wampus @ wampus @lemmy.ca

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The article literally has a Canadian medical professional stating that it was discriminatory against men. That the decision to provide it only to women was based on cost, and on relying on studies that ignored mens situations.

They literally changed it a decade later, acknowledging that it had been a discriminatory against men.

I don't see what you're arguing at this point. It's literally documented in the history of how this vaccine has been provided to the public.

They literally detail it as a cost thing in some of the reference material i linked. Protecting men's health wasn't worth the cost in the eyes of the government. I'm pretty sure that's not a gender-neutral medical opinion, but rather an ideological/political decision layered on top. They further clarify that the studies used to support women-only treatment, only looked at women's HPV related issues -- ie. "We looked at just cervix/ovarian cancers, and based on that we're just providing this to girls". Basing medical policy decisions on biased studies is not a neutral 'board of doctors wanting the best for all patients regardless of gender' type of move. Here's a quote from that university prof that sums it up, from the linked CBC article (my emphasis added):

"Many of the studies that have been done that have looked at cost-effectiveness regarding HPV vaccination coverage for boys have not taken into account cancers related to anal, penile and oral cancers. Most of those studies have been conducted around cervical cancers."

Sorta like how if the USA says they don't want to support trans/womens rights initiatives, because it's too costly, it's viewed as anti-woman/ideologically motivated. Even if they have some doctors that say "Yes, given our budget, we can't cover women's health needs", it'd still be discriminatory. And if they conducted studies that only looked at the 'men' situation, and issued policy excluding women as a result of those biased studies, you'd justifiably call the policy/process discriminatory.

I don't see your point as an issue with anything I've stated.

Eh? O.... k..... here?

http://www.bccdc.ca/resource-gallery/Documents/Guidelines%20and%20Forms/Guidelines%20and%20Manuals/Epid/CD%20Manual/Chapter%202%20-%20Imms/HistoryImmunization.pdf

There's your source for the HPV vaccine being available to girls in 2008, and only made available to boys in 2017 A doc straight from the BC CDC website.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/hpv-vaccine-the-growing-campaign-for-including-boys-1.3127916

There's a CBC article showing that there was a growing campaign to try and include boys in the HPV vaccine around 2015. They literally quote David Brennan, an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Work at UT, saying "I know our health ministry is committed to equity and I believe that we're a little bit behind the times in terms of addressing this equitable health issue for boys and men". So you literally had health care professionals calling out the gender-based discrimination that had lasted for about a decade. Some provinces started including boys as early as 2013 -- others waited till later.

Providing you internet sources in regards to my specific case from the 90s is more difficult, because there was.... barely... an internet at that time. It wasn't common for schools to communicate via email, or for govt to post information online. I did have an explicit chat with my mom at the time, who was annoyed that I couldn't get the shot because I was a boy -- and we couldn't afford to get it privately at the time, so I was not covered until much later in life. Apologies if I didn't remember the specific vaccine from when I was a kid, but your response and open antagonism is unwarranted. Especially given that a quick google search, brought up those above links, and support my overall statements. I removed the specific example, as explaining the differences between vaccines / time lines, was going to be overly onerous, and would've muddled the rest of the items I'd listed -- and as it was a later point that got added, it made sense to just clip it. It's not some "cry victim" thing where I turn tail and run when you challenge my stance. As I've hopefully demonstrated by responding to your comment here.

It's not just that. There's another way to look at these groups....

Something like feminist equality pushes are basically advocating for women's rights/equality in areas that are advantageous to women. It makes perfect sense that they don't advocate for something like equality in terms of life expectancy, or male access to traditionally female occupations, because it's outside the scope of their mandate. They are not advocating for equality/egalitarian goals, they are advocating specifically to gain benefits (or remove impediments) for their niche group. They don't totally hide this bias, they put it front and centre in most cases, but the public 'reads' it as pushing for equality because of marketing and the inability to question the narrative without being labelled as a misogynistic arse, basically. It's not just feminist pushes, special interest rights movements in general are not about egalitarian goals / equality, but are explicitly about providing advantages to their special interest groups.

