Oooh… $1500.

They’ll need their FSB handlers to sign off on that one.

The main reason Trudeau abandoned the attempt is that any method that would offer better representation for voters would ensure no more Liberal majorities with ~35% of the vote.

That’s it. He had a majority in parliament. He could have rammed it through. Instead, he assigned his most junior minister to the portfolio and let it die in committee. Constrast it with buying the TMX pipeline, which happened lickety-split.

Winning the popular vote is vanishing rare in Canada, but curiously we’ve had a number of Liberal and Conservative majority governments with weak pluralities. Neither the LPC nor the CPC will change a system that benefits them, but if I were the NDP, I’d make common cause with the BQ and Greens and, if I won, I’d ram PR through on day two.

I’m reminded of Trump’s meltdown when Biden dropped out.

I hope the result is better this time, and I hope the Liberals and/or NDP learn the lesson that the Harris campaign utterly failed to: that when the problem is an unpopular incumbent, you don’t say we’re going to keep doing what the incumbent was going.

I did this in the late 90s and early aughts with regular MTB tires. It works, but it feels really weird on pavement.

I suspect the lower fatbike tire pressure might help the situation.

You can pretty much trace the collapse to Trudeau’s “I don’t care, do you?” response about housing.

His support, especially among young Canadians, absolutely crated at that.

One thing the LPC needs to learn is to empathize: yes, housing a provincial responsibility, yes, inflation is global. But when you explicitly, and callously, and PUBLICLY wash your hands of it, you’re telling voters “Fuck you, we don’t care, you’re on your own!”.

Poillievre, despite being a lying, disingenuous, opportunistic weasel, at least speaks to people’s anxieties. He won’t do fuck all, and will almost assuredly make it worse, but at least he validates them. That’s important, and the centrist do-nothing knob-twiddlers in the LPC could learn a thing or two about how to acknowledge and empathize with voters.

Centrists the world over have been fucking useless at this, and they’re getting their asses handed to them as a result because they’re used to working like it’s 1994 and money will happen no matter what they do. Now they’re having to work for the first time in their lives: stake out actual positions, take actual action, and they’re trapped between voters that want results, donors that want the money train to keep rolling, and fascists willing to lie to both sides.

…while drunk.

The CMHC used to directly fund public housing and coops and just…stopped.

This was in the 1980s, and we were told that private lenders and mortgage assistance and P3 developments would be oh so much better. Well, all that did was transfer what little funds the CMHC did have into private hands while not really building much housing, and building functionall zero low-income housing at all.

Coincidentally, housing started to get out of control at about the same time all this happens. How fucking shocking.

Just to remind everyone: Layton pulled this same stunt, toppling Martin’s government.

The result was the loss of a number of progressive initiatives Martin’s people were working on, the election of fucking Stephen Harper and the most conservative Canadian political landscape since Borden. Science was suppressed, lslamophobia went from being a dogwhistle to a bullhorn, we narrowly avoided economic catastrophy. Harper even fucked with the Census in an attempt to remake Canada.

A lot of dippers really idolized Layton, but honestly he was a shameless opportunist and I don’t forgive him for giving us almost a decade of Harper.

And Singh is pulling the same fucking stunt.

Singh et al learned absolutely nothing from the Harper era

Betteridge’s Law of Headlines in full effect

I’ve worked for a company like that.

You don’t want to work for someone who thinks Finance, IT or HR should be profit centres.

Not sure if you’re sarcastic, but just in case: they’re hunting with dogs. The idea is that you loose a coyote or something you want your dogs to hunt, then you sic your dogs on it, so that they learn how to hunt (and corner, and, in most cases, maul) the coyote.

It’s absolutely barbaric.

“National Conservatism” on the wall, without a hint of irony.

I wonder if in a decade or so, if NaCo (nacho?) will replace Nazi in the lexicon.

One hole, because of Danger Diabolik

Maybe, and this is just an idea, stop being so attractive to fascist rejects?

Chickenshits cowering behind bulletproof glass.

I know it’s a gag post, but I always like to see a reference to After Man or Man After Man.

Fuck developers.

If they don’t want to build housing, we should nationalize a few of them and build it ourselves.

That’s actually what I was trying to understand. I recall evasion being less of a thing when I was living in Toronto (so much so that I used to get in trouble with late transfers sometimes) so I was wondering what changed.

It sounds like a combination of increased ridership and decreased staffing.

I’d note that I also don’t see inspectors on the GO with the regularity that I used to, either.

How about…hiring staff at all gates, like they did back when I lived in Toronto. It’s been nearly 20 years, but I recall it being somewat difficult to get into a station, and only marginally easier to get on a streetcar or bus, without having paid a fare.

Or am I missing something?