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.
Makes sense this is how capitalism will grow - once you've refined and streamlined things as best as possible and maximized your market, your next way to continue to grow is to buy up more companies (or farmland) or expand their operations into more sectors so line goes up.
Seems like we need to figure out a way to prevent this from becoming a race to the bottom in terms of quality (and a race to the top for company profits), or turning into mega-corpos only.
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.
If you don’t know why ‘email’ doesn’t get an S on the end, then I think we’ve lost the illusion of authority.
Plenty of people seem to weigh in on either side.
This linguistic argument is hardly a settled thing, and definitely not on par with their/there/they're mistakes.
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$/person). CPC fought against it on the grounds of, (an actual quote from the debate minutes)
My question for the minister is this: why legalize something that is ethically unacceptable?
And Pierre voted against the bill.
"As a hydrologist, I definitely agree that there's always a cycle with the water," Stadnyk said. "But what the science says is that this is one of the regions in the world where we can expect more frequent drought cycles, and longer drought cycles. "That begs the question about economic viability, right? How long can farmers and irrigators hold out without that water and still be productive and still have a viable business?"
This is what it boils down to. I think that unfortunately, we're going to have to either develop more water-effective measures of irrigation (which all cost significantly more than the standard sprayers), or the yields are going to fall significantly. Either of those mean that food prices will continue to climb.
Its not a good situation, and there's not a good solution.
Interesting article. We have a daughter in central Ontario, and have been signing her up for daycare. The article is focused mostly on Alberta complaints, but here prices are still ~20-40$/day, which is allegedly half from their original costs (which terrifies me).
Another way to look at it - $5k to $10k per year.
I can't speak to the daycare side of things, but from our side, my spouse and I each make good money, and can make it work relatively easily. Anyone making less than us would likely not have a partner return to the workforce, especially if you have multiple children. At the old prices, even just back 5 years ago, a family of two or three would be looking at 40-50k a year in daycare costs, which very easily justifies a partner not working, especially if you can fold into that reduced car wear and tear, not rushing back to pick them up/drop them off, etc.
Huge pet peeve of mine when articles discuss a study but don't link it. Link
When you look at what else we do in the modern world to avoid/mitigate a similar level of mortality, these seem like no brainers, especially the masking. A 0.19 per 100,000 reduction seems small, but the mortality rate was ~50 per 100,000 in Canada. This is basically a 4% reduction in deaths by masking. For a minor cost measure with no long term economic outcomes, this should have been an easy one for people to get on board with.
School reduction in spread (~10%) shouldn't surprise anyone who knows school aged kids. They're germ balls, and multiple kids per household means there's effectively no "bubbles", so of course stopping that spread would have a huge impact, but then kids are stuck at home, so it has a huge cost too.
SIPOs (Shelter in Place Order) had a 5% reduction in hospitalizations, which is honestly smaller than I was expecting.
See below for the mortality summarization.
Specific NPIs. Of the 6 NPIs studied in per capita mortality, bar/restaurant closures experienced the largest effects 4 weeks after implementation, corresponding to 1.08 fewer deaths per 100,000. Although we did not find any more evidence of fewer deaths per capita, limited gatherings (–6.41%), business (–5.32%) and school closures (–3.98%) were associated with decreased mortality growth rates after 2 weeks, whereas SIPOs (–1.66%), masks (–1.9%), and school closures (–8.29%) corresponded to reductions after 3 weeks. SIPOs were the only NPI studied at the ≥4-week lag for growth rates and were associated with a 1.95% drop in the mortality rates. Although the authors observed mitigative effects of travel restrictions on case growth rates, this was not the case for mortality.
I imagine its a tricky thing to study in any detail, and its interesting to look back now to see the effectiveness of the measures put in place.
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.
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.
Way more. I'm working on a road project now. Asphalt for a road (100mm thick) is being bid at approximately $35/sq.m. Granular are about an extra $30/sq.m.
For a standard residential size road (8.5m curb to curb) that puts you at $552/m of road length, or 33mil. The big costs on top of that number always come when you've got to remove the old asphalt and gravel ($75/cu.m), as well as all the fiddly little stuff like line painting, tying in grades to make sure you have drainage, sod restoration, tree plantings, etc.
Disappointing they've been sent to arbitration. Just a good reminder that the Liberals are not the party for unions/workers.