If you remove all the negatives from one side of an equation, without touching the other side, you don't end up with equality.

Semi fair, removed.

Based on Canada's own posting, the HPV vaccine was made available to women in 2008. It was later made available to boys in 2017, based on what I referenced obliquely in terms of scientists going "Oh my, boys have higher rates!". So it still fits.

The case from my childhood was more muddle, admittedly -- a different vaccine (Hep B) -- I admittedly don't keep a close tab on these things. It does make more sense, as part of a regular health check screening to do with a foreign partner I had started dating, my doc recommended I get a Hep B vaccine prior to getting intimate. Elementary school, early 90s, fits with Canadas vaccine schedules and with the adult vaccine top up.

"Lived experience" counts for other groups, why would you think it shouldn't count for us? Plus, surprisingly perhaps, I have a bunch of friends that I don't work with, where we discuss this stuff. Part of growing up local (though most of my friends from hs are minority folks, technically). I've not lilypadded much, so four of my five bosses historically have been women -- the majority of most management in those orgs, women.

While I wouldn't question your lived experiences, my own, and that of people around me in real life who I generally trust more than a rando online, support my viewpoint. This also includes a few managers in the federal government, who are pissed off with the demographic hoops they need to jump through for hiring/promoting people. Like there'll be suitable local candidates, but the gov forces them to appoint people from the other side of the country to meet the racial quota.

No woman in my age range that I've encountered in real life has stories of being denied employment due to their race/gender -- unless they've immigrated from another country. Many men in my friend circles do. I've literally seen women government regulators say to industry "I can't work with these people", and excuse almost every male from a board of directors.

I don't deny that women were treated poorly in generations past when it came to the labour force. My point is that for the current generation that's coming up, it has been almost completely flipped. The gender imbalance in the federal public service, is now more lopsided in favour of women, than it was in favour of men in the 1980s when this sort of legislation first came in. We reached relative 'parity' around 2000 -- two decades, a whole generation of people, and we're still preferencing women as though they're this poor downtrodden minority, and we just watched that imbalance get more and more out of whack. But there's no talk of relaxing those pro-woman hiring policies amongst politicians, let alone enacting pro-male hiring campaigns to sort out the "new" imbalance/reality. Just an authoritarian, discussion killing mantra of "Canada is DEI!!".

DEI and woke stuff is not inherently Canadian. Framing the current issues and political issues with the states, as being "Canada is woke and DEI! And the states hates us for it!" is not helping things.

Wait, before you do -- feed that guys statement into an image generating AI. May as well get really really dirty before you get clean.

Eh, I see this guy around and hear his speeches now and then. I don't really find his speaking points all that convincing, and some are not quite the 'win' that gets depicted.

Like saying we all support DEI is nice and all, but he acts like he doesn't even know what it is or why there are a lot of guys (typically) who are pissed off about it. Like I'm an older millennial, who has memories of being explicitly denied employment with the government because I didn't "Identify as an equity employment group" -- which is defined as any non-male or non-caucasian person (so no cis white guys were allowed to get past round 1 of the application for the jobs I was applying for). I was also asked, and stupidly/naively agreed, to step aside for scholarships/bursaries so that women could win the awards and pad my highschools stats - something that meant I had to work all through university, while those awards went to 1%er women who were too busy vacationing in their summer homes to even bother going to the award ceremonies. Our government literally releases a report about hitting its DEI hiring and promotion quotas -- it's less about finding the best person for a position, and more about determining the minimum requirements, and then shortlisting people based on race. It's not a meritocracy once implemented, even though its proponents like to claim as such. And from a white guys perspective, seeing a bunch of women and minorities in power, who block you from getting a job / benefits because there are.... too many white guys who have privilege... ain't gonna leave a positive perspective on the thing. Like imagine if everyone you interacted with was a white guy, and when you tried to work with them, they said "Nah man, too many women / minorities work here, go somewhere else" -- that'd feel like blatant discrimination, but when the races are reversed its celebrated as DEI.

