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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 2nd, 2023

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    1. Yes. Many people budget the most they can afford in mortgage payments to identify how much to pay for a home. Lower interest rates -> lower mortgage payments per $100K -> more money they can offer for the house -> house prices go up.

    2. Not just “people”, either. Interest rates are the main cost of expanding business activity. Lower interest rates means it’s cheaper to start or expand a business.

    3. Yes. Borrowing $100K just became $500 cheaper for each year the loan is held. With interest compounding over time, this has a much bigger impact the longer the term of the loan (mortgages and business loans are the biggest and longest, generally).


  • I think the building restrictions parent poster was referring to are density restrictions.

    As an example, there are narrow strips of Toronto along major roads that allow skyscrapers, a lot of it a block away from single-family-home zoning. So all the demand for multi-unit housing bursts up in narrow corridors.

    If, instead, quad-plexes became universally allowed, and lot height limits were increased to 3 (or 4? idk) stories, then single-family homes could be torn down or renovated to make room for up to 4 families to live comfortably on the same land.

    Rosedale shouldn’t exist. Single-family homes a short walk from downtown Toronto is a big part of why people are commuting from Barrie.

    West Van is just as bad. Even small towns in desirable areas are seeing density restrictions causing a missing middle in housing.



  • I wish STV came up in articles like this. I feel like it’s the perfect system for Canada since it fits so naturally with our constitutionally-required geographic restrictions on seats for the provinces.

    In short: all ridings are merged to have 3-5 seats* (same number in total as now). Parties can run as many candidates as there are seats. Cheers can give ranked votes to individuals or to parties. If someone gets 20/25/33% of the votes, they get a seat. If nobody does, the person with the least votes is eliminated, and their votes are distributed to the next-highest-ranked option. There’s a bit of extra math for fractional votes to ensure fair splitting of next-choice votes that are “extra” beyond what’s needed to win a seat.

    No party lists/corruption by being beholden to the party. No regional shenanigans about representation from listless MMP. Roughly proportional representation locally so most Canadians will have an MP that represents their interests well, while still keeping fringe parties from fracturing things too much.

    And it’s been done successfully in Ireland for over a century, too, so it’s well tested.

    *The territories would effectively just get ranked ballot (= STV with 1-seat ridings) to ensure they retain 1 seat each.




  • If you look at the actual seat-by-seat projections, current polls give a near mathematical certainty of a CCP majority.

    Trudeau needs to take a page from Biden’s book and step down in time for there to be a leadership race. I don’t think it’s fair (he’s done fine as Prime Minister, imho) but he’s unelectable. A PP-led majority government could do a lot of damage.


  • I agree, except that the law, as written, is stupid.

    Charging for outbound links and for sharing the robots.txt summary provided by the news outlets themselves for use is ridiculous.

    Instead, they should have implemented a digital advertising tax. 20% of gross sales, maybe? Make exemptions for small groups (first $1M in #ad dashes is untaxed?) (Numbers to be determined by an actual trained economist and policy expert, not me.)

    That would hurt them directly on the revenue side where they make most of their income, and make local print/TV advertising more cost-effective (helping local media companies).

    And then use 100% of the tax to support journalist salaries as a tax rebate through the CRA, like CCB or the carbon rebate.

    What am I missing? This seems so obvious to me idk why this wasn’t the original plan.









  • Vitamin D supplementation is recommended for all Canadians, not just vegans. And Omega 3, D, and B12 are common supplement recommendations (actually backed by strong evidence) for the general population. (Although the benefits of Omega 3 supplementation for heart health has come under scrutiny, I think its anti-inflammatory effects are still pretty widely supported.)

    Anyway, no need for the vitriol. Nobody is forcing you to go vegan. If it works for them, then great! It’s definitely better for the planet to eat less meat, so power to them. (I eat way too many eggs to ever consider going vegan, personally.)