Just so I can understand your position better, are you against any kind of carbon taxation (ie Cap and trade, etc.), or this one specifically?

FYI they made the Narnia movies from the most interesting and least convoluted boos. Lion witch and wardrobe is book 2, prince Caspian is book 4, and Voyage is book 5. I don’t believe they ever planned on doing the rest of the books. Book 1 and 7 both are some heavy allegorical books that probably wouldn’t translate well, book 3 has some serious questionable bits that would be seen as pretty racist these days. Book 6 could be decent, but doesn’t include the main siblings, so probably less interest from fans of the main actors.

My problem with Ford has never been that he doesn’t like Canada, or is a sellout. I honestly just feel like he’s a very average small/mid business owner here, who got himself elected and is treating it like he’d run his own business, which is decidedly NOT how a government should be run. He seems to think he can get away with stuff like the Greenbelt development, or push his own viewpoints like the wind turbine cancellations, which are exactly the kind of short sighted/backroom deal I’d expect from a small business person.

That being said, I’d take him over Trump-esque any day.

I work in road construction. I could maybe see this being feasible in highly localized critical areas, but this kind of road method can’t become commonplace. Canada just has too many roads.

Maybe a bridge along the DVP in Toronto that always has bad ice accidents, or a major bike arterial path, but the numbers don’t make sense for anywhere else. If a road/bridge is truly that bad for accidents, the Municipality is likely cheaper to redesign the approach/descent angles or change the speed limit rather than try this.

I note they don’t talk about how much road a 50 or 60 ton system would be able to serve, compared to the Vancouver budget, or what maintenance costs are on a system that size. The article they link to discussing the system costs is specifically looking at the costs of a BTES system for buildings/complexs.

Out of curiosity, what kinds of things would a federal government have done to make you feel this sense of pride you’re looking for? Are there any governments anywhere that have accomplished that task?

I would agree, except that this has been a problem ongoing for the last twenty years with no progress made by protesting/following legal channels. From my perspective, without the threat of violence, both US parties have too much to gain by maintaining the status quo to respond to general peaceful protesting or trying to legally change things. If your perspective is that these people are causing deaths, and the legal system isn’t willing to change quickly enough, an argument could be made that the slow protests/incremental change is causing more deaths.

From nearly all ethical standpoints this murder was unethical and unjust.

Really? I definitely don’t agree with that. The starting base that you’re likely missing is that this man is directly responsible for the preventable deaths of thousands to hundreds of thousands of people. He joined UHC as the CEO in 2021, so has had some time to work and adjust the company. Since he joined, he has changed their policy and implemented measures to deny additional claims (see, chatbot rejecting peoples claims), causing their denial rate to skyrocket to ~30%. Source is here in the XLS files the government provides. UnitedHealtcare claims it pays 90% of claims but hasnt actually provided data showing that.

Since his company posted enormous, increasing profits in every year he was CEO, and the denial rates, I’d argue he’s led the company to deny healthcare claims.

Some easy ethical frameworks where this is acceptable?

Utilitarianism - you could argue that killing him has caused companies to back off other healthcare cuts (see BlueCross and their anaesthesia cuts). The ripples it has caused are likely to impact what decisions CEOs of other healthcare organizations make regarding patient care and denials.

Natural law theory essentially argues that law and morality are separate. An example that might be clearer is slavery - I’d argue killing a slaver is morally correct, because I believe that slavery is immoral, even is slavery is legal in that country. I believe that healthcare should not be a for-profit industry, and that denying people care to prioritize “line goes up” is immoral. Those who are making the decisions to do that are thus directly contributing to the preventable deaths of countless people.

Rousseau talks about the social contract theory, and basically says if a government approves immoral actions (which I count for-profit healthcare as), they forfeit their legitimacy, and thus people have the right to rebel.

Retribuutivism by Kant argues punishment should be proportional to the crime. If you accept that he is responsible for deaths (not legally responsible, but morally), then this is definitely moral, though its worth noting Kant though murder is a serious, irreversible action and recommended other options before murder.

I could keep going, but those are the easy ones.

The problem with your “drop them if they don’t cover you” bit is that people generally won’t find out until something serious happens, and then they’re screwed regardless, OR their employer pays a good chunk of their premiums, so they figure they’re better off to keep that and hope something winds up covered.

Not American, but we studied this in school. The insurance/free market problem is twofold - healthcare is a captive industry, and the knowledge base required to understand what is and isn’t a good plan is well beyond most of the population.