There're very real, historical issues that some of us have with these programs and the way they're implemented. Similar story for being 'woke', and how adherence to some 'woke' principles means denying science/evidence -- Canada implementing legislation that makes it criminal to discuss non-scientific/subjective-based things, like blind adherence to a narrative about history, is an easy example. Rich old white guys pretending like its not an issue, aren't speaking to the "young" (under 50) disenfranchised male voters who've been negatively impacted by it on a personal level. Charlie/the left acting like it's "Support DEI or else you don't support Canada!" is nonsense. Politicians / white guys like Charlie, who did well and avoided all the negative stuff about these sorts of programs, aren't great spokespeople -- let's see some guys who have lived through the negatives of DEI up there supporting it, guys who've lost job opportunities / career paths due to its implementation and their gender/race, doubt you'll find too many who'd cheer it on. Like bring out Erin Weir, the guy who Jagmeet Singh kicked outta the NDP due to an unfounded accusation of misconduct -- when investigated, the most they found was that he raised his voice when talking about the carbon tax, and that he stood a bit too close in the elevator sometimes. Get him to explain how his getting kicked out for BS reasons is actually "good" and "Canadian".

The liberals will likely win this round, but its more because of anti-american sentiment, than a sudden embracing of this sort of nonsense -- sorta like ford riding a patriotic wave back into office, despite his policies / history. If the left/progressives don't pay attention to these sorts of concerns, things'll just fester. Asking men to vote against their interests didn't work in the USA. Some areas in the states have realised this and are trying to do better -- NBC just had a piece highlighting whitmer and moore attempting to build more programs to support young men. Let's hope it doesn't take similar circumstances for the Canadian left to do better.

In context of the Ops article, coming to a nation that's one "thread" seems to be "We're not THOSE guys"... when you're quite literally one of "THOSE" guys... is clearly grounds for concern.

And at a national level, to me as a local, having that be our main unifying thread concerns me.

I'm not as optimistic about Carney, though I do think he's the most practical choice in the running. I fully expect him to capitulate and sell out Canadians, and to take steps to appease the American administration -- he'll just do it with a sad face, compared to PP who'd do it with glee.

The OPs article doesn't really touch on the difference of approach to multiculturalism -- and I think your take is frankly dated (though true, as I recall hearing it that way in grade school years ago). Trudeau/the Liberals declared Canada a "post national" country around 2015, celebrating that Canada doesn't really have a cultural identity of any sort, nor any specific 'thing' that unites us. So while I agree that minority groups are celebrated, I disagree that there's a thread connecting us. People are more entrenched in an idea of being part of that minority group, than they are of being part of Canada, or a greater set of ideals that Canada stands for.

For a personal example, it's true that in school, all minority cultures are praised and the negatives of those cultures are completely ignored/absolved. My Niece has previously come to her parents crying, because at the end of a school 'lesson' where they'd learned a bunch of the great things from all her classmates' cultural roots, there was nothing said about anything great related to third Generation "Canadians" that don't identify with a specific minority group -- or about Canada more broadly. She was just the oppressor / colonial person who was ignored / had nothing special. Other kids take pride, and gloat (as kids do), about their races achievements, looking down on the Canadian kid, which's why she was crying. As far as I know it wasn't a 'lasting' negativity, as kids move on to other things, but the situation left a definite impression on us adults and our view of the education system. Canadian values, are not a thing. We're post national.

Likewise our laws and legislation are increasingly skewing in the direction of siding with cultural minority ideals, over broader Canadian values. You can look at the criminal justice system as an easy example, with its mandatory race-based reviews, specifically brought in for FN people. In Vancouver, we had a case where a FN guy literally stabbed an old white guy stranger in an elevator, killing him, and fled the scene. This guy faced zero jail time, as a result of the racial review. Canada no longer adheres to a notion that everyone should be treated equally under the law -- we explicitly force the law to treat some groups differently. Cold blooded murder is excusable, so long as the races of victim and perp line up. And the person who implemented the requirement for race based reviews, Jody Wilson Raybould, is a member the groups getting preferential treatment.

