Federal Government & Politics II

[ToxiK]

Originally Posted by acottawa

I am also unclear how much of the litter problem came from plastic bags. Most people were using plastic bags to get something to a destination (unlike plastic bottles for example).

I reused my plastic bags. I till have many of the best quality ones and take them with me in my backpack or in my coat so I have a bag if I need one. I don't usually carry reusable bags unless I am only doing grocery (they are too big to carry in a coat). I don,t have a car, so no need to tell me that I can just keep reusable bags in my car,

[Rollerstud98]

My grocery store has compostable bags that are great. That fuck face guilbault wouldn’t even consider allowing an exemption for them saying they wouldn’t do that for one company alone and that other places may not have access to that manufacture. Hopefully they fuck off now and we can keep our bags. We pay $.15/bag for them, they fit small garbage cans and the in-house compost bin great. Oh and the comparable ones are nice and strong too, seldom tearing unlike the last few years of plastics.

[1overcosc]

Originally Posted by Rollerstud98

My grocery store has compostable bags that are great. That fuck face guilbault wouldn’t even consider allowing an exemption for them saying they wouldn’t do that for one company alone and that other places may not have access to that manufacture. Hopefully they fuck off now and we can keep our bags. We pay $.15/bag for them, they fit small garbage cans and the in-house compost bin great. Oh and the comparable ones are nice and strong too, seldom tearing unlike the last few years of plastics.

The complete refusal to allow retailers to hand out compostable polymer bags is probably one of the stupidest things about this policy. It completely screws over a homegrown Canadian company and there isn't a good reason at all.

[niwell]

Another plus of doing most of my shopping at local greengrocers and convenience stores that are somehow cheaper than Loblaws is I still get regular plastic bags. Most places say they charge $.05 for them but they seem to rarely actually do it (I'm fine with a higher charge tbh).

[lio45]

I have an idea to suggest (inspired by the recent heating oil policy developments): how about allowing the return of single-use plastic bags, but only in ridings that are represented by a Liberal MP? Decent compromise, environment-wise!

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by Loco101

A lot of big stores in Canada got rid of plastic bags well before the ban took effect. I don't think that the big players want to be seen as going backwards on environmental initiatives. Plus, they do better financially by selling the reusable ones.

Most got rid of them anticipating the ban, not on their own initiative.

Unfortunately I agree that most won’t return to plastic bags. Much like when Toronto required retailers to charge for plastic bags a decade or so ago, and then reversed the requirement, most retailers just kept charging.

I always thought the ban was quite stupid and would have been reversed whenever the Conservatives formed government anyway.

[whatnext]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I'm going to be the rare voice of dissent on here. I hated the garbage and littering with plastic bags. And I do find there's been some reduction in that littering post plastic bag ban. For me, a lot of this has been reinforced, anytime I've gone to a developing country. The plastic pollution is always insane. I would never want to see Canada get that bad…….

The flip side of that is you go to a country like Egypt and see the horrendous amount of plastic waste all over the streets etc and wonder what’s the point of sorting, washing and recycling the plastic we use here.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by whatnext

The flip side of that is you go to a country like Egypt and see the horrendous amount of plastic waste all over the streets etc and wonder what’s the point of sorting, washing and recycling the plastic we use here.

Plastic pollution is first and foremost a local concern. Trash is usually the first consideration in single use plastics ban. It's why countries like India are also moving to ban single use plastics. And I don't think anybody is going to suggest that Modi is an envirohippie. Beyond just littering there's also the concerns about microplastics polluting everything and stopping this before it gets much worse.

Reducing emissions by discouraging single use plastics is a very distant concern. The emissions from single use plastics, at least in Canada, is not substantial.

[casper]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Most got rid of them anticipating the ban, not on their own initiative.

Unfortunately I agree that most won’t return to plastic bags. Much like when Toronto required retailers to charge for plastic bags a decade or so ago, and then reversed the requirement, most retailers just kept charging.

I always thought the ban was quite stupid and would have been reversed whenever the Conservatives formed government anyway.

Exactly. Most major retailers understand consumers want to see companies being environmentally responsible to the degree possible.

Some of it was also extreme. Safeway (Sobey's) store in Vancouver I use to go to on Kingsway, tended to put two, max three items per bag. It was insane.

Thrifty Foods (Sobey's) in Victoria at the same time was paper bags only and were pushing these cardboard totes.

