Rail Baron said
Alberta looks like a good place to die, from this perspective!

Anyone know the probate fees in BC? I'll bet that Norman1 has it at his fingertips.  

https://www.taxtips.ca/willsan.....ritory.htm

FYI, BC is a gouger like Ontario.

For Ontario residents, the avoid probate strategy might still make sense. it did for my wife and family. It's not a stretch to see probate fees before lawyer top $20,000, which is quite the leap vs Alberta. 😉

Although the interest rate hit for Insurance based GIAs vs chasing highest GIC rates, is real, it can be mitigated considerably by a good laddering strategy and the magic of compound interest. In our case we had multiple 5yr GIAs paying over 4%, with top rate being 4.95%, with Manulife. Of course there were others paying considerably less.
Bottom Line: As you pointed out in the Manulife 3.0% Offer thread, for some folks, it's better to accept the Probate, and other fees, than go the route we did. It all depends on the particular situation. For our family, having 100% of MIL's estate covered by Beneficiery designations was the correct one, for a number of reasons.

Anyone know the probate fees in BC? I'll bet that Norman1 has it at his fingertips.

Jim Sherat said

Having never experienced the "probate" process, how does one arrive at the expected fee in Ont. ? Is that $525 for lawyers fees ?, or does a lawyer even have to be involved, if the Will is not being contested ? Also, I assume if the family home is still in the name of the deceased, then that is a whole other complication, with higher Probate fee ? thanks, Norman.

Probate taxes are paid to the provincial court for the probate grant order. Lawyer fees are in addition to the probate taxes.

The tax is based on the value of the assets covered by the order. Each province has a formula.

In Ontario, the probate tax is

• $0 for the first $50,000 of assets and
• $15 for each $1,000 (or part thereof) above $50,000.

The probate tax in Alberta is not as onerous:

A lawyer is not required if one is up to doing all the paperwork. One will need a lawyer or commissioner of oaths to do any required affidavits.

Transaction fees, like land transfer fees and stock brokerage fees, are also extra.

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Bill said
canadian.100, I did the same, move investments to USA and elsewhere, starting around 2016.

It's not so much the governments as the reason, it's just that I suddenly realized the Canadians around me, when I listened to them and watched their voting patterns from municipal up to federal level, seemed (generally) anti-capitalism, anti private sector business development, and more pro-socialism, still do today, so my equities money is now mainly in places where capitalism and corporations are seen as positives and welcomed. Again, just my own super-macro approach, might as well sail with the wind.  

Well expressed! - I am in agreement with your assessment. I also note that so many Canadians are anti-capitalism, and pro-socialism - I believe it is not the way to go.

It's not so much the governments as the reason, it's just that I suddenly realized the Canadians around me, when I listened to them and watched their voting patterns from municipal up to federal level, seemed (generally) anti-capitalism, anti private sector business development, and more pro-socialism, still do today, so my equities money is now mainly in places where capitalism and corporations are seen as positives and welcomed. Again, just my own super-macro approach, might as well sail with the wind.

Bill said
Foreign investment (e.g. shares) and foreign debt buying (e.g. bonds) are not the same to me, I don't know but being reliant on the latter would seem to be less desirable for an economy.  

The US economy continues to be a powerhouse and is easily capable of attracting both US and foreign buyers for govt bonds and for the stock markets even with the Canadian $ now at 0.70 US and moving to a possible 0.65US. Canada is not friendly to business and investors ..... taxes are high due to high spending and expensive social programs and constant handouts. I have been rebalancing my investments to invest less in Canada and more in the US.

Similarly, other countries may want to reduce the power of the US financial system, but the US bond market is still the go-to place for financial security in troubled times, the US dollar is heavily baked into the world financial system, etc. It isn't like everyone can just say "hmm, let's invest our hundreds of billions in US treasuries in Belgian government bonds instead".

