Dearche @ Dearche @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

I mean, is anybody surprised? No matter how many underhanded deals and other political problems and disputes China has had with us, that's nothing compared to outright threats of annexation. Nothing threatens a people like outright ceasing to exist.

It's half an issue about messaging. The problem is that the Liberal messaging keeps sounding like things designed for older generations and not things that'll help younger Canadians, while Cons messaging sounds like they re for younger Canadians rather than older ones.

Yes, Liberal plans on expanding housing while preserving healthcare are definitely things that are good for younger Canadians, but they both sound like things that are only for older generations. Like building more houses are only for rich Canadians to buy cottages and healthcare are for old people who can't get out of bed because of their bad knees, not that housing means that first-time buyers finally have houses within their price ranges, or that getting sick and taking time off work doesn't equate to being 20 years in debt because hospitals gouge you for everything you have because people are willing to mortgage the rest of their lives to get life-saving treatments.

On the other hand, the Cons keep saying they'll create resource jobs and reduce taxes, making it sound like they're opening up so everybody can become gold diggers and stop the government from taking their hard-earned pay, when it's actually not even close to being true. That the jobs the Cons promise are only minimum wage jobs at best, in terrible conditions and far away from all convenience, or that the taxes reduced will save the rich millions while the poor still can't afford to buy the houses and services that the taxes get saved on, making it so that they are actually subsidizing the rich even more than before. Not to mention that every $100 cut in taxes means that the average Canadian will pay thousands more for the services that they've been getting all their lives.

But no, the Cons are better at wording their platform to appeal to the worst off in Canada, yet those are the ones cheering for them the most. The Cons are really the world's best conmen, and too many Canadians are too desperate to notice.

This is extremely narrow and one-sided. This problem went both ways.

For example, when western diplomats went to China to negotiate trade, they were often thrown out for not bringing convoys of gold and silver as tribute just to talk to the Emperor, since in those days China was such a local superpower that the very concept that a foreign nation wouldn't kowtow and beg for scraps at the Emperor's feet didn't exist. They thought that diplomats daring to stand without groveling in front of the Emperor was a direct insult and verging on a declaration of war.

This is why so many western diplomats simply went around the Imperial court, which is also a significant reason why the opium wars happened (though not exclusively. The west is heavily to blame for escalating and taking advantage).

Both sides refused to back down, so it both underhanded means as well as military force was utilized. Neither side accepted to consider the other as an equal, so when a clash of needs and desires came about, physical domination was the only possible result. Nowadays, China is still using the same principals that the Emperors of eld held, but is trying to use the west's old methods back against them.

I wont say that the west isn't at fault at any point along the way, but China's means and motivations are equally as bad and there is no justification aside from greed, pride, and envy for what they are doing. People complain about all the stuff the CIA's been doing, but you have to ask yourselves, how do you justify China sending thousands of fishing boats just outside of Argentina's EEZ? You know, in Atlantic waters, not even Pacific ones.

And this isn't even starting on how China keeps making artificial islands in the south China seas to extend their claims on territorial waters, boxing in the Philippines, Indonesia, and the other local powers that are still so poor that the Halifax-class is more like a battleship compared to what their navies have.

I'm pretty skeptical about this result, but if you think about a perfect 100 points not as a marker of true ideal freedom and prosparity, but rather a degree of freedom from blatant easily quantifiable oppression (in other words reverse the numbers and mark it as the oppression index), then the result does sound more reasonable.

Canada has made great strides and is ahead in many ways, but that's because so many major countries have such high degree of public oppression. We're one of the best in a quite dystopic world, which really isn't saying much when you are looking at ideas, and which also means we still have a massive amount to go.

Every time I see one of these, I get a bit more depressed. It's just incredible how people can vote for a party that openly declared to make depriving Canadians of some of their fundamental rights as part of their platform. How if you take even ten seconds to think about their policies, they're basically to purely empower the rich and powerful, while screwing over 98% of Canadians.

They basically stand on the same platforms as the Nazi party did almost a hundred years ago, and it's not like they're the only right-wing party. Just the most extreme right-wing one that has more than 1% of the expected votes.

It's because DOGE is basically cutting government everything, something the ultra-wealthy love, because it makes it easy to use money and power however they want because of the lack of government power to do anything about it. Doesn't matter if what they do is blatantly illegal if there is no department to even investigate such illegal activities. It's better than tailoring laws to suit them since they don't have to plan years ahead and instead just do so.

Imagine a mafia successfully eliminating the entire local police force. They could murder people out in the open, but without any cops to do the arrest, they effectively got away with it even if hundreds of people recorded the crime happening and posted it online. Nobody to do an investigation, nobody to do an arrest, and nobody to take them to court. DOGE is doing the same thing, but on a national level for the richest and most powerful.

Too bad the only non-right parties got single digit seats or less in the last election.

Very, very encouraging. I hope this isn't a one-time thing and we'll see at least double this on the actual vote day, and continue seeing such results on subsequent elections.

The more people vote, the more our leaders need to pay attention to our wants and needs, leaving little space for corporate corruption. This is especially for those of us unsatisfied with how our only leaders are all center right to far right and want leaders that actually lean in any direction but right.

No, it will affect us. Not massively, but it will, since now the producers will have to divide their shipments to route around the US. This will add to extra shipping since they benefit less from bulk.

