Even if only 5% of cops are dicks, that’s way too many for people in a position of power. Ask the two in your family what they did the last time they saw a fellow officer pulling some kind of icky crap (this, racism against someone Indigenous, whatever). Maybe they’re genuinely good people and called their fellow cops out, I don’t know. If not, I’m sorry to say that they’re part of the problem.

People involved in law enforcement have a higher obligation than the average citizen to follow the rules, except where specific affordances are made for them so that they can do their jobs. This is not one of those places.

When was the last time a federal government managed to balance a budget? Trudeau-the-elder landed a smallish surplus once, back in the late 1970s, I think. I’m not aware of anyone having pulled it off since.

Ford’s policies make it clear that he clings to the outmoded view that addiction is a moral failing and can be stopped by strength of will alone. He’d rather feel superior than save lives.

I kind of pity Powassan. Imagine a tick-borne disease being the only thing named after your community that anyone’s ever heard of.

Air Canada is not a vital service (some of the little bush airlines that are the only way in or out of remote communities might be, but not them). Believing that the government should intervene on their behalf is such excessive hubris that I can’t even.

Someone overreacted here, but it wasn’t just the police. Who calls the cops over a water gun, for crying out loud?!

Even if Singh were just in it for the pension (which I don’t believe), he has never shown an interest in dismantling public health care or building unnecessary additional highways, which makes him a better person than Ford. I wish Ford were just in it for the pension.

The issue is how to rejigger the universities’ income streams so that they can keep themselves afloat without that. We can start by looking into why some seem to be having more trouble than others.

Problem is that the prices were originally arranged to that first-class lettermail subsidized the rest of the services. Then the amount of lettermail tanked, and the pricing structure never quite straightened itself out afterwards. Someone has to sit down and rethink it from scratch, and so far no one’s been willing to do that.

We still need the postal service, though—it serves smaller and remote communities that the couriers would prefer not to deal with.

The logic adopted by the government and its defenders is that because the province’s overall high rate of opioid deaths has continued, these safe consumption sites are a failure

Even though the death rate has dropped in communities with safe consumption sites. It wasn’t as though Ford’s drug policies ever had anything to do with logic or evidence, though.

Loss of consciousness is not a normal symptom of migraine or cluster headaches (even if some sufferers wish it would be). The moment the ambulance brought him in unconscious, the doctors should have started testing for meningitis, tumours, etc. The fact that they apparently didn’t suggests that they were either incompetent . . . or severely overworked and so exhausted that they couldn’t tell a zebra from a horse even when it shoved its stripy butt in their faces. This kid is lucky that his mom kept fighting for him, and lucky that they were close enough to a major city that “bring him straight down” was only a matter of a couple of hours of driving.

Certain provincial governments have developed a tendency to scream “but jurisdiction!” about any federal policy that might affect them, whether or not it’s useful or justified to do so and regardless of what other stimuli are applied.

There’s a difference between ignorance—even willful ignorance—and active malice.

If the Peruvian government lied about why it wanted the weapons, and our government believed them, then our government is guilty of ignorance and stupidity, but not malice.

If the Peruvian government lied about why it wanted the weapons, and our government knew there was a possible issue but sold them the weapons anyway, that’s willful ignorance, but still not malice. Consider the following scenario: Your neighbour borrows a kitchen knife from you, saying he needs to chop some vegetables. Instead, he uses it to kill his wife. You knew that he and his wife had a bad relationship, and you’ve told him off when you’ve seen her with suspicious bruises, but you weren’t expecting anything like this. Still, you provided the weapon, and you didn’t try to step between them. To what degree are you guilty? Should you have interfered in their relationship? That’s where I suspect we’re at: our government not agreeing with or encouraging the Peruvian government’s behaviour, but not shunning the perpetrator or making any real attempt to stop what’s going on. Like it or not (and I don’t like it), this is really common in international relations. If the original headline had used “ignores” in place of “supports”, I would agree with it 100%.

If the Peruvian government told the truth: “We want these weapons to kill and maim our own people,” and our government still sold them, then that’s malice and would make the headline accurate as it stands. But I doubt that’s what actually happened.

I’d translate that as “We’re too lazy to do any actual checking, so we’re going to dump the responsibility on you in the hope that you’ll go away.”

“Supports” is stretching things way out of shape. “Ignores” or “does not attempt to prevent” might be accurate, depending on what’s actually taking place in Peru (about which I have no idea, nor do most Canadians), but to what degree is it acceptable to interfere in another country’s politics? Do they expect Canada to enact a trade embargo with Peru to get mining companies headquartered here to stop investing there? This is not stuff we do casually, nor should we.

So tell me, if the choice is between having the safe consumption site close to your kids’ school and having people doing their drugs in the open near your kids’ school and leaving their used needles lying on the playground, which are you going to pick? Often, these places are where they are because that’s where their clients already are.

You may also want to measure out the radius of 200m from every school or daycare in your town or city on a map and see how many places are left where they can park SCSs. I admit I haven’t actually done this, but my bet is that the options will be considerably reduced.

It’s just about inevitable that some SCSs are going to end up in someone’s backyard. Figuring out where they’ll do more good than harm is more important than enforcing arbitrary limits. This is typical right-wing “think of the children” rhetoric. Don’t fall for it.

You would think, but the NDP are seen as “unelectable”.

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.

This is the real issue. Having grown up in a dot on the map in the middle of the Ontario boreal forest on the arctic watershed side of the Shield, I can tell you that it isn’t all that much harder to build infrastructure there than it is further south (sometimes takes a little longer because of longer winters, that’s all). It isn’t even horrible land agriculturally as long as you take the shorter growing season into account when you’re choosing what to plant. So more of the land is usable than you might think. However, people want to go to the places where people already are.

Fewer homes are built -> municipality receives less money -> municipality can’t afford to build out infrastructure like water, sewers, and roads because they can barely afford to maintain the existing stuff -> even fewer homes are built. My cat can figure that out, so either PP is dumber than my cat (possible), or his goal isn’t what he claims it is (likely).

I know, and it’s terrifying.