No, I didn’t know that was an option. Cool idea, though. No pun intended, but I’ll take it.

I just had to buy a new gas furnace and air conditioner, so, with my mind on global warming, I asked the furnace guy what it would cost to put in a heat pump. He said he has put in quite a few, but the costs have gone way up. He also said that in our climate I would need an electric back-up furnace for winter because a heat pump loses efficiency quickly at temps below -15C. The cost was going to be around $30,000, compared to $15,000 for the new gas furnace and AC. Also, electricity in Ontario is an incredibly expensive way to heat, so that would be a big extra monthly cost in the winter. An in-ground geothermal system would be about $65,000, he said.

It isn’t hard to see why gas is still popular, and that it will continue to be far into the future unless we undertake some kind of national project to replace our fossil fuel infrastructure with nuclear for the needed electricity and then convert our cars and homes over to full electric.

HRTO certainly has a large backlog. The backlog has doubled in the last 6 years to 9,527 cases according to the latest HRTO annual report. To put that backlog number in context, only 40 cases received a substantive final decision in 2023/24, and that was actually a large percentage increase in decisions compared to the previous few years. Prior to the pandemic, though, the HRTO was making about 100 decisions per year, so one wonders if the backlog itself has slowed down the ability to make substantive decisions because staff are too busy managing the backlog and trying to clarify a massive number of low quality claims.

Many COVIDiots filed human rights cases that clogged up the system a few years ago, though I’m not sure if those cases are still in the system or if the HRTO disposed of them en masse at some point. The annual report showed that dismissals without hearing have also doubled. Regardless, human rights complaints about mask mandates and vaccination were well-publicized and made people realize that the HRTO could be a vehicle for all kinds of new complaints.

Unlike a civil law suit, making a human rights complaint is free and does not expose the complainant to civil liability for costs. Nor do most complainants need or avail themselves of legal representation because the HRTO provides a lot of free assistance to complainants. (That said, the amount of support provided has also decreased recently due to the backlog, so the number of abandoned claims has also increased.) In any case, it is easy to make frivolous and vexatious claims with no legal advice because there is no cost and no risk in doing so. At the same time, the backlog and pressures in the system make it equally difficult to get legitimate claims adjudicated in a timely fashion. While we obviously need a barrier-free system for making legitimate human rights complaints, such systems are easily abused. With no costs or risks, the current system is the perfect vehicle for making unfounded accusations to intimidate defendants, cast aspersions, and entangle them in legal proceedings.

As I said above, we need barrier-free (or at least low-barrier) systems for human rights claims, but barrier-free systems always break down when they are gamed in large numbers. Backlogs create serious problems for legitimate claimants as they block access to timely justice and create administrative barriers for unsophisticated and unrepresented claimants. I’m not sure what the solution is, but the current system isn’t working for anyone.

This article is bullshit. There have always been good landlords and bad landlords, good tenants and bad tenants. Renting is supposed to be mutually beneficial and it usually is, but sometimes it isn’t and that’s why we have laws and a tribunal: to protect both parties to the rental agreement.

Recent media stories about landlords and tenants are driven by two things: a MASSIVELY UNREASONABLE housing shortage and a MASSIVELY UNREASONABLE backlog at the landlord-tenant board. The housing shortage certainly favors the landlord, and the backlog at the LTB favors the tenant.

If the LTB is there to arbitrate all kinds of disputes in a fair manner, why does the backlog at the LTB favour the tenant? Well, the nuclear option for landlords is eviction, which they cannot do without the LTB. Whereas the nuclear option for tenants is not paying the rent, which is grounds for an eviction the landlord cannot obtain. That means the tenant can live rent-free for one to two years, if they do not mind being evicted in the end. And if the tenant is poor, it hardly matters that the LTB eventually orders the tenant to pay back-rent they do not have.

So, why have some recent stories been about the tenants-from-hell? Because it is the flip side of the large number of other stories about house prices and rents becoming unreasonable. There are news stories everyday about high house prices, high rents, low rental availability, increasing population, and the collective burden all of this places on younger generations. There are thousands of articles about this, and the media needs grist for the mill, so naturally they want to cover a different angle. Nobody cares about faceless corporate landlords, so they run stories about landlords or tenants with a human face. We, the public, lap up these human interest stories because we are programmed by evolution to find human drama at the individual amd small group level engaging. Thus, ragebait draws clicks.

