Rising prices are affecting the ability to meet expenses for most Canadians
www150.statcan.gc.ca
www150.statcan.gc.ca
I feel like there has been a huge misallocation of the nation's resources towards top of the pyramid endouvers like gig apps, banks, "tech", estate etc rather than base infrastructure and manufacturing/agriculture. All due to the easy money for these sexy sectors. For a long time.
Any reason the government allocated it to those endeavors?
Did you want a less boring, more easy to fix reason?
Our rulers are cruel, intentionally so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jain_vegetarianism
Another reason the above page lists: consumption of most root vegetables involves uprooting and killing the entire plant, whereas consumption of most terrestrial vegetables does not kill the plant.
Perhaps the most surprising part for me: "Strict Jains do not consume food that has been stored overnight, as it possesses a higher concentration of micro-organisms (for example, bacteria, yeast etc.) as compared to food prepared and consumed the same day."
Indian "veg" cuisine disallows eggs (unlike western vegetarian) but allows milk (unlike western veganism).
There is also a stricter form in which garlic and onions are disallowed, because they are said to inflame the passions.
There was a time when some Westerners believed similar things, which is how the world got corn flakes. And some other things I won't go into here.
There are religions within India that don't eat onion (Jainism come to mind).
Jagmeet Singh likes to characterize businesses as blood sucking institutions making money hand over fist. But competition in a healthy market makes it so that you can't just increase profit margins, because a competitor will eat your lunch. One big issue in Canada is that there is a lack of competition. Close friends who are entrepreneurs in Canada tell me that starting/operating a business in Canada is really difficult compared to the US (a lot more regulations, a lot less capital, and investors are really conservative). Telecom in Canada is pretty much a cartel - 3 providers, price fixing/geography-exclusion agreements, they inhabit the regulatory boards, ...
[1] https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/ndp-wants-to-redistri...
Interestingly, that's something fairly common in Indian politics: trying to squeeze out the vote from certain ethnic groups with handouts. It's just that some Indian politicians are a little more direct (It was once explained to me that a race was won after one party declared they would give out flat screen TVs should they win...).
> Close friends who are entrepreneurs in Canada tell me that starting/operating a business in Canada is really difficult compared to the US (a lot more regulations, a lot less capital, and investors are really conservative).
That's something a Canadian founder echoed to me long ago. He was trying to raise with a friend from Switzerland and basically couldn't get anyone to take him seriously (I think the only offer he got in Canada was for a loan if he could make something like 10K in profits per months?). Even getting a meeting took several months.
He was about to shelve the project when he came down to the valley (heading out to Yosemite to go climbing) and tried to schedule a meeting or two with some VCs. To his surprise, he was able to pitch to three different investors in a span of two days.
Long story short, he eventually decided to move to the valley and that's where he and his co-founder secured funding.
Rather, QP is reserved for gotchas, laughter, and ridicule -- which doesn't entirely absolve the Cons, but it should be seen as less "mask-off evil" and more "unnecessarily theatrical, but about something actually genuinely important rather than a meaningless political scandal". So, callous, and uh, approaching evil, but not there yet.
The "some MP" in question is Jagmeet Singh, the leader of the NDP, Canada's perennially second-banana left-wing party. To translate the status of the NDP into American: you can think of them as those third-party candidates who'd actually usher in change, but thanks to FUD everyone votes for one of the two neoliberals [1].
I don't think the fear, uncertainty, and doubt are unwarranted when your policy proposal are roughly "free everything for everyone" and "no rich people allowed".
I'm being a bit crass, but I don't have the time to dig up and cite their policy proposals from the federal election a few years ago which looked like a fantasy wishlist that ignores things like "costs".