Healthcare is a captive industry in that no one can stop using it entirely. Car insurance? Never get a car, you avoid it. Arguments of car-driven infrastructure aside, that’s not a captive industry. So you, at some point in your life, are going to need healthcare. But, you have no idea how bad it’s going to be, what’s going to be wrong with you, etc. so your needs are extremely unknown. Again, to use a car insurance comparison, your choices are fairly limited here in Canada at least. The govt has set minimum standards that all insurers must provide, and then you can choose to increase above that. But those minimum standards cover enough that you’re very unlikely to be totally screwed with enormous debt after an accident no matter what causes the accident, etc.

This leads to the fact that healthcare is so ridiculously complicated that sorting out what is and isn’t covered by various insurers (who regularly change their plans) is beyond the average person. They have no way of knowing how much a surgery for appendicitis might cost, and if the 2mil max Plan A covers will be enough. Now multiply that by a thousand illnesses.

Healthcare should not be left to the free market - at a minimum, there needs to be a robust, extensive, and functional public insurance to avoid stupidity like bankruptcy from basic, lifesaving surgeries.

Did you read the article? They talk about this one guy who says they should be privatized, then go on to talk about why that isn’t feasible or the problems those examples are already having with their privatized systems, including the drastically different population density. Its pretty clearly a “this doesnt make sense to do” article, even ending with “who would even want to buy it”

Nah things just got bumped till post holiday :(

I always feel a little confused by people using “populism” as a bad thing. The literal definition is “appealing to the masses who feel their concerns are being ignored by those in power.” That is a good thing, provided they aren’t lying about their goals. Cost of living is going up and corporations are raking in record profits, homelessness is on the rise, etc. These are all problems that I feel could be addressed better by non neoliberal policies that actually don’t further entrench those in power.

Populism by itself isn’t bad.

Ha, nope! That’d involve some introspection and realization that they’re partially responsible for the change in Christmas.

All of it basically boils down to “Christmas used to be fun and have seasonal stuff and now it doesn’t”. Most of the genuinely decent sounding points they make about things they miss seem to be more attributed to a lack of social network in the area (ie no caroling, no groups of neighbours out around a fire, etc) or to a lack of time/money in the school system OR desired by the parents (ie less christmas concerts, etc).

They come VERY close, for NatPo, to commenting on the commercialization of christmas, but manage to swing it back around to being our fault (not the corps), so its still a blah, uninspiring article.

Even then, that would not make that businessman the most knowledgeable in the world about medicine

Good for them! That’s one of the big moves to try and break up unions - a two tier system that pits the union against its own members

Every letter still requires paid postage. The problem is, if you set the cost to be actual cost incurred, then anywhere remote or rural will be ridiculously expensive, and no one will send stuff, making the packages/letters that do need to be sent even more expensive, and creating a death spiral. It’s no different than a million other public services that we pay for despite not using (public rec centers are sponsored in part by taxes despite charging admission/membership fees, daycare facilities get partially paid by the government, universities get some tax money despite the crazy fees we pay, etc).

But regarding the pension, I disagree - I believe that every job should be sufficient for someone to live comfortably on - why do we have jobs if someone can’t live on them? And the reason they pay well and have pensions is because they’re unionized, aznd have fought for the pay and pension they have.

Side note, but I always hate how it’s described as “losses”. No shit providing mail delivery is a service. It’s nice to aim to reduce the cost as much as possible, but when you’re looking at something like Canada where there are countless remote and difficult to reach communities, regular communication and parcel delivery is going to cost money

I don’t know if I’m naive and this happens all the time, but it feels like an import of our neighbours base partisanship against ANYTHING the liberals propose based on it coming from them and not from the cons.

Disappointed, but unfortunately not surprised.

Jensen said the ministry is also investigating a claim that Ma paid volunteers “20% of the total claim and pocketed the remaining amount.” However, the ministry would not provide further details about the allegation.

I mean this part sounds sketchy to me. Are you allowed to pay volunteers?

I feel like asking her to account for the cost is not ridiculous. She deserves to be paid for the work she says went into it, including training and organizing, but is that $600,000 worth?

That being said them reaching for this bulletin they provided seems like a stretch. Like the article says, if they had specifically asked for the bulletin to be waived during COVID, I’m sure the govt would have waived it, so that part feels like a big reach.

Canada is the same, just single payer (ie instead of hospitals billing the insurance company, they bill OHIP). There’s still complicated codes, though for what it’s worth they don’t change much, if at all. If you’re billing thousands of shots you’d probably want to double check you’re using the right codes.