Co-Op Housing - Zero
Pharmacare - Zero
Dental Care - Zero
Environmental Protection with Pipeline Purchase - Minus Zero
Trade Talks So Far - Zero
Defence of the North by Canada (as opposed to being done by the USA) - Zero
So what have the Trudeau Liberals actually done besides talk or waste our money on bad for the environment pipeline purchases?
Sat, 2018-09-22 11:56
#1
So what have the Trudeau Liberals actually done besides talk or waste our money on bad for the environment pipeline purchases?
Sat, 2018-09-22 12:54
#2
So what have the Trudeau Liberals actually done besides talk or waste our money on bad for the environment pipeline purchases?
Here's 3 things I can quickly think of:
- Reduce the age of retirement from 67 to 65.
- Introduce the Canada Child Benefit.
- Support a national carbon price/fee.
Sat, 2018-09-22 13:41
#3
Housing by far is the number one issue facing Canadians and citizens are entirely at the mercy of developers as our federal government has basically abdicated it’s responsibility in this area Basically municipal governments are just fronts in most cases for the real estate industry
Where are the news housing co-ops?
Where is the affordable housing?
It’s no wonder the carbon tax is a bust as Canadians can’t meet their basic needs like food clothing and shelter
This is what happens when the growing gap between the rich and the poor is not addressed
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/housing-affordability-feature
Sat, 2018-09-22 14:04
#4
Here’s what is wrong with politics and what is killing a sound for the people Canadian housing strategy in a nutshell. A real estate developer pays $85,000 for billboards saying to support some right-wing yahoo and the yahoo doesn’t know anything about it Sure he doesn’t!
https://m.facebook.com/pg/IntegrityBritishColumbia/posts/?ref=page_internal&mt_nav=0
Sat, 2018-09-22 14:09
#5
The difference between somebody who cares and those that are in politics to feather their own nest
https://www.vancourier.com/relief-for-b-c-renters-on-its-way-horgan-1.23431628
Sat, 2018-09-22 14:16
#6
Sat, 2018-09-22 17:39
#7
Sat, 2018-09-22 17:41
#8
Sat, 2018-09-22 17:41
#9
Sat, 2018-09-22 17:42
#10
Sat, 2018-09-22 17:43
#11
Sat, 2018-09-22 17:43
#12
Not that it matters.
Sat, 2018-09-22 17:45
#13
Sat, 2018-09-22 17:47
#14
Here's 3 things I can quickly think of: - Reduce the age of retirement from 67 to 65. - Introduce the Canada Child Benefit. - Support a national carbon price/fee.So what have the Trudeau Liberals actually done besides talk or waste our money on bad for the environment pipeline purchases?
But what about the shiny pony I wanted? Big fail.
Sat, 2018-09-22 18:35
#15
Where is the affordable housing?
Look outside of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
Lots of people live there, and you could too.
Sun, 2018-09-23 02:45
#16
Shiny pony coming up on Oct. 17th.
Sun, 2018-09-23 16:02
#17
Where is the affordable housing?Look outside of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
Lots of people live there, and you could too.
Affordabilty is a function of income compared to the price of housing. Jobs are harder to come by in small towns and the one's with the cheapest housing tend to have few employment opportunites. The other thing in small towns is most jobs go first to people in the loop. Most outsiders moving into a small town are outside that loop and thus not likely to get one of the few sweet jobs to be had locally.
Sun, 2018-09-23 17:32
#18
Where is the affordable housing?Look outside of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
Lots of people live there, and you could too.
By that measure, hell, why not look outside of Canada? Clearly it's only selfishness and ignorance of the glories of the free market that results in people wanting to be able to afford a house where they've chosen to build a life and career. Forget the opportunities awaiting us in booming Thetford Mines. Moldova, here we come!
Sun, 2018-09-23 17:34
#19
Where is the affordable housing?Look outside of Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal.
Lots of people live there, and you could too.
