they declared canada a threat due to miniscule amounts of fent going over the border in their direction. The US Supreme court, shortly before coming out with a ruling on whether the tariffs are legal or not, decided to just shelve that decision for an indefinite amount of time in the future. I don’t think the USA gives a flying fuck about your implied rules / order. This administration will tariff whoever they want, and the courts will approve it because the supreme court is controlled by the administration. Just like how they’ll let ICE shoot people, and then refuse to investigate it, stating their officers have immunity.

They’re likely intentionally targeting only ‘some’ EU members, because that’ll help them drive wedges between EU members and break up that block. They won’t give a fuck about any WTO shit, Trump and them actively want to see the EU broken apart and claim all this shit is in the interest of US national security.

I mean, if you want to continue dreaming like the USA makes sense / is rational at this stage, go ahead. I just dont think its that practical.

If someone comes forward as a leader of a movement, and gets quashed, and the organiser’s of that movement’s response is to then put forward the spouse as the candidate – it’s not a stretch to say many folks will be suspicious of the integrity, intentions and autonomy of the new person. Chances are she’ll march to the drum of her husband/whatever group of people control that movements interests. It’s also fairly clear that she wouldnt’ve run, if it weren’t for her husbands disqualification – which makes her commitment to the role a bit dubious.

In theory, the NDP caucus / membership should be the ones unquestionably in control of the party’s future and direction – not a small subset of unknown people/groups controlling a candidate. It’s not that different in scope to the issues on the right-wing – where a smaller contingent of extreme right-wing nuts have essentially managed to assume authority over the whole party, and steer its direction to their whims. Like if PP were turfed from the cons leadership, and the hard right faction then just stuck in the wife as a candidate/leader, it’d raise questions as to who’s actually leading that party/movement – cause clearly the leader is totally disposable, and there’s some more opaque group with significant sway / control. The voting process would help to eventually normalise/mitigate some of the optics, in that you could argue she has the support of most of the party if she does end up winning – but there’d still be some questions about a smaller subset group of unelected folks influencing her decisions.

And yes, I know, I’ve already been told recently that we shouldn’t hold politicians to higher standards than normal folks. But I say fuck that, if someone wants me to follow them, they gotta actually lead/inspire. I’m way too lazy to deviate from my norm for more of the same old shit in politics.

Her husband gets veto’d from the running, so the wife goes in as a candidate. Sorry, the optics on that alone looks really bad for neutral voters. She wasn’t the movements first choice of leader, it was her husband, and it’s reasonable to think that even if she’s now in the running, she’s overtly a puppet for other interests that are obscured. Add in a seemingly staunch adherence to what appears to be the tired old left-leaning minority demographic approach – where they target different minority groups with perks/benefits/funding promises that benefit those minorities exclusively, while ignoring and throwing shit at the majority interests of the voters – isn’t a winning strategy overall. One of the keys to the appeal of a leader like Jack Layton, was that he appealed to the interests of most people.

Just because Canadians rejected PP last time, doesn’t mean they want to go to the complete opposite side of that spectrum. Electing this lady would likely end as tragically as the Green party electing Annamie Paul.

Holding public officials to a higher standard is not in fashion these days I suppose.

The longshoremen are basically a borderline criminal organisation, especially given their alleged connection to all the smuggling in and out of the ports. But even beyond that, just the basic way you become part of the longshoremen is corrupt / enough to question anyone coming from that organisation. From what I’ve heard/seen, the way employment with them goes, each member is given a ‘recommendation’ that they can give to someone else, and that person gets preferential hiring – these recommendations are basically how you get in. So current employees sell these things for >$10k. To my understanding, this practice is explicitly illegal in Canada, but the longshoremen get away with it because the law has a very hands-off approach to the port unions for some reason.

There’s no way I’d trust a person from that sort of setup in politics. Even just participating as a worker in such a sketchy setup, your ethical backbone would become highly questionable.

Not sure you’ve read it properly then. “As a regular citizen” is a qualifier in that statement, with the point being that once you take an oath of office there’s a different set of standards that apply. Once you take on a position of authority and power as an elected representative, you have an obligation to put the interests of your elected constituents before the interests of your ties to your foreign ancestral home.

