This nihilist doomer shit is both highly speculative, and just as bad as denialism for why we can’t have nice things. In fact, they are just 2 stages of the exact same mentality. It’s not real, it’s not human caused, and we can’t do anything about it anyway. All the same picture; all the same motivation.
[ ] Climate change isn’t real. [ ] Climate change is part of a natural cycle and not related to humans. [x] Climate change is caused by humans, but we can’t do anything about it for whatever reasons. Note how all 3 lead to the same actual behaviour, and that benefits the very same people, but the first one works on conservatives and the third one works on liberals. You’ve fallen for the same gambit. There’s a big-ass sliding scale between “fuck it” and “techno utopia” both on climate mitigation and adaptation. The next 100 years are going to be hard, yeah, but those 3 propoganda tacts are designed to just make some rich twits richer before we all hit the wall.
Add to this that he was suspended (not jailed) and the country’s major public broadcaster posted this very article questioning the appropriateness of his suspension. He has a voice in the public media and also an opportunity to avail himself of the court system and seek damages. Are we still a democracy? Yeah, sounds like it to me.
“We’re not middle and lower class, we’re all working class”
Most home owners, if they cash out their home, and either rent or downsize, will still absolutely need to work to eat, and if they don’t they will find themselves homeless before long.
For that small portion that could actually live on the equity from downsizing their housing, yeah, they are upper class, but there are a lot fewer of those than you would think. For a single person, a million in equity (50k a year) might get you by, but not luxuriously and not safely, and most houses are owned by couples though (so cut that in half), and many have dependents.
It’s the least painful, most economically efficient way to encourage those things and other transitions. When it comes to transportation, higher gas prices have historically resulted in a market for more fuel efficiency (and inflation-adjusted low gas prices have lead to oversizing of vehicles). Unlike the 70s, this time, the carbon tax is brought in slowly and smoothly over many years to encourage conservation (including the things you mention), drive demand for more fuel efficiency, and in the long term, encourage the electrification of the remaining fleet.
The vast majority of Canadians want the government to do something serious about climate change, but they don’t know what that thing is. Economists said a carbon tax and rebate was the most efficient, but public support isn’t driven by economic papers, but by propaganda machines. It’s just too easy to blame the carbon tax for everyone’s problems. It’s the perfect boogeyman for inflation. Heavy handed regulation of industrial emitters would probably be the most supported by the public, but it would have a terrible impact on Canadian industry, and actually be limited in it’s effectiveness, as most of Canada’s emissions would still be “free.”
She dug her heels in because she’s jockying to move up to the provincial legislature. Getting fired is part of building her reputation as a conservative culture warrior. The board really did not want to fire her.
That list shows why the carbon taxes will be the target. Those first 5 account for basically all of the increased cost of living, but they are HARD problems. Not one of those presents a simple policy change that could even make a meaningful dent, and no one agrees on even the general approach governments could take to chip away at those.
However, for the last one, politicians can promise to scrap it or carve it up like a thanksgiving turkey and, despite that having almost no effect on the overall cost of living for the average Canadian, it seems like an easy solution.
The carbon tax is currently 14.31cents per litre, that’s about 10%. It’s an incentive. To fully wipe out that cost, you don’t need to buy an EV, you could drive 10% less, or buy an ICE vehicle that is 10% more efficient (or some combination). That’s very easy to do in a country where most of us drive large vehicles, and make too many un-combined trips. Drop one trip in 10, or combine it with one of the other 9 and you get to spend your rebate money on beer instead of gasoline.
Subsidies and special taxes are super in-efficient. Besides requiring a whole slew of bureaucracy to administer it, it never applies to everything fairly. That tax you suggest on new ICE vehicles doesn’t dissuade anyone from parking their jacked up f150 one day a week, and it doesn’t reward the person who buys a used car for their commute instead of a used SUV. All those little decisions get incentivized, and they allow people to make their own decisions about how to pollute less, instead of doing the 1 thing some government has decided to be the official, subsidized solution.
