International coffee chains moving away from their role as third places highlights the enduring value of libraries and their essential function in healthy communities. That’s what makes the library so special: they are there to serve the public. Whether you want to work on your laptop, use the computers to watch fight videos on TikTok, or conceivably even borrow a book, it is the one place that anyone can go for as long as they like, so long as they don’t cause trouble.

Premier Doug Ford, when he was a Toronto city councillor, once notoriously said that he would close a library “in a heartbeat” within his Etobicoke North ward, which he inaccurately claimed had more libraries than Tim Hortons. The province of Ontario has 921 libraries and 1,824 Tim Hortons. The threat to those libraries remains: In 2019, the Southern Ontario Library Service budget was cut by 50 per cent. Following budget shortfalls this year, London is considering closing two libraries; it has already suspended Sunday service for the remainder of the year. We are witnessing the erosion of an irreplaceable resource that the private sector cannot and should not be expected to provide.

This is written as if it is bad news, but it’s good news right?

It’s mixed news. Less money into fossil fuels is good but little investment in renewables so far is bad

Because Doug Ford is trying to privatize healthcare, like Smith is in Alberta. They’re trying to break it up bit by bit. Ford is giving money that would have gone to publicly operated hospitals and employees to private ones instead. And patients are forced to use these often because the public option has already been eliminated or is underfunded, and they’re told it’s the only place their OHIP applies. These private companies are then going to bill both the province and patients and deliver worse service and worse jobs - because they are profiteers. And down the road, it’ll be hard to back out of privatization when we no longer have any public infrastructure (which is when the private clinics can start gouging the province even more ;)

I love your idea in theory. In practice, I think it’s far too easy to hide CEO compensation and too effortful (ie, costly) for the government to track that. The easiest solution would probably be a carbon tax - which I figure would be linked to more transparently documented corporate revenue. As important historical context: that is the pro-business solution to navigating the climate crisis that the Conservatives and the ownership class wanted: a market-based solution without direct government regulation. Years later, they’ve rejected the most pro-business solution that they themselves championed and have worked hard to turn average Canadian voters against it through propaganda that the carbon tax is taking money from average Canadians. Now the Conservatives and ownership class’s solution to navigating the climate crisis is: pretend it doesn’t exist, keep riding this blip of unsustainable profitability as long as possible, and prevent everyday Canadians from realizing what they’re doing. The carbon tax should have been able to fund good jobs in a new economy

Big agree! I think they look solarpunk

I think we as a society may have underrecognized the impacts of newspapers and traditional/smaller media companies going out of business and the consolidation of news companies. Like twitter, I don’t think they’re being bought for investment purposes, I think they’re being bought for the sake of covertly spreading misinformation (which is a longer term investment for Big Money). I think a lot of people believe the ideas that are common in the news diet they consume, and those who wish to influence policy have found a pristine opportunity to shape that diet on a large scale for a bargain of a price (e.g., local newspapers facing bankruptcy and motivated to sell)

(Edit: here’s a fitting headline from today- https://techcrunch.com/2024/08/29/x-caught-blocking-links-to-npr-claiming-the-news-site-may-be-unsafe/)

There should be a special place in hell for people who privatize public services

(Edit: And separate from abstract issues with privatization, we already know that the new healthcare administrator Smith wants to bring in specifically excludes - for religious reasons - reproductive care (for women) like birth control and abortions. That’s right. We’re rolling back our clocks about a 100 years on the separation of church and state. And with healthcare being a provincial mandate - will Albertans whose local healthcare is under the new Christian and/or Catholic administration be able to drive across provincial lines for birth control or an abortion? It’s hard to believe these might be relevant questions IN CANADA in the next few years)

Everyday Canadians should not be expected to lead the transition to green energy while our politicians resist it: vilifying the carbon tax, expanding pipelines, levying Chinese EVs, the RCMP terrorizing Indigenous land defenders, all the pro-oil and anti-renewable stuff in Alberta (eg, windmills disrupt pristine landscapes and are prohibited while multibillion dollar oil companies are slapped on the wrist when they desecrate our environment).

We urgently need climate leadership in Canadian politics

Have we as a country ever met a climate target? In fairness to our politicians (not really), the O&G industry regulates them and not the other way around. Until that power relation changes, our targets are just greenwashing

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Nice to see more Canadian news outlets owned by a US hedge fund - that is sure to serve our public and national interests well /s. It only cost them 1 million dollars too [pocket change on their scale] to buy control of the largest newspapers in Atlantic Canada. That’s pretty inexpensive for the amount of control over information and opinion it will provide. Absurdly inexpensive actually

The only real news is independent news

In much of Europe and China the progress being made on renewables is awesome to see. In contrast, Canadian and American decision-makers seem hellbent on stymying this continent’s transition to renewables

With an election less than 2 months away? Sounds like probable corruption to me. And boo on losing the dynamic of two conservative parties splitting the conservative vote

Both privatization of healthcare and relegation of women’s reproductive healthcare. Sad and shameful

The plutocrats only want a free market when it serves their immediate interests. Default on their loans? They lobby for a bailout funded by taxpayers, of course. Can’t compete with another country and keep their profit margins high enough to their investors’ liking, they cry for regulation like this right here. The interests of working Canadians are perpetually sacrificed for the plutocrats - grocery, telecomm, oil and gas, real estate/housing, now this

Thank you for making this comment. The issue here isn’t having or not having reproductive autonomy (ie, being able to decide for oneself whether to have tubal litigation or vasectomy). The issue is having or not having one’s reproductive autonomy respected by their healthcare provider during a healthcare encounter.

This is a HCP not respecting a patient’s reproductive autonomy:

“(the) gynecologist told her the choice should be up to her future husband”.

I’m having a hard time keeping up with things, but the Teamsters just served CN with another strike notice: https://lemmy.ca/post/27557886

The gynecologist didn’t tell her it “may be an issue for her future husband”. The gynecologist “told her the choice should be up to her future husband.” That sounds a lot like something you would take issue with:

I would take issue if I were told that such a decision [vasectomy] should be left to her [my future wife], and not mine to make.

However by the logic in your first comment, we could say that being told the decision should be up to your future wife is a lot more benign than a urologist denying you your autonomy (ie, only your future wife can authorize your vasectomy). Because that’s a relevant comparison with which to evaluate a Canadian healthcare experience /s

Good point!

^ Willful ignorance