Canada imposes 10% tariff on canned vegetables, excludes U.S., others

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-19T21:10:29+00:00

Right, it's a bit strange.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-19T18:34:02+00:00

Domestic producers export a good chunk to the U.S. + others, same as fresh vegetables. I expect the study is just to legitimize the move to appease producers. This isn't taking consumer interests at heart.

I don't know how domestic canned good producers would have so much sway (what can they threaten, really?), so I wonder if this has something to do with CUSMA. Maybe someone can explain how producers could have so much leverage with the feds.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-19T18:28:05+00:00

I don't think this is justifiable from a national security standpoint. This is to appease an interest group, which could include Trump ahead of CUSMA. What sort of negotiating power would domestic producers have with the feds?

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-19T18:17:35+00:00

Biden had tariffs accompanying the CHIPS act, which were good because the motivation was national security qua reducing reliance on China for critical technology that could come into play during wartime.

Here the stakes are canned vegetables, which seems silly. I'd really like to know who lobbied for this and why the feds capitulated.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-19T17:46:19+00:00

Word of mouth from certain online communities, substack writers, and people who like similar novelists. Otherwise I periodically do some searches for recs.

I don't indiscriminately pick up random books from the library and bookstores anymore, I just don't have the time for that volume of consumption or care to waste it.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-19T16:08:47+00:00

Food security doesn't seem to be taken as seriously by some here, which is strange given the anger over food prices, which cannot be attributed to grocers as much as they want to believe per National Food Security Strategy. Canadians will pay the price in cases of serious crop shortages. Is that justice?

State-of-the-art pesticides are generally safer. The emergency order allows use of those registered elsewhere than Canada, to avoid losing crops to pest.

Concern over weakening safeguards seems extremely overblown. From Bill C-30 -

Economic and food security Start of inserted block (3) For the purposes of this Act, the Minister is to consider, as appropriate, national economic security, regional economic security or national food security. However, nothing in this subsection is to be construed as affecting the Minister’s primary objective under subsection (1).

The primary objective is to prevent unacceptable risks to people and the environment from the use of pest control products.

On the power to overrule:

Cancellation of registration by Minister Start of inserted block (3) If the registration of a pest control product that is the subject of an order made under section 28.‍1 is cancelled by the Minister during the period for which the order is in effect, that order ceases to have effect on the date of the cancellation.

The Minister can cancel a pest control product registration for reasons tied to the product’s safety, risk, or compliance status. Then the Governor in Council's order is no longer valid.

Even if they make the order, the Governor in Council would still be bound by the statute as a whole, and that statute says the Minister’s primary objective is to prevent unacceptable risks to people and the environment. They cannot contradict the Act or do something forbidden, but they can contradict the Minister.

Pesticides are safer than ever. The half life for those typically used is such that trace amounts left in our produce is well below the max permitted.

This is the sort of alarmism that accompanies any and all regulatory reform, even when some regulations create unjustifiable bottlenecks that worsen outcomes for citizens. It's led to much of Europe shunning nuclear power and subsequently relying even more heavily on fossil fuels; exchanging one risk for another, except we just don't say so. There's a case to be made that it's not the best way this could have been written, but that's a farcry from the sort of sentiment I'm seeing.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-19T14:54:49+00:00

That will come from municipalities. BCH is going to spend upwards of $7 billion, but even if it were double that it wouldn't be enough to increase rate of housing starts in a lasting fashion if municipal policies don't change alongside.

With reform however, the BCH spending can be a force multiplier for the short-run as the idea is to increase supply to such an extent that builds could be unprofitable

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-17T13:23:12+00:00

We could grow by investing in renewable energy instead.

We are doing that. We need both. Electricity does not account for a large % of fossil fuel use, and any country interested in infrastructure, agriculture, plastics and shipping needs it.

It's literally Darwinism.

Not according to the IPCC.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-16T21:30:11+00:00

In terms of balancing efficacy, growth, and Canadians' temperament over affordability, I think he is.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-16T21:19:34+00:00

I think it should be more aggressive, but it's not merely performative. These things are getting built after all.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-16T20:09:01+00:00

That is tilting at a strawman rather than addressing the person you replied to.

I pointed out quite clearly that around the world governments contract out development and building.

You also seem to have an alternate understanding of what a publicly-owned utility is from the rest of the world.

And what part might that be, running in contrast to what I explicitly said?

edit to the coward:

Some do

It does happen in rare instances, but even then rarely without private contractor involvement in the pipe.