Loblaws was happy to sell plastic bags at likely 100% markup versus given them away for free.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by 1overcosc

The complete refusal to allow retailers to hand out compostable polymer bags is probably one of the stupidest things about this policy. It completely screws over a homegrown Canadian company and there isn't a good reason at all.

Agreed. This is where they jumped the shark from science to ideology. If a product can be proven environmentally safe, there's no reason to disallow it.

[Hecate]

Xi is a dictator. In 2018 he removed the two term limit for Chinese presidents. The only people who do these types of things are…. Dictators.

If anything this was a test to see where Canada stands in support of its allies. Once again Trudeau fails. He should have stood by Bidens comment and showed allegiance. But nope, trudeau obviously doesn’t want to offend that Chinese dictator whose party members are donating to his family foundation.

[Hecate]

Canadian company selling drone technology to Russia… how is this not treason.

GO CANADA!

[Hecate]

It was nice watching Justin denounce Islamophobia again in San Francisco as the entire global Jewish community faces the worst rise in antisemitism since the holocaust.

[Rollerstud98]

Reading an article on the bags says they won’t decompose in nature. While slower they do decompose in my kitchen with scraps in them so probably wouldn’t take much for them to decompose in nature.

[someone123]

It sounds trivial but the plastic bag ban is one of the most annoying policies of the past few years and the environmental impact is dubious or minimal. To me it's emblematic unserious and incompetent politics. It feels like policies get implemented based on the whims of nanny-ish town councillor level opinions, while there isn't much focus on providing improved services and abundance in the economy that will actually make people's lives better. You don't need to be very bright or competent to ban straws, but improving a transportation network function in a large and growing city is very complicated. So we get the straw ban.

There is a deeper philosophical problem with people assuming that you need to suffer to do things like improve the environment (or anything; it's a similar motivation behind people doing a juice cleanse or whatever), which isn't true and is quite harmful in combination with the low competence. A lot of people can't tell the difference between meaningfully improving things and just making people suffer, and there's often a push to drop one thing deemed to be harmful before a viable alternative is offered. This is what happened with home heating oil in the Maritimes and it's likely hitting food prices as well right now, but our political leaders are too dumb to coordinate all of that and a lot of them view the bad coordination as a feature rather than a bug since it is perceived as adding pain and pain is perceived as pushing us a little along that path to utopia.

[Truenorth00]

Poilievre: "We have $900 billion of mortgages set to renew into these higher rates over the next three years. We have an emergency on our hands to bring rates down before those mortgages renew,...."


Ugh. This is why we will never be able to fix housing in Canada. Politicians aren't allowing any pain for people who stupidly overleveraged. And that in turn means housing prices will not be allowed to decline. On one side Human QE. On the other side political interference in monetary policy.

[someone123]

I still don't think the housing crisis or immigration have been addressed in an honest way by any significant federal politicians. It's still the fantastical view of providing returns from real estate, nobody ever being allowed to miss a mortgage payment, bringing in huge numbers of people as part of the Ponzi scheme, and then paying lip services to housing affordability, government finances, and the wider economy.

[kool maudit]

Polievre is only saying he'll cut rates because he is gambling on an overall dovish tilt from G20 central banks by the time he is running for office. Absent that, he couldn't slash rates as PM and he would be foolhardy to try -- BoC isn't the PM's plaything anyway. He could crater the currency, for example, if he had the necessary power, which he wouldn't. This is just noise for those who are frustrated and do not understand monetary policy.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Poilievre: "We have $900 billion of mortgages set to renew into these higher rates over the next three years. We have an emergency on our hands to bring rates down before those mortgages renew,...."


Ugh. This is why we will never be able to fix housing in Canada. Politicians aren't allowing any pain for people who stupidly overleveraged. And that in turn means housing prices will not be allowed to decline. On one side Human QE. On the other side political interference in monetary policy.

Nice to hear. Sounds like my exit from Canadian real estate doesn’t need to start getting planned anytime soon

[lio45]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

Polievre is only saying he'll cut rates because he is gambling on an overall dovish tilt from G20 central banks by the time he is running for office. Absent that, he couldn't slash rates as PM and he would be foolhardy to try -- BoC isn't the PM's plaything anyway. He could crater the currency, for example, if he had the necessary power, which he wouldn't. This is just noise for those who are frustrated and do not understand monetary policy.

That’s just semantics though: the PM technically can’t “slash rates” but he can fire a BoC Governor who refuses to, and replace them by a loyal buddy ordered/tasked with slashing rates.

Canada’s monetary policies are ultimately decided by the forces who control the Parliament in Ottawa, even if not directly, as you point out.