I agree that the government should govern not politick, but isn’t it a bit naive to think you can make lasting change without politicking?

I wonder if it’s useful to look at “governing”, and “politicking” as either end of a spectrum with “leading” as the sweet spot.

Just my two cents though.

It’s because of the rail labour dispute. The NDP can’t/won’t be party to cutting down unions.

It’s really telling that Chinese EVs (like imported Teslas) were basically considered fine until the prospect of them being affordable to the middle class arose. That’s when we started hearing about labour abuses and fires that only happen with * cheap Chinese* batteries.

It’s not like Tesla has a stellar reputation for quality and reliability. They started powerwall as a way to offload bad/ prematurely failing batteries. Don’t get me wrong, powerwall is a good idea. But pretending like BYD is going to have terrible batteries and that’s why we need tariffs is bad.

China has labour and human rights abuses (eg genocide of Uyghers in Xinjiang [cultural genocide is still genocide]). Imo Canada is doing a better job of reconciling with its history/present of cultural genocide than China is. Canada’s TFW program probably results in lots of horrible abuses that we don’t hear about, but i think this program may be on its way out too. These issues don’t only apply to EVs though.

The only things that’re EV specific are lithium batteries and automotive manufacturing.

EV tariffs are protectionism: We want to protect domestic automotive (and para-automotive) manufacturing capabilities, and our investments in EVs/green tech.

I don’t think 100% tariffs can be justified on EVs alone.

Yeah I think that the best plan would be to genre edit a solution, then selectively breed ‘normal’ humans to recreate that engineered genome

“Mr. Poilievre, should Canada deem rail freight an essential service and nationalize the railways?”

Isn’t BYD the world’s #1 or #2 battery company?

They ought to respect consumer protections and warranty laws but I don’t think dismissal of their batteries outright makes sense.

I would worry about it yeah. Also nobody buys a pint of haagen daas with the money they need to survive, and it will be obvious to them that it’s been melted and refrozen.

Ice cream is better imo because you’re less likely to kill somebody

I think you deleted a sentence or something. Your 5% number is to do with the opportunity cost? So you’re saying that the project cost Vancouver 5% of 31.8M ie 1.6M. That makes sense.

I think comparing it to the cost of a single duplex is a good way to provide context.

But the city didn’t buy the units, they only catalyzed their construction. So it’s not a perfect analogy.

Another short coming of your analysis is that the estimated cost of the loan is ignoring the risk of default. What if the contractor spends the money, but fails to complete the project? Or builds it but cuts a bunch of corners and gets sued into bankruptcy?

The risk of that is the real cost of the project. But overall I like your analysis, thanks for bringing it up.

MAID accounts 4.1% of deaths and, if current trends continue, will grow by 35% per year! That means that in two years 79.1% of Canadians will be Murdered by Trudeau’s health care!!!

-idiots

Idon’t think that’s a warship (although I do concede it’s gathering intel) and it’s a 1500km boat ride away from Canada’s territorial waters.

1500km is about twice the length of Canada’s pacific coast (Southern tip of Vancouver Island, to Northern tip of Haida Gwaii)

My view is that the condition of the arctic ice cap is of global interest, but China’s claim to be an arctic nation is total garbage.

Canada probably should take steps to further assert sovereignty over its arctic archipelago (and the associated searoute), but I still feel that the comment I was responding to was spreading alarmist junk.

Could you give an example of a Chinese warship entering Canadian waters?

It seems that there is a lot of moving parts to this story and the article reports some eventsand quotes but doesn’t really string them together coherently. The Liberal MP that’s accused of trying to shift the discussion to abortion rights had some procedural complaints about the way the Conservative meeting chair set up the meeting, and argued that they were changing the topic away from abortion. Is there any merit to that complaint? It’s the sort of thing an article needs to address.

So we have fewer doctors per person.

Small quibble: we have approximately the same number of doctors per capita as we always have. The problem is that the amount of medical care reqired per person is going up because elderly people need more care than middle aged people. Ie as boomers age they require more care, also their parents are living longer, which is great, but also translates to a lot more care within a lifetime than previous generations. As boomers require more care they are simultaneously retiring from the work force and thus reducing the number of medical professionals. A lot of the gap is being filled by para-medical workers (eg personal support workers). Who are largely immigrants.

The fact that we simultaneously need more doctors, and send thousands(?) of bright, hardworking Canadians overseas for medical training where they saddle themselves with debt, but then make it difficult for them to come back and work in Canada is a real shame (I mean that literally, we should be ashamed of how poorly this system is being managed).

This sort of comment from a premier under mines the little leverage Canada has in the situation.

What? They should have been banned in new builds in 2008.

They are allied with him because he weakens America. If America invaded Canada, China and Russia would probably support both sides to make America look bad.

We would not get state level military support from any ally. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Cuba might help us.

The type of build up that would be effective (if it could even be called that) against a US invasion would be sapping roads and bridges like Switzerland, and transforming our army into a resistance/insurgency force. Should we re allocate our spending towards these aims?

It seems a little premature.

Maybe we should actually invest in helping Canadians (and Americans) engage with and value democracy and human rights.

We need to build up in case of a trump win in the US. He may well order US military action against Canada.

…

No matter how much equipment we purchased, it wouldn’t be enough.

So how much should we build up? Or did you mean build up international alliances?

I agree that force is the only language fascists understand, But what would preparing Canada for a US invasion look like?