Affordabilty is a function of income compared to the price of housing. Jobs are harder to come by in small towns and the one's with the cheapest housing tend to have few employment opportunites. The other thing in small towns is most jobs go first to people in the loop. Most outsiders moving into a small town are outside that loop and thus not likely to get one of the few sweet jobs to be had locally.
It also goes to the life you wish to lead. If you want to devote your life to major creative works, it's impossible to do that in a small town in Manitoba or Alberta, or in most small towns anywhere. Same, in the vast majority of cases, if you want to be an activist for transformative change-that kind of work is impossible in, say, Prince George B.C., or on a homestead in Yukon.
Sun, 2018-09-23 18:12
#20
Affordabilty is a function of income compared to the price of housing. Jobs are harder to come by in small towns and the one's with the cheapest housing tend to have few employment opportunites.
I see. So the smaller cities and towns are clearly out, and that leaves only downtown Vancouver, except that due to some kind of neoliberal malfeasance, that's out too.
Clearly it's only selfishness and ignorance of the glories of the free market that results in people wanting to be able to afford a house where they've chosen to build a life and career.
The problem is everyone apparently wanting/needing to "build a life and career" in the same place(s).
Do you think the cost of real estate in Vancouver, Toronto and (to a lesser degree) Montreal is just a function of some executive order by Stephen Harper before he lost??
Or else why do you suppose real estate in these three markets is more expensive than in other markets? Is it:
a) supply -- you can only fit so much real estate into any geographic area
b) demand -- not everyone can live in one geographic area
c) both -- demand is high, and supply is finite
d) it's base trickery. People are paying more in certain areas because our governments lack the will to set the price of real estate in downtown Vancouver at the same price/square metre as in Peterborough, and their cronies reap the profits!!
I would like to build my life in Toronto's Bridle Path. How do you suppose that's going to play out for me? Where are the affordable Bridle Path homes???
I'd settle for something with a waterfront view. Or failing that, maybe something with a private ravine??
If you want to devote your life to major creative works, it's impossible to do that in a small town in Manitoba or Alberta, or in most small towns anywhere. Same, in the vast majority of cases, if you want to be an activist for transformative change-that kind of work is impossible in, say, Prince George B.C., or on a homestead in Yukon.
Ya, so few artists ever lived outside of the downtown core.
I'm curious though: what, specifically, is supposed to change here? A "cap" on the maximum price a property can sell for? A cap on the maximum rent that an apartment can rent for?
If there are already "x" number of people who want to live in desirable areas, deciding by fiat that homeowners there can only sell for what people want to pay is only going to make "10 x" people fight for the same property.
It's like saying that a rare painting can only sell for the same price as a plain painting by a mediocre artist. That might help the one person who gets to buy that painting, but nobody else. Nobody else is going to get to own that painting because there just aren't enough of them to go around.
Sun, 2018-09-23 19:07
#21
The problem is everyone apparently wanting/needing to "build a life and career" in the same place(s).
The old libertarian fantasy: that prices are simply driven by basic supply and demand. It's rhetorically appealing, like a lot of libertarianism, and it doesn't stand up to analysis, like all of libertarianism. Population growth isn't responsible for skyrocketing housing prices in Toronto.
Or else why do you suppose real estate in these three markets is more expensive than in other markets?
Policy failure. Lack of government expenditure on affordable housing, uncontrolled speculation by investors (foreign and domestic) using housing as their own equivalent of a hedge fund, riskier lending practices, bad tax policy, poor urban planning (especially transportation). Throw all those together and you have cities people can't afford to live in.
I would like to build my life in Toronto's Bridle Path. How do you suppose that's going to play out for me? Where are the affordable Bridle Path homes???
I'd settle for something with a waterfront view. Or failing that, maybe something with a private ravine??
It's cute and all to misleadingly conflate "Everyone wants to be able to live in the city of their choice" with "Everyone wants a free mansion", but both those who live in the Bridle Path and those who live in the cheapest neighbourhood in Toronto can work in Toronto. When a city is truly abandoned to the super-wealthy, and nobody can afford to live there and work a retail or hospital job, rather than raising wages, the super-wealthy start bitching about "labour shortages" and proposing various TFW-style forms of indentured servitude.
