[picard102]

Already seeing the attack articles from certain quarters rehashing how she's an anti-semite for speaking out against Israel during her time at the UN.

 

[urbanclient]

Since it involves trade policy:

I've been vocal against losing the manufacturing base to offshoring. I exaggerate: Why import wooden furniture if the lumber is from Canada.

Because you can't make decent furniture from soft wood like pine and cedar. For it not to cost an arm and a leg, you need hard wood from a tropical environment where the harder woods grow a lot faster than here; and at that point it's cheaper to ship it as furniture than trees.

Remember back when some of the best looking modern furniture was being imported from Scandinavia ... 1970s, etc.? Much of it was teak ... it wasn't growing in Scandinavia (I'm curious as to how it came to be that teak was coming to Scandinavia for their export ... I'm referring to before Ikea came to Canada.

But I get your point - we certainly shouldn't be importing toilet paper and maple syrup.

Canada has hardwood lumber, and I'm almost certain I own furniture using Canadian maple, but manufactured in Vietnam, or was the Vietnam factory just repackaging Chinese products? We'll never know. You can buy Canadian maple flooring too, and back when I got it in the mid 2000s, it wasn't the premium option.

If anything, tropical hardwood tends to be more expensive than Canadian hardwood. Not sure why you seem to be implying tropical hardwood is cheaper than hardwoods elsewhere?

Canadian hardwoods being maple, oak, birch etc...

 

[nfitz]

Already seeing the attack articles from certain quarters rehashing how she's an anti-semite for speaking out against Israel during her time at the UN.

Which only makes anyone such quarters say look like fools, given how highly regarded she is world-wide for her groundbreaking work in prosecuting war criminals! Which quarters?

Though does "anti-semite" have much meaning any more? In recent years it seems to be applied to just about anyone who opposes Benjamin Netanyahu .... which is about 60% of Israelis given the latest approval polling!

Canada has hardwood lumber, and I'm almost certain I own furniture using Canadian maple, but manufactured in Vietnam, or was the Vietnam factory just repackaging Chinese products?

Little sense in exporting Canadian maple to Vietnam for manufacture and export back here. Does that really happen? I just can't fathom the economics on that ... that's the kind of thing where I'd hope tarifs do come into play, because that's would be just silly.

Yeah, we have hard wood, but it grows so slowly in comparison to the soft wood we lumber heavily. So importing southeast Asian wood products, where the economic advantage is climate, rather than underpaid labour, makes sense to me. And we really don't have woods that compare well visually to stuff like teak or the very expensive high quality hard softwoods like Kauri (obviously not from Asia).

I don't know anything about Vietnamese forestry though - never been there. Funnily enough I'm sitting typing on a brand new wooden chair from Malaysia. I doubt that the wood can be harvested in Canada at a price to compete. But price amd grain really wasn't a factor ... the factor was getting the entire very stubborn family to finally agree on the choice of new solid chairs, while the ancient ones at the dining room table collapsed under their own weight. Though I might have vetoed it if it was US hardwood.

I'm not going to invest in Canadian-grown tea plantation or a Thai wheat farm either!

You can buy Canadian maple flooring too, and back when I got it in the mid 2000s, it wasn't the premium option.

If anything, tropical hardwood tends to be more expensive than Canadian hardwood. Not sure why you seem to be implying tropical hardwood is cheaper than hardwoods elsewhere?

Well I won't die on that hill. Just an assumption watching how fast these trees grow in south east Asia. The growth rates of the hardwood trees somewhere with no winter season of no growth is amazing!

Heck, even the rare lone hardwood with good light in coastal British Columbia grows faster and it would appear bigger than here - with shorter periods of dormancy.

But I'm just pulling it out of my ass as an "obvious" example. I won't pretend to have any real knowledge in that area.

But I think we can agree that there would be examples that even experts would agree! I don't see converting Smalls Creek into a rice paddy would have worked well for Mr. Ashfield and Mr. Small.