This isn't the only example of racism being excused/defended by our government. Another prominent example is Harjit Sajjan. While our Minister of Defense, he used Canadian Special Forces during the pull out of Kabul, to specifically, and exclusively, target non-Canadian Sikhs for rescue and streamlined immigration to Canada. A Sikh guy, directed Canadian forces, to rescue just his minority group. Our government responded by saying that accusing him of racism, was racism, and would be considered a hate crime... because we wouldn't think him racist for rescuing just Sikhs, if he wasn't himself Sikh. It's an insane argument, as expanding it to other races would absolve all white supremacists from being thought of as racist. So again, the government does not treat people evenly.

Further, many companies are openly racist in the private sector of major Canadian cities. They'll "hide" behind technicalities, like saying a specific language is required for a job posting -- which they can use to filter out any non-conforming race from the list of applicants.

You also see increasing cross-border associations of Canadians with the ethnic identities of people from other regions, more so than with other Canadians. This is partly spurred on by things like the Internet making "staying in touch" with a persons roots, or keeping up to date with the culture of a foreign region, so much easier. For example, Canada doesn't have a history of slavery (though our TFW program is sorta borderline imo): in Canada, slaves were outlawed long before BC and most provinces joined. In fact, that's one of the things that we "colonized" out of the FN on the west coast, where ~25% of their population were slaves from other FN groups. And yet, many black Canadians still push a very strong message that we should feel guilty for what happened to them -- even though we were literally where the underground railroad 'went' for them to have freedom/equal treatment. Drakes posturing as a 'gangsta' as an easy silly example. This is in part because of the saturation of our media with US black culture, where this sort of dialogue is far more pertinent. Calls for justice/antipathy related to racism is almost always directed at white people in Canada for a similar reason, as our media is often inundated with the US-centric view of the topic: even though actual events involving racism, such as the VPD cuffing a First Nations grandad for no good reason at a bank, are often committed by one minority group against another minority group.

In times past, if a person of a specific ethnicity, advanced legislation/laws that benefited their own ethnicity, that'd be considered racist / discrimination / wrong. Now it's considered 'reconciliation', or excusable, so long as it's a minority group promoting its own agenda -- calling out such behaviour as racist, becomes a potential hate crime under current Liberal laws. Minority cultural groups are increasingly insular and antagonistic towards Canadian institutions -- something like JWR's legal changes, including the practical removal of Bail requirements for minority groups (which are what caused all the revolving door issues we've seen since COVID started), are the very real, and in your face result: it was quite literally a change done for the explicit benefit of a minority group, to the detriment of the general public, carried out by a person in the highest offices in the land, who was a member of the minority group getting privileged. Canada's moved passed the Charter of Rights and Freedoms -- Section 15(1)(2) were converted into equity employment groups that exclude "just one demographic" (who are increasingly shifting right-wing as a result), and elevated minority interests/group identity above Canadian interest/identity. Gone are our traditions of "Peace, Order and Good Government" that were set out in the Canadian constitution.

The OPs article writer is right to be pensive/nervous in my view. As an American, she/her husband likely won't fit into one of the privileged minority groups in Canada. And there's increasingly divisions and conflicts between all of those racialized clusters, who tend to promote their own groups interests over the broader public's best interests. PP's popularity isn't a mirage -- and the only reason he's struggling in the polls at the moment is that pretty well everyone, everywhere in the world, is pissed off / amazed at the crap coming out of Trump's mouth, which they associated with PP's style of conservatism. But those issue still remain, festering under the surface -- in fact, if the 'backlash' against Trump style conservatives causes progressives to go even further on the massively unpopular demographic style politics, as they may take it as a 'mandate' to do so, it'll just make things worse.

Musks Tesla stock holdings make it so that even if he were kicked out as CEO, the company would continue to be viewed as his personal piggy bank, and likely continue to face backlash for the stuff Musk is doing. Him liquidating his stock position would crater the stock price. It's pretty well cooked.

And yet the CBC is explicitly reporting on Smith as threatening a National Unity crisis.

