streetfestival @ streetfestival @lemmy.ca

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Joined

2 yr. ago

I live in Toronto and can speak to what's happening here. The financialization of housing is to blame. Most new builds are condos, many units are smaller than most people would want to have a family in.

https://thehub.ca/2025/05/17/chart-storm-five-graphs-on-torontos-historic-condo-market-collapse/

Some of the condo units for sale in Toronto are about 550 square feet, are cheaply made, have poor layouts and are listed for over $760,000; small, subpar quality, and expensive.

The quantity of unsold completed units has more than doubled compared to last year, marking the highest level of unsold completed units in Toronto since the first quarter of 1993. Experts at the real estate think tank Urbanation anticipate that the increase in completed and unsold inventory will persist in 2025, with an additional 2,411 unsold units expected to be finished by the close of 2025.

So what's being built is designed to meet investor interests but not community needs.

These units are also listed at incredibly high prices, so that if interest rates drop a bit, units lose the value they are listed at pre-construction, and quickly become negative assets from the perspective of a homeowner versus a long-term investor.

And all this is market-priced housing, not the subsidized housing we desperately need in addition to affordable and adequate market-based housing.

Affordable housing was a non-partisan issue before the financialization of housing in Canada in the 1990s

@otter@lemmy.ca @mp3@lemmy.ca @dwazou@jlai.lu I'm pretty sure I viewed this post when it still had the original CBC link, with the CBC headline preserved in the post title. I think this poster is getting tripped up by the Lemmy issue whereby adding a post image deletes the URL. Maybe the user then supplies their own title instead of the 'copy suggested title'

I see you're off-instance, so just so you know we have a fledgling !cfl@lemmy.ca community on here

Israeli troops fire ‘warning shots’ at 25 diplomats visiting occupied West Bank: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/21/israeli-troops-fire-warning-shots-25-diplomats-visiting-occupied-west-bank

Shots force delegation representing 31 countries, including Italy, Canada, Egypt and UK, to run for cover

In plain English: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander - A Canadian (born in Toronto ON and grew up in Hamilton ON) - was recognized as the best basketball player this year in the world's most elite men's basketball league (NBA). He plays for the Oklahoma City Thunder professionally. He also plays for Team Canada. In a wider sense, he represents an ongoing emergence of basketball talent in this country at the highest level that is decades in the making. Canada's Men's Basketball team is going to be stacked for a while. Canada's Women's Basketball has been globally dominant for a while.

I assume all anti-bike stuff is essentially astroturfing funded by big money interests that want to maintain the status quo and keep the public focus off of climate change and our failure to respond to it, the affordability crisis, and widening inequality. And they're able to trot out a few people who have nothing better to do with their time and who are too stupid to know what's really going on

Canada has an anti-vaccination problem. It's wiiiiiild how quickly the alt-right in the US (and the big money, mainstream media, and social media amplifying them) have normalized unintelligent, selfish, anti-civilization behaviour like being anti-vaccination.

Along with the Black Lives Matter movement, people's distrust in Chump handling the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was a big reason why the US chose Biden over Chump in 2020.

It's wild how quickly we're throwing out progress now. Mainstream news is a joke. CBC's often good but any tongue-in-cheek coverage of Chump is a disservice to our country. Mainstream social media is a propaganda chamber where the oligarch-serving alt-right and foreign disinformation and division efforts work in harmony spreading similar misinformation.

The US is making moves to restrict access to COVID vaccines (while they have stopped counting bird flu outbreaks): COVID vaccines are only approved for elderly and a few others as RFK continues to reshape how Americans fight disease

The Mennonite angle interests me. I would guess their vaccination rates haven't changed much over decades, them being very consistent in their ways and presumably less affected by recent political developments. Have their vaccination rates fallen, or were they never all that well-vaccinated but were guarded by herd immunity amongst local non-Mennonites - that acted as a fire barrier that's increasingly breaking down

Insurance companies claim closed PPNs will help ordinary people and reduce premiums.

Not in the slightest bit believable

How @#$%ing original

In addition I feel like google allows for like manipulation by the US gov.

We got receipts, for example: Mexico sues Google over changing Gulf of Mexico’s name for US users

That's pretty chilling to hear. But great info, thanks for sharing!

Is this populism? Is this Trumpism? Instead of running the province well and communicating that to the electorate, you make up the idea of a referendum on an asinine idea and then market it as "listening to the people." Irresponsible and effortless

Finally, a scale for the rest of us!

I have mixed emotions today. I grieved for a few days after tRump was elected in 2024, processing the state and direction of the US. I've never had such a powerful reaction to election results before. I'm guarding myself for the possibility that PP forms a minority government. Improbable but possible. I would hurt and be worried, like I was after tRump last fall.

I voted in the advance polls over Easter weekend, when 7.2 million Canadians turned out iirc. I felt a greater than usual sense of civic duty amongst voters in the voting station - like people felt it especially important to have their voice heard in this election.

Voting typically inspires some pride in me about this country we are fortunate to call home. And although I've nervously been checking CBC News today for issues at polling stations, I also take pride in our voting process. The shit that goes on in the States in and around voting stations is obscene and very undemocratic. Thankfully I've read about no voting-related issues so far. (Our thoughts though are with the Filipino community and everyone affected by the tragedy in BC.)

Ideally, I'd like to have a Liberal minority with an NDP coalition. Second best would be a Liberal majority. I think that's the most likely outcome. For ABC reasons (especially now that C is MAGA-lite), I'd accept it.

tRump's comments today - presumably undermining PP's votes more than anything - surprised me. As did some comments DoFo made about PP and Carney over the weekend. It made me realize that the Conservative party leaders (Marlaina, schMoe, DoFo, PP) in this country have quite different relationships with the other adjacent political forces (i.e., Carney and tRump).

I'm looking forward to election coverage tonight! And I hope to breathe a sigh of relief soon. Don't @#$% this one up, Canada!

It seems to me like this physician may be exploiting harm reduction practices for personal financial gain and tarnishing the reputation of safer supply clinics. Year after year he's amongst the highest physician billers in the province; has something like 15 practice locations. He seems to only do virtual care appointments. I question the appropriateness of mainly/ exclusively virtual care appointments for this population. People accessing safer supply services often have many under-treated medical and social needs. Responsible providers seek to assess and address those needs during appointments centred around accessing safer drug supplies. This isn't just compassionate care; it's fiscally prudent by reducing urgent and acute care needs down the road - it's all the same health system. I doubt much of that is included in what seem to be as quick as possible virtual care appointments. It seems like profiteering off a vulnerable population and a significant social issue given a lack of oversight

the rhetoric gets pretty noticeably “anti-woke” in the full text

Thanks for pointing this out. I didn't notice the comments about BC's history curriculum - where I completely agree with your assessment - or know what the author meant by "post-national" in my first skim. If I'd read this more carefully I probably wouldn't have posted it. Thanks for the insights!

One would hope so, but I think people who find Trump alluring tend to vote (and think about politics) like sports fans as opposed to rational or self-interested actors. For them, feelings and fiction are more important than policy, facts, etc.