to withhold some material on national security grounds. TikTok goes the clock … On his first day in office, President Donald Trump declared that he would effectively ignore the law, and so TikTok lives, argues Rules of Law columnist Ankush Khardori. In the process, Trump effectively immunized a slew of large corporations from devastating financial penalties that were dictated by Congress, and he has created a precedent — that he can direct his own administration to ignore laws that he believes are politically or personally unhelpful to him — that ought to trouble Republicans and Democrats alike. The tariff threat might just be real … Donald Trump launched a two-year trade war against China during his first term in the White House, and he's poised to do it again, writes Bob Davis. Even before being sworn in, Trump threatened China with 60 percent tariffs to cut its trade surplus, 10 percent tariffs if it didn't halt fentanyl shipments and 100 percent tariffs if it tried to create a rival currency to the dollar. On his second day in office, he announced the first wave of tariffs would hit China on Feb. 1. Of course, this may be bluster or a negotiating tactic. But with Trump, you never know, which makes his tariff threats that much more effective. From the drafting table of editorial cartoonist Matt Wuerker. Who Dissed? answer: It was Nicole Shanahan, RFK Jr.'s former running mate. She was specifically threatening these Senators with funding political primaries against them. politicoweekend@
