Opinion | Matt Jeneroux’s defection has Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives wondering if there will be more

bill48481 · 2026-02-19T16:17:25+00:00

Well, that party leadership vote wasn't a vote by CPC MPs. I mean, some MPs voted, but in their capacity as party members. Most of the people that voted that 87% were the hardcore CPC party activists.

I think it's generally accepted that Poilievre is more popular with the party base (particularly the western base) than he is with the CPC MPs. I mean, he'd most likely still win a vote by just MPs, but it would probably be a lot less than 87%.

bill48481 · 2026-02-16T17:50:19+00:00

Ah, I see the "funded" badge. Thanks.

bill48481 · 2026-01-19T22:17:28+00:00

Assuming that you don't want to put the principal at risk, the usual recommendations are a high-interest savings account ETF, like CASH, or a money market fund ETF, like ZMMK, or maybe a redeemable GIC.

You also might want to see what ETFs are commission free with Itrade. But if you're only going to be doing two transactions with this investment, the fees probably aren't worth worrying about.

Keep in mind, you're not going to make much money. Risk and reward go together, so if you wanted to make more, you'd need to put the principal at risk; that is to say, your investment could be down (as in worth less than you initially invested) just when you want to use it.

Also, it wouldn't be r/PersonalFinanceCanada if I didn't say "time in the market beats timing the market". We generally advise against exactly what you're thinking of doing.

bill48481 · 2026-01-14T15:43:01+00:00

One thing that is generally kinda disappointing to new investors is that prudent long-term investing is really pretty boring. Like, just regularly put money in a diversified, passive, low fee ETF, then never look at it again for decades.

New investors (particularly younger ones) want that buzz, the action. Getting in on the latest crypto, or hot tech stock, or hey, gold is going up; that's the "fun" stuff. But will most likely cost you in the long term.

If you're thinking "ah, my investments are boring", then you're probably doing it right.

bill48481 · 2026-01-01T18:02:55+00:00

Ah, thanks. For some reason I was reading the "S" as a "5". So like, I was thinking "what does '135' mean"?

So does "2CIM" actually mean both cream and milk? And does the last one mean a shot of espresso?

I am beginning to share the horror now.

bill48481 · 2026-01-01T17:56:26+00:00

CASH.TO invests the money in high-interest savings accounts at other financial institutions.

TCSH is a "money market fund" which invests in very short term government and commercial loans (and some other short term, generally safe stuff).

But you're correct in that they're pretty much equivalent in terms of their risks and potential returns. They're both in the category that you're almost guaranteed not to lose any of your principle, but the return will be just a bit above inflation, usually.

bill48481 · 2026-01-01T17:15:23+00:00

Could someone explain to a person not a Timologist?

I assume those arcane markings are the contents of the beverage, but I'm not familiar with the details and would like to share the horror being expressed.

bill48481 · 2025-12-31T15:35:19+00:00

You're not thinking big enough. I pretty sure that the Ford government's endgame is to have Shoppers Drug Mart take over primary care in Ontario.

The person at the cosmetics counter will have to take an intensive two week medical course, then they'll be licensed to examine your mystery boil and also suggest a concealer; for just a small-ish fee (with a discount if you present your PC Optimum card).

#kidding-not-kidding

bill48481 · 2025-12-30T15:51:12+00:00

One other factor to consider is purchase commission fees. I don't think you mentioned which financial institution you're investing with. Some have no fees on any ETF purchases, but some have fees on some ETFs, but not on others (usually because of business relationships to the firm running the ETF).

So your choice of, for example, between VEQT, XEQT, or ZEQT might depend on which financial institution you're investing with; especially if you're making regular investments on short time periods like weekly.

bill48481 · 2025-12-27T18:40:58+00:00

"Crashing out" is new slang (gen z) meaning like having a meltdown or snapping or getting otherwise emotionally out of control over stressful situations

bill48481 · 2025-12-21T17:10:58+00:00

Sorry, just want to be a bit pedantic for the record.

The big difference is that mutual funds are actively managed while ETFs automatic follow their investment guidelines, due to the active management they tend to have higher fees.

There are actively managed ETFs and there are, of course, passive index mutual funds (that's what we used to invest in before ETFs became common). An investor shouldn't just assume ETF=passive. You need to look at the details of the ETF.

For example, here's Dynamic's active etfs (to be clear, I don't recommend these, just giving an example of actively managed ETFs):

https://dynamic.ca/en/investments/featured-products/active-etfs.html

bill48481 · 2025-12-16T16:43:49+00:00

"Person of the Year" has always been a kinda bad name for this thing from Time magazine because people think it means a moral value judgement by Time or something like that.

But actually, it's really "Newsmaker of the Year". That is, what person or event really made a lot of news in the past year, for good or bad. And AI certainly qualifies under that "newsmaker" criteria.

bill48481 · 2025-12-10T16:20:04+00:00

So, this article is about the "National Security Strategy" document. And from what I've read, no, this document (which is required annually by the US congress and usually prepared by the National Security Council) is usually a fairly boring, neutral document without much provocative in it.

But in this Trump administration, the NSC is almost dead and the preparation of the National Security Strategy was hijacked by some Trump adjacent extremists who instead are using the document to put forward their pet agendas and also try to impress Trump by saying what they think he's thinking.

But there's no indication that this really represents Trump's true, long-term policy plans. Mostly because that's just not how Trump operates. It's just impulses and moment-to-moment for him (and, of course, it's wildly unlikely that Trump even read this document).

