Dearche

This can work in some places (mostly looking at the prairies), but will do close to zero in others (like eastern Canada+BC). The simple problem is that the land the house is built on is often worth something like 80% the cost of buying property. The cost of a new house can be zero, but that will do little to help people afford new homes. Only slightly better than the tax cuts PP is proposing, which will have just as weak of an effect helping those who don't already own six houses.

The solution is to use the land we already use for homes more efficiently, and the only way to do that is to build condos and apartments. Make them mixed use and you can add the rental fees of a grocery store and several other services to the mix to subsidize the cost even further. A single grocery store that'll take up half the ground floor paid something like a million in rent a year, and that was before COVID. Add a convenience store, a couple fast food restaurants, a bar, and a dentist or salon, and you've got a mini-mall that'll rake in several million in rent that has a captured clientele in those that live above and near them. And that number will be in the hundreds for a 30 story apartment in the space of half a city block, since there'd be more than ten units per floor, even if it only has two-four bedroom units.

Such buildings can't be built in a factory, even partially. Not if we want them to last more than ten years, since that's the problem with the quick condos China tried to build.

I don't agree. This is only true because supply is so badly constrained. If each province had another million homes tomorrow, with the biggest cities building another 200 thousand plus a year until capacity is greater than demand, such a thing wouldn't happen. It's entirely because people were allowed to believe that a necessity to life could be treated like investible asset despite being an entirely non-performing asset.

It's like hoarding wheat, then blocking farmers from increasing production so that the value of your wheat stockpile grows. Yes, it technically works, but that's because you're artificially preventing the market from doing its job. The value of homes only go up because demand rises without supply keeping up, and various housing associations and interest groups have kept it that way to make their investments grow instead of prioritizing on making this country more livable.

The fixing taxes can fix things, but they're not the root problem. It's the sheer lack of development, and if normal developers won't do their damn job, then it's the government's job to step in and fix things like it once did.

I waited an hour in line on Friday to cast my ballot.

During the provincial election, I didn't wait even a second. In fact, it looked like some of the workers there hadn't had any work to do for a while and were bored out of their minds.

While I won't say that this was the reason why we got a selfish and corrupt moron a majority government (my district elected Lib), the fact that people were so unaware of what's going on in the Provincial government was depressing.

One hour lineup on fri.

Frankly surprised at how many others showed up that day, but glad. People need to be more active in the democratic process or else it only benefits the already powerful because they never forget to vote.

As much as some people get annoyed by this, I think it's actually a good form of peaceful protest. It brings awareness to the issue without disrupting the election process. Anybody who ends up having difficulty voting because of this simply hadn't been thinking much about the election before picking up their ballot or hasn't really thought voting was important.

First-past-the-post has definitely being a net detriment to Canadian democracy and perpetuates the two party system that are far-right and right-of-center. The fact that most governments manage to come into power without the even getting half the votes, much less the majority of Canadian support, is proof that the governments we elect haven't been representing the will of the people.

I'm personally a fan of proportional representation as that means you can simply vote for your favourite candidate and ensure a greater mix of parties reach the table. This makes small parties and independents matter more, as they basically don't matter at all right now. They're just a formality since even if they can get a seat, they won't be heard with such little representation. It does increase the number of seats by a large amount, but it almost guarantees smaller voices will reach the table unless if the support for a single party in a region is overwhelming, which in itself is democracy doing its job.

Ranked ballots aren't bad either, just that I feel they're weaker since they tend to strengthen whatever party that forms the government and makes it easier to ignore other voices. But this does mean that smaller parties are more likely to get seats if they align with district interests more. To not have to vote strategically and just let people vote for their favourite candidate makes it far easier on the voter and helps get their voice out.

I understand spending $100million of it's to fix Ontario's infrastructure and get more people connected, but this isn't it. It's simply paying off someone else to put in a band-aid solution that only looks good on the surface.

I understand the idea of building up the infrastructure for isolated communities to become connected, but I strongly feel that this isn't the way. It's forcing a group of people onto a monopoly that can be taken away at any point. If the government really wanted to do this, then they'd fund cell towers to these isolated communities instead. That'll give them reliable internet access that isn't beholden to a single company on top of helping local companies. Nobody would be forced to use hardware from a specific company or suffer complete loss of service.

This is likely more expensive, but it's far more beneficial and forward looking and may even bring people together more. And it doesn't exclude Starlink for those who want it as well. They just have to pay for that on their own, but Starlink is already priced to be affordable to individual families.

Early polls have started as well! Never too early to vote against a wannabe dictator that tosses your rights away like a used candy wrapper!

I think this is the key. While I do think that a government can juggle multiple issues at the same time successfully, the population can only pay attention to a single issue at a time. Splitting attention dilutes a party and news outlets will have trouble disseminating so many issues at once. Concentrating on just a small number means that people can get a good and slightly nuanced idea of the party's policies making disinformation harder, accidental or purposeful.

Hence the reason why only Conservatives rely on fearmongering.

I don't think talk of separation itself is bad, even if I think it's exceedingly stupid.

But people should stop talking about other provinces separating when such sentiment obviously isn't there at all. If the prairies want to separate, stop acting like BC is in on it as well. From what I can tell, it feels more like BC wants to have nothing to do with Alberta if it can help it, and it's the federal government that's forcing them to play nice together.

All this separation talk is entirely Alberta, with a bit of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and even then the numbers suggest that it's at most 30% of Alberta that is actually talking about it.

I agree here. The issue is that lobbyists can give donations and kickbacks. The act of lobbying isn't a problem, it's that lobbying as it stands right now is basically the same as legal bribery, which is the real issue.

Politicians shouldn't be able to receive anything from lobbyists (or anybody for that matter), and be barred from working for companies connected with decisions made during their term for at least ten years.

It's obvious looking at the US, that corruption had flourished for decades to the extreme, making politicians being entirely pocketed by large industries rather than working for the people who actually voted them in. It's not as bad up here, but you can see how so many of our leaders chose the interests of specific businesses over the public interest.

Isn't the the sort of thing you're supposed to complain to the CRTC if the providers refuse to deliver their services within the city? You said you're in the GTA, right? So it's well within their official coverage range.

And even if not, cell coverage according to their maps, extend to almost the whole of Southern Ontario. Together with a decent plan, you could piggyback on that (though I suppose speed would vary on location).