The wealthy haven't managed to abolish their need for the working class yet. When they do, they can all fuck off to Monaco or wherever. In the meantime, Doug Ford doesn't want to fly to Sudbury every time he needs bypass surgery (nor does he want to pay sufficient taxes to pay health care workers $1M/year), so Toronto needs to be a place nurses and other working-class people can afford to live. When they can't, that's not just a problem of supply and demand. It's a crisis in need of better policy.
Sun, 2018-09-23 19:52
#22
The old libertarian fantasy: that prices are simply driven by basic supply and demand.
I see. So why does a first edition "Action Comics" fetch several million times the price of a a current comic book?
It's rhetorically appealing, like a lot of libertarianism, and it doesn't stand up to analysis, like all of libertarianism.
What's your argument? Are you suggesting that rare things that people want are more expensive than common things that people want for some other reason that you will tell us?
Population growth isn't responsible for skyrocketing housing prices in Toronto.
The demand for houses in Toronto is certainly not just a function of population growth. It's a function of lots of people wanting to live in Toronto. Vancouver, same. Montreal, same.
Throw all those together and you have cities people can't afford to live in.
But Canada has lots of cities. Lots. So why not the same problem in ALL of them? Is it that people don't want to live in those cities as much as they want to live in the Big Three? Or else what?
And conversely, if it's not happening in those other cities -- only the Big Three -- then people should be flocking to live in a city like, say, Sarnia.
That's just a shout out to Sarnia, where I grew up. But there's hundreds more.
The wealthy haven't managed to abolish their need for the working class yet. When they do, they can all fuck off to Monaco or wherever. In the meantime, Doug Ford doesn't want to fly to Sudbury every time he needs bypass surgery (nor does he want to pay sufficient taxes to pay health care workers $1M/year), so Toronto needs to be a place nurses and other working-class people can afford to live. When they can't, that's not just a problem of supply and demand. It's a crisis in need of better policy.
OK. Seems like Toronto, at least, is still a city that nurses can afford to live in (or at least commute to, since I've never asked a nurse for his/her address).
But take a quick peek at this breaking story, posted in another thread about housing and how it's too expensive in Vancouver.
She's a lucrative "Mommy Blogger", he commutes to a job (huh??) outside of Vancouver, and they seem to still be having troubles.
She can't even Mommy Blog properly because those damned kids are underfoot, he's travelling outside of the City for work (I guess, in some other municipality they could never live in or something) and even though their parents bought the property, it's just not working.
I just don't see what the government -- ANY OF THEM -- is supposed to do to make this right for them.
Sun, 2018-09-23 20:57
#23
Affordabilty is a function of income compared to the price of housing. Jobs are harder to come by in small towns and the one's with the cheapest housing tend to have few employment opportunites.I see. So the smaller cities and towns are clearly out, and that leaves only downtown Vancouver, except that due to some kind of neoliberal malfeasance, that's out too.
Clearly it's only selfishness and ignorance of the glories of the free market that results in people wanting to be able to afford a house where they've chosen to build a life and career.The problem is everyone apparently wanting/needing to "build a life and career" in the same place(s).
Do you think the cost of real estate in Vancouver, Toronto and (to a lesser degree) Montreal is just a function of some executive order by Stephen Harper before he lost??
Or else why do you suppose real estate in these three markets is more expensive than in other markets? Is it:
a) supply -- you can only fit so much real estate into any geographic area
b) demand -- not everyone can live in one geographic area
c) both -- demand is high, and supply is finite
d) it's base trickery. People are paying more in certain areas because our governments lack the will to set the price of real estate in downtown Vancouver at the same price/square metre as in Peterborough, and their cronies reap the profits!!
I would like to build my life in Toronto's Bridle Path. How do you suppose that's going to play out for me? Where are the affordable Bridle Path homes???
I'd settle for something with a waterfront view. Or failing that, maybe something with a private ravine??