Just an FYI to other HN users: this is just lies. Whether ignorance or malice, it's lies. The above position isn't an unusual one in the Canadian right wing, though; I bet the above poster voted for Kodos. Regarding the 2021 election:
>In the IFSD report released Sunday, the NDP platform was rated high by Mr. Page’s institute for realistic fiscal assumptions and passed on fiscal responsibility, but got a failing grade on transparency. [0]
And as for Kodos' team:
>Mr. Page’s team gave the Conservative costed platform a passing grade overall, but a score of “fail” under the category of responsible fiscal management. [0]
The NDP are often maligned this way, yet cursory examination of federal (and even most provincial!) political history shows that, er, the Conservatives are the ones who are bad with money. [1] It's just that Postmedia, our media monopoly, is mostly owned by the American-right-wing-aligned Chatham Asset Management, and thus backs the Cons more often than not.
[0] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ndp-is-the-...
[1] https://rabble.ca/economy/ndp-far-have-most-fiscally-respons...
Canada strikes me as more than ripe for a split. Quebec goes one way, Ontario another, Manitoba - Saskatchewan - Alberta another, BC a fourth, and I don't know about the other provinces.
The ultra-progressive Trudeau minority government should have fallen a long time ago. Their "conservatives" are about as worthless as California Republicans.
I think this is partially why separatism isn’t as prominent as it is today. A province would need an incredible benefit from splitting and most of the motivations are more cultural/ideological than economic.
Wasn't that talked about in the 90s or something (maybe as a reaction to the idea of Quebec independence)? My recollection was the idea fizzled because any transition period would be longer than those provinces expected (it also may have not been that serious of a proposal).
Didn't they actually vote for an independentist leader at the federal (house of rep) level?
Currently Quebec has strong momentum relative to the rest of Canada and their prime minister is a soft nationalist populist who likes to stir up trouble with the federal government but public support for independence in Quebec is still around the 40% mark. There's no realistic scenario where Quebec actually becomes independent in the short term.
It's worth remembering that this problem is structural. Canada is what the US would look like if it had no Constitution, all votes were party line, and the House was supreme: the only votes that would ever matter are the ones in NYC (Toronto/Montreal), DC (Ottawa), and San Francisco (Vancouver), and because they vote as a bloc the vast majority of the time their governance would be entirely unaccountable to the rest of the nation.
The fact that this would rip the US apart is due to its unique kind of citizen; Canadians tend to be more passive-aggressive and as such would need a lot more to go wrong before they consider it. Quebec is a special case since their language and culture really do need the kind of protection they say it does or it's going to die out- which is why they're more separatist than the rest of the nation (and it's very revealing that the only region of Quebec to vote against separation was Montreal, their largest city, and most Anglicized part of the province: had they the foresight to exclude Montreal, the nation would look very different today).
As such, the only time any opposition can gain a foothold is if the voting bloc these cities comprise is destabilized. Out of control healthcare spending (of which the massive spike in living costs and inflation is a direct result) may be enough to do this, but only time will tell.
Canada has a (written) Constitution. You are probably confusing Canada with the UK, which does not. Same ceremonial monarch (and more purely ceremonial in Canada than the UK), different (though broadly similar, both are Westminster-style systems) system of government.
> and the House was supreme:
Canada has a Senate that can reject and initiate legislation. You are probably confusing Canada with the UK, where the Lords can only delay legislation that has been passed by the Commons.
It is functionally useless in a way that the US one isn't.
>Canada has a Senate that can reject and initiate legislation.
The operative word being "can"; but in practice the overwhelming majority of legislation makes it through with no change. It's functionally a ceremonial role.
I'll meander with this reply - the topic itself has a nebulous, uncertain quality to it.
The situation is pretty bad but, as usual, it's very difficult to actually put a proper description and anecdote on some of the things that have been happening.
Reddit et al as usual have been calling for protests, and have for some time - see r/canada, r/ontario, r/canadahousing, the usual bunch. Plenty of memes there if you're in need of them for a Friday afternoon.
