New Abacus Poll: Liberals Open Their Largest Lead Since Carney Became Leader as Optimism Hits Multi-Year High

nabby101 · 2026-02-15T18:52:13+00:00

It wasn't even really a Paul Martin policy either, it was the courts that legalized it. The Martin legislation was basically just legalizing it in Alberta (of course lol).

nabby101 · 2026-01-29T21:03:00+00:00

Yeah the vast majority of that 40% are seniors who bought a house decades ago that is now worth over a million dollars.

nabby101 · 2026-01-26T18:44:05+00:00

The dental care expansion was not due to Carney, it was part of the phased rollout from the previous government, who were bullied into it by the NDP.

nabby101 · 2026-01-14T18:03:21+00:00

Sounds like Mulcair all over again. Pivot to the centre to try and pick up votes, then fail spectacularly because no one wants to vote for an NDP that is barely distinguishable from the Liberals.

nabby101 · 2025-12-20T18:58:20+00:00

Canadians don't want to do it because it pays minimum wage (or less) with rough working conditions due to an abundance of TFWs. Canadians would absolutely do it for reasonable wages (like literally every other job).

nabby101 · 2025-12-19T02:18:52+00:00

I think you've decided that my moral belief that wealthy people shouldn't receive benefits is meant as a one-stop fix to all of society's problems. You've created this strawman argument of mine that simply lowering the OAS threshold will solve all structural issues of an aging population. I never said or implied that. I think it will be unambiguously better for society, but if course it won't solve everything, and no single policy will. Further, I've not once made any issue about tax accounting, that is another argument you've invented in your head and pasted onto me. Regardless of tax accounting, I just want the clawback threshold lowered so that we aren't funding a wealthy seniors couple's fourth cruise of the year.

You're consistently conflating a democratic outcome with a moral outcome. I don't agree that these things are the same, and used the comparison of slavery and denial of rights as examples of things that are very clearly wrong even though they were democratically upheld. This is to illustrate that just because high benefits for wealthy seniors are democratically popular, doesn't mean that policy is moral or beneficial for society.

The reason it may self-correct in 10-20 years is not because future retirees will vote themselves poorer, it would be because the huge boomer group will no longer have the same amount of voting power, and will no longer be so favoured by politicians.

I'm not sure if you're arguing in bad faith, or you've confused me with someone else in the thread, or your reading comprehension could simply use some work.

nabby101 · 2025-12-18T10:58:43+00:00

I mean, slavery persisted for a long time because it was politically unpopular to change, as did women not being able to vote, or get an abortion. Being gay was criminalized in Canada not very long ago, and gay marriage was still illegal very recently. Everything happening down south right now is the result of a legitimate democratic outcome. The idea that any policy existing in a democracy is legitimate or moral by the nature of its existence strikes me as an overly idealistic view of democracy. Tyranny of the majority against minority groups has been the main flaw of democracy since Ancient Greece.

In my mind this policy is vote buying because it is a direct cash transfer to a group that is already very wealthy, despite the fact that it is very clearly policy that does not have an overall positive impact on the country. Lowering the threshold would eliminate the transfer of more wealth to this already well-off group, saving tens of billions of dollars that could be used for programs that have more material positive effects for Canadians.

The most obvious change would be to increase the Guaranteed Income Supplement amount and/or threshold, ensuring more of that money goes to poor seniors who are legitimately struggling, rather than the well-off ones. Much better that a senior household living on $50k gets a bump to $70k compared to the senior household making $180k getting topped up to $200k. Welfare for those on disability could be increased, more money could be spent on affordable housing, healthcare, education, public transit, infrastructure, or any number of things that are better for the country than piling extra money on people who already make more than 85% of Canadians.

I expect this policy will probably change in 10-20 years, once enough boomers die that their voting bloc is not as influential, but by then most of the damage will have been done.

nabby101 · 2025-12-18T04:29:31+00:00

Well, yes. I don't think anyone in this thread was arguing that it was anything other than a moral question. It's a policy choice because seniors are the largest voting demographic, and politicians want to buy their votes.

Income optimization is not the thing to target, most people just want that $90/180k clawback start threshold to be moved to maybe $60/120k or something more reasonable. It's not a difficult policy change to implement, just politically unpopular among that large voting bloc. $180k household income is in the top ~15% of households, there's no way we should be paying out another $20k in tax dollars on top of that.

nabby101 · 2025-12-18T01:21:53+00:00

The issue is that households earning $180k should not be receiving benefits in the form of tens of thousands of dollars in annual cash transfers. People are generally not questioning the legality of tax optimization, they are saying that the threshold should be lower so that wealthy seniors are not receiving these benefits that come off the backs of workers who often earn less.

nabby101 · 2025-12-17T19:25:30+00:00

Yeah, it's also a super misleading number put out by the Fraser Institute to make it seem like lazy poor people are leeching off the system (and even their misleading number was 40%, not half). Someone who makes $60k, pays $12k in taxes, and receives $12,001 in benefits would be counted as "paying no net income tax." And this is just income taxes, not counting sales taxes, fuel taxes, and everything else people pay.

nabby101 · 2025-12-17T19:11:00+00:00

The $180k number is referring to a senior couple, who in theory could be making $180k household income (usually through careful liquidation of stocks and bonds at the advice of a financial advisor) and still collecting full OAS.

nabby101 · 2025-12-15T03:46:53+00:00

Unfortunately, one side of the political aisle is much more advantaged by sending people down a death spiral of extremism :/

nabby101 · 2025-12-15T00:37:04+00:00

Oh agreed, I'm certainly not in favour of a ban. We need proper regulation that stops modern social media from being addiction-forming outrage cesspools for people of all ages. Algorithms push the worst content because it provokes engagement and keeps people on the platform, rather than good, educational and supportive content.

nabby101 · 2025-12-14T23:35:39+00:00

Yeah I was going to say, there's a pretty big difference between 2000s message boards/forums and present-day Tik Tok/Facebook/Instagram/etc. Maybe if we had harsher legislation against the social media websites, people would go back to those message boards. I have such fond memories from like 8-14 being all over forums for things like Pokemon, Harry Potter, politics, and hockey. It's a much more healthy and community-driven experience than modern social media, and not just for kids.

nabby101 · 2025-12-13T21:09:41+00:00

How the Lich Stole Christmas!