If you want to devote your life to major creative works, it's impossible to do that in a small town in Manitoba or Alberta, or in most small towns anywhere. Same, in the vast majority of cases, if you want to be an activist for transformative change-that kind of work is impossible in, say, Prince George B.C., or on a homestead in Yukon.Ya, so few artists ever lived outside of the downtown core.
OK, some of them moved to the country years after doing their major work, after they made their statement and got rich. But I'm talking about at the start. Nobody can develop into a creative force if they have to try and START their work in town of 20,000 or less where it's a three-hour drive, at the least, to get to the actual creative centers. It's not possible to grow as a young composer or poet or actor or novelist in a place like Thunder Bay or Kamloops or Asbestosville. Live in those places until you die and you'll live in a creativity and enthusiasm-free zone, where the dominant ethos is churchgoing blandness. No place that's like that now can ever be changed.
More to the point, Magoo...do you actually accept the "free-market" canard that large cities should actually be the exclusive preserve of the wealthy? Would you want to live in a world where cities were like that? There'd pretty much never be any good reason ever to go to a city again if the only people who lived in them were people who could afford to pay "market prices" to live there-those places would be just as soulless and dead as the small towns where you want us all to accept being reduced to currently are.
Sun, 2018-09-23 21:22
#24
It's not possible to grow as a young composer or poet or actor or novelist in a place like Thunder Bay or Kamloops or Asbestosville.
Really? I'm not just trying to be argumentative, I'm curious why a poet needs to live downtown.
More to the point, Magoo...do you actually accept the "free-market" canard that large cities should actually be the exclusive preserve of the wealthy?
I would never say that they "should". That makes it sound like some sort of value judgement -- the "kind of people we want".
My point has only been that when lots and lots of people want to live on one of three cities, that's unsurprisingly going to drive up the cost of living in those three cities. In the same way that if lots and lots of people want to own the first Superman comic, that's going to drive up the price of that comic, since we can't just print more so that everyone can have one for the original price of ten cents.
What's the hard part to understand about supply and demand?
Sun, 2018-09-23 21:44
#25
OK. It's because a person seeking to devote their life to creative work, to cultural work, needs to be living in a place where cultural work and those who do it are valued, are respected, are supported-are validated as a purpose in life, in addition to being, if at all possible, financially supported; where everyone who wishes to create is actually encouraged to do so. Most small towns now are dominated by those who see art as a frivolity, as a waste of time and effort, who believe everyone living within their bounds should be made to feel obligated to just "get a job" doing whatever drudgery somebody might find to do just to keep body and soul together. There are people in those places who wish to create, who wish to do transformative work, but the small town ethos of resentful dismissive Calvinism will usually crush those who can't escape to places where creativity is actually treated as something that matters.It's not possible to grow as a young composer or poet or actor or novelist in a place like Thunder Bay or Kamloops or Asbestosville.Really? I'm not just trying to be argumentative, I'm curious why a poet needs to live downtown.
Mon, 2018-09-24 16:42
#26
On my Island all the medium size communities have housing prices that rival most of the municipalities in Metro Vancouver. If you want to buy a cheap house you can always move to Gold River or Port Alice. Of course the area is a little remote and Port Alice especially used to be the home of very toxic pulp mill.
Its hard to find a 2 bdm rental house in my part of the world for under $1,500 and small apartments run around $1,000. My son's apartment in Coquitlam is cheaper than a one bedroom in the Comox Valley. So this idea that it is somehow a big city small town thing is simplistic and absurd.
https://www.pennylane.bc.ca/homes-for-rent/
https://www.usedcowichan.com/classifieds/house-rentals
https://www.rew.ca/properties/areas/comox-bc
https://www.rew.ca/properties/areas/duncan-bc
https://www.rew.ca/properties/areas/qualicum-beach-bc
https://www.rew.ca/properties/areas/gold-river-bc
https://www.rew.ca/properties/areas/port-alice-bc
Fri, 2018-10-26 04:54
#27
Sun, 2018-10-28 23:29
#28
Tue, 2018-10-30 04:28
#29
Dp
Mon, 2018-10-29 12:22
#30
Strange that the Straight article characterizes a 4-point lead as "well ahead". When is the last time we saw a campaign not move more than that?
