Its been a nightmare working with CAs recently (last 3yrs), but that’s largely due to budget cuts and staffing losses.

Fund them properly and set strict guidelines for plan review turnarounds, and you’ll see improvements.

But alas its the classic “defund then claim its not working” be that he pulls everywhere.

I mean at the least it looks like we’re taking some steps to avoid the clusterfuck that the USMCA resigning is likely to be by getting ahead of it.

Its not hard to double exports to other countries when your main trading partner (US) stops taking your stuff. Talking out of my ass, but it seems like doubling exports to other countries wouldn’t be that hard when we wind up having a surplus because US trade dries up. Seems like it’d push prices of our goods lower and hurt Canadians, which is what he seems to be implying to me.

Lol, this is not anything new or crazy - All of NA infrastructure is built the same way. I’d be surprised if there were many places in the world that weren’t built this way.

I mean I see a number of factors that contribute to this that arent ridiculous.

1. 4yr post secondary degree vs 1 yr post secondary degree. Cost and lost wages for the extra years means I’d expect most 4yr degrees to earn more than jobs without that requirement. Fix: eliminate university costs is a good first step. That’d reduce some of the burden of school/lost cost opportunity.

2. That position is a senior role. The job posting sounds like the role is largely required to analyze and make decisions for the company. The PSW role doesn’t generally have a lot of decisions to be made. Generally, the more decisions and responsibility a role needs, the more it should pay.

3. The position requires a professional accounting designation, unlike the PSW role which doesn’t require any. This represents additional standards and requirements they needed to meet and maintain.

A better example is a senior RN vs the senior BA, which are both paid similarly (See ONA agreements which show $50/hr for 5-yr experience RN).

The union said lifting the surtax now would risk undoing recent investments in vehicle assembly, battery production and critical minerals. It is asking Ottawa to extend the surtax for at least 24 months, broaden it to include EV and battery components, and reinstate federal EV rebates restricted to Canadian and North American-built vehicles. The union also wants stronger enforcement against goods made with forced labour. Unifor said Canada should align its approach with the United States and Mexico. The U.S. has combined tariffs of 127.5 per cent on Chinese EVs and plans to restrict connected car technology by 2027, while Mexico raised its EV import tariffs to 50 per cent this year after Chinese vehicles surged to 70 per cent of its market.

I don’t disagree that China is going to flood our markets with cheap EVs, with huge impacts on our own auto plants.

But holy fuck guys, we just dropped our previous pledge of 30% EV by 2026. What’s the plan - indefinitely push off electrification? We’re getting lapped by China on renewable and electrification technology, and its only going to get worse if we dont FORCE companies to electrify and move faster.

On top of that, the US companies are all starting to move their car manufacturing back inside the US. Our auto sector is in serious trouble regardless of our move here, and continuing to put our eggs in the US basket is a mistake, IMO.

Keep a 50% tariff, which still places these cars into an affordable price point here. Given the problems the China auto sector is in, they’ll likely still move cars with that rate. Then earmark those tariffs to retrain those auto workers, or support a canadian EV manufacturer.

Lol they definitely did not take better care of infrastructure. They were freaking cowboys and a ton of municipalities got burnt on it. I work on lots of capital jobs that involve fixing problems that have been around since then.

So now they have much more stringent standards, which in turn means projects are more expensive. Add onto that the growing complexity - installing a water main down a street in 1980 when you have overhead hydro lines and no other utilities to work around is much easier than installation in a crowded right-of-way with buried gas, hydro, storm sewer, sanitary sewer, and existing water main that needs to continue to service residents.

As for how they were originally funded, idk. Don’t think they ever really asked residents what they wanted back then. Now there’s much more accountability, which is good but has drawbacks and costs.

In Canadian municipalities specifically, or in general, like for climate reasons?

I mean climate, but not specifically global warming, just the fact were a planet with finite resources.

Unfortunately some municipalities have used development fees incorporated into their normal budget, whether directly or indirectly, rather than solely using them to account for the increased costs in maintenance, which is what they should be for. Often times I’ve worked on capital projects (repair ones) where the funding has come directly from development.

For example, one municipality I work closely with has the salaries for all their development staff and the salaries for their capital design staff paid by development fees, plus some allocations for expansion of other services to account for more citizens.

Edit for clarity: Municipalities can also skirt this use by doing things like the following: a long stretch of road from a highway is in poor condition and needs to be repaired in the next 2 years. But a development is going in on the road, and they can force the developer to pay for the reconstruction of the road, despite the fact that it is in poor xondition and needs to be redone anyway. Ditto for sewer, or water main replacement.

