Blah, I hate it when they don’t link to the report or study they discuss.

I’ve looked it up on the ATI portal, but it doesn’t look like the portal has previously requested data up for 2024 yet, which is frustrating. I did stumble across one that looks like its a review of the PRC interference in the 2019 election, so once that comes through I’ll be interested to read it.

I’ll eventually come back and see if I can find the original report.

Seems like a non-issue then? I know nothing about this guy, but if his office investigated and found nothing wrong with the gift (ie by him saying Trudeau hasn’t listed it publicly, that means it came from a friend or relative), then there’s nothing wrong? If someone wants to try and dig more into that and why they didn’t approve it, go for it MPs, but this one doesn’t seem like an actual issue.

Its a mess, for sure. This is a good first step, but in general children are wildly expensive, and the current model of raising children has increased the expectations for what is required of parents, while not actually changing (and in many cases reducing or removing) the resources they have at their disposal to do that.

The only thing you can really do is wait out the first few years until the kids are in school, and hope one or both of you haven’t fallen too far behind in experience to make up for it. It’s one of the reasons multi-generational houses have, historically, been a thing. In the last 50-100 years we’ve entered an age where it’s become normalized to live alone, but I think as pressures increase and little is done to improve them, these kinds of concessions will be ones people will have to be making more often. I’m not suggesting you do that - I know nothing about your situation. I’m agreeing that the life that many people had when they were children is not likely to be the life that many of their children will get to experience.

Interesting article. We have a daughter in central Ontario, and have been signing her up for daycare. The article is focused mostly on Alberta complaints, but here prices are still ~20-40$/day, which is allegedly half from their original costs (which terrifies me).

Another way to look at it - $5k to $10k per year.

I can’t speak to the daycare side of things, but from our side, my spouse and I each make good money, and can make it work relatively easily. Anyone making less than us would likely not have a partner return to the workforce, especially if you have multiple children. At the old prices, even just back 5 years ago, a family of two or three would be looking at 40-50k a year in daycare costs, which very easily justifies a partner not working, especially if you can fold into that reduced car wear and tear, not rushing back to pick them up/drop them off, etc.

Did you read the article? They’re just making it easier to vote (3 day voting window, expanding mail in votes, etc.) they’re not doing any serious changes

Fun fact, most countries still allow asbestos in a lot of products, including the States. Canada has an outright ban since 2018, which includes in concrete materials.

It’s a pain in the ass to deal with when we come across old asbestos concrete sewer pipes and have to dispose of them properly. It’s weird that a lot of other countries are still producing it.

Huge pet peeve of mine when articles discuss a study but don’t link it. Link

When you look at what else we do in the modern world to avoid/mitigate a similar level of mortality, these seem like no brainers, especially the masking. A 0.19 per 100,000 reduction seems small, but the mortality rate was ~50 per 100,000 in Canada. This is basically a 4% reduction in deaths by masking. For a minor cost measure with no long term economic outcomes, this should have been an easy one for people to get on board with.

School reduction in spread (~10%) shouldn’t surprise anyone who knows school aged kids. They’re germ balls, and multiple kids per household means there’s effectively no “bubbles”, so of course stopping that spread would have a huge impact, but then kids are stuck at home, so it has a huge cost too.

SIPOs (Shelter in Place Order) had a 5% reduction in hospitalizations, which is honestly smaller than I was expecting.

See below for the mortality summarization.

Specific NPIs. Of the 6 NPIs studied in per capita mortality, bar/restaurant closures experienced the largest effects 4 weeks after implementation, corresponding to 1.08 fewer deaths per 100,000. Although we did not find any more evidence of fewer deaths per capita, limited gatherings (–6.41%), business (–5.32%) and school closures (–3.98%) were associated with decreased mortality growth rates after 2 weeks, whereas SIPOs (–1.66%), masks (–1.9%), and school closures (–8.29%) corresponded to reductions after 3 weeks. SIPOs were the only NPI studied at the ≥4-week lag for growth rates and were associated with a 1.95% drop in the mortality rates. Although the authors observed mitigative effects of travel restrictions on case growth rates, this was not the case for mortality.

I imagine its a tricky thing to study in any detail, and its interesting to look back now to see the effectiveness of the measures put in place.

There’s a reason we have all the checks and red tape that housing developments go through. Because once the developers leave, it’s the Municipality that has to maintain their infrastructure.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve worked on a subdivision project built in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, only to find a half dozen other problwms that we need to fix, at the cost of the City/Town, because it wasnt done right the first time.

Beyond that, those developments had no proper storm water treatment method, and now that we’ve successfully paved over half the swamps, we’re realizing that untreated storm water wreaks havoc on streams and rivers and lakes. Now we’ve got to build to deal with that, another big cost.

Like no shit stuff was easier to do back in the “good ol days”. They just didn’t bother figuring out the problems that we’re having to deal with now.

Interesting article, and though long, well worth the read.

It’s unfortunate to see someone fall down into negativity like that. I imagine decades of warnings he was outlining as clearly as possible falling onto dead ears would jade someone, and perhaps he’s got the view that it isn’t his life that will be impacted? It would be easy to distance yourself that way from it, and might explain his recalcitrance

Developers costs go up if they try to make houses faster- increased labour costs by increased demands, plus decreased housing costs when they go to sell.

Why would they make homes faster?

