Fred Dennis

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@DemosKratosCA I think someone has already beaten you to the punch on the whole 1st dictator thing. Solid platform though, I'll support you.

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@DM4444 @anttsinc @grok No Darcy, the democrats lost. They were the most corrupt. Or do facts not matter to you.

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@KushPatil_ @grok It's really not a big deal. One province amongst a sea of elbozos.

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@Armando89271415 @RealisticReid @KushPatil_ @grok That's your definition of wokeness? You're absolutely lost.

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@kinsellawarren Only the truly moronic ones

[Elliot Daigneault @hrh_elliot]

Once again the Canadian government FAILS to understand the problem

I would know, I founded and ran a tech company for a decade and raised MILLIONS from investors

And it was HORRIBLE doing business here

Let me explain

This isn't a "money issue"

This is a regulatory, economic and taxation issue combined with a deep cultural problem

Back in 2015 I founded a tech company, using my own money from working in the Alberta oil field

We developed our MVP in Montreal and launched our proof of concept right here in the West Island

Our first ever investors were our own first clients. We raised $150,000 from them

But things got harder when it came time to raise our seed round

I met with EVERY SINGLE VC in Montreal.

All told us NO

Why?

Too risky

lol... its the very definition of Venture Capital

They wanted a pitch deck, projections on 5 years, cashflow, business plan, go-to-market strategy, communication strategy, marketing strategy, Tech reviews, C.V. of founding team, financial disclosure etc

We spent more time preparing documents for them than we did scaling our business

Worse of all, they all wanted something different and would give contradicting requirements

I remember this interaction at the Espace CDPQ, the headquarter for all Venture firms in Montreal

ie:

Investor: How much do you need
Me: $1 Million
Investor: So if you only raise $750k what happens?
Me: Well we'll adapt XYZ
Investor: So then never EVER tell me a fix number. Give me a range. $750K-$1.5M or else you look foolish

I went home, reworked the pitch deck

The very next day:

New investor: How much you need
Me: $750K-$1.5M
New investor: What... you don't even know your number???
Me: well... yes but what if we raise less or more
New Investor: No, you look foolish

We said screw it. Approached American Investor

Our first was a VC firm out of Houston, Texas

Took less than 1 month from initial pitch, to closing.

In USD. For more money than what Canadians wanted to offer.

Best of all, they understood the fluid nature of a startup. No onerous and rigid plan. No overburdened documentation. Every second wasted on non-operating activities was sucking productive time away from scaling.

But Elliot... what about BDC and other AMAZING institutions in Canada

We did business with the BDC. a $250,000 loan. Which I had to personally guarantee.

Which 25 year old has assets and the balls to guarantee that amount? Very few. It's prohibitive. And reduces capital available to our homegrown companies

And this was AFTER MONTHS of explaining to them what we were doing. It was clear the BDC was setup to support traditional brick-and-mortar companies only.

Think Manufacturers or Commerces. But a tech startup? They could NOT wrap their heads around it.

Canadian banks? Forget it. Outright. Too risky

Then I watch fellow startups do the same. And move to the US.

Why wouldn't they?

In Quebec, I had to pay an extra 15% on top of my payroll as taxes. QPIP, QPP, FSS, CNESST... all to satisfy the government non-stop appetite.

Consequences: Well for a startup where every dollar counts, this means lower salaries thus harder to attract top talent (vs American competitors)

or

I simply hired less staff... thus slowly growth for both my company and the country's economy.

But wait it gets worse.

Revenue Quebec and CRA both required a plethora of compliance documents filled monthly or quarterly. GST and QST tax fillings, CNESST Salary equity (yes lol) documents, Source deduction documents, RL-1 fillings, Income tax (both QC and CAN), Workplace sexual harassment policy, OQLF policy, CNESST training and certification... the list goes on

At least 1 day a month was spent by me and some of my executives preparing and fulfilling these documents. This means we were't scaling our business and instead working for FREE for the government.

Then there is the tax burden.

Why would top talent want to come here and get taxed at up to 52% marginal rate?

While a Miami startup offers higher salary and the State taxes you 0%

Finally investor behaviour

In Canada... safe. steady return. Great for a Series C. Great for an established companies. No desire for risk. No understanding of the ecosystem.

HORRIBLE FOR VENTURE

Meanwhile the U.S. , they understand the ecosystem. 90% of their investment will go down to 0. But the few that survive will go on to earn them BILLIONS and change the world.

