Federal Government & Politics II

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by acottawa

The big gig operators like Uber track a mountain of information on their “employees” I assume hours worked is one of them.

I guess there are people working in an informal gig economy like shovelling snow that would be harder to track, but I think that is a pretty small percentage.

You think this government tracks Ubereats Door Dash and casual employment totals to make sure they don't exceed 24 hours? I hope they at least at the end of the year or when they apply for PR look at their hours but doubt it. I guess a lot of people learned when they pretended to be present in Canada and then lost their citizenship the government can come for you at any time.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

You think this government tracks Ubereats Door Dash and casual employment totals to make sure they don't exceed 24 hours? I hope they at least at the end of the year or when they apply for PR look at their hours but doubt it. I guess a lot of people learned when they pretended to be present in Canada and then lost their citizenship the government can come for you at any time.

I think it would IRCC enforcement about 5 minutes to get records from Uber in bulk.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by YOWetal

Overall it is splitting hairs we were governed very well from 1993 to 2013 despite complaints on both sides.

There's a danger painting too rosy a picture: Many of the problems we're facing today are the result (at least in part) of poor decisions made during those years.

For example: Despite repeated calls from advocates and the NDP throughout the period outlined, both Liberal and Conservative governments refused to adopt a national housing strategy. All else being equal, I doubt we would have dodged a housing crisis completely had a federal strategy been implemented (none of our peer nations seem to have managed it), but the crisis may not have been quite so severe had the federal government taken the matter a bit more seriously earlier on.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

There's a danger painting too rosy a picture: Many of the problems we're facing today are the result (at least in part) of poor decisions made during those years.

For example: Despite repeated calls from advocates and the NDP throughout the period outlined, both Liberal and Conservative governments refused to adopt a national housing strategy. All else being equal, I doubt we would have dodged a housing crisis completely had a federal strategy been implemented (none of our peer nations seem to have managed it), but the crisis may not have been quite so severe had the federal government taken the matter a bit more seriously earlier on.

Yes the NDP want to tax the the most productive part of our economy to give housing to those not working. There isn't much evidence this is going to make us better off. We don't really have a crisis. Most are happy with the status quo. Even the priced out Gen Z young Millenial proessional class who are the losers in this outcome are beneficiaries of the 1933-2013 growth. While maybe we could have kept taxes low and government intervention low in all areas except housing and one alright but this seems doubtful.

[P'tit Renard]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Yes, this is all true, but there is still a significant possibility this was the Minister’s stupid decision.

I really don't get why some would paint Sean Fraser as the innocent bystander. He's just better at the media game than fellow sycophant Marc Miller.

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Having regional representation in cabinet is very important. The real decision making bodies are the cabinet and the PMO. If there is no one in cabinet from NL, then, their voice will not be heard when important decisions are made..

I completely agree that regional representation is important which is yet another way Trudeau has managed to alienate many voters.

Ontario is home to 16 of the current 29 Cabinet Ministers but don't let that fool you into thinking Ontario is well represented as only Toronto is. Of those 16 posts one in in Thunder Bay, one is in Ottawa and the rest are in the GTAH.

KW/Niagara/London/Windsor/Kingston don't have a single seat at the Cabinet table. If you are wondering why Toronto is getting money hand over fist from Ottawa, you have your answer.

[YOWetal]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I completely agree that regional representation is important which is yet another way Trudeau has managed to alienate many voters.

Ontario is home to 16 of the current 29 Cabinet Ministers but don't let that fool you into thinking Ontario is well represented as only Toronto is. Of those 16 posts one in in Thunder Bay, one is in Ottawa and the rest are in the GTAH.

KW/Niagara/London/Windsor/Kingston don't have a single seat at the Cabinet table. If you are wondering why Toronto is getting money hand over fist from Ottawa, you have your answer.