Look, it took a while for people to wake up to the fact that Donald Trump "meant it" when he said crap, because what he was saying sounded so far out there. There's no reason to think differently of any politician, if they're saying really dangerous shit. A national unity crisis is basically saying she wants out of Canada if her demands aren't met And she has the support of 'most' Albertans, apparently, cause they voted her in, and her party still supports her and her actions. Like even if there's no 'recall' option for her as an MLA, if her party didn't want to follow the crap she's saying they could all just stop voting for her crap. Albertans aren't openly calling for her to get dethroned / booted. To think that they would not, potentially, vote to leave -- and/or not stoop to the level of dirty tricks like what we see in the states (Elon's reportedly paying people again in some election to skew the vote, and gettin away with it) -- is naive in my view.

If someone had said 10 years ago that the USA would be talking about annexing Canada, we would have called that a fantasy / no way it'd ever happen. But here we are.

I disagree with this sentiment, to some extent.

For industries and areas considered critical to national security / functions, they ought to extend and enforce a Canadian content like requirement for the sector ownership structure. That is to say, you'd define news sources / papers as an area of national interest, and require that at least 51% (or some other percent) of that industry's stakeholders are Canadian citizens / organizations.

Blocking all foreign ownership of media is not the direction I would want to go, though I would like it to be transparent about its ownership structure, so that readers can make an informed decision about potential ownership biases in the content they read.

I also wouldn't be opposed to the Government keeping track of a formal list of licensed News Agencies / Papers, with their ownership structures and official sites. Not only would that make different smaller/local papers easier to find / add to feeds, but it would help in weeding out the "fake" (ie made by unknown/questionable sources) sites. Businesses have to get licenses to operate anyway, so I don't imagine this would be something too difficult to sort out for the Govt IT folks. Any information they'd require to make it work could be added to the licensing process pretty easily I imagine, and they could theoretically provide options for businesses to update their information in the event of things like site/domain name changes etc (if they expand it beyond just news agencies). They could even tie this in to the ACSS system, or Interac E-Transfers, to flag vendors that have Canadian hosted online payments available, for people wanting to avoid US card networks like Mastercard/Visa. As many business licenses are handled at a municipal level, you'd have in person verification options for all of these items, which could help cut down on potential fraud and abuse. Main hurdle would likely be sorting out how to have the information presented to end users, but if it used a federated approach with clusters for each municipality, province, nation-wide, and international, allowing users to opt in to whichever lists they wanted to reference/search for products, I imagine that sort of an approach could work... ? And honestly, might even give better results for marketing/connecting businesses and customers than something like Google or the existing search engines.

I admit I haven't really dug into what's online related to business licences etc as part of this, though I'm fairly sure we don't have something like that. If it exists I'd welcome some insight.

Frankly, I can't take anything the conservatives say seriously given their close alignment with Trump-style conservatism. They use practically the same campaign slogans, court the same style of extremist bullshit, and PP even wore Trumps orange bronzer for a bit lately.

Trump's overtly lying about things like trade deficits, cartels controlling Canada, fentanyl flowing over the northern border, and he overtly mislead people in the USA in regards to things like project 2025. they made it clear that they'd do/say anything they wanted to get elected, and then they enacted policies that they'd previously claimed they weren't aware of. I don't see why I would believe a single thing that comes out of the Trump-style conservative party that exists today.

Carney and his policies are honestly a lot more in line with 'traditional' conservative principles, along the same line as the Reform party under Manning, and the Cons under Harper. One reason he's got potential to win a big majority, is that he can bring in many of the voters who normally go conservative, who are pissed off at PP's bullshit machine and divisive rhetoric.

Quebec already set a precedent that Provinces can theoretically vote to separate. The Bloc Quebecois in the 90s held votes, and the claim then was that a simple 51% majority on the referendum would've triggered Quebec into declaring independence from Canada. The blocs remained a staple in Canadian politics ever since, historically promoting "Quebec First" and separatist values the whole time, with tons of support from people in Quebec -- one of the big surprises with the US rhetoric, is that Quebec is suddenly seeming more 'pro Canada', even while still electing a party who's roots are separatist. Canada's a federation of provinces, so it's theoretically possible for provinces to leave.