Mon, 2018-10-29 12:37
#31
Strange that the Straight article characterizes a 4-point lead as "well ahead". When is the last time we saw a campaign not move more than that?
Especially when the polls margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.
Mon, 2018-10-29 17:19
#32
Unless Singh pulls a rabbit out of his hat it does not take a fortune teller to forecast that Trudeau will win the next election probably with another majority. Polls are only telling us what we already know at this point. Between now and the election polls will fluctuate as they always do. They measure popularity in the moment not actual voting intentions even if the vote were held the next day.
Mon, 2018-10-29 17:26
#33
Especially when the polls margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points.Strange that the Straight article characterizes a 4-point lead as "well ahead". When is the last time we saw a campaign not move more than that?
Actually it is much lower than that -- an individual poll has an error of about that but this is a combination of several. Still even if dead on -- this is not much of a margin.
Tue, 2018-10-30 04:36
#34
Nanos seems to suck all the wind out of the room as 6 of the 9, or 67% of the most recent polls are Nanos polls and like Mulroney liked to often say ‘you throw enough mud against the wall and at least some of it sticks
Tue, 2018-10-30 04:36
#35
Nanos seems to suck all the wind out of the room as 6 of the 9, or 67% of the most recent polls are Nanos polls and like Mulroney liked to often say ‘you throw enough mud against the wall and at least some of it sticks’
Tue, 2018-10-30 17:11
#36
While the Liberals have made little positive change, they have occupied the space that the Conservatives would ahve used to make things worse AND the space the NDP might have used to make things better. No such thing as neutral when time is being consumed.
Wed, 2018-10-31 00:05
#37
While the Liberals have made little positive change, they have occupied the space that the Conservatives would ahve used to make things worse AND the space the NDP might have used to make things better. No such thing as neutral when time is being consumed.
Do you really think that under Mulcair we would be in a better position now? He promised no deficit every single year from year one and national daycare. He would not have been able to do either. Everyone would be screeching see see the NDP can't be trusted. I don't think it would have been good for the NDP or Canada. We wouldn't own a pipeline but neither would we have legalization. Singh may not be the best leader ever but he beats Mulcair. Had Mulcair won an election, even if it were a minority and short-lived, the party would probably stick with him for years afterwards.
Wed, 2018-10-31 07:05
#38
While the Liberals have made little positive change, they have occupied the space that the Conservatives would ahve used to make things worse AND the space the NDP might have used to make things better. No such thing as neutral when time is being consumed.
Do you really think that under Mulcair we would be in a better position now? He promised no deficit every single year from year one and national daycare. He would not have been able to do either. Everyone would be screeching see see the NDP can't be trusted. I don't think it would have been good for the NDP or Canada. We wouldn't own a pipeline but neither would we have legalization. Singh may not be the best leader ever but he beats Mulcair. Had Mulcair won an election, even if it were a minority and short-lived, the party would probably stick with him for years afterwards.
Yes. You are being selective about the NDP platform.
For one the tax increase for the extreme wealthy was less than the tax cut for the well off. The NDP would have done better than this for the majority of people.
I think the NDP may have gone to legalization as well but this is not the top priority for me over all other issues.
Regardless of how the NDP budget bottom would have compared to Trudeau, more of the money would have been spent on what people need. The NDP promises to Indigenous people where not just the latest in Liberal false promises.
I think the NDP is better on the environment as well.
So no, I do not think we are better under Trudeau.
Sat, 2018-11-03 02:47
#39
While the Liberals have made little positive change, they have occupied the space that the Conservatives would ahve used to make things worse AND the space the NDP might have used to make things better. No such thing as neutral when time is being consumed.
