Hacker News Reader

Comment by loceng | Hacker News Reader

This is nothing but pandering for votes before an election for those who don't understand this won't have any significant impact on affordability of houses for Canadians.

There's a reason why we still also pay the highest telecommunications bills in the world - industrial complexes have captured our government, and even it's far worse that that; regulatory capture.

Edit to add: 3 points down to 0 points; downvotes are an embarrassment to civil and critical conversation, and you should be embarrassed if you use them.

View on HN

We just had a Federal election though? :/

Unless you are referring to this toothless promise made prior to the election in question, and now they're happy to follow that as it won't actually change anything.

Only 20% of Canadians voted for Trudeau, and the majority of Canadians are being misled by our mass media channels - CBC which got $1.2 billion of government funding last year, and they are now being rewarded with an additional $100 million per year for the next 4 years.

E.g. our electoral system is designed to be unfairly balanced towards the duopoly, so we've been stuck in a cycle of voting for the lesser of two evils - instead of who we actually want to vote for.

I agree with you that the voting system is letting down Canadians, but I also think you are using an unfair framing with your "20%" figure which risks undermining the legitimacy of coalition governments (and thus efforts to introduce a more representative voting system where coalitions between smaller parties might become more common).

In particular, I want to point out that the NDP have agreed to help the Liberal government to pass its legislative agenda, which presumably includes this ban, as the NDP had pushed for a tax for non-resident home purchases, which is a similar policy.[0]

Considering the government as a two party coalition, therefore, and with the NDP getting close to half the number of votes as the Liberals, that would mean that 30% of Canadians voted for the current government. That's somewhere between Biden's numbers[1] and Boris Johnson's[2], to compare it to other major recent Western FPTP elections.

[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ottawa-face...

[1] 34% = 81m / (158m / 66.2%)

[2] 29% = 14.0m / 47.6m

And 30% making decisions for all of Canada is being argued as a good thing and fair, that my framing is unfair?

Thank Goodness we have the Senate that requires passing these measures, these harmless ones like this one because it basically does nothing, but thankfully would have voted down the Emergency Act being extended for a month - which is why Trudeau the night before revoked it himself.

I hope you're against Bill C-11 - the internet censorship bill as well? Did you hear their illogical conclusion for why they're doing it?

> And 30% making decisions for all of Canada is being argued as a good thing and fair, that my framing is unfair?

I'm not claiming it's a good thing, just that your headline figure of 20% makes it sound like coalition governments are somehow less good and less fair than single-party governments.

Anyway, yes, you'll be glad to know that I'm against permanent "emergency" powers, and concerned about Canada's internet censorship bill, which seems to be an attempt to control social media as tightly as (government-approved) broadcast media[0].

[0] https://reclaimthenet.org/canadas-internet-censorship-bill-i...

I was shocked and alarmed at the cellphone bills when I moved to the US from a third world country, and then my classmate who had moved to Canada sent me his bill...

I know this is probably naive thinking but I don't understand how we can have so much land and still have unaffordable homes and concentrated populations.

Exactly: it's the policy, it's captured by for-profit industrial complexes - and if you want to get into deeper conspiracy hypothesis, it's also foreign influence laundering $100s of billions into our real estate market, not only buying up/owning our most valuable land and properties, but at the same time making the costs of every Canadian go up and quality of life going down - making us weaker as a society, and more vulnerable to takeover; there's a whole book written on this called "Wilful Blindness: How a Network of Narcos, Tycoons and CCP Agents Infiltrated the West" by Sam Cooper; Canada is one of the richest countries in the world, resource and spring water wise with our lakes, and especially per capita with only 38 million population - we're a prime target, rich and relatively easy, and our systems are clearly captured.

Most of the land is useless and completely unviable for building anything. Seriously.

Almost all of British Columbia is mountain. We flooded many of the river valleys for hydro power in the 1950s. Can't build on the side of the mountain that easy.

Huge swathes of Canada are muskeg bog and tundra. etc.

IMO British Columbia is way under-developed. There is literally 15 or so Switzerlands worth of some of the most beautiful and desirable real estate North of Vancouver that could be developed in similar way to the cities in the Swiss Alps. The Okanogan is not really all that mountainous but is basically unpopulated, etc.

Funny thing about the Okanagan is that given that it's pretty much the only land in Canada where you can make decent red wine, a lot of that land is more worthwhile for agriculture than housing.

Feel bad for the farmers that happened to be born on the wrong side of the border in the US side of the valley. In the USA there's heaps of places where wine can be made and their land isn't worth anywhere nearly as much.

Cause we don't build homes.

Canada just had an election and the Liberals are secure in power from their deal with the NDP. This isn't pandering, it's them trying to advance their agenda. (Whether you agree with it or not)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com