Yes, allies, sure. We’re tepid trading partners, as of 2017, a time when Ms Freeland had authority in Canada’s government - and which, given her current decision, it would be reasonable to question whether that trade arrangement was made because it was in Canada’s best interests, or was it more out of loyalty to Ukraine, with too many concessions made on the Canadian side?

We’re not official military allies, as they’re not in NATO. Preventing that alliance from being ‘formalized’ is/was a big part of russia’s thin justification for their aggression.

We’re both, in theory, democratic nations. Though in Ukraine’s case, that’s a very recent development, given that previous leaders were largely considered russian puppets – another theorized reason for russia’s aggression being that they lost their puppet. We may show solidarity with their plight against a russian aggressor, but I don’t think that inherently makes us allies.

Ukraine is about as much an ally of Canada as any other neutral third party country on the other side of the world.

If she couldn’t represent Canada and Canada’s interests without conflict of interests, she shouldn’t have been an MP in the first place, nor should she have been given any authority over the Country’s policies/direction.

Nothing inherently wrong with continuing to be involved with / supporting the interests of your former/ancestral home (to some extent) as a regular citizen. But when you take an oath of office to represent a nation, you shouldn’t have loyalties to other nations that undermine that oath. I don’t think this is a very complicated take on the situation, nor one that warrants further explanation.

When you’re elected to represent your new home, you shouldn’t be representing your old countries interests. Doesn’t matter if she’s of Ukrainian ancestry. Just take that line, and swap it to China – we’ve a lot of elected reps who are of Chinese ancestry. “Clearly” people would take it as unacceptable if it came out that they were actually working for the interests of China, and/or if they reverted back to being members of the CCP mid-way through their term serving as Canadian representatives.

A Canadian MP, who theoretically swore some sort of oath of office to serve the Canadian people, bails mid-term to serve a foreign power. CSIS had a report a little while ago about a bunch of Federal MPs who’s loyalties were with foreign interests, not with representing Canada and the Canadian people. I wonder if she was one of the ones on their list.

Yes, anything can happen, in theory. In practice, and based on what we’ve seen historically in the US as of late, no one will be held accountable. America is ok with Fascism, and they’re OK with war crimes, especially against foreign nations. They’re generally proud to be bullies and to be asserting dominance with their elected thug.

These aren’t slanderous accusations or anything, it’s just the blunt assessment from a foreigner, given what’s going on. There’s a subset of Americans who go on social media and lament their country’s actions, and those people tend to get either offended, or depressed/resigned, when you highlight America voted for, and are enthusiastic about, their fascist dictatorship. But that minority outlier does not change that Americans en masse still support their government, even when their government has become a pretty clear fascist dictatorship to the rest of the world. Most of the country is cheering on war crimes and crimes against humanity. It comes across fairly explicitly as such through multiple media sources, from multiple countries etc.

Publicly, the rest of the world leaders are cagey about comments on Americas recent turn, because they’re all worried that America will attack them next. That’s not how your relationship with ‘allies’ should be, and many are moving to shore up militaries and cut ties with America as part of this shift. That sort of thing won’t change, even if America manages to have another election and a more ‘normal’ democrat wins that time around – because the world knows full well that America could flip flop the next time, back to even more hardcore fascist leanings.

Well, in America, war crimes usually make you a profit and get excused/vetod/protected by the govt. So there’s that reason.

It’s not like Americans are going to hold any of these people accountable. They’ve already failed to do so after Trump’s first term.

Reminds me of a date with an Asian X, to a Chinese restaurant. We get seated, waitress comes by with chopsticks for my date, knife and fork for me. I shrugged, but my X went and got chopsticks from the waiting station for me cause she was pissed off at the blatant racism. I admit if the races were swapped, it’d likely get branded something like a ‘micro-aggression’ of racism I guess? idk.

But there are quite a few places where white folks get that sorta thing, its almost always quite benign.

Meh, as this is still being discussed/debated between gov and FN, and the courts have stuck their foot in too, I think it’s misleading to make statements with any certainty as to what the end result will be – the article implying the owners are totally fine, because the writer can’t imagine them being forced to leave their homes, doesn’t really do the situation justice.

What defenders of this process who bang the drum of “no no! Private property’s fine! Don’t blame FN, private property owners will be totally fine!” don’t seem to be factoring, is that the uncertainty itself is enough to wipe out house values, cause sales/developments to fall through, and so on. And that damage can be done beyond just “instantly losing your home” (which I don’t think many people thought would be happening anyhow, so it’s sorta a straw man in the article).

