I thought it was introduced by Nate Erskine Smith?

The concept was quirky but it had a ton of hype. It wasn’t helped by the fact that it has some fairly noticeable flaws, one being panels that are glued on and have been known to fall off. And headlights that are placed so close to the front bumper that any buildup of snow blocks them. Not smart design.

Teslastans hyped the fact that there were “2 million preorders” which was supposedly because of the mass appeal of the CT. Turns out once the novelty wore off, people just said ‘meh, Id rather have a more normal truck for doing truck things’ which is why the Rivian is still selling ok, the Ford Lightning is limping along and the Sliverado EV is actually a range champ with real world reports of over 800 km range that can actually tow a trailer for more than three blocks before needing a recharge.

Yes its a couple of degrees warmer than it used to be. But that’s hardly the major story. The fact is that we dont do much active fire management in Canada and we’re way behind the curve.

Its a little known fact that fire is GOOD for promoting regrowth and rejuvenation in forests. In fact there are some species of trees that actually dont open their seeds until they are touched by fire. Lodgepole pine, Jack Pine, and Pitch Pine are notable examples that have serotinous cones sealed with resin, which melts and opens only when exposed to the heat of a fire. Who knew?

And who knew that indigenous peoples used to regularly start forest fires to rejuvenate the land, cleaning out all the old underbrush and deadfall and making the forest safe for years to come? But along came us settlers and we thought its better to just leave the forest alone. Wrong.

We actually had a wildfire come within 30 feet of our house two years ago. The efforts of a dedicated group of firefighters saved it, but three of my neighbors lost theirs. The forest looked terrible for a few months. But by the next summer it was already very green and THIS summer it looks amazing. There are already 5 foot tall trees where there was only black ground two years ago. The grass and trees look amazingly green and lush. And there is NO underbrush so the chances of another fire are pretty much zero for at least another 20 years.

IF the gov had an active forest management plan, with controlled forest burns, after carefully creating fire breaks around nearby populated areas, we wouldn’t have wildly out of control fires every year that threaten people’s homes and make the air hard to breathe.

Its not all about “climate change”, MOST of the problem is poor management. And careless people.

Conservative religious groups, and Mennonites are part of that, already have a strong distrust of government. They were targeted, ridiculed and ostracized when the covid vaccines came out and that did nothing to reassure them that the gov is looking out for their best interest, so this latest outbreak isn’t going to make them suddenly swing toward being pro vaccines. If anything they’re going to pull back even more which is why we have such a huge measles outbreak. Its not going to change easily as the mistrust runs deep.

And its no wonder - there were Amish people (a related group) who were charged for not getting a covid vaccine passport and had to go to court to argue that their faith doesnt allow them to use that kind of technology. They DID win their case and the charges were dropped but once again the distrust in gov grows.

ps. Just a correction but the Mennonites actually came from Europe, followers of Menno Simons who who was a former Catholic priest who was excommunicated for his reformational ideas. We settled in Mexico, the US and Canada after running from persecution so this mistrust in gov is a deeply held part of culture. Some Mennos are still quite conservative, others are quite liberal and you couldn’t tell them from any other Canadian.

“The posts promoted numerous conspiracy theories — asserting the fires were primarily caused by arson…”

Well, according to our own government, more than 2/3 of wildfires ARE started by humans, but not necessarily arson. We are a sloppy lot, and untended campfires, thrown cigarette butts, even sparks from train wheels, and downed power lines are all culprits. But it IS mostly humans, not mother nature doing the most damage.

Ive been on it for over 15 years now and in most ways its gotten worse. For one thing there are FAR more bots that are posting and commenting. Quite a few times Im sure replies have been from bots looking for more “engagement” as thats reddits bread and butter. The ads are getting more prolific, with some “hey what do you guys think about x product” becoming more common. The moderation in some areas has gone a bit bananas. I used Redact to erase my comments in all forums and got permabanned in one for doing so because Redact posts a self link. No warning, just a ban. The only thing thats improved is that a lot of trolling a-holes have also been banned so there are less outright vitriol than there used to be. And some of the worst subs are gone. But its not going in a good direction overall.

Kind of ironic since the sponsor of the bill is from the Liberal party.

This. And I used to teach that age group. They seemed to be very invested in gaming, the opposite sex, celebrities, what their friends were doing, social media and music. Not sure those are the people who give two seconds thought to politics and there were a few who were socially aware and active on some key issues, but in general, nope, they’re far too distracted to care enough to even vote.

It takes time and these days, it takes some training to learn discernment in media messaging. Those skills come over time.

I understand the logic, that Parliament is making decisions that is going to affect the future lives of our youth, but I would worry about young people who have grown up devouring a steady diet of TikTok, youtube and Instagram making voting decisions before they’ve really understood how much the messages they ingest have been massaged, curated and shaped in order to manipulate them. There’s far too much rage baiting, shilling and astroturfing on socials but the hard fact is that the really effective stuff is getting harder to discern and AI and algorithms are making it harder and harder to figure out what’s real and what’s not.

The attorney general firing her ethics advisor just as the most damning stories about Epstein and Trump emerge (again). What could possibly go wrong?