Just saying goodbye, and thanks! My multiple substack cancellations today are not about the quality of the journalism, or even the comments.
I've followed the news somewhat obsessively (especially the commenting-back) since retirement, because it was a substitute for the reading and commenting of my office job. That job was very technocratic, an engineer calculating the best places to spend public money. It was all about Science and Reason and provable results.
The BC and USA elections, and what seems to be issues for the our upcoming federal, are all about personalities and vibes, and little of the news is about policy and hard facts that I used to work with.
So, I'm cutting my news diet for my mental health, with particular attention to any place that supports my "comment addiction". Substack has become quite the social media lately, the "Notes" dragging me in. I have to disengage. The kinds of political stories that are popular, and above all the commenting about them, are causing anxiety and depression.
So I'm just checking out of substacks, at least for a while while my head gets straight again. Hope to support more good journalism at some future point.
Parliamentary stunts gumming up the works have always been a part of the way things work. Yet, while hopefully I am not seeing the past with rose-coloured glasses, my memory suggest these were undertaken with a more basic principle or objective in mind. The norms and conventions governing how the game was played seem quaint relics of ancient times. As this does not feel like an issue of immediate and direct importance to the average Canadian, suspect you are correct that a surprisingly small number of Canadians are fully aware that parliament is not working. This would likely have broken through to a greater degree in the past because most of us would having been getting our info from a limited number of television and newspaper sources. And right now, these legacy media elements are not doing a very good job of explaining the issues engaged by this dispute. When reporting on it they seem mostly focussed on the drama, horse race politics and salacious nature of corruption.
At this point, the less parliament does, the less damage it does.
It seems that at this moment, there is only one party interested in rooting out the corruption that has occured...not to mention the games being played around foreign interference.
I'm not sure what to make of the comment about the other parties being "caught in the middle" as if this is all just some sort of unfortunate happenstance. They're largely complicit in all this.
The NDP knows that they will be decimated after the election, so they'll keep dragging things out as long as they can because this is the closest thing that they will know to power. The fact that a number of MPs stand to miss out on their pensions if an election is called early only fuels more cynicisim.
The Bloc doesn't care either way as long as the gravy keeps flowing to Quebec. Most of them will likely get re-elected anyways.
Wow! You were so right, you've nailed this topic. That was, in fact, so boring to read about, that I had to slip away from the article twice - to refresh myself with some Trump-is-bad coverage to stay awake.
Seriously, the paving crew does not even notice City Council, even if it approved the job they are paving.
Contracts will be cut, patients will be cured, judges will sit, the People's Business goes on whether there's some work done on coming strategic changes, or not.
If there is some great legislation that WAS expected, now being held up, tell us about that. Otherwise, the calm is welcome, while we spend all our bandwidth on two wars, and a prospective fascist takeover of a nuclear power.
"The details of the issue... are interesting???" A Billion Dollars! Just exactly when or how much is worthy of pursuit, David. By your own words "the auditor general tore it to shreds, citing 90 violations of its own conflict of interest policies, general incompetence, and the funding of projects that were, wait for it, not eligible for funding. Oops."
Please tell me at what level of ineptitude you would trust the Liberals to put forward trustworthy legislation.
Dr. Evil holding a finger to his mouth and intoning "One. BILLION. Dollars." now means $24 per Canadian citizen.
That's the amount by which the cost of Halloween candy went up over 2019-2024, for the average Canadian parent. (25% of ~$100, both figures easily googled). There were a zillion "inflation" stories a year and more ago, but none on the extra billion dollars Canadian parents had to spend on Halloween this year.
It's been a little hard for Boomers to accept how big the economic world has become in our lifetime, when there were only a few billionaires in the whole world. The only way I can make sense of numbers like "Couch-Tarde tried to buy Japan's 7/11 for $47 Billion" is the divide-by-population thing. (If still staggered, divide by 20 to convert capital costs to carrying costs. A mere $20/Japanese Citizen/year in profit is needed to carry the bank loan.)
Sorry, Roy, but I find your comment preposterous. It's the same as Trudeau's attitude of "Jus' another billion or so". He's doubled the Canadian debt that we had when he came to power.
But my comment wasn't about debt...'twas about trust. Do I trust a person who considers a wasted billion dollars as simply "round off". Absolutely not. Ditto for those with similar thinking.
My comment was intended to point out that we're having a billion dollars hoovered out of our collective pockets every day, by stores and telecoms and employers in whom we've reposed a lot of trust.
