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.

Why we keep trying to build more highways to alleviate congestion is beyond me.

Its an idea that has been consistently and thoroughly debunked since the 80s. No one who studies traffic has ever suggested highway upsizing to decrease congestion as anything more than a very temporary stop gap. Single or dual occupancy vehicles cannot continue to be the primary way we commute to work in a dense area like Toronto. It simply will not work, full stop. We can fight against the idea, but we’re wasting our time and money.

We need high density solutions. TTC line 1 was built in the 50s. Line 2 in the 60s, which comprise 64km of the current 70km in use. Line 3 was added in the 80s, but has been decommissioned due to maintenance costs and poor performance, but even that was only 6km. Why have we barely expanded the system since the city consisted of 30% of the current population?

We used to have more rail lines running throughout the province, mostly privately owned. They have since been discontinued with the advent of trucking. Why have we not reintroduced rail service? Canada as a whole is low population density, but the Niagara-Toronto-Ottawa-Montreal corridor has more than enough people to justify a regular rail line.

The Bradford Bypass and Highway 413 are an estimated 8-10$ billion, on the low end. Combine with his current proposed cuts to transit funding of ~$150 million, and it paints a clear picture of his priorities.

I feel like the rest of the sentence is important for those skimming for the important bits -

together made 52.6 per cent of all corporate capital gains reported in Canada between 2018 and 2022.

That’s a stupidly large percentage of the capital gains reported. The argument that capital gains tax stifles innovate is argued against in the report as well

The report also finds there’s no historical correlation between capital gains taxes and business investment in machinery, equipment and intellectual property.

Interesting start, and I hope they receive more funding, but I can’t see how a two year (max participant length of 4yrs) period is near long enough to confirm that these changes are solely due to age and not some other, personal factors or generational factor.

For those interested in the actual study (non-paywalled) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7301912/

“Party of the people” guys, I promise

I think the bigger concern is that if there are other foreign influenced MPs who aren’t listed in the report, then they and the country influencing them realize that CSIS/Canada doesn’t know about them. Keeping it vague and uncertain makes it more likely that those people will be concerned and may reduce their interference to avoid detection.

Likewise, revealing which MPs are known to be influenced may reveal moles or informants that Canada has, thus curtailing future efforts at limiting foreign interference.

And a bipartisan committee created by the liberals at that.

This is so wildly inappropriate that it makes me wonder which of the liberal party were involved. It must have been senior members for them to close ranks like this.

If you happen to remember or find that article I’d be very interested in reading it!

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.

Oof, this guy seems easily swayed.

Was it really just boredom that had brought him here [,the first far right v. antifa] rally, I asked him. “Yeah,” he said emphatically. He hadn’t felt any prior urge to join a protest movement? “I didn’t know what it was. Like I said, the security guard just told me that there was going to be a protest.” If he’d gravitated toward the anti-fascist side, would he have joined their organization instead? “For sure.”

I’m glad he got out, but there’s got to be something more going on in his life, searching for meaning or guidance. In this, he’s going from ethnic (but not practising) jewish, to fundamental christianty, to far right, to antifa, to judaism.

It’s an interesting read - a lot of her experiences she’s discussing boil down to feeling she was ignored or her voice minimized because of her perceived gender identity and assumptions about how she was raised and what she would feel.

I liked her discussion and thought her perspective on purposely not transitioning was an interesting view. This was a really good analogy and drove home the point for me:

Imagine, dear reader, a cis-woman evenly saying:

“I wish I looked like that but I don’t and can’t. It sucks and it makes me feel really awful if I brood on it. That’s why I focus on my writing—I’d rather make things. Investing in and building things that aren’t my body helps me cope with the body issues I’ve been saddled with against my will.”

She doesn’t sound like she needs advice on how makeup will actually fix her core problem, does she? She seems like she’s doing alright. I’m her and I’m trans. That’s all.

Some big quotes that hit home through this post were

Do I need to be inspected and dissected by the people who laughed at me in order to receive my credential?

“I play along,” one of them told me, “because in the queer community the only people who defend cisboys are cisboys. I don’t want to give up finally being read as a girl.”

Oof.

I don’t know if it’s just the sections of the internet I frequent these days, but this intense, misandrist views don’t seem to be as common as they once were, and not as accepted.

I was born into that shitty town, maleness, in the remains of outdated ideals and misplaced machismo and repression and there are some good people stuck living there. They are not in charge. They did not build it. And I don’t feel okay just moving out and saying “fuck y’all — bootstrap your way out or die out, I was never one of you.” I want to make it a better, healthier place—not spend all my time talking about how shitty it is and how anyone who would choose to live there deserves it.