If Quebec can do that, there's no reason to think that other provinces can't do the same. And if Alberta were to hold such a referendum, and the vote showed 51% in favour of 'leaving' -- be it through semantic shenanigans on the phrasing of the question, or overt election manipulation aided by people like Musk -- it's unclear how the rest of Canada would react. Even more, if they did that, and Canada didn't let them "leave", the US could take that as a justification to help "free" the people and oil of Alberta.

Individual towns and regions might try to separate -- in the Quebec referendum, there'd been talks of the northern parts of QB wanting to stay in Canada. Practically though I don't imagine that'd happen. The division of powers between provinces and federal governments, and the authorities given them, are fairly clear cut. Towns and regions sorta just pop up at resource hubs within the province, and aren't as clearly demarked in terms of self governance / "the big" items for a nation. Again, we're a federation of provinces, but provinces aren't a 'federation' of cities.

"This one thing won't be a magic bullet that saves the environment, so we shouldn't do it!" .... huh?

They're less damaging overall, and more sustainable.

If/when Alberta and Sask vote to defect, that's not an invasion. After losing them, and east/west trade is disrupted, forcing BC to also defect, it's not an invasion. If the US takes greenland, effectively fully encircling Canada and blocking most trade, causing the rest to 'vote' to defect, it's not an invasion.

It's crappy, and antagonistic/aggressive -- but if they don't move military troops in, and if the "choice" to defect is "voted for" by Canadians who are sick of being embargo'd and isolated etc, then... idk. I think "invasion" isn't right, and annexation seems more accurate.

Western Canadian here (BC) -- I agree with Moe on this one.

Tariffs on them imply they're still generally safe to use / drive -- it's not a 'ban' after all, for being unfit for the road or a security risk. Tariffs make sense to some degree if/when there's a local industry you're protecting, especially if/when the good is a luxury.

In the case of EVs though, getting off of gas is a priority in terms of reducing emissions / combating climate change -- it's not so much a luxury even, given how many of our cities are designed for car-oriented travel. I'd rather we had $20k EV options from BYD, rather than we continued to push gas cars and/or EVs that are in the $40-50k from US manufacturers, as it'd mean faster adoption of EVs and faster exit from gas cars. We have literally had multiple cities burn to the ground due to climate change lately. You'd think we'd be above political nonsense on this subject.

So you're in a demographic that gets 'uplifted'/'praised' at the Canada Together event -- explains why you view it differently.

One of the most common graffiti tags around Vancouver is FN tagging things about giving land back, or wanting colonials out. The MMIWG report recommendations largely orient around FN-exclusive services and privileges. The criminal system literally has to have a race-based reviews as part of judgment, which is an attempt to justify the law punishing people differently based on racist segregation, giving specific benefits (in the form of reduced sentences/bail conditions) to criminals of FN descent, and giving harsher punishment for crimes committed against people of FN descent -- JWR, our first FN AG, literally campaigned for and implemented this race-based privilege, her policies being a big reason we had the huge uptick in repeat violent offenders being released onto the streets around the time COVID started (it became much more noticeable after the lock downs). Housing is built explicitly for FN. The Hereditary chief system, and band management in general, is not inclusive, not overly accountable, nor something other races can "immigrate" to -- a black guy can't show up and become a FN, the system is racist by definition. Non-FN that do things like create art/images that resemble FN things, get sued / torn down / shamed -- hell, my Mom once brought some home-made Dreamcatchers to a craft sale in the 90s, and was verbally assaulted by a FN vendor (whose dreamcatchers weren't selling, as they were lower quality) until she had to leave.

I'm not allowed to ask questions about the residential school system, or question the narrative around it being a genocide, as questioning it is on schedule to be claimed a hate crime. So you win that one by authoritarian decree, I have to accept whatever you say about it. Because the system doesn't treat people equally. Very Canadian -- so you're right, we do have very authoritarian tendencies, even in recent history.