So this new announcement of $1.75Billion won't change the underlying issue that makes us uncompetitive.

At best, it will go to startups who will flee to the US the very second the money hits

At worse, it will just be another slush fund given to friends of the government

and I fear its the latter as usual

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@the_fish1984 @StevenKerwin @p00x @MaximumK75753 NATO should have been disbanded the moment the Berlin wall came down. It has been nothing but a beligerent since. You warmongers keep spewing the same tired propaganda. The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Absolutely retarded you are.

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@the_fish1984 @StevenKerwin @p00x @MaximumK75753 You think they wanted independence, so they joined a military alliance. Did you read that before posting? That's just plain stupidity.

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@ZelenskyyUa Actually you are losing the war. It's painfully obvious. Dictators do have some wild takes though.

[Maliq @MasterMaliq]

I think Muslims need to understand something uncomfortable.

Non-Muslims do not owe Muhammad their respect. They do not believe he was a prophet, and some do not even consider him a good man. You can disagree with them, but you cannot demand that they see him the way you do.

Your reverence for someone does not create an obligation for the rest of the world to revere him.

So, are we going to kill everyone who insults Muhammad, or are we going to learn to practise our religion in a world where not everyone shares our beliefs?

Because the world is not going to become Muslim just to protect our feelings.

We have two choices: learn to live with our differences or spend our lives fighting a world we cannot control.

You cannot force people to love your prophet by making them afraid to criticise him. You can only teach them to fear those who claim to love him.

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@JonFraserTF Perhaps you're just an ignorant sack of shit. Seems likely given your response.

[Liz Churchill @liz_churchill10]

The world is being destroyed by the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization and the Intelligence Agencies. They’re using Colour Revolutions, DEI, NGO’s, Immigration Warfare, Biological Warfare and Psychological Warfare. No one voted for this shit.

[L. Wayne Mathison @WayneMathison]

George Orwell Would Have a Field Day in Canada Today

George Orwell understood something politicians would rather we forget: control the language and you can influence how people think.

Look at Canadian politics.

Borrowed money becomes an “investment.”

More government spending becomes “compassion.”

Preferential treatment becomes “equity.”

Political disagreement becomes “division.”

Unpopular opinions become “misinformation.”

Government failures become excuses for expanding government authority.

And when citizens question the official narrative, too often the response is to attack their motives rather than answer their arguments.

Orwell warned us about political language designed to conceal reality rather than explain it.

Our media should be challenging that language, especially publicly funded broadcasters such as the CBC. Journalism should hold government accountable, regardless of which party holds power.

Canada is not Orwell’s 1984. We still have democratic elections, independent courts, and freedom to criticize our government. Those distinctions matter.

But democracy requires more than the right to vote every few years. It requires citizens willing to question authority, demand evidence, and reject political double standards.

I don’t care whether it’s Liberal, Conservative, or NDP. Apply the same standards to everyone.

Orwell’s lesson is simple: When politicians change the meaning of words, citizens need to pay closer attention to the facts.

A government that cannot defend its policies without manipulating language deserves more scrutiny, not more trust.

Think for yourself. Question authority. Demand evidence.

That’s how you keep a free country free.

[Brivael Le Pogam @brivael]

My dear American friends, in my last post I gave you a snapshot of where France stands today. Now let me show you how we got here. I want you to see the whole movie before you buy the ticket.

After the war, France was a machine. We called it the Trente Glorieuses, thirty glorious years. We built Concorde, the most beautiful aircraft ever made. We built a fleet of nuclear reactors in about fifteen years and gave ourselves some of the cleanest, cheapest electricity in the world. We built Ariane and put Europe in space. We built the TGV, the fastest train on earth. We invented the Minitel, an online network in millions of homes before most of you had heard of the internet. We were not a museum. We were builders.

Then came 1981. François Mitterrand. Think of him as our Bernie Sanders, except he actually won. At his side, in the office next to his at the Élysée, sat a 37-year-old prodigy named Jacques Attali, his special adviser for the next ten years. The brightest minds of the left, convinced they could run an economy from a ministry.

Here's what they did. They governed with Communist ministers. In 1982 they nationalized dozens of banks and the biggest industrial groups in the country: Paribas, Suez, Saint-Gobain, Thomson, Pechiney, Rhône-Poulenc. They lowered the retirement age to 60. They cut the work week to 39 hours and added a fifth week of paid vacation. They created a wealth tax. They hired massively into the public sector.

