• 5 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • Headline and article mischaracterize the report’s findings.

    The country added nearly 1.3 million people last year — a 3.2 per cent increase — while the economy grew by just 1.1 per cent in the same time period. That means more people taking slices out of an economic pie that hasn’t grown much bigger.

    Right, but if we’re talking about GDP per capita growth, we should probably subtract retirees from the population number, and not count new residents that don’t have the right to work. Also, one year data is probably not very valuable because I think the we’re only just now reaching a post-pandemic equilibrium in terms of retirement/ migration flows. Probably a lot better to look at 10 year numbers.

    The news isn’t all bad. Data shows real weekly earnings — a person’s take home pay — has actually increased in Canada, even when accounting for inflation. The household savings rate is also up.

    So it’s not that we’re getting poorer, it’s that we’re not getting richer as quickly?

    This is toxic ‘keeping up with the Joneses’.

    We should focus on equity and sustainability, not growth for growth’s sake.



  • I agree that the government should govern not politick, but isn’t it a bit naive to think you can make lasting change without politicking?

    I wonder if it’s useful to look at “governing”, and “politicking” as either end of a spectrum with “leading” as the sweet spot.

    Just my two cents though.



  • It’s really telling that Chinese EVs (like imported Teslas) were basically considered fine until the prospect of them being affordable to the middle class arose. That’s when we started hearing about labour abuses and fires that only happen with * cheap Chinese* batteries.

    It’s not like Tesla has a stellar reputation for quality and reliability. They started powerwall as a way to offload bad/ prematurely failing batteries. Don’t get me wrong, powerwall is a good idea. But pretending like BYD is going to have terrible batteries and that’s why we need tariffs is bad.

    China has labour and human rights abuses (eg genocide of Uyghers in Xinjiang [cultural genocide is still genocide]). Imo Canada is doing a better job of reconciling with its history/present of cultural genocide than China is. Canada’s TFW program probably results in lots of horrible abuses that we don’t hear about, but i think this program may be on its way out too. These issues don’t only apply to EVs though.

    The only things that’re EV specific are lithium batteries and automotive manufacturing.

    EV tariffs are protectionism: We want to protect domestic automotive (and para-automotive) manufacturing capabilities, and our investments in EVs/green tech.

    I don’t think 100% tariffs can be justified on EVs alone.




  • If they know these people are active criminals they will have no problem citing just cause for arrest and search.

    I live in Canada, our gun rules are different than the USA. This week in my city some charges against a dangerous criminal were dropped because the police had a “flagrant disregard for charter rights” (according to the judge) (oir charter rights are similar to American civil rights)

    They searched him improperly, and found a loaded, illegal gun. Charges dismissed. If they had handled it properly they could have made the charges stick. What a waste of everyone’s time. Police didn’t respect his rights because they don’t respect my rights.






  • I think you deleted a sentence or something. Your 5% number is to do with the opportunity cost? So you’re saying that the project cost Vancouver 5% of 31.8M ie 1.6M. That makes sense.

    I think comparing it to the cost of a single duplex is a good way to provide context.

    But the city didn’t buy the units, they only catalyzed their construction. So it’s not a perfect analogy.

    Another short coming of your analysis is that the estimated cost of the loan is ignoring the risk of default. What if the contractor spends the money, but fails to complete the project? Or builds it but cuts a bunch of corners and gets sued into bankruptcy?

    The risk of that is the real cost of the project. But overall I like your analysis, thanks for bringing it up.




  • Idon’t think that’s a warship (although I do concede it’s gathering intel) and it’s a 1500km boat ride away from Canada’s territorial waters.

    1500km is about twice the length of Canada’s pacific coast (Southern tip of Vancouver Island, to Northern tip of Haida Gwaii)

    My view is that the condition of the arctic ice cap is of global interest, but China’s claim to be an arctic nation is total garbage.

    Canada probably should take steps to further assert sovereignty over its arctic archipelago (and the associated searoute), but I still feel that the comment I was responding to was spreading alarmist junk.



  • It seems that there is a lot of moving parts to this story and the article reports some eventsand quotes but doesn’t really string them together coherently. The Liberal MP that’s accused of trying to shift the discussion to abortion rights had some procedural complaints about the way the Conservative meeting chair set up the meeting, and argued that they were changing the topic away from abortion. Is there any merit to that complaint? It’s the sort of thing an article needs to address.


  • So we have fewer doctors per person.

    Small quibble: we have approximately the same number of doctors per capita as we always have. The problem is that the amount of medical care reqired per person is going up because elderly people need more care than middle aged people. Ie as boomers age they require more care, also their parents are living longer, which is great, but also translates to a lot more care within a lifetime than previous generations. As boomers require more care they are simultaneously retiring from the work force and thus reducing the number of medical professionals. A lot of the gap is being filled by para-medical workers (eg personal support workers). Who are largely immigrants.

    The fact that we simultaneously need more doctors, and send thousands(?) of bright, hardworking Canadians overseas for medical training where they saddle themselves with debt, but then make it difficult for them to come back and work in Canada is a real shame (I mean that literally, we should be ashamed of how poorly this system is being managed).