And that is ehat this article is as well. It does nothing but push an oppressor-oppressed narrative to make people mad. It’s ragebait masquerading as media analysis. The fact is that renting is as old as civilization itself and will always be with us. It is necessary because many people cannot or do not want to own a home. In a balanced market with a reasonable arbitration mechanism, the interests of landlords and tenants are also approximately balanced. But right now we have neither a balanced market nor a reasonable arbitration mechanism. In this context, stories about rapacious landlords and scumbag tenants are just stories about the range of human nature when the rules of fair conduct are not enforced. We can’t change human nature, but we can shape the market and the dispute resolution mechanism.

I’m not sure what you mean when you say that developers serve no purpose. Maybe there is a definitional problem here. Maybe you are thinking of planners rather than developers. Developers organize, design, finance, and gain approvals for housing projects. Often they are also the general contractor for the building phase. Planners, on the other hand, ensure that projects meet the requirements of municipal Official Plans and the Planning Act (in Ontario).

It is true, though, that a lot of developers submit shitty plans that municipal planners have to fix. That’s because the average developer doesn’t give a single shit about the public good and only seeks to maximize personal profit. So, they treat the Planning Act as an obstacle to work around rather than making a good faith effort to follow the principles of good city planning.

Yeah, midwifery is a very tough job and should be better compensated. The call schedule is nuts!

The acceptance rate at Canadian med schools is about 1 in a 1000, and most of those 1000 applicants are qualified in the sense of having decent grades and passing the MCAT. There is no shortage of qualified applicants for med school. This issue is that there is a shortage of funded positions in med schools.

In addition, we admit many trained physicians via our immigration system. We have a system for training these physicians to work in the Canadian health care system, but it is woefully inadequate. I’m sure my numbers are out of date, but about a decade ago there were 5000 physician applicants to that training system with only 5 slots available. And, if you were not among the lucky 5 after 3 years on the list, you were no longer eligible. As a result, we have tens of thousands of trained physicians who gave up on medicine and now work in other fields.

So, the logical next question is, why? The answer is that there is a convergence of interests between the government and the physicians associations. Physicians don’t want their profession flooded with additional members because it weakens their bargaining position with the government. And the government does not particularly want to license a whole bunch more physicians because each new physician they add represents a long-term expense to the health care system.

Health care consumer demand in a system like ours with no point-of-service fees is effectively bottomless. You could triple the number of physicians and they would all be busy. The only curb on consumer demand is rationing, which is done by limiting the number of licensed physicians.

Nurse practitioners could definitely fill the primary care gap independently, but that’s not what physicians want. Physicians want nurse practitioners to work under them so that they can get a cut for every patient the NP sees.

All of that is to say that it is always about money. Always. It is no accident that there is a primary care shortage, and no mystery as to why either. Cost containment by the government and turf-protection by physician groups are the main reasons.

Fortunately, there has been some movement on alternatives. There are a few more NP-led clinics being approved. Midwifery was legalized in the 90s, and midwives and pharmacists in Ontario have had their scope expanded in recent years to include the ability to diagnose and treat a range of minor ailments. All of this helps, though hopefully it is only the thin edge of the wedge in terms of broadening the base of primary care.

I’m not sure I understand you. Who is this “we” that can already afford to provide healthcare for the planet?

If you mean all the taxpayers in the world can afford to pay for all the health care of all the people in the world to a high standard, that just isn’t true. Canada is a highly developed country with lots of resources to devote to modern health care, but much of the world is not like that. The need for health care FAR outstrips the supply. Even in Canada.

Second, we in Canada don’t have any control over the health care policies of the rest of the world. If you are just musing about how the whole world should come together and prioritize medicine instead of bombs, well, sure, I guess most everyone would agree with that. But that’s like wishing for world peace. It’s not a realistic health care policy for Canada. As I said, and which you pointedly did not respond to, we can’t freely open our health care system to the victims of America’s dysfunctional health care system, not to mention the rest of the world. Sure, it would be great if Canada could heal the world, but we can’t. It isn’t about “fairness”, it is about our ability to maintain a functioning system in a world we don’t control.

Thirdly, the argument that ending military spending would significantly improve health care is a nice idea, but it is a red herring. Canada, and most Western nations, spend less than 2% of GDP on military. Ending military spending would help a little bit, but it wouldn’t “solve” the problem of funding health care.

While I understand the sentiment, it is unrealistic and naive. Doctors and nurses get paid. Someone has to pay them, and while you may be personally happy to see the system cover the costs for one illegal undocumented immigrant, the supply of money and health care resources is not endless. Indeed, we already have a massive shortage of doctors in large parts of Canada. Obviously, our model of health care doesn’t work if we allow non-taxpaying, non-citizens to have free treatment. Imagine, if you will, the millions of Americans that would flood our country if they could get free health care here.