In addition, while we'll cut out the US middlemen, there'll likely be a Canadian middleman taking their place to do distribution on a more local level, negating any cost savings from removing a step from the process.

Still a minor logistics issue, but one that'll likely take several months at least to resolve that'll land us with a few points higher in cost.

If I remember right, that was basically what they did to make commie blocks.

If the building isn't too tall, maybe 5 stories or less, that is proven to work, though I don't know about the quality, at least it's durable. But I strongly doubt that it would work for skyscrapers. I don't think there's any way to get beyond single large support struts to go throughout the entire building, and concrete walls feel too heavy to be used. Maybe prefab concrete floors could work, but I don't work construction.

Could be. Some places make election day a mandatory holiday to encourage turnout. Frankly, I think we should do that here for elections on all levels for the same reason.

This can work in some places (mostly looking at the prairies), but will do close to zero in others (like eastern Canada+BC). The simple problem is that the land the house is built on is often worth something like 80% the cost of buying property. The cost of a new house can be zero, but that will do little to help people afford new homes. Only slightly better than the tax cuts PP is proposing, which will have just as weak of an effect helping those who don't already own six houses.

The solution is to use the land we already use for homes more efficiently, and the only way to do that is to build condos and apartments. Make them mixed use and you can add the rental fees of a grocery store and several other services to the mix to subsidize the cost even further. A single grocery store that'll take up half the ground floor paid something like a million in rent a year, and that was before COVID. Add a convenience store, a couple fast food restaurants, a bar, and a dentist or salon, and you've got a mini-mall that'll rake in several million in rent that has a captured clientele in those that live above and near them. And that number will be in the hundreds for a 30 story apartment in the space of half a city block, since there'd be more than ten units per floor, even if it only has two-four bedroom units.

Such buildings can't be built in a factory, even partially. Not if we want them to last more than ten years, since that's the problem with the quick condos China tried to build.

I don't agree. This is only true because supply is so badly constrained. If each province had another million homes tomorrow, with the biggest cities building another 200 thousand plus a year until capacity is greater than demand, such a thing wouldn't happen. It's entirely because people were allowed to believe that a necessity to life could be treated like investible asset despite being an entirely non-performing asset.

It's like hoarding wheat, then blocking farmers from increasing production so that the value of your wheat stockpile grows. Yes, it technically works, but that's because you're artificially preventing the market from doing its job. The value of homes only go up because demand rises without supply keeping up, and various housing associations and interest groups have kept it that way to make their investments grow instead of prioritizing on making this country more livable.

The fixing taxes can fix things, but they're not the root problem. It's the sheer lack of development, and if normal developers won't do their damn job, then it's the government's job to step in and fix things like it once did.

I waited an hour in line on Friday to cast my ballot.

During the provincial election, I didn't wait even a second. In fact, it looked like some of the workers there hadn't had any work to do for a while and were bored out of their minds.

While I won't say that this was the reason why we got a selfish and corrupt moron a majority government (my district elected Lib), the fact that people were so unaware of what's going on in the Provincial government was depressing.

One hour lineup on fri.

Frankly surprised at how many others showed up that day, but glad. People need to be more active in the democratic process or else it only benefits the already powerful because they never forget to vote.

I understand spending $100million of it's to fix Ontario's infrastructure and get more people connected, but this isn't it. It's simply paying off someone else to put in a band-aid solution that only looks good on the surface.

I understand the idea of building up the infrastructure for isolated communities to become connected, but I strongly feel that this isn't the way. It's forcing a group of people onto a monopoly that can be taken away at any point. If the government really wanted to do this, then they'd fund cell towers to these isolated communities instead. That'll give them reliable internet access that isn't beholden to a single company on top of helping local companies. Nobody would be forced to use hardware from a specific company or suffer complete loss of service.

This is likely more expensive, but it's far more beneficial and forward looking and may even bring people together more. And it doesn't exclude Starlink for those who want it as well. They just have to pay for that on their own, but Starlink is already priced to be affordable to individual families.

I think this is the key. While I do think that a government can juggle multiple issues at the same time successfully, the population can only pay attention to a single issue at a time. Splitting attention dilutes a party and news outlets will have trouble disseminating so many issues at once. Concentrating on just a small number means that people can get a good and slightly nuanced idea of the party's policies making disinformation harder, accidental or purposeful.

Hence the reason why only Conservatives rely on fearmongering.

I don't think talk of separation itself is bad, even if I think it's exceedingly stupid.

But people should stop talking about other provinces separating when such sentiment obviously isn't there at all. If the prairies want to separate, stop acting like BC is in on it as well. From what I can tell, it feels more like BC wants to have nothing to do with Alberta if it can help it, and it's the federal government that's forcing them to play nice together.

All this separation talk is entirely Alberta, with a bit of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and even then the numbers suggest that it's at most 30% of Alberta that is actually talking about it.

I agree here. The issue is that lobbyists can give donations and kickbacks. The act of lobbying isn't a problem, it's that lobbying as it stands right now is basically the same as legal bribery, which is the real issue.

Politicians shouldn't be able to receive anything from lobbyists (or anybody for that matter), and be barred from working for companies connected with decisions made during their term for at least ten years.

It's obvious looking at the US, that corruption had flourished for decades to the extreme, making politicians being entirely pocketed by large industries rather than working for the people who actually voted them in. It's not as bad up here, but you can see how so many of our leaders chose the interests of specific businesses over the public interest.