Note - I work in Ontario, and this is my experience as an engineering consultant working with dozens of municipalities.

We’re finally at the end of infrastructure lifespan point for a good chunk of the province. That means Water/Wastewater plants, as well as the hundreds of kilometers of pipes required to transmit those liquids are at the end of their life for the first time since being installed (50-70 years).

The cost to replace those is enormous, and IMO, should be covered primarily by property tax and/or useage fees. However those fees have not actually set aside the money required in many places, which means that municipalities have been propping up their old infrastructure costs by charging large development fees. Doug Ford, as much as I hate him, slashed development fees allowed, which forced property tax rates to rise. This more accurately reflects the ACTUAL cost of owning a home with services by the municipality. Given that I believe growth stagnation is required, this is the direction we need to head. We can’t keep running this ponzi scheme of funding old infrastructure with new infrastructure fees. Its unfair to new buyers and subsidizing older homeowners.

We also likely need to take a look at the actual fees and costs associated with maintaining our infrastructure. Stormwater ponds, seen typically in subdivisions, are HORRIBLY under-serviced, with a recent investigation in our area revealing 75% of them had never been cleaned out since being put into service ~30-50 years ago. They typically have a service life of 10-20 years, and have been leaking pollutants into our creeks and waterways since. The primary reason - you guessed it, budget. At 1+Mil/cleanout, they’re expensive.

We’ve skated by up till now by externalizing these costs and letting the damages build up for tomorrow’s solutions. We can’t keep putting off those costs.

When people are in a hurry, they find other ways and that’s when things get more dangerous.

Can you try explaining this? I’ve reread it and can’t make sense of it. Are you saying that speed cameras INCREASE how much people hurry? I disagree. School safety zones are not big areas - if they’re having a notable impact on your length of drive, that’s weird. Forcing people to go 20km/hr slower through those zones via speed cameras shouldn’t add more than a couple of seconds onto a drive. Even if the zone was a km long, that’s a 30s difference going at 60 vs 40. You’re more likely to be caught at a streetlight longer than that.

So rich people don’t care at all about going fast in those areas - it’s just a fee to go fast to them.

Data isn’t showing that. Data, when released, shows top speeds of ~10km/hr over the limit once cameras have been in place. Demerits can’t be assigned until 15km/hr over.

Right, but if were keeping our economy going solely on the basis of (generally) cheap imported labour, that’s going to come back to bite us in the ass unless the govt comes up with a plan to actually alleviate the labour shortage.

IMO, they haven’t, so there’s a serious problem.

I don’t doubt the TFW has a place, particularly as a stop gap, but there should be additional requirements for those positions, such as requiring an apprenticeship/entry level position to match their requirements, or some other long term planning.

It’s all measured speed reduction in the camera zones. That doesn’t mean people are driving safer, or slower on average even.

Few months back City of Barrie released some info that showed the reduction in speed was long lasting, well after the removal of the speed cameras. This shows a positive change on drover behaviour, even if it is only for the school zone, that’s a big win in my books.

More use of smaller residential roads that don’t have cameras is probably not safer.

Ignoring the assumption that traffic cameras cause decreases in AADT, when the alternative is people speeding through school zones, yes it is likely much safer. Fewer pedestrians, particularly kids which are notorious for not paying attention and are more likely to wander into lanes, means that it is a net positive for those areas.

Allowing rich people to speed as much as they want and just pay a fee probably isn’t safer either.

Is this any different than it currently is? Definitely isn’t making things worse.

For sure - I know the original intention was to try and bring in specialized workers we don’t have here. But IMO, that encourages wage suppression and hiring from outside rather than training.

Its a useful stopgap tool, but it always should have had a requirement of training an alternate candidate or showing some other longterm solution beyond permanent use of the TFW program.

And, like you said, definitely not intended for its use the way it has been now.

As someone who has studied traffic engineering in school and works in road design, I’d be very curious what studies these were.

Look into it, there’s a heavy increase in collisions where cameras are present.

Only place I’ve seen this data was as an example in school of what not to do - several states had low yellow times (1-2s shorter than Ontario’s), and added red light cameras at large, wide intersections that took longer to cross than the yellow timer, meaning if you entered on a green you could theoretically get hit with a red light violation. But those studies were late 90s, early 00s.

Every piece of data I’ve seen shows either a reduction in speed (even post camera removal), or minimal change after removal.

Note that studies need to reflect current state cameras in Ontario - only allowed to be used in school zones, and need to have signage present indicating their use. They’re not used specifically at intersections.