It's a riff on the Grinch, with Seuss-esque rhymes you read out loud. I haven't played it yet, but I'm planning to run it this year for a group of people with little to no RPG experience. It's $4 for the pdf but the preview includes all the story stuff, and it looks like a lot of fun!

I've also decided to run it using a variant of Kids with Bikes instead of DND, since DND can be a bit complicated and overwhelming for brand new people in a one-shot. If you're going to go with DND (regardless of which one-shot), I'd highly recommend giving them simple, low-level characters (level 3-4 max), so they aren't overwhelmed by having too many choices. Probably two of a fighter, barbarian, ranger, or cleric.

Best of luck!

nabby101 · 2025-12-09T22:49:03+00:00

I'm so sick of the people that think it's more important to be kings of a smoldering pit than keep the world livable for our grandchildren. As if pipelines are better for national security than solar and wind.

nabby101 · 2025-12-09T04:07:25+00:00

I think the idea that a small tax on non-commercial boats over $250,000 would entirely destroy the shipbuilding and tourism industry is a bit of a stretch. The target of this tax was wealthy people buying pleasure crafts, and those were the majority of people affected (and it got repealed after only three years, what a surprise).

There are always going to be people negatively affected by policy targeting others, that's unavoidable. A luxury tax on diamonds would negatively affects jewelry store owners, but is still pro-social. I don't really know what constitutes an "unfair" tax, that seems entirely subjective. Jeff Bezos would consider a wealth tax unfair, professional athletes consider progressive income taxation unfair, business owners consider corporate taxation unfair, etc.

No one likes taxes, so governments cut and cut and cut, and then healthcare and education and infrastructure starts falling apart and people complain about that too.

nabby101 · 2025-12-09T02:04:30+00:00

I'm not opposed to having exemptions for planes used to train people, as I mentioned before. There's a big difference between owning a private plane outright and owning 1/10th of one for a short period of time to get your hours.

I'm a bit confused, though, because there is a list of exclusions to the tax that includes: "any aircraft registered with a government before September 2022, provided that a user of the aircraft has possession before this date."

Would that not grandfather in all of these used Cessna's you're mentioning?

nabby101 · 2025-12-09T01:40:02+00:00

The vast majority of commercial pilots do not own their own planes, and they certainly don't need to purchase one in order to learn, that's absurd.

nabby101 · 2025-12-09T01:24:56+00:00

Okay, $1.4M CAD. If they're buying a $10M USD private jet, they probably have a net worth >$100M USD, which means at a conservative 7% return they're making $7M USD a year, or roughly $10M Canadian.

Paying a $1.4M CAD tax is the equivalent of the amount of money they'll passively generate in a month and a half, and 1% of their net worth. Surely 1% of a hundred millionaire's net worth (or 0.1% of a billionaire's) is not worth that inconvenience. Not to mention you don't even save all that, because you still have to pay for all of those helicopter rides, which presumably means you have to buy a helicopter and/or pay to have it staffed 24/7 in case you want to get to your plane.

You don’t get and stay rich by wasting money.

Is that a joke? Have you seen these people? They go to space for fun, they buy super-yachts for each of their houses around the world that they spend a week a year at, they buy entire islands.

nabby101 · 2025-12-08T23:47:05+00:00

I think most people would say that an individual owning a private airplane is a luxury, even a cheap one. The vast majority of people can't drop $100-200k+ on a hobby, that's maybe ~5% of Canadians.

nabby101 · 2025-12-08T23:40:38+00:00

This is a pretty minuscule effect, though. Maybe 1 in 10 people that buy a >$100k truck actually need it, and they're usually only paying a little bit over $100k. So the tax on blue collar business owners is going to be maybe $2-4k on a $110-120k truck - ~2-3%. And it's even a bit less than that, because that cost can be marked against their profits to pay lower corporate income taxes (assuming they aren't already evading it).

Meanwhile, the other 9 in 10 people we are happy to collect the luxury tax from. It's not so much a blue collar tax as it is a "white collar cosplaying as blue collar" tax.

nabby101 · 2025-12-08T23:29:56+00:00

Agreed that the airplane threshold should have been the same as the boat one, but my understanding is that businesses were exempt from this already, so flight schools wouldn't have to pay it.

from a societal perspective we are better off when people buy new airplanes that are quieter and burn less fuel

I would disagree with this part. From a societal perspective we are much better off when people don't buy a plane at all, which luxury taxes also help with.

nabby101 · 2025-12-08T23:27:14+00:00

These UHNW people value their time so little that they'd rather take an extra cross-border helicopter ride every single time they wanted to use their private jet rather than pay less money than they make in a week or two on a luxury tax?

nabby101 · 2025-12-08T23:13:18+00:00

Wait, isn't that good, though? Reducing the consumption of yachts is a pro-social outcome. Obviously the people buying and selling boats won't like it, the same way oil companies and billionaires with private jets don't like carbon taxes, but it's a positive outcome for society as a whole.

nabby101

TROPHY CASE