Very true. The cost-of-living crisis is happening around the world. The main issue with Canada is, and always has been, that it is cold. That’s why Canada is so under-populated. Of course, this also means that Canada will (probably) become more desirable as it warms and more southerly countries become unliveable due to climate change.

In addition, some immigrants have unrealistic expectations of Canada. A friend of mine originally from Nigeria has family back home that literally asked him to go to a bank machine, take out some money, and send it to them because they thought ATMs just gave out free money in Canada. His wife also doesn’t like the fact that Canada is less socially stratified. Being a university graduate in Nigeria makes you a big man (or woman) and you can lord it over poorly-paid tradesmen and other lower classes. Whereas in Canada, there’s a good chance that your plumber makes more money than you do!

Yeah, I do understand that we, like the US, also have a Constitution. Do you? Our Constitution includes a Charter of Rights and Freedoms which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. You should look it up sometime. Here’s a starting point from the Canadian Encyclopedia:

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/constitution

Edit: I should also say that protections against unreasonable search and seizure long predate the Canadian and US Constitutions and are derived from our countries’ common lineage back to England. If you are ever confused about why Canada and US have many similar rights and freedoms, it is because both Canada and the US were British colonies before achieving independence.

Um, yeah, Canada has a Constitution and the Charter is a part of it:

The Constitution Act, 1982 gave Canada complete independence from Britain. Months of negotiations between the federal and provincial governments were held to determine how to “patriate” the country’s last British-held powers from Britain. The resulting Constitution Act, 1982 made several changes to Canada’s constitutional structure. The most important were the creation of an amending formula (the criteria that would have to be met to make future changes) and the addition of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/constitution

So, yeah, I am Canadian and laws in Canada can be unconstitutional. If you are curious about it our constitution, try finding basic information about it before condescending to teach someone else about it.

If there is no reason to suspect a crime, then this seems like unreasonable search and seizure, which is unconstitutional. It’s like randomly searching people’s homes to see if anything illegal is going on. Actually worse, it’s like searching EVERYONE’S home.

This is so true. I get the sense that a lot of human rights complaints nowadays are vexatious or inappropriate (many by COVIDiots), which only makes it harder for the legitimate complaints to be taken seriously and heard in a timely manner. Another reason for so many human rights complaints is that it doesn’t cost anything to make a human rights complaint in my province, whereas it does cost money to start a lawsuit and the plaintiff can be on the hook for costs if the lawsuit is without merit. It is unfortunate when people take advantage of a valuable mechanism like the human rights tribunal for the wrong reasons.

Interesting, thanks. Forty-five minutes down a dirt road sounds like a dream. Ours is 1.5 hours down the highway, then 1 hour on logging roads, and the final leg is a good half-hour by boat through a labyrinth of narrow channels. No road access and no services. The log cabin is a Wendall Beckwith design so it looks cool, but my wife’s father didn’t take good care of it so it leaked quite a bit before I put a metal roof on it. (That was fun with boat access and a small generator only capable of running a jigsaw, let me tell you.) We have an open invitation for any of our friends that want to use it and no one ever takes us up on it, so I suspect it will still be quite affordable for someone, if we ever decide to sell it.

You’re right, I don’t. There weren’t any long term protests or encampments at my university when I was there. How long does McGill usually let it go on, or do the students just run out of steam on their own? Is the timing of the encampment related to having just finished exams?

You are making a lot of assumptions there. I’m not saying the two protest groups are equivalent. I’m saying that uninvolved people only have so much patience for disruption. Protester’s don’t have the right to occupy someone else’s property or engage in the prolonged disruption of other people’s rights. The University is private property and no one has a right to occupy it. The protesters are trespassing. Legal protest is about making your voice heard. It is not about using your presence to force the issue your way. That’s illegal and rightly so.

It really depends where you live. In northern Ontario, many working class people have a small cabin on a lake. It may be a plywood shack or log cabin, may lack plumbing and electricity, and may be a two or three hour drive into the bush on logging roads, but it’s affordable. If you want a second suburban-style home with all the amenities on an easily accessible lake, well yeah, no shit that’s going to be really expensive.

You can have a “vacation home” or a “yacht” and have it be middle-class affordable if you keep it small and away from the most expensive parts of the country.

What did we learn when the trucker convoy occupied downtown Ottawa? We learned that a protest and an occupation are not the same thing. I don’t know what the acceptable length of a protest should be, but the trucker convoy showed that 3 weeks was way too long.

I agree with you. The parties should work together. I just don’t think Trudeau will be specifically remembered for the dental program. Kind of like how Tommy Douglas is considered the father of universal health care rather than whoever was PM at the time federal Medicare was legislated.