As a Canadian I’m proud of my fellow countrymen for helping and accepting refugees. Although most arrive here with nothing, studies have shown they benefit our society in the long run. They contribute massively to our economy and enrich our culture. They overcome daunting obstacles and become productive members of society, and they make Canada a better, fairer and more inclusive place

I hope they can use part of those tax revenues to fix our healthcare.

Canada is no longer a shining first world example of success (if it ever was). We used to boast about how great our healthcare system was, but it’s had serious problems for years and those problems just keep getting worse. If I were a tech immigrant looking to move to a rich country I don’t think I would choose Canada at the moment.

I don’t know about Canadian news but Google has blocked bard (their AI chatbot competitor to ChatGPT). Not sure if it’s related to this but Canada is one of the few countries worldwide (along with the likes of Iran and China) where bard is not available.

You can drink beer and wine (not sure about spirits) in parks in Quebec as long as you have food. Some people just bring a few packets of chips or cookies to comply. But the police are relaxed about it (at least in Montreal)

High inflation is worse for workers than high interest rates since wage hikes always lag price rises. This round of inflation was brought to us by poor economic decisions … pumping billions of dollars into the economy without raising taxes, as well as the Ukraine war. It wasn’t caused by corporate greed, as some claim. The BoC is doing absolutely the right thing. If they don’t raise rates now they only kick the can down the road when the pain would be far worse.

I think we should let the Ukrainian military decide what weapons they need.

The big advantage of these weapons for Ukraine is that they can be fired directly from the western -suupplied Howitzers and HIMARS they already have without needing modification. Ukraine’s problem is that they are running out of shells. Cluster munitions go further since they are area weapons.

No matter which side you are in the statement “The Taliban’s successful opium ban is bad for Afghans and the world.” is objectively true. The shortfall in opioid production will easily be made up from other sources, likely adulterated with synthetics that cause more harm. As for the Afghan farmers who grew the stuff they’ve not been given another alternative…they just had their crops destroyed and have no other sources of income.

You can’t solve a shortage of houses by discouraging people from building them. Canada is simply not building enough housing and has not been doing so for a long time. Your proposal would have a marginal effect at best and would in any case be only a temporary solution. People who buy second homes do so in places where there are generally few jobs. And people who buy houses as an investment need to rent them … which is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem we have is that home prices have risen to such stratospheric heights primarily because of policies that discourage new development. The only way to fix that is to promote legislation that penalizes NIMBYism and encourages building in urban areas.

Russia has used cluster munitions from the start of the war and Russia is the invader. Ukraine should be allowed to do the same in this case.

Both Russia and Ukraine have been using Soviet-era cluster munitions since early in the war. The US made versions have a lower failure rate so it’s preferable that Ukraine use those instead.

So if corporate greed is responsible for things like high oil prices what happened on April 20, 2020 when oil prices touched 0.01 per barrel? Do you think the oil companies were suddenly overcome with a spirit of charity?

It’s true there may be some profiteering during times of economic instability but those are exceptions and they certainly don’t account for the high profits experienced after the pandemic…those were a result of supply chain bottlenecks and a release of pent up demand. Corporate profits are now trending back down, at least in the US. Do you think the companies there have suddenly become less greedy?

The article confuses cause and effect. Stratospheric corporate profits are the result of too much money chasing too few goods and services, the same as it’s always been. The culprits are not corporations but rather profligate spending by rich world governments.

During the pandemic central banks reacted by opening up the money spigots, injecting vast amounts of cash into economies trying to keep them afloat. It was the right thing to do. The problem was that they never turned off the taps, nor did they raise interest rates or taxes to try to balance the books.

The fact that companies raise prices in response to shortages is not only natural it’s also desirable. There is no other way to align supply and demand short of rationing.

There’s nothing inherently bad about propaganda. The problem with Russian propaganda is that it’s trying to justify a brutal invasion that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, among them children buried in rubble by missile strikes. The US did the same after it’s invasion of Iraq. It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.

Cuba was removed from the list during the Obama administration and put back on the list by Trump. This has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with appeasing a large and vocal group of Cubans in Florida.

Turkiye doesn’t care about a second cold war. Erdogan is using this as leverage to try and force Sweden to get tougher on Kurdish militants. In other words Turkiye cares about Turkiye and nothing more (which is fine … most countries do that).

Both Russia and Ukraine have been using Soviet-era cluster bombs. Ukraine has asked America to supply dual-purpose improved conventional munitions (DPICM), a class of cluster munition that could be fired from howitzers or from the himarsrocket launchers that Ukraine has been receiving for around a year. They have the added benefit of fewer duds so that risk to future civilian populations is reduced.

It’s more than just funding though.

'Canada is above the OECD average in terms of per-person spending on health care. Among 38 countries in the OECD in 2020 (the latest year for which comparable data is available), spending per person on health care remained highest in the United States (CA$15,275). Canada’s per capita spending on health care was among the highest internationally, at CA$7,507 — less than in Germany (CA$8,938) and the Netherlands (CA$7,973), and more than in Sweden (CA$7,416) and Australia (CA$7,248).".

Canada is a vast country which definitely makes the provision of health care a challenge. But Australia has around the same population density as us, spends a little less than we do and their health care is excellent.

I was thinking it was just a right wing, anti-immigrant politician, not an actual Nazi. Then I went to check… holy hell.

Citizens of authoritarian countries often trust their governments more than those in liberal democracies. This apparent paradox is easily explained by the tight control these governments maintain over what people can see and hear. Since Tiananmen the Chinese government has ramped up it’s campaign to eradicate any opinions that are contrary to the government line, and now a whole generation has grown up in this new, hermetically sealed environment.