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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 9th, 2023

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  • A healthy city needs socioeconomic diversity. Not that long ago Montreal was known for cheap CoL allowing people of all walks of life to thrive. Putting aside the artists, students, and general eccentrics that contribute to the vibrant life of the city, we have to consider where the hell are our minimum wage workers going to live. I seriously don’t understand how places like Vancouver do it. Does every coffee shop, fast food, retail etc worker commute 3hrs each way? What about the teachers, nurses, garbage collectors? Or do they all get paid way more and everything just costs a lot more?

    There’s a compromise possible and despite being a major city without lots of undeveloped land, there is still plenty of space reasonably close to the city where high density affordable housing could be. Doesn’t have to be prime real estate right downtown. There just needs to be social will and courage to stand by the conviction that this is something good for the city. The truth is that like someone else said, the fine is too low and developers just see it as the cost of doing business.


  • Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre and Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet had both rejected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s offer to see the documents, arguing it was an attempt to trap them into agreeing not to speak about allegations in public.

    Am I right to feel like absolutely nothing of consequence will come of this? The two biggest critics of the ruling party won’t know the true extent or evidence. The two sidekicks can see the whole story but will be gagged. So we ultimately won’t know the truth and it’ll all just devolve to posturing.



  • Meanwhile cannabis beverages are required to have:

    -Nutrition facts including calories, sugar, etc.

    -Gigantic yellow warning with random health warning (e.g., don’t use if pregnant)

    -Huge red stop sign cannabis leaf logo

    -KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN

    -Big pain in the ass plastic childproof thing

    None of these required on a can of beer.

    From a harm reduction perspective, it’s a massive failure. Many cannabis beverages have very low nearly zero calories, sugar-free. For your physical health they are almost certainly less harmful than alcohol and I know many people would enjoy them as an alternative to alcohol.

    We have faced a similar failure in harm reduction strategy regarding vaping versus tobacco. I think in both cases it’s a result of vested interests (tax revenue, lobbying, don’t know) trumping what is best for people.


  • There is a logic to this. Private developers will not make multi-year, large capital investments in something if they think that its value is guaranteed to decrease. That should be obvious.

    And we desperately need to increase supply. For better or worse, we do still live in a capitalist society so its going to be up to the private sector to increase supply, with the govt providing an incentivizing role. The govt ever saying anything like “we need to bring house prices down” would paralyze private sector investment into building houses.

    FWIW, in my esteemed position as an armchair big-social-problems-fixer, the solution is obvious: Govt investment/subsidies to convert downtown commercial real estate towers into condos. Instead of forcing people back to the office to salvage what’s left of the real estate value for those empty towers. The owners get their handout, people can continue to work from home, it’s good for the environment too! I dunno, I think it makes sense.