The fact that they’re even going down this path, vilifying people’s pensions is fucking disgusting. As if a pension should be some sort of a luxury. This should be used to clap straight back at PP in the form of standing up for more people to have pensions, not fewer.

Someone has been reading MMT. Nice. 👍

It seems like Canadians have a pretty fair assessment of Polinever’a agenda.

Oh they’ll complain no doubt but I can much more easily sell to my average intelligent relatives that they’ll be able to get to work without a car or go visit the extended family in Montreal without driving or flying. The cons line will be “too much spending” which only works if there’s nothing to show for it. If most people are getting or expecting to get something (e.g. EVs for drivers, transit for the rest of us) that argument goes limp.

And this is why I went down this hypothetical. Perhaps doing transit subsidies and buildouts, heavy EV subsidies would be something most would see and understand. And I’m talking about heavy subsidies, not something I significant that’s not noticeable.

I completely understand, but don’t you see that the lack of self-evidence is an inherent weakness of the scheme which allows the cons to easily weaponize it? Unless we enact some form of censorship on what certain actors can say (factuality, etc), which I’m not opposed to, I don’t see how you fix that. Perhaps the current carbon scheme is not sustainable, even if it works economically. If replacing this policy with something more self-evident is the magic bullet to curb Polinever’s enthusiasm, I’d be 100% for it, because he’ll also get rid of it and do worse in other fronts. “Axe The Tax” is leading by 19% and 27% points at the moment. Clearly this shit resonates. I’d be curious to see what would happen if we took away the axe. Perhaps you believe the knowledge gap can be filled instead. I’m skeptical.

Why Axe It?

Because if people don’t want it, democracy could give us something worse than no carbon tax - politicians that would kill it and increase emissions.

The carbon tax may be “most efficient” from free-market economist point of view but that view itself disregards the political externalities which could upend the whole equation over the long term.

If the carbon tax is felt unfairly by the majority then a different scheme should be implemented that doesn’t feel this way. For example, if most people are getting what they paid in carbon tax and some even more, then instead of insisting on a broad market approach, exclude individuals from the scheme. Tax only firms, perhaps over certain size or over certain emissions. When it comes to individuals, perhaps invest public money in creating cheap alternatives for individuals. Like I don’t know, massively expand public transit. Build high speed rail. We can’t build a single fucking LRT line in Canada’s biggest city for 15 years now and the TTC has been running on a shoestring for at least that long. You’re trying to achieve these things with the carbon tax anyway (shifting behaviour to lower carbon options) but it matters how people feel about the means to the end. If they feel punished and especially if they feel punished with no alternative then they’ll give you Polinever and the whole scheme goes down the trash chute.

Speaking of majorities, given FPTP “a majority” here could be as little as 39% so a plurality is more accurate.

Also I’m not trying to absolve the reformacons from responsibility of their fuckery in all regards discussed in this thread. They’re objecitvely making all of these problems worse.

Another Canadian influencer, Lauren Southern, produced dozens of videos about Canadian politics for the site. She claims she was unaware of how Tenet was funded.

Oh apparently this star is also part of the ring.

Yeah.

Would it further Russian interests if it shows people being sent into the meat grinder by their bosses?

Zing!

What. 🥹

Technically it’s 260 Celsius. By then any oil in a pan should start smoking, telling you to lower the heat. The PTFE won’t burst in smoke in a split second at 260, it’ll just start off gassing. The higher you go the more gas. So yeah, it’s not very safe if you don’t know about this and don’t treat it accordingly. And yeah, I think that’s what the bird thing is about.

I got shocked at first but then I read it’s about polymers. Fluoropolymers indeed have a completely different safety profile than the typical PFAS culprit like C8, PFOS and so on. The polymer molecules are different and can’t do what the non-polymers can. PTFE (Teflon) for example has wide uses in surgical implants. The health concerns around PTFE stem from C8 and other PFAS used during its production, through work exposure and residues on the final PTFE due to insufficient cleaning. There’s something to be said about the manufacturing of PTFE but PTFE itself is inert up to 200-something Celsius. And then it breaks down to poisonous gases but not non-polymer PFAS.