2SLGBTQIA+ community leaders are denouncing the Conservative leader’s speech accusing Justin Trudeau of imposing “radical gender ideology” on children.
The debacle is the MPs and NDP falling for the populism carrot that is carve-outs. It won’t be the last one either. It will always be framed as “helping the old lady keep the heat on” and not what is is - an oil subsidy that keeps people tied to a highly price-volatile and polluting heating source. You can also help that old lady by tweaking the rebate algorithm, but that wouldn’t help out the oil industry near as well.
Supply chains, worker wages and the price of energy has been blamed for the current bout of high inflation. But central bankers around the world are starting to clue in to something consumers have been aware of for a while — corporations just aren't afraid to raise their prices anymore.
They also like to pretend they care about balanced budgets and monetary supply. Guess what? Taxes both balance the budget AND they evaporate money from circulation, reducing actual inflation. They ignore that because taxes are the ONLY lever that is progressive; where we can spread the pain equitably, asking the wealthy individuals and corporations to pay the largest share. That’s a terrible idea /s
Our current system relies on the economic externality of relying on private vehicles and private transportation on local infrastructure to artificially lower the transportation costs for grocery logistics. It’s much cheaper to run an 18-wheeler to a large grocery store on the edge of suburbia than running box trucks all over town. It doesn’t actually lower food costs, because people pay a large fraction of their income to that private transportation so that they can access that super-grocer, and then the grocer seems to jack up the price of food anyway.
The president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada defended the public broadcaster and its independence Thursday from a fresh barrage of pointed Conservative questions about its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Every time CBC gets budgets cut, it hits CBC radio first and hardest. It’s an extremely small portion of the Federal Government’s budget. This has nothing to do with fiscal restraint, and is purely about neocons who don’t like there being a public owned media source existing at all. They want 100% corporate media and nothing less.
Agreed. Fuck off with this “we have no free speech” bullshit, substack (and it’s freedom of conscience in Canada in the first place, not free speech). All of the things listed are social consequences, not criminal prosecution or some other government persecution. Sarah was booted by her party, not the government, and the rest are employers and universities. If there is fault, it lies with those organizations.
It’s also not protected speech, so if there is fault, those organizations will have to suffer social consequences themselves, as it doesn’t seem that they broke any laws.
Like most people, I avoid companies that platform hate, and am perfectly contented being banned from them if they go that far. That’s not a power they ever didn’t have.
My job getting a new CEO? Getting a new useless figurehead is supposed to scare me? Why? Youtube is going to block me? Why should I care? They either moderate hateful content, or they lose me and a great many others -voluntarily.
And if people are suffering, the solution is to increase the rebate (or increase it’s frequency). If it ends up being revenue deficit temporarily, fine, still better than vanity exemptions like this. This breaks the whole model. It removes the incentive to switch for people already looking replace old equipment, it removes the reward for those who did change, and it creates a whole inefficiency of administration for figuring out which fossil fuel burning is “free” and which is taxed. That bureaucracy is just going to burn money that could have went into the rebates.
Almost ALL brand new furnaces being installed even the most heatpump friendly places in Canada are NG or propane right now, and will continue to be for years to come. Even new home builds are virtually exclusively gas. This is taking away event he slightest incentive to change that.
Rural and remote residents already get a slightly larger rebate, and as a city dweller, I think their share should be higher for exactly the reason you state. Also, keep in mind that at night time, which will typically be the only time people end up using resistive heat while on a heat pump, electricity is cheaper. Ontario’s ultra-low off-peak option is even more extreme. It’s probably cheaper to run resistive heat at night, than running the heat pump during peak times.
Legal professors say if SaskEnergy doesn't remit the carbon tax on natural gas starting Jan. 1, it could face big consequences. Premier Scott Moe said the exemption is unfair.
Because they are the party of oil and gas. And because the party of oil and gas has spent the last few decades tying every aspect of Albertan quality of life to O&G profits. The great circle of sludge.
