Confiscating their drugs, forcible confinement… you serious? They’ll just get more when they get the chance; they’re addicts, and there are markets for them to find drugs, there’s no easy way of stopping addicts from getting what they need. Confiscating or 24 hour confinement just ends the immediate risk of use, there’s no saying that won’t stop them from getting another hit by the next day (or even guarantee that they haven’t already used it by the time they’re confiscated / confined).

You’re advocating for punishing people effectively for being poor and addicted to drugs. That’s kind of a fucked up opinion, and opening SCSs does not mean you aren’t thinking of the children - it’s also keeping addicts off the streets and away from exposing that lifestyle to children, but on a more humane and practical level.

To be fair, yes, Canada has the second-largest land mass on the planet. ~90% or more of that landmass is largely inhospitable for larger communities though, whether it’s the Canadian Shield and the fact we can’t grow any crops on that or dig through tough rocks, the Tundra and Arctic (where it is way too cold to grow anything, much less settle), vast distances of forests - it is a lot tougher to build infrastructure in most of Canada, leaving it pretty much to the places already with larger population sizes. And even then, most people are still choosing to go to the three cities and immediate outlying areas where the most economic influence and possible social connections are - Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal.

It would seem deceiving, given how large Canada is, but there are very few places outside of those major metro centres where people want to live, or can even live comfortable lives and be productive. Honestly, given how little good land is available in Canada, it would make far more sense to cut down on suburban developments and focus on higher-density, transit-minded communities. Single-family homes are way too inefficient for what we actually need, and having politicians and citizens who demonize quadplexes and other high density options do not help at all.

Bus driver here. Our transit commission finally got it’s first EV bus to start the transition to the electric system! But we still need to build the charging stations for it and other EVs to use, not to mention the bureaucracy and other normalities that go in certifying any vehicle for the road, plus our one garage did kinda burn down, so that has set things back a wee bit…

It’s coming, but do expect it to take a long-ass time.

Average Canadian: “Oh yeah, I got this one easy bud!”

Alright, for your final test: how do you spell Quebec?

AC: “Oh, for sure, that one there is easy! It’s, uh… Q, for… uh…”

…

AC: “Q… for… Kay-beck…”

Oh it’s definitely a great city builder, I quite enjoy it myself! Even when it comes down to putting down housing, you can adjust the size of the plots to perform different functions, whether it is to grow large veggie crops, whether you need housing for specific specialized individuals, whether you just need to cram as many families as you can into one housing unit, assigning specific families to work at nearby locations, I could go on and on!

And there is a peaceful mode if you want to avoid the wartime strategy bits, but even those seem to be rather enjoyable, at least from the initial experience I have had with it. Very much looking forward to seeing what the expanded final product is going to look like, it is definitely a game worth all the praise!

Well, think about it this way:

A standard house for 4 people is probably in the range of 200k - 400k. Then you would need supporting infrastructure for each house - sewage and gas pipe connections, electrical connections, road infrastructure, all that jazz. That’s probably another 100k right there. And then public infrastrcture for things like schools, parks, firefighters, police, road equipment, etc. It’s easy to see why the costs would add up quickly to roughly $1 million or more per person. Managing city infrastructure is really damn expensive, especially for more ineffective housing options (hellooooooooo, suburbia!).

Maybe they don’t explain it in the article, but I’m gonna posit my own two cents: Alberta’s economy is quite big, relative to how much it contributes to Canada’s GDP as a whole, but the overwhelming majority of that is in oil and hydrocarbons, and a lot of the overall economy is geared towards that particular industry. Without it, Alberta would be in a significantly worse position. I would wager that we are seeing a good example of Dutch Disease.

What Ontario and Quebec lack in oil, they make up for in a more diverse economy, especially being the economic financial and trading hot-spots a la Toronto and Montreal. They have a robust enough economy that they can basically support their own dedicated Provincial police force and not have to rely too much on one singular economic output to fuel the entire thing.

With the EV market looking to expand faster and faster, Alberta hitched its economic future on a product that people actively want to turn away from. To create their own police force would mean they’d need their economy to be capable of funding this police force permanently, no Federal assistance, and if the demand for oil craters out because more and more people start getting off gas and going towards EVs, heat pumps, nuclear / solar / wind, etc., well, then Alberta would be quite pooched. Also, worth pointing out that neither Canada nor Alberta have enough weight in the global oil markets to guarantee that oil is a prime economic benefit, especially if new sources of cheap oil start popping up in the US.

I can’t speak to all of the political reasons for wanting to create a new Provincial police force, but economically? Alberta is better off relying on the RCMP rather than trying to do its own thing, just in case funding becomes a problem in the future.

Honestly, if Ottawa can pull this off in their winter climates, I’d be excited to see how well these EV’s will work in the milder climates around the GTHA.

So I ran the math on the election outcome on this, as someone who lives in the riding directly:

32401 / 116259 = ~ 27.9% (Voter turnout)

27.9 * 0.574 (Percentage of vote which went to Jivani) = 16.01%

16% of the electorate gets to decide a candidate for the remaining 84%. I don’t know about anyone else, or whether it’s just supposed to be the way that things go, but it gives me a real ick feeling when I see a number like that. Maybe if it was something closer to 30% or something along those lines, I could at least begrudgingly accept that this is such a solid Conservative riding, but only 16%?!

I just really hate voter apathy, guys. Come on, we had 4 days of early voting, mail-in voting, the actual vote day itself, you can legally request time off work to go vote if you need it… was it that difficult to get out and vote, or am I just missing some other context?!

Obviously the filthy casual didn’t know how to parry.

I shudder to think what country would want to actually buy asbestos. All I can think about is how much of a pain in the ass it is to clean up once used in construction.

Well, whatever O’Toole wants is far beyond his control, at this point. Maybe if he ran a better campaign he could have nipped this problem in the bud, or maybe he could have entirely empowered the crazies, but that’s neither here nor there. He lost, he’s resigning, and the problem is beyond his fixing now - who knows if his appeal will even reach the ears that it needs to.

This is going to be a Canadian problem as a whole to resolve, and it’s a simple solution: if you do not want radicalized politics to take over, do not vote for the radicals to take over your party or Parliament. Say what you will of the other parties, but radicalism and reactionism are largely a Conservative issue, and I imagine the voters will more than kindly respond to the idea of trying to turn things up a notch.