The most significant sources of exposure to PFAS is via stain-resistant furniture, carpets, and oil-resistant food packaging. Then you have exposure via food, from pesticides, biosolid fertilizer (shit collected at the water treatment plants, only legal in the US, so shouldn’t be a thing in Canadian produce), manufacturing processes where it’s used to keep equipment clean. Then you have exposure via drinking water, from firefighting foam (AFFF, used at all airports), factory dumping, firefightand all other sources that eventually end up in the water. All of those examples are non-polymers.

I’m not saying there isn’t a problem with the industry writing regulation. I’m very much against that and I’m very suspicious. I’m just saying that if the exception is about polymers only, while the rest of PFAS are regulated as a class, then this isn’t the loophole that it seems it is. I wrote a letter about the PFAS draft report during the citizen comment period where I stressed PFAS should be regulated as a class because it’s too easy to find alternative molecules that aren’t forbidden to workaround specific-compound regulation.

Miller should get slapped for this. Assuming accuracy.

Conservatives suggest Singh is maintaining the deal to secure his MP pension, which he will qualify for in October 2025, when the next federal election is scheduled.

Oh so he’s parroting Bitcoin Milhouse’s ads. Nice.

Preface: I do not like what domestic autos are building. I do not like F-150, RAM. I do not like SUVs either. We’re building and driving way too large cars that impact us negatively in multiple ways. BTW almost all Japanese cars are made in North America too. Many of them in Canada.

I see a few people talk about the non-existence of a Canadian EV industry so writing here instead of replying individually.

From Wikipedia:

Automotive manufacturing is one of Canada’s largest industrial sectors, accounting for 10% of manufacturing GDP and 23% of manufacturing trade. Canada produces passenger vehicles, trucks and buses, auto parts and systems, truck bodies and trailers, as well as tires and machine, tools, dies and molds (MTDM). The auto industry directly employs more than 125,000 people in vehicle assembly and auto parts manufacturing, and another 380,000 in distribution and aftermarket sales and service.

Many of the manufacturing jobs are well paid union jobs and most will transition to building EVs long term.

EV manufacturing is still being built out. There is significant investment in the pipeline. There’s likely more to come (to Canada) if Harris wins the US election. Many are battery plants but those will feed into North American EVs whether built in Canada, US or Mexico. These vehicles will sell in North America too. If there’s no market for them, there’s no need for the battery manufacturing either. There’s no need for the jobs. The incomes that feed into the automaker adjacent communities dries up. Other parts of the local economies contract because of that. The extra income from the savings from buying Chinese EVs might not be enough to replace the loss. We also lose the ability to make EVs long term which increases our dependence on China, regardless of whether you like China or not.

Someone mentioned forcing domestic autos to make smaller and cheaper EVs. I think that’s a grand idea. Likely not gonna happen with an LPC/CPC gov’t but still.

Another way to get smaller and cheaper EVs without deindustrializing parts of Canada would be to force China’s EV makers to open factories in Canada. Cheap and small Canadian-made BYD would still be cheaper and smaller than large and expensive EVs. If the North American autos refuse to make them and fail at the hands of domestic BYD, the existing workers will be able to staff BYDs new factories at decent wages duo to collective bargaining and we’ll retain the ability to build EVs in Canada long term. If something happens with China in two decades and 95% of all vehicles come from these factories, we still have the factories and workers, we can run them without China if needed and keep our car-dependent economy going. So how do we force BYD to open up shop in Canada? Tariffs. This is already happening in the EU. BYD will be building factories in Hungary and Turkey. There’s talk of another in Italy.

If we made no vehicles in Canada, had no significant number of workers doing it, had no reasonable prospects of building the cars that will be driven 20 years from now, then tariffs on Chinese EVs today would be completely counterproductive.

Find out when?

In his first interview on Friday, Barnier said his administration would include conservatives, as well as members of Macron’s centrist party, and said he “did not exclude” having ministers from the left.

🤦

You’d think he’d have learned a lesson after shitting the bed by calling an election…