New research suggests more newcomers to Canada have chosen to leave in recent years, a threat to a country that relies on immigration to drive population and economic growth....
And PP is trying to line things up so the big “cost of living” debate of the next election will be the carbon tax. Out of all the costs of daily living, they will spend their time bickering over the only one that gets rebated.
I used stunnel years ago to tunnel both openVPN and SSH traffic and it worked flawlessly. Looks just like https web traffic to dpi software. Beware though, that long open connections can also set off flags, so don’t keep connection’s open permanently.
The whole point with a carbon tax and rebate is that it doesn’t come with all the administration and inefficiencies of picking and choosing things to subsidize and things to penalize. As soon as you start exempting this and that, you blow that out of the water.
The correct response is increasing the rebate to rural households, who statistically, rely more on oil heating, or increase the rebate across the board temporarily.
All this does is take away a very solid incentive for people who are currently looking at upgrading their home heating to chose a lower carbon option. It’s also not fair to people who recently did upgrade their heating systems, based on the expected costs.
It’s not about how much it generated, but about nudging people who are already looking at doing something, to chose the lower carbon option. If people are suffering, the rebate should be increased.
Now that the Liberals have done this once, our next conservative government will be able to butcher it with vanity exemptions all over the place, just like Harper loved the vanity tax credits to buy various voter segments. It will be useless before long, and just a bunch of unnecessary administrative baggage. They won’t even need to cancel it, because handing out exemptions will be so politically profitable.
I actually think we should just start an old-school crown corp that directly competes with the grocery stores. That’s what crown corps used to do -push the private sector to do better through competition aimed at serving an important public need.
The crown corp could sell basic foods; produce, bread, simple meats and dairy products, and at a very low margin. The private grocers would have to compete either by tapping into that mysterious private-sector-efficiency to beat those prices, or via luxury grocery products that draw in customers. The crown corp could either build it’s own supply chain, or rely on auctions, as needed.
mediabiasfactcheck.com is useful for it’s “factual” measure of sources, but the right-left spectrum is based on what Americans consider “right” and “left” -so what they consider “far left,” outside America is probably just “left.” They label a lot of international centrist media sources as “left” too. What they consider “least biased” is going to be straight up capitalist.
That appreciation you have seen on your principle residence isn’t really accessible though. You have to live somewhere. If you were hit with capital gains tax on your primary residence, it would impart a whole lot of financial friction on ever being able to move.
Let’s say you need to re-locate, or upsize/downsize; the house you are moving too also has appreciated, but you have to buy that house at the new, appreciated price, and ALSO pay the capital gains on the 400k. That financial friction on being able to move is bad for everyone. It keeps people in inappropriate houses, or commuting long distances, and doesn’t do anything to improve housing affordability.
It does effectively become a transfer of wealth (from lack of taxes) from young to old, as they downsize, and reap the financial windfall. However, that could be clawed back with estate taxes. If you penalize downsizing, you create an even bigger incentive to stay in oversized housing, as you mention. If anything, not being allergic to property tax increases is probably the only thing that would encourage people to rightsize.
Hopefully, we don’t see any backsliding federally with Trudeau’s personal lack of popularity giving any inroads to Christofascists in the CPC.
It’s hard to be optimistic here. I’d like to be. They don’t even need to court the christofascists right now. That protest seemed to be rather integrated with the PPC, so maybe they still have enough steam to split the right vote a bit.
Yes. It’s certainly less of a problem in an agrarian society where nearly everyone provides simple labour, but in any technical or urban society, being able to focus on complex tasks is going to improve your quality of life. Of course the degree of impact and the nature of the problem is going to vary widely depending on the fabric of that society. It would look different, indeed.
Saskatchewan's premier says he'll use the notwithstanding clause to override a court injunction that has paused the province's new pronoun policy for students. But a professor says the clause is meant to be used as a tool of last resort.