Reality hit in less than two years. Capital fled, inflation ran wild, and the franc was devalued three times. In March 1983 Mitterrand had to slam on the brakes and impose austerity just to stay in the European monetary system.

But here's the trick: the brakes never reversed anything. They just slowed the ratchet. The so-called right came back with Jacques Chirac, and nothing was undone. Under Chirac's presidency, France passed the 35-hour work week. Left or right, every government added one more program, one more rule, one more tax, and nobody ever took one away.

At the same time, the political class did something even more destructive than bad economics. It turned the youth into a political instrument. Instead of teaching young people, including millions of children of immigrants, to love the country they lived in, it taught them a story of guilt and grievance: France as the oppressor, France as the thing to resent. You cannot integrate people into a country you've taught them to despise. We are living with the consequences of that narrative today, in our schools, our suburbs, our streets.

Then forty years of slow decline, all the way to Macron. And the story has a perfect ending. In 2007, Jacques Attali chaired a commission on how to unleash French growth. Its deputy rapporteur was a young civil servant named Emmanuel Macron. The commission proposed more than 300 reforms to free the economy. Almost none were ever implemented. Even the men who built the system knew it wasn't working, and even they couldn't undo it.

No balanced budget since 1974. Public spending around 57% of GDP. Debt above 3,300 billion euros. Growth stuck under 1%.

Now the number that should keep you up at night. In 1995, GDP per person in France was about $27,000. In America, about $29,000. We were neck and neck. Today France is around $49,000. America is around $90,000. You are now nearly twice as rich per person as we are.

What changed? Not our talent. Not our engineers. Not our schools of mathematics. The only thing that changed is that we went all in on socialism. The 35 hours, the endless regulation, the taxes that chase out anyone who builds, the belief that the state should do everything and the individual should ask permission for everything.

There's a line people love to attribute to Einstein: insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. We tried. For forty years, we tried. Every government promised that one more program, one more tax, one more regulation would finally fix things. You just saw where it got us.

So if you choose the Democratic Party, which is literally turning socialist in front of your eyes, you will deserve what comes next.

Let me tell you exactly what will happen if you go down that road. Nobody will vote for decline. Every single measure will sound generous, compassionate, reasonable. Your builders will slowly leave or stop building. Your state will grow every year and never shrink. Your debt will compound. And in thirty years, your kids will look at a chart like the one I just described and wonder when it all went wrong.

You still have something we lost. You have Elon Musk sending rockets to orbit and landing them on their tail. You have Palmer Luckey building the defense industry of the future. You have Jeff Bezos, Jensen Huang, and thousands of founders nobody has heard of yet, building in garages right now.

Trust your entrepreneurs. Don't trust your politicians.

I come from your future. Don't make it yours.

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@MikeDee1976 @Generation4580 @acoyne Clearly you're a bot. Parroting the same nonsense and thinking this is some noble cause. It's the only plausible explanation for your massive ignorance.

[Exit the Left @_ExitTheLeft]

First, let me just say that I love that you used to make these posts about millionaires, until you became one, so you changed your target to billionaires.

Second, you just described a system that both parties exploit, then conveniently blamed the donors you dislike.

Yeah, we get it, you don't like Musk. But what about Michael Bloomberg who gave Democrats more than $60 million, and Dustin Moskovitz who gave another $50+ million? What about Soros? Won't talk about those billionaires, right? Weird -- I wonder why.

How much was spent on Kamala vs Trump in 2024? Kamala was given 2.5x more than Trump.

If you genuinely want “ONE PERSON, ONE VOTE,” propose rules that apply equally to every billionaire, union, corporation, PAC, and special-interest group, regardless of which party benefits.

But you won't do that. You just yap about one side and hope those who read your bullshit aren't very bright.

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@COVIDBurnerAcc @UnwokeMediaInc @MarkJCarney Ah the ignorance of an elbowzo. Meanwhile in reality, those well educated people are leaving canada to work in the US. Your version of freedom applies only to those who agree with you. Otherwise you label them maga or racist or nazis or....In actual fact you are the fascist scum

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@kinsellawarren As do you

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@Shamsplace @FakeGermaansk @ArmstrongEcon If he needs to ask how free speech is regulated in this country, he is bereft of intelligence.

[Fred Dennis @freddyfixedgear]

@Lenageeh @Shamsplace @ArmstrongEcon LOL!!! Prove that foolish statement. I can show you lots of examples how Canada is an authoritarian state.