I'm sorry, but it really is "another billion or so", because there are many other billions to whom Mr. Moscrop and colleagues could direct our attention. The majority of those billions are actually in private control, not public.
If the telecoms or banks or grocery stores had pulled $10B out of your pocket this year (and they have), the difference is that you'll never hear about it. Or Jim Stanford will prove it statistically, but you'll never be able to open books and get details.
The difference is that we have some choice on whether we do business with a telecom or grocery store.
Otherwise it's a deflection from the fact that we don't have a choice in the taxes we pay (except maybe for sales tax on discretionary consumer items).
"This billion" is only one of many more, and coupled with the "usual" bloat and inefficiency that is the nature of government, totals to far more than $24/citizen. I'd wonder how much each *net taxpayer* pays. The ratio of net tax receivers vs. net tax payers seems to be tilting in a concerning direction in all this.
Also, by the time you concentrate "this billion" down to the relatively few hands that took it, they get to live the high life and no longer need to concern themselves with the petty matters the rest of us do, like how much they pay for groceries or their mobile service.
You just lost me. Canada is so mired in oligopoly that we have few meaningful choices of vendor for most products. The few vendors that exist in any major commercial space are few enough that they don't need to meet in a backroom to coordinate prices; they can send pricing signals to each other quite openly. Fewer than 7 (some businesses, 5) vendors in competition are never very competitive.
If we had REAL choice, we wouldn't have the highest telecom rates on the planet, and satellite TV would cost differently than cable TV since they are utterly different technologies and can't possibly match to the penny.
And corporate profits would not have soared during the pandemic recession when ever working person was taking a hit.
Of course we have a choice how much tax to pay; we have the power to elect those who will cut them. We do not have the power to fire Galen Weston, or compel his company to return to a 4% profit margin, because he doesn't compete in an actual free market.
I can agree with you on some of this, and would be happy to chat in another thread - it's a topic on its own. We have some choice in elections, despite the fact that the bureaucrats stay regardless, and it would also be tough to claim that we have a fair and unbiased media to inform the electorate (especially as long as they are taking government subsidies).
Just saying goodbye, and thanks! My multiple substack cancellations today are not about the quality of the journalism, or even the comments.
I've followed the news somewhat obsessively (especially the commenting-back) since retirement, because it was a substitute for the reading and commenting of my office job. That job was very technocratic, an engineer calculating the best places to spend public money. It was all about Science and Reason and provable results.
The BC and USA elections, and what seems to be issues for the our upcoming federal, are all about personalities and vibes, and little of the news is about policy and hard facts that I used to work with.
So, I'm cutting my news diet for my mental health, with particular attention to any place that supports my "comment addiction". Substack has become quite the social media lately, the "Notes" dragging me in. I have to disengage. The kinds of political stories that are popular, and above all the commenting about them, are causing anxiety and depression.
So I'm just checking out of substacks, at least for a while while my head gets straight again. Hope to support more good journalism at some future point.
Thanks for your support. I absolutely hear you and respect your choice. Take care of yourself.
Parliamentary stunts gumming up the works have always been a part of the way things work. Yet, while hopefully I am not seeing the past with rose-coloured glasses, my memory suggest these were undertaken with a more basic principle or objective in mind. The norms and conventions governing how the game was played seem quaint relics of ancient times. As this does not feel like an issue of immediate and direct importance to the average Canadian, suspect you are correct that a surprisingly small number of Canadians are fully aware that parliament is not working. This would likely have broken through to a greater degree in the past because most of us would having been getting our info from a limited number of television and newspaper sources. And right now, these legacy media elements are not doing a very good job of explaining the issues engaged by this dispute. When reporting on it they seem mostly focussed on the drama, horse race politics and salacious nature of corruption.
At this point, the less parliament does, the less damage it does.
It seems that at this moment, there is only one party interested in rooting out the corruption that has occured...not to mention the games being played around foreign interference.
I'm not sure what to make of the comment about the other parties being "caught in the middle" as if this is all just some sort of unfortunate happenstance. They're largely complicit in all this.
The NDP knows that they will be decimated after the election, so they'll keep dragging things out as long as they can because this is the closest thing that they will know to power. The fact that a number of MPs stand to miss out on their pensions if an election is called early only fuels more cynicisim.