This is pretty stark. Gender plays a bit of a role there but London and KW both have female MPs if you are just filling bodies and really can they be worse than Holland or Ahmed? The former not really representing any key constituency (other than long loyal to Trudeau which shouldnt' be dismissed)

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

I completely agree that regional representation is important which is yet another way Trudeau has managed to alienate many voters.

Ontario is home to 16 of the current 29 Cabinet Ministers but don't let that fool you into thinking Ontario is well represented as only Toronto is. Of those 16 posts one in in Thunder Bay, one is in Ottawa and the rest are in the GTAH.

KW/Niagara/London/Windsor/Kingston don't have a single seat at the Cabinet table. If you are wondering why Toronto is getting money hand over fist from Ottawa, you have your answer.

How many caucus members are there from KW/Niagara/London/Windsor/Kingston?

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

There's a danger painting too rosy a picture: Many of the problems we're facing today are the result (at least in part) of poor decisions made during those years.

For example: Despite repeated calls from advocates and the NDP throughout the period outlined, both Liberal and Conservative governments refused to adopt a national housing strategy. All else being equal, I doubt we would have dodged a housing crisis completely had a federal strategy been implemented (none of our peer nations seem to have managed it), but the crisis may not have been quite so severe had the federal government taken the matter a bit more seriously earlier on.

This is the part I'm weary of. This government has been banned. But virtually every problem we face today was a problem that has long existed and was simply exacerbated by COVID or this government's incompetence. We risk learning the wrong lessons by pinning it all on Trudeau.

A small example. How much transit was built in Ontario through the 90s and 2000s? And now that property and construction prices are through the roof, we are forced to pay top dollar to build infrastructure we should have built decades ago for the population we were mostly planning to have anyway?

Or the problem with car thefts? We were always at risk because we never bothered with inspections for outbound cargo. But now that we have a crisis, we're panicking and plopping down tens of millions.

We have a bad history in the modern era of procrastinating until we are forced to react. And then we get forced into some of the most expensive solutions. Penny wise pound foolish. The debate over HFR in the Corridor is emblematic of this. We'll build something half assed eventually for $30B when traffic gets horrendous and we have to do it.

We're basically going down the same path as the UK. We're now going to get the horrible austerity they've had, which also accomplished nothing for them.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

How many caucus members are there from KW/Niagara/London/Windsor/Kingston?

If they are counting the rural and exurb ridings near these cities about 30.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

If they are counting the rural and exurb ridings near these cities about 30.

What's the equivalent comparison to the GTA that ssiguy was comparing? Not the broadest definition possible.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

This is the part I'm weary of. This government has been banned. But virtually every problem we face today was a problem that has long existed and was simply exacerbated by COVID or this government's incompetence. We risk learning the wrong lessons by pinning it all on Trudeau.

A small example. How much transit was built in Ontario through the 90s and 2000s? And now that property and construction prices are through the roof, we are forced to pay top dollar to build infrastructure we should have built decades ago for the population we were mostly planning to have anyway?

Or the problem with car thefts? We were always at risk because we never bothered with inspections for outbound cargo. But now that we have a crisis, we're panicking and plopping down tens of millions.

We have a bad history in the modern era of procrastinating until we are forced to react. And then we get forced into some of the most expensive solutions. Penny wise pound foolish. The debate over HFR in the Corridor is emblematic of this. We'll build something half assed eventually for $30B when traffic gets horrendous and we have to do it.

We're basically going down the same path as the UK. We're now going to get the horrible austerity they've had, which also accomplished nothing for them.

Yeah, that’s true that governments aren’t good at anticipating further problems. But at the same time it is easy to retroactively identify problems people should have anticipated. In the 90s the transit priority was the Shepherd Subway. Even if was fully built out it would have been of pretty questionable value. In the 90s nobody would have considered living in Kitchener if they worked in Toronto, an GO service would have been primarily student transportation. The experts at the time thought boomers would move to small towns when they retired (for example Boom Bust and Echo by David Foot) causing a real estate bust.