Civil engineer with a number of courses in building science (aka this).

Can’t tell for sure without seeing what kind of insulation it is, but there are a few factors.

First, as other people have mentioned, having temperature gradients cause moisture issues. Typically, in modern construction in cold weather climates like Canada, we install a single waterproof layer. Cold weather, this goes inside of the insulation (between the insulation and the drywall), and in hot weather places, it’ll be installed outside the insulation.

My understanding of the houses this is being done in, there is no vapour barrier, meaning damp+ moisture can accumulate.

Second, new houses in NA have a “minimum air exchange”, which is a specific amount of air that needs to move through the house within a given time frame, typically air changes per hour (ACH rating). This is usually accomplished by means of a central heating/ductwork units, and bedrooms are generally somewhere around 4-8, meaning all the air in the bedroom should be refreshed 4 to 8 times per hour. My understanding of many of these houses is that there is not central air system. Before the insulation, it is likely that small gaps or holes in the walls/exterior siding were sufficient to allow enough air to move through, however that air slows down when there is insulation sprayed into the cavities. Any slowdown will exacerbate moisture problems, as still air is bad. More air exchanges also would allow the house to dry out more, as evaporation would help.

Those are the general situations that would likely be a problem.

In this case, from reading the article, it seems like she has a hole in her roof, which is either new or was not caught by the installers. ANY source of water ingress would cause mold problems. The issue here is that previously, it is likely that the water trickled down the inside of the cladding (likely brick), and out at the base of the wall. Once you add insulation to that cavity, it’ll hold water and cause mold problems. Seems like a shitty spot to be in.

Some choice quotes from the official Toronto Police email response:

The police can park where they need to. If they wanted to park upside down, inside out, or on top of a building, that would be acceptable.”

“Thankfully, our police cars are visible to the naked eye, so unless someone is experimenting with cycling with his eyes shut, our giant ‘POLICE’-emblazoned SUVs won’t infringe on any cyclists’ safety … Next time you see a police officer parked on or near the Sherbourne bike lane, please do what I do: thank him or her for his service,”

“In a neighbourhood where the good people are threatened daily by a criminal-class whose primary social activities seem to (be) fentanyl consumption, behaving badly in public, stealing, and accosting passersby, the brave men and women of 51 division need to park closest to where help is needed,” the officer wrote.

“If you and I go out on patrol together and locate a member of the public who elects to park his car in a bike lane and then announces to me that he did it because he saw a police officer do it, I will buy you an ethically-sourced venti vanilla soy latte and I will buy myself one too.”

Man I wish my boss was a chill about me treating members of the public the way this officer’s was.

I swear, how did we get to this point, where we have massive (effectively) monopolies that are able to continue to merge and buy up smaller companies and grow?

I know we have anti-trust laws, but if companies are able to keep doing this, we need a review of those laws.

Interesting.

I wound up doing more of a dive into per capita GDP as a metric, and see more of the benefits of it, as well as why its used. I’m still not entirely sold on its benefits overall due to concerns over wealth inequality and “living standards” being averaged.

Thanks for pointing out CPI vs GDP/C differences!

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.

Our Government Weighs in, in favour of emails

Typically most grants from the government come with strings attached. Those strings are typically a minimum amount of the money going directly to the people it helps.

In this case, that means going to pay the rent on these houses (or the subsidized amount), and setting some aside for the repairs to the program. I’d guess the way they’re worded would likely force the organizations to choose to either pay good wages, and keep good social workers, or skimp on the wages and get more bodies in seats, and in theory, more people helped. But paying poor wages means there are fewer good people to work for you, and you wind up in other troubles. Pay them too much, and a news article about cushy governmental jobs catches peoples eye and the program gets shuttered. Those strings are supposed to prevent massive bloat of admin/staffing costs that eat up all the cash without providing a full benefit for the people it should be helping. Which makes sense - its easy to see how funding without those strings could easily lead to poorer and poorer outcomes for those its supposed to help. The tricky part is finding the balance, and the way the article phrases it, it seems like there isn’t enough support for these people available.

What do you consider treating people equally?

That seems like an odd take. Literally any tax or incentivization would be “punishing” those who can’t/don’t use it.

Is providing school funding via taxes punishment for parents who want to homeschool their children?

Is providing any kind of child care/child education funding punishment for childfree people?

Is increases in funding for rural internet or road reconstruction punishment for people who choose to live in cities or don’t drive?