The deep and entrenched US financial system can be looked at as a financial service export as much as a foreign financing source for the US, and changes would be a gradual evolution, not a quick alteration - a sudden run on US Treasuries makes for exciting fiction plots, but has significant difficulties in real-world realization! Things like increasing US domestic manufacturing output, or trade imbalances, or domestic capital allocation, or whatever, are higher-level questions on top of that.

Loonie said
FWIW, I did anticipate that some would disagree with my opinion above. However I can't buy Norman's opinion.

When a country is dependent on investment from another country, let alone China, and especially if this arises because the recipient country doesn't have enough savers (good grief!), it becomes vulnerable in innumerable ways.…

That's false. The US allows foreign capital to invest. It is not dependent on that capital. That's just a misintepretation of the situation.

Profitable businesses, including the ones in the US, can reinvest their profits in themselves or invest in other businesses. There are plenty of such businesses in the US.

Berkshire Hathaway is one. It has $400 billion in cash and short-term cash equivalents waiting to be invested somewhere, including in the US.

Another is Microsoft. Net profits about $125 billion. Pays out about $25 billion of that to shareholders. Are we to believe that $25 billion a year is just spent on consumption?

Ditto with those incredible statements of China's oil consumption and EV's. Nonsene. China cut it oil consumption by cutting its oil refining for its petroleum product exports. ChatGPT's explanation actually agrees with the facts:

You are completely right, and that is an excellent catch. The math reveals a massive 3.5 million barrel per day (bpd) gap that cannot be explained by stockpile draws or drop in consumption alone.

The missing link is a dramatic drop in refinery processing runs (the amount of oil actually turned into fuel). Chinese refiners simply stopped buying crude and stopped making products they couldn't sell or export. [1]

## Breaking Down the 5 Million BPD Import Drop
When China slashed its imports by roughly 5 million bpd (falling from 11.4 million down to ~6.5 million bpd), that missing oil was accounted for by three very different mechanisms: [2]

Total Import Cut (~5.0M bpd)
├── Consumption Drop: 0.2M to 0.6M bpd (Actual demand destruction)
├── ️ Stockpile Drawdown: 1.0M bpd (Using up existing crude reserves)
└── Refinery Run Cuts: ~3.5M bpd (The missing piece: Idled capacity)

## Why Refinery Run Cuts Dominated the Drop
The bulk of the import collapse happened because Chinese refineries aggressively shut down or slowed down their processing units. They did this for two critical reasons:

* Squeezed Profit Margins: Because the war drove crude prices up to $120–$150 a barrel, but domestic fuel prices were capped or managed by the government to protect citizens, refiners were losing immense amounts of money on every barrel they processed. [3, 4]

* The Product Export Ban: Beijing banned the export of refined gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel to guarantee domestic energy security. Normally, Chinese mega-refineries import vast amounts of crude just to process it and export the finished fuel to the rest of Asia. When the government blocked those exports, refiners lost their buyers, rendering millions of barrels of processing capacity instantly useless. [5, 6]

…

All I care about is who is the dominant military power because that determines who the top dog is at any moment, we live in a world where (ultimately) might has always, and always will be (in my opinion), right. As of today that still appears to be USA over anyone else and I've no doubt USA can ramp up military production dramatically and very quickly if it's an emergency.

When a country is dependent on investment from another country, let alone China, and especially if this arises because the recipient country doesn't have enough savers (good grief!), it becomes vulnerable in innumerable ways. Further, I don't think we have a very clear or reliable sense of how big this problem is. Anecdotally, however, it appears to be quite large, from what I've picked up from people in various countries and sectors.

Be that as it may...
yes, the US has its military. The problems there are at least threefold: Increasingly, it seems like that's all they have, weak on diplomacy and helpfulness and strong on threats and bullying; people in other countries with fewer resources still outwit them; and I have read that they are using up their weaponry faster than they can replace it.

I don't want to get into an interminable discussion and don't have the capacity for that any more, but these are my observations.