If Canada had invested heavily in the military in the 90s based on expert opinions at the time, would the country have been any better prepared for Afghanistan or Russia?

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

What's the equivalent comparison to the GTA that ssiguy was comparing? Not the broadest definition possible.

I don’t know what he was comparing. For example, just KW is 2 ridings. Cambridge and the exurbs of Waterloo Region is 6.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by acottawa

Yeah, that’s true that governments aren’t good at anticipating further problems. But at the same time it is easy to retroactively identify problems people should have anticipated. In the 90s the transit priority was the Shepherd Subway. Even if was fully built out it would have been of pretty questionable value. In the 90s nobody would have considered living in Kitchener if they worked in Toronto, an GO service would have been primarily student transportation. The experts at the time thought boomers would move to small towns when they retired (for example Boom Bust and Echo by David Foot) causing a real estate bust.

If Canada had invested heavily in the military in the 90s based on expert opinions at the time, would the country have been any better prepared for Afghanistan or Russia?

Many of the problems we have today were problems back then as well, and our leaders at the time (and the voters who elected them) chose to sit back and do nothing while the problems became progressively worse. That the Sheppard subway survived the 90s at all is a minor miracle—many eminently reasonable projects (e.g., the DRL) were jettisoned, and we're just now starting to catch up.

The housing crisis and the real estate affordability problem are related but separate issues. While the latter came as a bit of a shock to some, the former has been a brewing problem for decades. We used to support private nonprofit housing, on-campus student housing and government-led social housing projects precisely because for-profit development was inadequate at housing the full population. We stopped.

We stopped building and stopped planning to build. Deindustrialization and changing logistics helped mitigate this lack of vision to a degree by removing some of the strain on our systems: Relatively cheap and fairly central land became available for residential development, strain on our power and transportation grids eased and newly useless industrial infrastructure was turned over to other uses (e.g., a warehouse transitioning into a commercial use like a nightclub or a residential use like lofts).

That said, we already had tent cities appearing in the 90s and the waitlists for nonprofit and subsidized housing had already begun to grow rapidly. Anyone paying attention should have been able to see where we were headed.

[ssiguy]

Currently there are 4 Liberals from KWC, 2 in Niagara, 2 in London, and one each in Windsor, Guelph, and Kingston yet somehow Trudeau just couldn't muster any MPs in Southern Ontario outside the GTAH.

Representation is important and clearly Trudeau thinks that only Toronto is worth representing.

[shreddog]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

Unlikely, but absent a good explanation from this government, one is left wondering. I sometimes wonder if they didn't have information that NOT jacking up the numbers would lead to even worse consequences? Again, absent clear and convincing explanations, one can only wonder.

Maybe it was McKinsey's?

Ottawa often disregarded contracting rules in deals with McKinsey, Auditor-General finds
...
Throughout their study, MPs have heard from policy experts who question why Ottawa is spending billions more per year on outsourcing while also growing the size of the public service in recent years. Several other independent watchdogs, such as the Privacy Commissioner and the Public Sector Integrity Commissioner, are also investigating concerns related to how Ottawa manages private contractors.
...
The report stated that auditors “found frequent disregard for procurement policies and guidance and risk to value for money across the contracts awarded to McKinsey & Company both by departments and agencies and by Crown corporations.”

It also found that 71 per cent of the 97 contracts were awarded without an open competition. The report expressed concern that some departments and agencies were not able to demonstrate that individual consultants had the necessary security clearances.
...
In its early days, the Trudeau government relied heavily on policy advice from Dominic Barton while he was the global head of McKinsey, and then later named Mr. Barton as Canada’s ambassador to China from 2019 to 2021.
...
Specifically with respect to McKinsey contracts, the report said spending by departments, agencies and Crown corporations increased from $817,000 in the 2011-12 fiscal year to a high of $55.1-million in the 2021-22 fiscal year, and then decreased to about $46.8-million in the 2022-23 fiscal year

.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by wg_flamip

Many of the problems we have today were problems back then as well, and our leaders at the time (and the voters who elected them) chose to sit back and do nothing while the problems became progressively worse. That the Sheppard subway survived the 90s at all is a minor miracle—many eminently reasonable projects (e.g., the DRL) were jettisoned, and we're just now starting to catch up.