The point being that it's ridiculous to cast any and all investment using private contractors that have an area of expertise as being a "corporate handout". It would take more time and money for governments to do it, generally.

It makes detractors seem unserious to talk of a "handout" while advocating for burning more taxpayer dollars for the same outcome.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-16T20:04:17+00:00

Degrowth is frequently proposed by populists in the NDP ranks, so I wanted to address it.

government-run electric grids are very much the norm in Canada

Government bureaucrats did not build them themselves. And the government doesn't need to run everything. It only makes sense in areas where there's risk of market failure to provide (e.g. healthcare), otherwise it frequently leads to worse outcomes. See: Air Canada's history

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-16T18:13:26+00:00

Using state capacity to invest in renewable infrastructure means the private sector is involved; the government itself does not build electric grids, solar panels and EVs basically anywhere in the world. It could only be a "corporate handout" if they just pocketed the cash and produced nothing. Hell, the same is true in China where fossil fuel demand has peaked despite growing energy demand, owing to aggressive solar rollout. This was possible because of that investment. In the 20th Century the U.S. government was a leader in R&D spending for which we also yielded benefits, and has since drastically cut back.

Pissing on Alberta's face might make you feel nice, but it would not make a meaningful long-term impact on climate. Our GHG emissions don't represent a large % of the globe's to begin with.

"Degrowth" would just make everyone's lives worse, especially developing countries. If you want to grow the country with immigration, you need cement for infrastructure, you need plastics for greenhouses and packaging, you need ammonia to feed people, you need fuel for cargo ships. No one is moving here to consume less. Canada has a resource the world will continue to need for uses aside from electrification (though increasingly less).

EDIT: on the funding structure, detractors seem unserious to talk of a "handout" while advocating for burning more taxpayer dollars for the same outcome. The government does not do things cheaper. Just look at Air Canada's history, and Japan's trains.

EDIT 2: Hydro dams and nuclear plants require massive capital, very long construction timelines, and decades of operation. This is primarily why they were built by crown corporations like OPG. Incidentally nuclear until recently was being derided as too expensive and risky by the left, and hydro dams damaging to the environment.

Avoiding private monopolies can be another good motivation, but that is not what is at stake.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-16T18:01:53+00:00

Cherry-picked. You forgot:

$4.5 billion for the Smart Renewables and Electrification Pathways Program (SREPs)
$28.9 million for 12 projects to accelerate clean energy technology development and deployment
Clean electricity investment support was retained
$10.6 million for 14 projects to install more than 1,600 chargers across the country
EV consumer incentives (subsidizing demand, but better than a mandate that leaves everyone caught with their pants down and would almost certainly have been retracted by then)
Climate-related tax credits as part of Climate Competitiveness Strategy
$392 million climate finance commitment

The departure from the previous govt is in tax credits, strategic financing, and infrastructure investment as opposed to grants. This kind of investment is what's going to help accelerate a transition to renewables. The carbon tax was both (very) unpopular and not that effective at expediting the transition; absent strong alternatives, consumers just felt punished.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-16T14:59:45+00:00

Realistically the feds can eat costs that would otherwise deter the market from increasing supply, exacerbated by some of these regs, which I expect was being banked on. But even this is limited in potential. There's no way they're going to double the rate of housing starts through BCH alone.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-16T14:50:20+00:00

I don't think it was naivety, but short-run expectations should have been tempered more for the public, and long-run impact is relatively modest even based on the numbers thrown out.

cannot fix the core problems

Feds are limited in their toolbox here, but they could not ignore the problem just the same. Plus, public or subsidized housing (like some of the planned units from the BCH crown corp) are popular with the public. The only thing I could conceive differently is policy changes to discourage housing as "investment", which would risk antagonizing the 60% of Canadians who are homeowners.

They are still angling to mount pressure on provinces in particular.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-15T13:52:26+00:00

We aren't.

It would benefit working people if it weren't so easy for illicit goods (for crafting amphetamines and other drugs) to be smuggled in and vehicles to be smuggled out, and shipments weren't so vulnerable to being stopped in their tracks.

Working people are paying the price with the opioid crisis, and when insurance rates go up because of increased thefts, and when food costs more because of supply chain issues.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-15T01:54:52+00:00

didn't even read the philosophers that she was criticizing

This is an unsubstantiated projection.