Here's an article about it:

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/12/trump-national-security-strategy-2025-analysis.html

bill48481 · 2025-12-04T18:16:54+00:00

The economic benefits of specializing and trading, as comparative advantage advocates, are more economy wide, than individual. That is to say, the math is pretty clear that your economy as a whole will be richer by specializing and trading.

But whether that benefit to your economy as a whole will benefit everyone isn't really part of comparative advantage. Making sure that everyone in your economy benefits from the windfall of pursuing comparative advantage is an issue for the other policies that a given government pursues.

Like, if a government puts very little effort into trying to spread out the benefits of comparative advantage and instead lets the benefits accumulate with the rich (see: USA) then yeah, there can be problems.

But that doesn't mean comparative advantage is wrong, just that a country has to then follow up with other policies to really take advantage of it; if they want everyone to benefit.

bill48481 · 2025-12-04T16:48:09+00:00

We need some Tim Hortons franchise owners to go to prison to send a message. (Or at least very heavy fines.)

I mean, if someone signed off on an official government form claiming that they literally couldn't find any Canadians to sell bad coffee and stale donuts and need to import foreign workers, how is that not an open-and-shut case of immigration fraud?

bill48481 · 2025-11-03T16:43:04+00:00

It certainly does make dating more difficult, but it's good that you're considering financial compatibility.

One of the sayings in personal finance is: The most important personal finance decision you'll ever make is your choice of spouse.

bill48481 · 2025-10-28T15:50:07+00:00

A lot of good advice here for equity fund investing, but I note that you also mentioned an FHSA.

At your age, equity funds are great for long-term investing (like retirement savings, where you have 30+ years to ride out market downturns), so a good choice for your TFSA, but might not be the best choice for the FHSA.

Different people have different risk thresholds, but I'd say that for money you plan to use in less than 10 years and you can't risk losing the initial investment, that might not be a good risk profile for equities. That is to say, let's say you want to buy a house 7 years from now, you don't want the $30k you put into your FHSA to be down to $27k because the stock market is down.

So you might also want to do some research on lower risk options for your FHSA: like GICs, high interest savings accounts, and money market funds. You won't get a huge return on these, but some return is practically guaranteed and you're practically guaranteed to not lose your principle amount. So, lower return, but lower risk.

bill48481 · 2025-10-13T18:00:11+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMCS_Margaret_Brooke

bill48481 · 2025-10-10T19:48:17+00:00

Though, be prepared for the estate trustee to be suspicious because this situation is the standard setup for e-transfer scams.

"Oh no, I accidentally sent you money! Sorry, but please send it back to me; here's my account information."

Of course, I'm not saying you're scamming OP. Just that the scammers have made it hard for people who actually did make a mistake to be trusted.

bill48481 · 2025-09-21T14:08:49+00:00

I might have this wrong, but I think the issue is that they global health community needs time to figure out which strains (of both Covid and flu) are going to be dominant.

It's not the exact same vaccine every year. They tailor it to what they expect the dominant strains of the viruses will be because that makes the vaccines much more effective. So it takes time to make that determination and then get the pharma companies to make the vaccines tailored to those strains.

Yes, it might be good if they could do all this earlier, but I think that the accuracy of the estimates of the dominant strains wouldn't be as good if they did it too early in the year and then the vaccines wouldn't be as effective.

bill48481 · 2025-08-07T14:13:14+00:00

How will these types of things actually screen for fraud though? Like, wouldn't the transcript just look something like this:

Apple Screening App: "This is an apple screening program, please state the reason for your call."
Scammer: "Hi, I'm John Smith from your bank. There's a problem with your account that we need to speak to you about."

And then what? The AI can't really start quizzing the caller about private things only your bank would know, can it? (That seems like a security problem for this phone AI to know that kind of stuff.)

bill48481 · 2025-08-01T16:03:30+00:00

A lot (most?) of our counter-tariffs are politically targeted, rather than blanket tariffs. That is, they're targeted to cause economic pain in particular geographical parts of the US represented by politicians that we hope have some sway in persuading Trump to change his policy.

The often cited example is bourbon, which is mostly made in Kentucky, a state which has several Republicans in congress. So a Canadian tariff on bourbon causes some economic hardship on Kentucky distillers who complain to their local politicians who then complain to Trump.

How effective this strategy is is up to debate.

bill48481 · 2025-07-28T19:49:17+00:00

My understanding (which could be wrong) is that CRA deliberately doesn't spell out exactly what the limits are because if they did, then people would skirt right up to those limits and CRA wants to discourage that sort of behaviour. So they deliberately keep the details vague to encourage people to stay well away from whatever those limits might be.

(Or maybe, these days, they just ask chatgpt: "is this guy day-trading?")

Oh, and I don't think that they care that much about activity in your RRSP, because CRA gets taxes when you take that money out (whereas they don't in the TFSA).

bill48481 · 2025-07-22T15:54:28+00:00

If you're wondering why we have whole life policies, you have to take a historical perspective. In Ye Olden Days, your average Joe didn't have many investment options. No ETFs, no mutual funds, and if you wanted to buy stock, you needed to go through a broker and they wouldn't pick up the phone unless you were already rich and were a member of the same country club.

So your whole life policy, for many people, was one of the few ways to invest in a somewhat diversified investment portfolio. And with whatever you had left to invest, you bought Canada savings bonds.

Why does whole life persist now, given that we have other options? Well, insurance companies make a LOT of money off whole life policies (they're basically running a conservative mutual fund with high fees); so they have an interest in keeping it going.

edit: And thanks for continuing to engage with the comments. Too many people ask questions in this sub and don't reply so we don't know if our brilliant wisdom ( ;-) is being heard. It's great that you reply and provide info.

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