The housing crisis and the real estate affordability problem are related but separate issues. While the latter came as a bit of a shock to some, the former has been a brewing problem for decades. We used to support private nonprofit housing, on-campus student housing and government-led social housing projects precisely because for-profit development was inadequate at housing the full population. We stopped.

We stopped building and stopped planning to build. Deindustrialization and changing logistics helped mitigate this lack of vision to a degree by removing some of the strain on our systems: Relatively cheap and fairly central land became available for residential development, strain on our power and transportation grids eased and newly useless industrial infrastructure was turned over to other uses (e.g., a warehouse transitioning into a commercial use like a nightclub or a residential use like lofts).

That said, we already had tent cities appearing in the 90s and the waitlists for nonprofit and subsidized housing had already begun to grow rapidly. Anyone paying attention should have been able to see where we were headed.

I don't think this was foreseeable. Population in Canada had been growing at a fairly predicable rate for decades. It was in no way obvious before 2022 (event as recently as the 2021 election) that in 2022 the Government would upend decades of immigration policy and both open the floodgates to massive "student" migration and massively increase regular immigration. It would be like blaming Chinese planners in the 1930s for not predicting Mao would suddenly want the mass extermination of sparrows (which caused massive crop losses because the sparrows ate the locusts). Terrible decisions from terrible leaders are hard to predict decades in advance.

Public housing is subject to the same constraints as private housing: increasing land prices, increasing labour costs, supply shortages, skilled trade shortages, NIMBY-run municipal governments. Any significant increase in public housing is going to further crowd out the market, which is good for the chosen few who are gifted a subsidized unit, but bad for everyone else.

Also, as I noted earlier, the current situation runs counter to all predictions that had been made in the 1990s and 2000s. It was assumed that baby boomers would move to small towns, cottages, Florida or possibly to condos as the Greatest Generation had done in significant numbers. Boomers staying in their suburban homes was not widely predicted.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by acottawa

If Canada had invested heavily in the military in the 90s based on expert opinions at the time, would the country have been any better prepared for Afghanistan or Russia?

Yes. We would have been. Our guys wouldn't have been running around in Afghanistan in olive green fatigues in unarmored jeeps from the 70s. I'm fairly sure they could have foreseen the possibility of operations in a desert with land mines regardless of the theatre of operations. They could have foreseen that we'd need heavy lift helicopters and artillery in any conflict also. And a good chunk of all of that would have been useful to give to the Ukrainians even today.

Originally Posted by acottawa

I don't think this was foreseeable. Population in Canada had been growing at a fairly predicable rate for decades. It was in no way obvious before 2022 (event as recently as the 2021 election) that in 2022 the Government would upend decades of immigration policy and both open the floodgates to massive "student" migration and massively increase regular immigration.

Even at Harper's level of growth we probably would have reached current population levels by 2030-2035. Trudeau pulled forward a few years worth of growth. It's mismanagement to be sure. But the fact that a small surge broke so much is also revealing.

Originally Posted by acottawa

It would be like blaming Chinese planners in the 1930s for not predicting Mao would suddenly want the mass extermination of sparrows (which caused massive crop losses because the sparrows ate the locusts). Terrible decisions from terrible leaders are hard to predict decades in advance.

Public housing is subject to the same constraints as private housing: increasing land prices, increasing labour costs, supply shortages, skilled trade shortages, NIMBY-run municipal governments. Any significant increase in public housing is going to further crowd out the market, which is good for the chosen few who are gifted a subsidized unit, but bad for everyone else.

Also, as I noted earlier, the current situation runs counter to all predictions that had been made in the 1990s and 2000s. It was assumed that baby boomers would move to small towns, cottages, Florida or possibly to condos as the Greatest Generation had done in significant numbers. Boomers staying in their suburban homes was not widely predicted.

