sbv

It's good to see some kinda/sorta/almost direct spending on affordable housing being announced:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the creation of a $1.5-billion rental protection fund that will provide a combination of loans and grants to help non-profits buy affordable rental apartments when they go up for sale.

It's nowhere near enough, but it's better than the neoliberal tHe FrEe MaRkEt WiLl SaVe Us shoveling that both the Liberals and Conservatives have been pushing.

The article explains how the number of homes affordable to people making $30k annually is crashing across the country (but less so in Quebec).

https://archive.is/ocuud

Canada: three oligopolies in a trenchcoat.

Bank service charges and overdraft fees can infuriate consumers, and more choices could lower their temperature.

From the perspective of investors, though, Canada’s cozy network of oligopolies – in which a few players dominate one sector – can look very different. Slim competition can keep upstarts out and profits in, driving strong shareholder returns and attractive dividends over the long term.

“We have a handful of oligopolies that are able to fend off new entrants (whether regional or foreign) without needing to destroy profits for an extended period of time, or where we need a government financed solution,” Ian de Verteuil, head of portfolio strategy at CIBC Capital Markets, said in an e-mail.

https://archive.is/1BPVW

Whenever I hear politicians propose to cut the carbon price, I can’t help but think back to my childhood growing up with divorced parents.

On the rare occasions my dad took me for weekends, he would offer me candy and let me stay up late.

“Why can’t you be more like him?” I’d yell after returning home as my mom made me do my homework, eat vegetables and go to bed on time.

So it is with proponents of Axe the Tax. They offer us candy, when the federal government, like my mom, expects us to live responsibly.

...

But a politician’s promise that pollution can be free is no more realistic than my childish fantasy that I could live on candy alone.

We are all entangled in an energy system that helps and harms our children. While it enables us to taxi our kids around, and keep them warm, it also poisons the air they breathe, evaporates the water they need to drink and burns the forests in which they play.

...

To preserve summers without smoke, winters when our kids can ski, water they can drink and forests and wildlife with which they can live in awe.

That’s why we pay for our pollution.

This dude gets it. We need to do so much more, but walking back the carbon tax is a terrible idea.

https://archive.is/kpZQu

Toronto-based Canadian Health Labs, had inked contracts with health authorities in Newfoundland and New Brunswick, and charged rates that in many cases worked out to more than $300 an hour per nurse. That is roughly six times as much as nurses earn in the public health care system.

We've systemically underpaid nurses for decades. We've failed to train enough nurses. Their real pay has shrunk, while their workload has grown. It isn't surprising nurses have left the public system for less shitty jobs.

Canadaland Commons has a great interview with a nurse who has seen the decline.

It feels like Canadian governments have forgotten how to plan. As the op-ed states, we don't have the sewer/water/road/fire for the 5,800,000 houses we're building by 2030. And politicians aren't budgeting for it's construction.

In the bigger picture, we aren't training enough nurses and doctors to service our current population, let alone what our population is forecast to become. Similarly, we aren't funding post-secondary education beyond overcharging students from abroad.

But I digress. On the housing file:

The politicians who are promising action to build the 5.8 million new homes Canada needs by 2030 seem to be forgetting that, unlike that log cabin, the millions of homes that are needed can’t even begin to be built without connection to the world around them, to roads, bridges, clean water, electricity and waste management. They don’t seem to be factoring in that those houses will have people in them, millions of people, who need access to hospitals and schools, to civic and recreational facilities, to public transit, to emergency services. In other words, it is not possible to build so many new homes across Canada without considering essential housing-enabling infrastructure. Yet no one is even talking about that part of the equation, let alone announcing funding for it.

It is a significant oversight. A report by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimates that each new housing unit will require $107,000 in public infrastructure investment. This amounts to a total of $620-billion in new public funding needed to produce workable housing, which far outstrips currently projected investments of $245-billion.

https://archive.is/xEIez

A woman is in critical condition in hospital following a police-involved shooting in Ottawa's Westboro neighbourhood.

Niyondagara, who is Black, said he was shocked with a stun gun, pinned down, struck in the face and handcuffed before police realized their mistake.

...

After some discussion about the name [of an alleged murderer], the police officer left the cruiser and soon returned to explain "that there was a misunderstanding," Niyondagara said.

The cops then drove Niyondagara home.

Yellow Dot studios has been releasing YouTube videos trying to mobilize "populist anger" over the climate crisis.

I'm thinking of running a Cyberpunk RED campaign. My group has played D&D together for about five years now.

Any suggestions or advice on running the game? Are there any game play or mechanics tips that would help people coming from D&D?

What you should not do:

Experts have for years pointed out that’s a bad idea – and now Apple is officially warning users not to do it.

“Don’t put your iPhone in a bag of rice. Doing so could allow small particles of rice to damage your iPhone,” the company says in a recent support note spotted by Macworld. Along with the risk of damage, testing has suggested uncooked rice is not particularly effective at drying the device.

What you should do:

If your phone isn’t functioning at all, turn it off right away and don’t press any buttons. The next steps depend on your specific circumstances, but broadly speaking: dry it with a towel and put it in an airtight container packed with silica packets if you have them. Don’t charge it until you’re sure it’s dry.

"It feels like something went really wrong," said Aubin, who chaired the King Edward Task Force. "Here's something that we had in Ottawa that was super unique, and we lost it."

It's all the more painful to compare those images with the King Edward Avenue of today. Picnics have given way to open drug use, the lovers' path replaced with a median lined with panhandlers instead of elm trees.