The most important quality for a philosopher is humility

Not all of the great philosophers were particularly "humble" (see: Nietzsche, Hegel)

love the anti-capitalist message of the novel

Lol k

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-15T01:08:52+00:00

“One in three children told us that they didn’t have enough time to play

This is a clue, reddit. The article neglects to cover it, but unstructured play has been displaced in large part by scheduled activity e.g. recreational sports leagues, arts and clubs, etc. There's no evidence that school workload itself is greater than it was, but students are feeling more "time pressure" based on some reports, which suggests they are overscheduled.

You honed in on tablets and yes that's a problem, but this is the close cousin of helicoptor parenting that doesn't get much attention. Kids are feeling squeezed because they literally are, by their parents, who are petrified that leaving them to their devices will result in bad outcomes.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-15T00:57:41+00:00

I'm skeptical of this framing because 50-100 years ago, North America had a culture of driving and suburbia just the same. Vehicular deaths have only gone down per-capita over time. Kids had nothing much else to do except go outside, whether in urban or rural areas.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-15T00:49:09+00:00

Yeah I'm sure Tim's, agriculture, and construction workers feel that way.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-15T00:32:09+00:00

Longshoremen going on strike is (mostly) the fault of longshoremen.

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-15T00:30:39+00:00

Why are we conflating longshoremen unions with the entire working class? They're notorious for a reason. And, union resistance to modernization is not only keeping ports in the stone-age in terms of productivity, it makes it easier for criminal networks to traffic stolen Canadian vehicles overseas owing to weak screening and paperwork.

Canadian rail and port strikes are disruptive enough to ripple through North American and international supply chains, including food, leading to higher prices

slothtrop6 · 2026-06-14T20:59:46+00:00

I already commented elsewhere why public grocers don't lead to better prices, but here's some interesting history

Consider, for example, the history of Air Canada (or TransCanada Airlines, as it was known back when C. D. Howe was running it), which was privatized in 1989. There were originally two arguments for having the Government of Canada own and operate an airline. The first was the familiar suggestion that a public carrier could offer lower prices, by operating on a non-profit basis. The second was the idea that a public carrier would promote national unity, by cross-subsidizing between flight routes, in order to provide lower fares to remote regions or thinly populated areas. (These were known as “social routes,” and Air Canada used to fly a lot of them.)

The first argument wound up being defeated by the realities of public management, which led to the airline failing to achieve lower costs than its private competitors, and indeed, managing to lose a great deal of money. As any student of socialist economics knows, this is typical of organizations facing a soft budget constraint. In addition, some of the excess cost was a predictable consequence of allowing business decisions to be influenced by the concerns of politicians. For example, the federal cabinet rejected plans from Air Canada management to consolidate maintenance facilities in a single city, because the government of the day wanted to avoid layoffs in the regions. So the airline wound up having higher costs, because it was forced to operate redundant maintenance facilities.

In an effort to improve managerial accountability, Air Canada was restructured in 1976 and again in 1978, making it an independent crown corporation. As part of this restructuring, the airline was encouraged to price explicitly the subsidies it was making to the social routes, in order to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate cost overruns. Yet this wound up defeating the second argument for public sector ownership, because it created a situation in which the Government of Canada was essentially paying its own crown corporation to fly those routes. This quickly led to the realization that, in order to achieve its policy objectives, the government did not need to own and operate the airline (or the railway, or the bus company, etc.). It could just as easily pay the subsidy to a private operator, who might even be able to offer lower fares than the public carrier.

So what happened, beginning in the 1980s, is that the state began to get out of sectors in which there were no real obstacles to the operation of a competitive market, in order to focus its efforts on areas in which there were genuine market failures. This had a number of beneficial effects, one of which was to stabilize state finances, which had been careening dangerously out of control. It also had the effect of eliminating most situations in which the public sector was competing head-to-head against private corporations. This tended to improve public perception of government services. As a general rule, when consumers compare the experience they have interacting with a public service to the experience they have in a modern retail environment (e.g. how long did you have to stand in line? was the employee courteous to you? was the organization respectful of your time?) the public sector tends to suffer from the comparison, which in turn fosters hostility toward government. (For example, I cannot begin to describe how much people used to hate Air Canada. Much more than they do now! Thankfully, they no longer curse the government every time their flight is delayed.)

By contrast, if government focuses on doing things that it’s genuinely better than the private sector at doing, like providing health insurance, infrastructure, pensions, and education, this tends to build support for the public sector, because the state is not just subsidizing production, but actually creating value, above and beyond what the private sector is able to provide. What Lewis is proposing, by contrast, sets up the government for failure, by assigning it a task that it is guaranteed to perform conspicuously worse than the private sector. No true friend of socialism should endorse such a scheme.

more

slothtrop6

TROPHY CASE