Beyond the issues of it being NaPo and the Fraser Institute being the main interviewee, using per person GDP as a measure of living standards seems.... Wildly out of touch. There are no comments on consumer pricing index (with all its flaws).
Literally they hinge their proof of "living standards" on average GDP.
I don't even know how to begin addressing that.
Oh man this guy seems unhinged. I found a few other articles over the years in the peterborough examiner that talk about him, never in a great light.
Sad that he seems so far gone - self-declaring himself chief of his own nation and becoming banned from the local municipalities council chambers and other properties
It's definitely in his interest to try and portray lobbyists as useless. If/when this becomes a big story for him, he can pivot and say they're not doing their company any good anyway, so it shouldn't matter.
In December, Poilievre expressed disdain for Bay Street executives, saying he "almost never" speaks to crowds in downtown Toronto or "anywhere close to Bay Street."
Fundraising records show Poilievre has headlined three fundraisers for the Conservative Party on Bay Street and at least four others in downtown Toronto since 2023.
Lol, anyone who thinks Pierre is a "for the people" man is more gullible than those who thought Trudeau was.
Edit: as the article mentions, Liberals made it mandatory to post who's attending these events ahead of time (when >200$/person). CPC fought against it on the grounds of, (an actual quote from the debate minutes)
My question for the minister is this: why legalize something that is ethically unacceptable?
And Pierre voted against the bill.
Beyond his backtracking on election reform when early results indicated it'd be a long, tough battle to actually change and re-educate people?
He ran on transparency, and while he has been faaaar more transparent than Harper, thats a low bar, and I expect better.
Hes had his share of scandals, which isn't good (SNC, ArriveCan, off the top of my head)
He supported the transpacific pipeline, which I personally am against.
The Liberal party drastically increased immigration rates beyond what the systems to help get them started (think transferring education credits, language barriers, community programs, etc) could handle. The current housing crisis is at least in part due to that.
All in all, not a terrible PM by my judge, but I tend to lean further left than him, so it's not like I'd vote for PP no matter what Trudeau did.
It's wild when you see the actual cost per person, and the compare that to the US systems cost per person ( $12,000), and still somehow see people here arguing for a for profit system.
If we doubled our healthcare payments per person, something tells me we would have much better service and outcomes than we currently do, and still be below the US system on a per capita basis. Wild.
Not sure where you get that from. Most systems operate at a major loss and are propped up by grants/government funding. Typical targets for operating are ~1/3 of costs are covered by rider fares with the rest coming from grants or government funding.
Since the thread talks about NYC, I pulled this - MTA Budget. In it they state:
In a normal year, farebox revenue constitutes approximately 40 percent of the MTA’s annual budget, or $6.5 billion
There's a reason we have all the checks and red tape that housing developments go through. Because once the developers leave, it's the Municipality that has to maintain their infrastructure.
I can't count the number of times I've worked on a subdivision project built in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, only to find a half dozen other problwms that we need to fix, at the cost of the City/Town, because it wasnt done right the first time.
Beyond that, those developments had no proper storm water treatment method, and now that we've successfully paved over half the swamps, we're realizing that untreated storm water wreaks havoc on streams and rivers and lakes. Now we've got to build to deal with that, another big cost.
Like no shit stuff was easier to do back in the "good ol days". They just didn't bother figuring out the problems that we're having to deal with now.
EVs make a difference for anyone in an area with low density. I live in the country relatively close to population centres, but it's impossible for me to ever imagine transit being even near me.
We will literally always have a need for small, individual vehicles of some kind for most the population. If we could reduce that to one car, then supplement with transit, where available, or carpooling? Then also make that car an EV instead of ICE? That's a huge emissions reduction
Housing is an easy example. One bedroom or bachelor's pads are, in my area, ~1200/month. Not the nicest ones at that price, but decent. You jump up to a two bed or a Ben+a den, and you're looking at 1800/month at least. At a three bed, it's close to 2500/month.
Even if you assume those are on the larger side for price jumps, if you're barely able to scrape by with two people in a bachelor's apartment or in a one bedroom, there's no way you can "afford" it solely by CCB benefits. Almost all the benefit is eaten up by housing increases alone! Then add on childcare, and CCB isn't enough to give those feeling like they're just hanging on wiggle room to raise a child.
Kids are an enormous financial burden early on, especially for the small things. Kids get sick a lot, so you need to have a job that will allow you flexibility, or else you'll lose money for unpaid days off for doctors appointments or to sit at home with them when they're puking.
Kids need daycare unless youre staying home, which is suuuuper expensive these days. They also have limited hours, which if you're stuck working a shitty job, you may not be able to make.
Even second hand, clothes are expensive, and with how fast kids grow, it's an expense worth noting.
All in all, if you're well off, yeah it may not be a big problem for you, but for the people that are already struggling, it's a large factor into why they're not having kids yet.
The problem is bigger than that.
The government has had lobbying for years from the private sector, and the O/G sector has had big money to throw around. They get pushback from these companies when they try to up the 'just in case' fund that is there to cover costs of rehab in case the company goes under. But since that isn't enough, they're often left unmanaged. In the article above they talk about the two easiest examples - mine rehabilitation and orphan well cleanup.
If a company ignores well decommissioning, they can cut costs, suck up as much oil as possible, then declare bankruptcy and walk away from the requirements to clean up, leaving the public to pay for it.
Why should they be responsible for cleanup?
This one is easy. You make the mess, you clean it up. Basic kindergarten levels of societal responsibility.
There’s no law or contract that compels this.
There is, actually, but they're avoiding it by a number of legal loopholes (as mentioned above). Socially/morally, they have the responsibility to do so, but they've managed to legally avoid it/ignore it. Hence the 'shirk'
The argument is that there should be a greater amount of laws and regulations surrounding the O/G or resource extraction sector and their impacts, but often you hear complaints from those employed in those sectors about government overreach and unnecessary bureaucracy/red tape hampering and smothering the free market.
This article is important as it highlights why we need more regulation and the danger of letting these companies continue to act they way they have for years.
I don't disagree - not being able to meet the minimum amount agreed on is not sufficient as a country.
But reading the article, it seems those in the actual combined defense meetings between Canada and the US have not commented or raised to the Canadian side their lack of funding. Additionally, Canada is looking to expand the definition of military spending - not sure how much that would actually change our percentage though.
And to call our military a joke isn't really valid - we do spend a shit ton of money on military. Not anywhere near the US, but we can't compare ourselves to the worldwide military superpower with 10x our population and 11x our GDP. Canada still places in at 6th in the NATO countries on raw dollar spending.
Glad the government refused to arbitrate at this point, and glad rail workers were deemed non-essential by the CIRB, meaning they can strike.
CN has been pulling in crazy profits, and is greedy and doesn't want to share. They posted a net income increase of ~500mil last year.