The Bloc doesn't care either way as long as the gravy keeps flowing to Quebec. Most of them will likely get re-elected anyways.
Wow! You were so right, you've nailed this topic. That was, in fact, so boring to read about, that I had to slip away from the article twice - to refresh myself with some Trump-is-bad coverage to stay awake.
Seriously, the paving crew does not even notice City Council, even if it approved the job they are paving.
Contracts will be cut, patients will be cured, judges will sit, the People's Business goes on whether there's some work done on coming strategic changes, or not.
If there is some great legislation that WAS expected, now being held up, tell us about that. Otherwise, the calm is welcome, while we spend all our bandwidth on two wars, and a prospective fascist takeover of a nuclear power.
"The details of the issue... are interesting???" A Billion Dollars! Just exactly when or how much is worthy of pursuit, David. By your own words "the auditor general tore it to shreds, citing 90 violations of its own conflict of interest policies, general incompetence, and the funding of projects that were, wait for it, not eligible for funding. Oops."
Please tell me at what level of ineptitude you would trust the Liberals to put forward trustworthy legislation.
Dr. Evil holding a finger to his mouth and intoning "One. BILLION. Dollars." now means $24 per Canadian citizen.
That's the amount by which the cost of Halloween candy went up over 2019-2024, for the average Canadian parent. (25% of ~$100, both figures easily googled). There were a zillion "inflation" stories a year and more ago, but none on the extra billion dollars Canadian parents had to spend on Halloween this year.
It's been a little hard for Boomers to accept how big the economic world has become in our lifetime, when there were only a few billionaires in the whole world. The only way I can make sense of numbers like "Couch-Tarde tried to buy Japan's 7/11 for $47 Billion" is the divide-by-population thing. (If still staggered, divide by 20 to convert capital costs to carrying costs. A mere $20/Japanese Citizen/year in profit is needed to carry the bank loan.)
Sorry, Roy, but I find your comment preposterous. It's the same as Trudeau's attitude of "Jus' another billion or so". He's doubled the Canadian debt that we had when he came to power.
But my comment wasn't about debt...'twas about trust. Do I trust a person who considers a wasted billion dollars as simply "round off". Absolutely not. Ditto for those with similar thinking.
My comment was intended to point out that we're having a billion dollars hoovered out of our collective pockets every day, by stores and telecoms and employers in whom we've reposed a lot of trust.
I'm sorry, but it really is "another billion or so", because there are many other billions to whom Mr. Moscrop and colleagues could direct our attention. The majority of those billions are actually in private control, not public.
If the telecoms or banks or grocery stores had pulled $10B out of your pocket this year (and they have), the difference is that you'll never hear about it. Or Jim Stanford will prove it statistically, but you'll never be able to open books and get details.
The difference is that we have some choice on whether we do business with a telecom or grocery store.
Otherwise it's a deflection from the fact that we don't have a choice in the taxes we pay (except maybe for sales tax on discretionary consumer items).
"This billion" is only one of many more, and coupled with the "usual" bloat and inefficiency that is the nature of government, totals to far more than $24/citizen. I'd wonder how much each *net taxpayer* pays. The ratio of net tax receivers vs. net tax payers seems to be tilting in a concerning direction in all this.
Also, by the time you concentrate "this billion" down to the relatively few hands that took it, they get to live the high life and no longer need to concern themselves with the petty matters the rest of us do, like how much they pay for groceries or their mobile service.
You just lost me. Canada is so mired in oligopoly that we have few meaningful choices of vendor for most products. The few vendors that exist in any major commercial space are few enough that they don't need to meet in a backroom to coordinate prices; they can send pricing signals to each other quite openly. Fewer than 7 (some businesses, 5) vendors in competition are never very competitive.
If we had REAL choice, we wouldn't have the highest telecom rates on the planet, and satellite TV would cost differently than cable TV since they are utterly different technologies and can't possibly match to the penny.
And corporate profits would not have soared during the pandemic recession when ever working person was taking a hit.
Of course we have a choice how much tax to pay; we have the power to elect those who will cut them. We do not have the power to fire Galen Weston, or compel his company to return to a 4% profit margin, because he doesn't compete in an actual free market.
I can agree with you on some of this, and would be happy to chat in another thread - it's a topic on its own. We have some choice in elections, despite the fact that the bureaucrats stay regardless, and it would also be tough to claim that we have a fair and unbiased media to inform the electorate (especially as long as they are taking government subsidies).