There really needs to be a consequence for using the notwithstanding clause or otherwise violating charter rights. Time and time again, populist politicians violate them to stoke votes, gain political momentum, then many years down the road, lose in court and their policies are reversed (paid by a future government with tax dollars). It’s usually not as egregious as this, but it’s a constant thing. Look at the public pay freeze that was just reversed in Ontario.
No, it doesn’t take away or give rights to provincial or federal governments. They don’t have charter rights in the first place, only individuals have charter rights.
The notwithstanding clause permits the province to override people’s charter rights. That may be justified sometimes, but it shouldn’t be framed as anything else. It’s removing rights, not granting them.
Huh, I had suspected a lot of conservative types see everything as a zero-sum game, but it isn’t usually presented so obviously.
Clearly, this isn’t the case. Let’s say we delete the right to freedom of religion in the Charter, and ban Christianity from our country. No one has gained any rights. In fact, we all lose a right, even non-Christians.
I’m not sure that helps. Here’s my thinking: When it’s done in bad faith, it’s usually used for a populist cause, even though it’s ultimately illegal. A snap election just lets them ride that popular support to another government, and as usual, the legal ruling comes much, much later. I don’t really know the solution. The legal system is necessarily very slow, and that’s a good thing, but it means that a politician can basically ignore whether a bill is legal or not, as they will never see any consequences.
That’s a strange re-definition of a “right”. I guess if you re-define the word to encompass any sort of government power. Too bad we live in a world where words mean things.
Okay, now your argument has officially gone off the rails.
To clarify my point, governments don’t have rights, they have powers. The charter grants people rights. The notwithstanding clause gives the province a power to override a charter right. Exercising that power only ever removes people’s rights. And yes, the country can become less free if rights are overridden. Nothing necessarily “balances that out.” Losing charter rights is often a very bad thing, and even if it’s necessary in a particular case, everyone should be honest -it’s a loss of rights.
And simple narratives like “everybody in the SS was guilty of war crimes” are more pervasive because they’re much simpler to grasp.
Your whole wall of text seems to be a strawman based on this projection. Canadians obviously don’t believe this, or these former SS members would have been strung up by their necks decades ago. However, they should never be honoured, regardless of whether they directly participated in crimes. That membership implies being complicit in those crimes, as they would have sworn allegiance to Hitler, and would have known and understood the Nazi ideology and supported it through their military action.
If a SS fighter doesn’t have enough evidence for a conviction, they should simply live out their lives quietly and in shame for being part of something truly evil. If they were fooled in youth, and understood as they grew older, they would abhor any sort of valour or recognition. I’m not going to engage in whataboutism. There are plenty of other examples of people who should do the same thing.
I went to a remembrance day ceremony in a church last year and then later found out one of the soldiers we honored was SS. The person that put his name in even made excuses like “everybody thought they were fighting the good fight” etc etc. It’s a good thing it was a posthumous honor, because if he was there I would have been on the phone.
There are a lot of people who are still unsure about whether the Nazis were really evil, or just on the other side of a bad war, and trying to erase, or whitewash their relatives crimes. It isn’t a partisan thing either, as the church group is very much not Liberal leaning.
A person can choose to learn by repeating lies on social media so they can be “dog-piled” and have their statements picked apart, or they can google “what trans healthcare can minors access in Canada?” If they choose the former, they probably have thick skin by now.
If your criteria are that a medical treatment is absolutely 100% safe and can be reversed as if absolutely no intervention was completed, then well, yeah, we shouldn’t have Tylenol. Medicine is ALWAYS about balancing risks, and trying to make sure things are the least invasive option. It’s done every day, in every Drs office.
Concern trolling about this particular case while spreading misinformation is in fact being “against” those particular people. Let them work out the safest option with their doctor in peace, like you would be able to do with your own health concerns. For all practical purposes, puberty blockers are relatively safe and reversible.
Actually, I directly suggested they were misinformed and not malicious, rather than implying anything. Since then, they confirmed their intent by moving the goalposts away from their clearly disprovable point, rather than acknowledging that they might have been misinformed by an irresponsible source.