In truth, we have had protests throughout the pandemic for various reasons; almost no protest was covered by the media. We've had a handful of marches in Toronto, long before the "Freedom Convoy" scare which was, as far as I could tell talking to friends who live/work in Ottawa downtown, a fabrication by the media - which would explain why it was covered to such great degree. I don't want to turn this post into a conspiracy theory type thing, just calling it as I see it. A nothingburger that was spun for some purpose unknown to me.
Now, back to prices.
The situation is as bad as it seems, probably worse than I can tell. Those of us in tech are sort of okay; tech companies here are okay with regular salary bumps that, at the very least, offset inflation. We know we are fucked and no amount of money at the moment will really feel like it's "enough" because the inflation has made people's incomes, essentially, worthless for the time being. Even if you're well off, if you were making a million/yr before now you're making 200k/yr. Your purchasing power has fell through the ground. I feel very bad for most of the population who is not in this luxurious position (and it is luxurious, by all accounts). A few years ago we were at peak golden age, now we are slowly coming down and it's a hard crash for many people. I see a lot more homeless on the street here. These are "fresh" homeless - you can see it because their body language, over all appearance has not yet degraded.
The Bank of Canada is trying to do something to control the housing prices/inflation, however whatever they do will negatively impact the local affordability.
Not sure what the way out of it is, to be honest. But one thing is for sure, and that is that none of this is new and should not surprise people. It was quite obvious that a "wave" of massively increased housing prices was moving from West to East Canada over the last decade; and with it, everything else followed.
I've always felt bad for people here for awhile now because it's been a train wreck in slow motion, and I don't want to see the local population of people who at the very least keep the culture going - all the small shops, the flower shops, the barista/coffee/tea shops, the random used book stores, the impromptu concert events that happen, and so on be displaced and removed from the city they know and contribute to. My perennial question is always, "How can they afford to live where they work, with prices like these?" Putin/Russia didn't cause this, and people blaming the inflationary boogeyman on the bombing of some Ukranian village that the Western world can't even agree on how to spell/pronounce, is not the reason.
It's pretty obvious why the state sponsored medias would try to manufacture a panic, considering not long after the state decided it could just ignore the constitution to curb said panic. Sounds a lot like what they did back in the 70's...
> Not sure what the way out of it is, to be honest. But one thing is for sure, and that is that none of this is new and should not surprise people. It was quite obvious that a "wave" of massively increased housing prices was moving from West to East Canada over the last decade; and with it, everything else followed.
Aren't immigration quotas in Canada 10x per capita what they are in the US?
I don't quite understand, are you saying that inflation is *checks notes* 500% in Canada right now? The article says something like 6.8%?
Re 200k/yr down from 1mil was a bit hyperboic, but he literally referenced buying power. Ie what one million got you before has essentially been cut to 1/5. Again hyperbolic but not wrong.
Funny that a comment that didn't even properly read the one its refencing is itself disinformation.
>>>>the "Freedom Convoy" scare which was, as far as I could tell talking to friends who live/work in Ottawa downtown, a fabrication by the media - which would explain why it was covered to such great degree. I don't want to turn this post into a conspiracy theory type thing, just calling it as I see it. A nothingburger that was spun for some purpose unknown to me
Fabricated how? Spun how? A "nothingburger"? One can tell this guy didn't actually know anybody from Ottawa. Trumpy dogwhistles without context, without an explanation of what exactly is being called a fabrication or spin or "nothingburger"...
It was covered so extensively because it was a right-wing protest whose goal was to overthrow the sitting government and somehow couldn't receive any attention from the cops (despite functionally shutting down the capital's downtown).
You're disinformation, too -- your role is to make the handwaving and prevaricating sound more reasonable. Reading anything [0] about the convoy's political fallout should make non-extremists see that -- unless CSIS is part of the nothingburger. Maybe they are!!!1
[0] https://www.lavalnews.ca/freedom-convoy-2022-advocated-civil...
Bad faith, bullshit, and disinformation to boot.
Length!=salient points.
Perhaps CSIS is wrong and you are right, because you say so?
You are a troll and not worth wasting more time on.