Additionally, the fees for traffic cameras go back to road redesign budget, which is used (on the projects I’ve worked on) to provide traffic calming measures like narrower lanes, AT facilities, etc. Cameras should be a stop gap measure, and are vastly preferable to an increase in the polices budget to have increased traffic enforcement presence.

I honestly can’t see how people defend the TFW program. It artificially suppresses wages of low-income Canadians and pads the pockets of large corporations.

CAA reports as well as studies conducted of driver behaviour before, during, and after shows that speed cameras do.

I don’t want to balloon cop budget to allow proper enforcement. This is a better route with fines going to something useful

Fair - I agree it should be a faster fine to ticketing timeframe. Personally, I think they should do the one month “warning” tickets mailed out to everyone who speeds, when they first install the camera, followed by fines. Give drivers a chance to change their behaviour before being hit by fines.

But a cop isn’t pulling over every single driver doing 50 in a 40 zone. A ticket camera is hitting all of them. I’d argue that’s far more fair.

Wow.

“Our members are fully committed to the transition of their product portfolios to electrified transportation and this is the future of our sector, however that transition can only happen as quickly as consumers are willing to move.”

How about you actually make an affordable EV (ie actually invest in the manufacturing)? Or remove the barriers preventing BYD and others from offering their 20-30k EVs into this market? Protectionism doesnt do shit for a business that refuses to modernize and accept that their products are a major leading factor of climate change.

Things like this always strike me as the biggest example of why regulation is critical, and those fighting against is are wrong.

If there was no regulations and no government body in charge of these things, the public in the area would be responsible for fixing these orphan wells or risk contamination and dying off, while the company owning them is likely dissolved and gone.

Also side note, but this

“Instead of having these really long-term plans, the industry should be using periods of high prices to clean up and prepare for downturns. And instead they are still sort of assuming that good times will last forever, and planning to have long, long periods of good oil and gas prices,” said Yewchuk.

Sums up the mentality of the oilsands pretty well

I get it makes life harder, and many places do require a car to function. If you are consistently a poor driver, unable to actively think about decisions you are making while operating that vehicle, you need to change your life. Whether that’s job you’re in, where you live, or how you work, that’s up to you. There are plenty of options, just people like to default to the easiest. StatsCan data:

75% of people in GTA commute to work in a car. 85% of those are the only person in their car. Average commute for those drivers is 25.5mins.

Lets take out the transit option, since the system can be shoddy and patched together. There are SO few people who carpool to work. If you work down in the GTA and commute in, odds are there is someone within a short drive of you that also commutes in near to your end point. There are facebook groups that are sadly empty for carpoolers, and there are lots across the city to park in and share the drive. You can split the drive, offer to pay, or come up with another solution not based around transit or other, system setups, and doesn’t involve you driving.

25.5mins at 50km/hr (assuming 0 traffic) is 21km. An e-bike is easily able to commute to and from that daily, and is far less likely to kill someone else.

Both of those are less easy options, and options that make most people uncomfortable, so they default to driving themselves.

That choice is the problem. If you are someone who can provide actual rationale for why those reasons don’t work (those who need to drive their personal vehicle for work, extreme mobility restrictions, extremely irregular schedule, etc), but for the vast majority of officeworkers, there are options they are choosing not to use because they’re less comfortable. So yes, I will fixate on individual choices, especially ones with such life-altering consequences. You can’t change the system if you don’t have more individuals on board to drive those changes and sustain them through carbrained idiots fighting against you.

I appreciate your comment, but disagree with some of your stats/facts.

Revenue from traffic cameras goes to mostly the police, not for making roads safer. Revenue from all of Ontario goes to the City not the police. A quick scan of a few municipalities FAQ indicates the same. Brampton, [Barrie](https://www.barrie.ca/services-payments/transportation-parking/traffic-control/speed-limits-enforcement. That funding is actually used to implement other traffic calming measures to further help reduce accidents and speeding.

As far as safety goes, the data I’ve seen shows they initially work, then only for about 100m. Red light cameras are the same, they create rear end collisions due to unsafe breaking from someone who should have used the orange light, but was afraid of a ticket.

Barrie’s data indicates otherwise, showing a tick up in speed after ASE is removed, but still below the pre-ASE speeds. . I can’t find the staff report detailing exactly what their survey data was, but thats still a serious reduction - generally enough to get us almost to the 45% survival rate.

CAA’s data shows that driver behaviour IS changing, which is good news and provides hope that this might actually improve behaviour.

If you have any other recent data that shows otherwise, I’d be interested in seeing it - everything I’ve seen and was taught in school is that speeding is a behavioural habit, and ticketing/consequences are the easiest method to change that habit. It takes time, but habits can change.