I’ve thought about this issue plenty, thank you for implying that I’m acting thoughtlessly.
The ‘carbon tax’ isn’t causing inflation. No matter what politicians say | The Narwhal (thenarwhal.ca)
If We’ve Lost the Climate War, What’s Plan B? | The Tyee (thetyee.ca)
Doctor suspended from U of O residency after pro-Palestinian social media posts (www.cbc.ca)
Homeowners Refuse to Accept the Awkward Truth: They’re Rich - Owners of the multi-million-dollar properties still see themselves as middle class, a warped self-image that has a big impact on renters (thewalrus.ca)
Public support for carbon tax waning quickly (www.nationalobserver.com)
AB school trustee who compared pride flag to swastika removed from board (rabble.ca)
The next election will be a climate change election — because they all are now (www.cbc.ca)
Pierre Poilievre Under Fire After Video Surfaces of Homophobic and Transphobic Speech (pressprogress.ca)
2SLGBTQIA+ community leaders are denouncing the Conservative leader’s speech accusing Justin Trudeau of imposing “radical gender ideology” on children.
It's not your imagination: Companies are more willing to raise their prices now — and it's because we let them (www.cbc.ca)
Supply chains, worker wages and the price of energy has been blamed for the current bout of high inflation. But central bankers around the world are starting to clue in to something consumers have been aware of for a while — corporations just aren't afraid to raise their prices anymore.
Defunding CBC would be 'devastating' to news in rural Canada, network president warns (www.ctvnews.ca)
The president and CEO of CBC/Radio-Canada defended the public broadcaster and its independence Thursday from a fresh barrage of pointed Conservative questions about its coverage of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Do not say we have free speech in Canada (noraloreto.substack.com)
NDP to back Conservative motion calling for carbon price off all heat sources (www.ctvnews.ca)
The New Democrats say they will back the Conservatives on a motion to pull the carbon price off all home heating until after the next election.
Saskatchewan gas utility could face steep fines and jail for not remitting carbon tax (globalnews.ca)
Legal professors say if SaskEnergy doesn't remit the carbon tax on natural gas starting Jan. 1, it could face big consequences. Premier Scott Moe said the exemption is unfair.
Immigrants are leaving Canada at faster pace, study shows (www.bnnbloomberg.ca)
New research suggests more newcomers to Canada have chosen to leave in recent years, a threat to a country that relies on immigration to drive population and economic growth....
How do you mask Wireguard traffic?
ChatGPT led me to tunsafe however the project seems to be abandoned?...
Ottawa exempting home heating oil from carbon tax for 3 years, Trudeau says (www.cbc.ca)
As cost of living soars, millions of Canadians are turning to food banks (www.cbc.ca)
Canada’s weak stance on Gaza crisis gives green light to Israel’s war crimes (canadiandimension.com)
The housing crisis is not just a supply issue. Here are two solutions to fix demand (www.theglobeandmail.com)
People are finally talking about shifting income tax to take some of the money out of the housing market:...
“Parents’ Rights” Rhetoric Is Rooted in Radical Conspiracy Theories | The Walrus (thewalrus.ca)
Manitoba NDP win majority, CBC News projects (www.cbc.ca)
Woo!...
More adults are taking medication for ADHD. Physicians say trend is a double-edged sword (www.cbc.ca)
Sask. premier 'jumping the gun' with turn to notwithstanding clause for pronoun policy: expert (www.cbc.ca)
Saskatchewan's premier says he'll use the notwithstanding clause to override a court injunction that has paused the province's new pronoun policy for students. But a professor says the clause is meant to be used as a tool of last resort.
Fighting against the USSR didn’t necessarily make you a Nazi (www.politico.eu)
Everybody knows that a lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth has even got its boots on....
House Speaker apologizes for honouring Ukrainian who fought in Nazi unit in WW II (www.cbc.ca)
Anti-LGTBQ “Million March For Children” outnumbered by “Billion March For Not Being Bigots” (www.thebeaverton.com)