• 10 Posts
  • 26 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 9th, 2023

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  • “We have new people whose life experiences have been radically different than ours. And so for those of us who have been here for decades or a long time, it gives us an insight into how people lived in other parts of the world, and now they’re with us and we want to learn about them. So we are one united community.”

    This is such a positive take from someone in leadership re: new immigration to their community. It can be difficult to manage unexpected population growth and the federal/provincial governments offer poor support to growing communities across Canada. Mr. Morrison and his neighbours deserve lots of credit and respect for welcoming new neighbours who’ve been through a lot. They sound like good people.



  • Just a reminder that many former government staff, ex-elected officials, family members and acquaintances of current politicians, etc. are now lobbyists and/or investors in the commercial cannabis sector. For example, Smitherman (CEO of CCC) worked for 4 decades in Ontario politics before becoming a lobbyist. As the retailer quoted in this article says, these politically-connected producers are the intended beneficiaries of pricing changes, not the retailers or customers.

    Unfortunately, this is standard business practice in Canada: now that they have achieved market dominance over less-connected peers, they look to the government to help protect their profits, which they will use to purchase struggling competitors to further consolidate the industry and allow them to raise wholesale prices in the future. Once only 2-3 major producers remain in the country, they will have spent two decades lobbying the government and can look forward to protectionist government intervention, price collusion, and guaranteed profits, not unlike Rogers/Bell/Telus enjoy today.


  • Agreed 100%.

    BC port workers do not provide what the Canadian government defines as ‘essential services’. Minister O’Regan’s statement, implying that the membership’s rejection of the latest agreement means a settlement might be impossible and an alternative solution must be reached quickly, demonstrates the government supports the employer despite its self-claimed obligation to neutrally mediate the dispute. (Maybe the employer’s inadequate contract offers demonstrate its unwillingness to negotiate in good faith? Why must the needs of the employer and its customers determine the time frame for negotiation, and not the needs of the employees performing the work? Why must the government intervene in a legal negotiation progress?)

    His trial-balloon proposal of binding arbitration is simply not acceptable if the membership itself outright rejected a deal. If the government takes that step – or even worse: back-to-work legislation – the NDP will be forced into an existential decision: support the government and make the final break away from organized labour, or force an election that both they and their Liberal counterparts do not want. It would also force union leadership and its members to demonstrate their approval/disapproval with their votes (or refusal to support political parties that show contempt for working people), or else risk irrelevancy.

    This situation is politically risky for almost everyone involved.





  • Ironic that MPP Hunter was required to resign her provincial seat to run in a municipal election, but Cllr. Crawford (who does not live in Scarborough-Guildwood) is not required to resign his municipal seat to run in a provincial election for her vacated position.

    It is also ironic that our disgraced former mayor Tory, whose resignation is the reason why we just had an election in Toronto, and why Hunter resigned for the opportunity, is now asking voters to go back to the polls to support his council budget chair, just after it was announced that we face a $1.4 billion deficit for which Crawford and Tory are mainly responsible.

    Reality is stranger than fiction.





  • “In my view, a lot of the general associations we have with drinking in public are negative, like drunkenness in public, drinking and driving, like drunken hoodlums, all of these things — which make the news, but aren’t necessarily the only way people consume alcohol in public.”

    Dr. Malleck quoted here gets close to the source of the problem, which is classism.

    Most mayors, city councilors, etc. are doing well financially and they own their own houses (as well as cottages, investment properties, etc.), so the idea of going to a public park to drink outside with friends seems unusual to them. They view public parks as community spaces, but only within their personal perspectives as homeowners, and therefore what is allowed in parks is restricted to class-based moral sensibilities. It’s easy for Councilor So-and-So to bring her laptop to her backyard garden patio for another Zoom meeting. The line worker who just wants to sit outside with her family after 12 hours inside sorting chicken meat for Councilor So-and-So’s BBQ that weekend… she was an afterthought when it comes to these kinds of public space bylaws.

    This disconnect between how municipal leaders and many apartment/condo-dwelling constituents live also explains the conflicts during the pandemic when people wanted to leave the isolation of their apartments for fresh air, but homeowner leaders (with their backyards, cottage retreats, ‘working’ holidays, etc.) told them to go back inside and threatened them with fines.

    We do we have these bylaws? Ignorance rooted in class.