Saying nothing could have been predicted is a nice way of absolving past governments of any and all responsibility. I don't buy it. It's purely a defensive response from people who know they should have done better and didn't do their damn jobs or ran off assumptions that worked out all too conveniently for them.

I may be a lowly junior officer in the CAF, but I can see poor decisions we're making now that will have an impact regardless of how the world turns out in the future. I don't think my predecessors were any less intelligent. I'm fairly sure they could foresee the impact of their choices. And I'm fairly sure the government was informed and ploughed ahead anyway.

There are certain choices that are so fundamental that they would have held regardless of broader changes, that we've been irresponsible in avoiding. I'm inclined to believe that other public servants are also equally cognizant of poor decisions made in their domains.

[Djeffery]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Currently there are 4 Liberals from KWC, 2 in Niagara, 2 in London, and one each in Windsor, Guelph, and Kingston yet somehow Trudeau just couldn't muster any MPs in Southern Ontario outside the GTAH.

Representation is important and clearly Trudeau thinks that only Toronto is worth representing.

Yeah, I was surprised Peter Fragiskatos from London North Centre didn't make the cut last time. Pretty solid election wins all 3 times and does great work on the various committees and is Parliamentary Secretary for National Revenue. He was always the face of the party anytime there was an announcement to be made in the area (despite the London West MP Kate Young being a well known London face as the news anchor for over 20 years on the local CTV affiliate). I think he is the safe seat of the 2 London Liberals next time around. I think Kate might have had a shot at cabinet if she had ran last time, given JT's gender thing, which is why I think Peter didn't get it. The woman who replaced Kate Young, Arielle Kayabaga, checks off 2 of JT's boxes, black female, but she was only 30 and very inexperienced for cabinet at this point with only a partial term on city council. She didn't win any favours in the party when she helped the CPC with campaign fodder when she complained on TV that even on an MP's salary, she couldn't afford a house.

[acottawa]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Yes. We would have been. Our guys wouldn't have been running around in Afghanistan in olive green fatigues in unarmored jeeps from the 70s. I'm fairly sure they could have foreseen the possibility of operations in a desert with land mines regardless of the theatre of operations. They could have foreseen that we'd need heavy lift helicopters and artillery in any conflict also. And a good chunk of all of that would have been useful to give to the Ukrainians even today.

These were the international security concerns in the 1994 White Paper. No mention of international terrorism, no mention of the long term threat of Russia and China. They thought they were doing peacekeeping type missions, so I am not sure even with more money they would have prioritized armoured tactical vehicles, etc. for a counterinsurgency operation.

10. The world's population is growing rapidly, putting pressure on global political, financial and natural resources, as well as on the
environment. In addition, the past decade has seen exponential growth in the number of refugees and of people displaced within
their own countries. The breakdown of authority in certain states is yet another source of instability.
11. Increasingly, armed forces are being called upon to ensure safe environments for the protection of refugees, the delivery of
food and medical supplies, and the provision of essential services in countries where civil society has collapsed. And yet, the
international community cannot intervene every time these pressures reach the breaking point.
12. Among the most difficult and immediate challenges to international security are civil wars fuelled by ethnic, religious and
political extremism. The absence today of adversarial relations among the world's great powers suggests that, in the future,
regional conflicts are more likely to be contained. That being said, Canada cannot escape the consequences of these conflicts,
whether in the form of refugee flows, obstacles to trade, or damage to important principles.
13. The spread of advanced weapon technologies has emerged as another security challenge of the 1990s. The transfer of
weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missile delivery capabilities to so-called "rogue" regimes is of particular concern.
14. Diminishing resources make it more difficult for advanced industrial states to cope with global security challenges.
15. The world is neither more peaceful nor more stable than in the past. Canada's defence policy must reflect the world as it is
rather than the world as we would like it to be.