Do you really think that under Mulcair we would be in a better position now? He promised no deficit every single year from year one and national daycare. He would not have been able to do either. Everyone would be screeching see see the NDP can't be trusted. I don't think it would have been good for the NDP or Canada. We wouldn't own a pipeline but neither would we have legalization. Singh may not be the best leader ever but he beats Mulcair. Had Mulcair won an election, even if it were a minority and short-lived, the party would probably stick with him for years afterwards.
Yes. You are being selective about the NDP platform.
For one the tax increase for the extreme wealthy was less than the tax cut for the well off. The NDP would have done better than this for the majority of people.
I think the NDP may have gone to legalization as well but this is not the top priority for me over all other issues.
Regardless of how the NDP budget bottom would have compared to Trudeau, more of the money would have been spent on what people need. The NDP promises to Indigenous people where not just the latest in Liberal false promises.
I think the NDP is better on the environment as well.
So no, I do not think we are better under Trudeau.
I guess it depends on whether or not they would have had a majority. The NDP is better on many files but without a majority the NDP would be blocked and with a majority I think the commitment to balanced budgets was so high that they would not have been able to follow through on promises. Under Mulcair the focus would have been on keeping the impossible fiscal balance promise.
Legalization has made no difference to me personally. I haven't purchased from a legal source yet. I've never been arrested or hassled for using cannabis. I've gone years without by choice. Thousands of people have criminal records for doing what Trudeau and many other well known powerful people have done. Trudeau's brother got off because of high powered lawyers that the average person has no access too. The law was used to harass the less privileged.
The medicinal applications far outweight all of that:
More importantly, modulating the activity of the endocannabinoid system turned out to hold therapeutic promise in a wide range of disparate diseases and pathological conditions, ranging from mood and anxiety disorders, movement disorders such as Parkinson’s and Huntington’s disease, neuropathic pain, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury, to cancer, atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, stroke, hypertension, glaucoma, obesity/metabolic syndrome, and osteoporosis, to name just a few. An impediment to the development of cannabinoid medications has been the socially unacceptable psychoactive properties of plant-derived or synthetic agonists, mediated by CB1 receptors.
I'd say the impediments included the pharmacological industry. It is not an exageration to say this could be the best thing since penicillin. It has already proven itself to be miraculous for families of children with untreatable life-threatening seizures.
There is no guarantee that medical research will expand expotentially but I do believe it probably will.
Politics is far from fair. The Liberals are able to run a deficit without issue because they are the Liberals. The NDP couldn't get away with it because it would reinforce the narative of fiscal irresponsibility used to tar the NDP. It doesn't matter that it isn't true because it is believed.
Mulcair wouldn't have bought the pipeline, I don't think, but he was pro-pipeline. I don't recognize the NDP so much as I do the Layton-NDP, the Mulcair-NDP and the Singh-NDP. While the party itself has an identity the leader is the reflection of its current incarnation. Right or wrong the leader and administration have the power in a party not the members. Members get to vote on resolutions determined by the resolution committee. While there is some dissent the majority of NDP members accept the status quo of how the party is run.
Just my perception, but NDP supporters here seem much more QS than NDP.
I am hopeful that Singh's platform will include some of the heart of the Leap Manifesto if not the language. Only time will tell.
I was shocked when Bush won a second term. Never in a million years did I see Trump coming. It boggles the imagination that such a man could be the leader of the most powerful nation on Earth. So things could be much worse.
The NDP would not have gotten the fair treatment Trudeau has had from Canadians in the NAFTA negotiations. The NDP would have been ripped to shreds over being excluded from talks all summer. Had they negotiated the exact same deal they would be getting it from all sides. Maybe I am too pessimistic but I really don't believe Mulcair would have been able to beat back the attacks and it would have left the NDP worse off. Had Layton won that would be an entirely different situation. Mulcair wasn't really that progressive at heart. He was too much of a traditionalist for that. He genuinely supported EE. He genuinely believes the hype about old pot being like oregano.
Both Quebec and Canada would be better off under a QS style party but there is a reason we don't have that situation. Progressive economics just don't have mainstream public support which is needed. If progressive economics gain public support then political parties will be forced to respond and/or it will become much easier for the NDP to gain support.