 

[Jonny5]

Google closed a deal to raise a lot of capital yesterday, interestingly in Canadian Dollars.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2026-05-05/alphabet-issues-c-8-5-billion-in-loonie-denominated-bonds

Alphabet has entered Canada’s bond market and it’s making a Google-worthy splash — raising C$8.5 billion ($6.2 billion) in the biggest loonie-denominated debt deal on record.
Google’s parent company initially targeted C$3 billion to C$5 billion, but set its sights higher after receiving orders of nearly C$20 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.

Alphabet didn’t conduct a widely publicized roadshow that’s customary of first-time issuers — it is, after all, one of the world’s biggest and best-known companies. That lack of notice, as well as the sheer size of the deal, are driving corporate and provincial bond spreads wider, said Naveed Sunderji, a portfolio manager at Franklin Templeton Canada. The market had a month’s heads-up for the last corporate bond megadeal in Canada, he said, when Coastal GasLink raised C$7.15 billion in 2024.
Canadian investors had anticipated a hyperscaler would tap the market, even though US tech companies rarely look north when raising debt. One of the last big maple offerings from a big-name tech firm was Apple’s C$2.5 billion issue in 2017.

 

[Monarch Butterfly]

...

Yeah, we have hard wood, but it grows so slowly in comparison to the soft wood we lumber heavily. So importing southeast Asian wood products, where the economic advantage is climate, rather than underpaid labour, makes sense to me. And we really don't have woods that compare well visually to stuff like teak or the very expensive high quality hard softwoods like Kauri (obviously not from Asia).

I don't know anything about Vietnamese forestry though - never been there. Funnily enough I'm sitting typing on a brand new wooden chair from Malaysia. I doubt that the wood can be harvested in Canada at a price to compete. But price amd grain really wasn't a factor ... the factor was getting the entire very stubborn family to finally agree on the choice of new solid chairs, while the ancient ones at the dining room table collapsed under their own weight. Though I might have vetoed it if it was US hardwood.

I'm not going to invest in Canadian-grown tea plantation or a Thai wheat farm either!

Well I won't die on that hill. Just an assumption watching how fast these trees grow in south east Asia. The growth rates of the hardwood trees somewhere with no winter season of no growth is amazing!

Heck, even the rare lone hardwood with good light in coastal British Columbia grows faster and it would appear bigger than here - with shorter periods of dormancy.

But I'm just pulling it out of my ass as an "obvious" example. I won't pretend to have any real knowledge in that area.

But I think we can agree that there would be examples that even experts would agree! I don't see converting Smalls Creek into a rice paddy would have worked well for Mr. Ashfield and Mr. Small.

Canadian softwood is generally considered harder and denser than much of the softwood produced in the U.S. due to slower growth rates in colder climates. The shorter growing season produces tighter growth rings in Canadian softwood, which enhances its strength, durability, and resistance to warping compared to faster-growing southern U.S. softwood

 

[guavadelic]

Feds seem pretty committed to privatizing airports to raise funds:

Prime Minister Mark Carney said his government is considering spinning off or selling ownership stakes in Canadian airports in order to use the proceeds on new projects aimed at fueling economic growth.

“We will look at options for the airports so that they better serve Canadians and so that the capital that is tied up in those airports can be redeployed potentially in other ventures that will grow our economy,” Carney told reporters at a separate announcement in the Montreal area. “That’s the core of the idea.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...eploy-capital-tied-up-in-airports-carney-says

Privatizing airports would be a quick way to attract investments. Canadian pension funds have been pushing for more opportunities to invest domestically, such as Airports, Ports, Utilities.
However, the policy would be a tough sell to a Canadian public who is firmly against it. Carney just got himself a majority so he's got some political capital to expend; just not sure this is the best use of that political capital.

We'll see how sensitive to public opinion his government is.

 

[picard102]

neo-liberals just can't help but sell off public assets to fill someone else's pockets.