If this is the link you’re talking about, your numbers are way off - https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11f0019m/11f0019m2023007-eng.htm

That shows that even for low income families (<83k/yr), they spend an average of 14,000$/yr on each child. That’s way higher than your estimated 30,000/ages 0-7, so I’m curious where you got your data from.

I don’t discount that there’s a societal push for people to get older and make sure they’re confident in wanting kids before they have them, and with low cost birth control we’ve reduced accidental pregnancies, but cost is still an enormous factor.

Housing is an easy example. One bedroom or bachelor’s pads are, in my area, ~1200/month. Not the nicest ones at that price, but decent. You jump up to a two bed or a Ben+a den, and you’re looking at 1800/month at least. At a three bed, it’s close to 2500/month.

Even if you assume those are on the larger side for price jumps, if you’re barely able to scrape by with two people in a bachelor’s apartment or in a one bedroom, there’s no way you can “afford” it solely by CCB benefits. Almost all the benefit is eaten up by housing increases alone! Then add on childcare, and CCB isn’t enough to give those feeling like they’re just hanging on wiggle room to raise a child.

Kids are an enormous financial burden early on, especially for the small things. Kids get sick a lot, so you need to have a job that will allow you flexibility, or else you’ll lose money for unpaid days off for doctors appointments or to sit at home with them when they’re puking.

Kids need daycare unless youre staying home, which is suuuuper expensive these days. They also have limited hours, which if you’re stuck working a shitty job, you may not be able to make.

Even second hand, clothes are expensive, and with how fast kids grow, it’s an expense worth noting.

All in all, if you’re well off, yeah it may not be a big problem for you, but for the people that are already struggling, it’s a large factor into why they’re not having kids yet.

Bear wasn’t tagged - GPS SOS signal is likely how they were alerted. That being said, if they found an aggressive bear in the area, I’d be inclined to trust them. There isn’t really anything to gain by lying, especially if it leads to another hiker death from the actual bear.

Parks Canada received an alert indicating a bear attack from a GPS device in the Red Deer River Valley around 8 p.m. Friday. A grizzly bear displaying aggressive behaviour was found in the area and was euthanized by Parks Canada for public safety reasons. First aid kits and knowledge, bear spray and a GPS are all important tools in case of an attack, Titchener said.

Allegedly they were “experienced outdoors backpackers”. Guessing the dog being there played a role in the attack - animals can make wildlife more aggressive, and if it wasn’t on a leash, it could’ve attacked the grizzly, provoking it. Then again, its entirely possible the grizzly learned that humans have food from some past hikers, and tried to get at the food from these guys.

If Parks Canada found a grizzly in the area and stated it was acting aggressive, I’d be inclined to believe them. They know animal behaviour pretty well.

Did you read it? The barrel was reused, not the needle. The plastic part where the medicine goes before being injected.

Way more. I’m working on a road project now. Asphalt for a road (100mm thick) is being bid at approximately $35/sq.m. Granular are about an extra $30/sq.m.

For a standard residential size road (8.5m curb to curb) that puts you at $552/m of road length, or 33mil. The big costs on top of that number always come when you’ve got to remove the old asphalt and gravel ($75/cu.m), as well as all the fiddly little stuff like line painting, tying in grades to make sure you have drainage, sod restoration, tree plantings, etc.

Most of these exisiting systems are meant more to service commercial/industrial/agricultural customers, it is unfeaseable to deliver grey water to every home or business

I’m not sure what you mean here. Even if you limit the great water system to large scale operations that would use the grey water, you’re still looking at billions of dollars to run the pipes plus all the pumps, sampling points, water valves, new water towers/resevoirs etc.

It would be incredibly dangerous to have the wastewater system directly hooked up to a potable water system. A variety of issues could disrupt the flow/treatment/monitoring of wastewater which could contaminate the drinking water system and its reservoirs/water towers and pose a serious threat to public health.

So can any surface treatment system that is currently used. Any city that uses rivers or lakes as their treatment centre already need to purify to a high standard and closely monitor quality of in and outflows. Additionally, most of those areas have their treated sewage outflow to the same body of water as they draw from. The whole point of designing a system is to build in backups and fail-safes to ensure those issues are identified and accounted for. It’s significantly cheaper than creating a whole secondary great water utility system, not to mention the additional costs for all those businesses that need to add another internal plumbing system

Realistically, it’s better and more cost effective to add additional treatment to that water, and bring it up to potable standards.

Hundreds of kilometers of extra water main pipes, plus pumping stations and home services would cost trillions of dollars.

If you’re living in Ontario, email or call your MPP and ask why Ford is only imementing 14 of the 15 recommendations. It’s very telling that the 15th is the ones that actually directly would impact his developer friends. And honestly, screw them. Screw them even more if they’ve started the development process already and would have to stop. Maybe then they’ll learn to do things the right way, not push it through these back channels like we’re some country without laws.

Something I never see mentioned in these articles/discussions is the design problems. I’m a civil engineer who works in infrastructure maintenance, including sanitary sewers up sizing/repairing. The minimum design guidine for slope is 0.5% for sanitary sewers, but there are many old neighborhoods where the slope is as low as 0.3%.

The way those pipes continue to operate is the large volume of water that is sent through those sewers regularly, flushing away the solid waste.

If, theoretically, every house swapped tomorrow to a grey water system, we’d seriously struggle with blocked sewers and backflows regularly.

Until someone solves that part of the issue, this system isn’t practical for widespread adoption.