Because sure, there may be a ‘settlement’ where the private property owner keeps their title as is. There may be a requirement that they need to sell it to the FN when it comes time to sell, and that’d be at a discounted price (essentially shifting it to a 99 year lease like other FN properties that gets sold to non-FN). There could be some government buy outs, transferring the property at ‘fair’ market values as of just prior the ruling, which could make any development of that land at this point, pointless. No one knows. I can’t imagine many private businesses/owners wanting to take that sort of gamble on these properties. Especially when it’s a risk that’s entirely outside of your control as an owner.

That uncertainty is what tanks the prices. Those owners are basically screwed, at the very least, until there’s clarity on how the situation is going to get resolved – and likely longer.

Quebec’s used it for decades. Provinces could use it to ‘notwithstanding’ PP anti-trans legislation at a federal level if the conservatives get in next time around.

I don’t think your issue is with the mechanism, you’re just not in favour of how Alberta’s using it on this particular social issue.

Not sure what you mean, can you elaborate? “In theory” you can contact the CB if there are erroneous entries under your name, though to see those you need to get periodic CB reports to see what all is listed there… which can be a pain in the arse to fetch. I admit I’ve never personally had to cancel/dispute anything though, so I’m not sure how easy that process is first hand.

My personal pet peeve about credit scores in Canada, is that they’re all maintained by companies with ties to US parent companies. Equifax is a good example, where tons of sensitive information gets submitted, and it’s potentially within reach of the US govt. As an anecdote to clarify why this bothers me – I recently worked for an org that submits regular data extracts to equifax for credit bureau purposes. There was an error on a submission that required fixing. They told us they were going to charge us ~$20k to correct the error (which is crazy, as the org was a small business). We pushed back, basically pointing to Canada’s privacy legislation that states we as an org have an obligation to inform other orgs of issues/mistakes, and that they have an obligation to fix it. As part of that, we asked them to confirm they were in compliance with Canadian privacy legislation.

Instead of answering, they dropped the $20k bill and fixed the mistake.

Relatively minor breach, honestly. Name, address, phone number – all things that were historically available in a phone book, and are difficult to use to steal an ID (ie. no CC’s, no SINs, nothin like that).

You can ask orgs to delete your personal data, and they ‘should’ so long as its not retained for legal reasons (eg. tax stuff). That said it doesn’t really matter, as once the data’s out, it’s out. Most people I know in Canada just assume that their basic details are leaked, period, due to the volume of leaks reported in Canada annually.

The ones to watch for are CCs and SINs, really. CCs as they can directly impact your wallet, SINs as they can get used in ID fraud / setting up things like loans in other cities.

For CC breaches, you just call in and cancel the CC and get a new one. For SIN breaches, I think there’s a process to replace a SIN, but Im not sure, and I imagine its got a hefty wait with the govt / lots of bureaucracy. You can mitigate the ID theft risks by getting Credit Reports periodically, and/or signing up for regular ones with Equifax or whoever. When getting a credit report, I’d suggest checking how its getting run, as if you go through a third party it could translate to ‘hits’ on your credit score.

This is an absolutely stupid take, especially considering the rough evidence we can literally see with our own eyes at this point.

Vancouver’s housing prices are down ~4% this year, and have been edging down since ~2022. Rents have also been coming down, ever since the liberals reversed their policy on immigration.

“It’s the banks!”… bullshit. It was the immigration situation, with 99% of our population growth from immigration, housing supply couldn’t keep up, and locals got priced out. House prices and Rent prices have reversed course ever since they massively clipped immigration. We need immigration, of course, but not at the levels that the Liberals had jacked it up to for so long.

I don’t think I’ve made any passive aggressive comments – most/all of my replies are briefly noting the other posters aggressiveness, and then expanding on points I’d made to try and clarify, in hopes that the other poster would grow up, or to allow them to continue to lob personal attacks to highlight just how baseless their position is/was. After recognising the other persons a .ml, and the reputation .ml has, I realise there’s likely not much point to it though.

All of your responses to me have just been thinly veilled passive aggressive insults that don’t refute anything that I’ve said.