Reading it, it looks like they’re stuck on this point “This municipality urges the province of Ontario to work urgently with key stakeholders to develop limited liability legislation, including enforceable contractor training and a single set of provincially-endorsed standard BMPs for snow and ice management; and…”

I’m guessing liability reasons mean the first one to take a step and suggest we use a little less salt and increase our risk of injury is opening themselves up unless the provide sets mandated standards or direction.

When I go to do road reconstruction, enormous amounts of effort (and money) are spent avoiding underground utilities. In the event they can’t be avoided, the municipality is on the hook for (generally) half the relocation cost.

And they dont have to pay to have their stuff there in the first place.

The key part in this argument -

Guelph Coun. Leanne Caron says many of those agreements were signed decades ago, when natural gas was treated as a public good and Enbridge was still a Crown corporation. Today, Enbridge is a for-profit company and Caron says the old rules no longer match current economic, environmental or planning realities.

That basically sums it up. Turn back to a Crown Corp and continue gaining free access, or pay like the private corp you are.

Locally, as discussed in the article, they can use it to prop up small scale green infrastructure grants/loans which help further reduce the use of those gas pipelines, and reduce upsizing or new installation requirements.

I mean I dont understand why they keep doing this. This is the third or fourth city I’ve seen get into it.

For those who dont read the article, there was JUST a court case in the last few months where Mississauga lost over this exact issue.

I dont see this precedence being upended UNLESS they can prove this poses a danger to residents (think poison sumac, etc). Otherwise its a waste of taxpayer money and time for a non-issue.

Yeah, I agree. I think its extremely unlikely that this was intentional in the sense of cheating. It’d be a weird way to cheat.

I appreciate you finding that article - interesting one.

I’m very much amateur curler, and can’t see how that tiny touch would impact it, but maybe it does at that level of competition.

Using a perfect shot to stop on the button with no spin, and energy= all kinetic (1/2mv2) =friction energy(F*deltaX), we get a release speed of 1.8m/s (with a .006 coefficient), and a 2.98m/s speed (with a 0.016 coefficient).

Using the same equation, I go ahead and rerun the number, but adding a distance of 0.1m, a value I used as a good approximation of a reliable accuracy of an Olympic throw, and a time of 0.2s (the approximate time I estimated based on the video), which means a deltaX2 of 0.36m, or 0.596m.

1/2mv2+fapplieddeltaX2 = ffrictiondeltaX Fapplied comes out to 0.326N to 0.526N which is a miniscule amount.

That seems to indicate that a tiny touch DOES have the potential to make a significant difference. Some sources say 0.25 to 0.5N is required for a keyboard press, so its roughly on par with that

But, how much of a difference does the sweeping make on stone speed? Its easy to say that tiny change can impact things, but how does it compare to, say, sweeping hard vs not sweeping?

This study shows a sweeping change of 45+/-8mm. Thus a change of 25% on top of that is not insignificant.

So the last question is, does it make sense for someone to train specifically by cheating this way rather than doing it right and just pushing off with a more accurate force? That’s likely going to be subjective, but seems difficult to me.

Who knows, maybe this is a crutch and it is making a difference. Sounds like they need to stop doing it any case, whether a way they’ve trained or not. Or wear a camera showing they don’t touch the rock and just hover their finger behind it.

Sounds like the “loophole” we need to address is our lack of funding courts and justice systems - a problem seen Canada wide. Seems like a very easy and popular way to solve the issue.

I can’t say I’m too surprised. I’m not involved in the auto sector in anyway, but the media I’ve seen about it with respect to Canadian manufacturing has been all negative - US companies or US owned companies pulling their manufacturing out of Canada despite deals made (looking at you Stellantis). If our auto sector is diminishing/pulling out, what do we have to protect?

That being said, I’d like to see more manufacturing jobs here as part of that deal, but I’m entirely uninformed on how that would work or what it would look like.

Wild. I’m a tall guy (6’5"), and I can just barely squeeze into normal seats if my wife is beside me, letting me knees flare out wide. I cant imagine I’d even fit into these seats, particularly if I didnt know/realize this was a change that had happened.

Time to avoid westjet until they sort out that shit.

Unless I’m mistaken, hydronic systems like those USUALLY require a pump to circulate the water.

I’m glad there IS data to do this comparison. Nothing I’ve seen from proposed cuts has made me believe that they are in the best interest of mail delivery, and its good to see that Canada Post is doing so well relative to other countries.

This reeks of the same type of stuff as “just get outside to cure your depression” or “have you tried just not thinking like that?” for mental health issues.

If someone could be reached by telling them “just reach out, its that simple”, they weren’t the ones we need to be reaching. For sure it’d help, and there may be some people this resonates to. If so, great for them. But we have a major problem with isolated men, and those usually aren’t ones who this will be helpful for, any more than an article addressing the mental health crisis by saying “just try more” solves that problem.

I think we need to be reaching out, but IMO the focus isn’t on using words that are incredibly loaded, particularly for those people we’re trying to reach and connect with. Those of us who are doing better should be reaching out, like the author said, and making those connections, but that won’t solve this loneliness crisis.

I’m confused - are you arguing for lower property values as a driving method to reduce COL, or for trying to redistribute housing prices?

50 per 100,000 people.

I don’t think we should be using the States as our goal/bar as to what is normal or acceptable for violence. What are the rates in Europe? What about Japan or Korea?

Arguing that were not better than the US or Russia (the two biggest neighbours and both much more aggressively imperialistic than Canada), is extremely disingenuous.

I think Canada has the potential to do better and I’m not about to give it up or roll over for another country to come in, particularly one like the US who has shown an incredible swing towards facism and aggression to LGBTQ and POC. Me defending this country, if they were to invade, would have direct benefits to those of my family who are LGBTQ and those of my friend group who are immigrants. Arguing that because Canada has a problem with wannabe monopolistic companies and a bleed over of American individualism its basically as bad as any other is a stance I disagree with.

The most likely deployment for these forces would be natural disasters and support - something I’m interested in doing anyway. If this does come out its something I’d explore and see if its a good fit.

Its been a nightmare working with CAs recently (last 3yrs), but that’s largely due to budget cuts and staffing losses.

Fund them properly and set strict guidelines for plan review turnarounds, and you’ll see improvements.

But alas its the classic “defund then claim its not working” be that he pulls everywhere.

I mean at the least it looks like we’re taking some steps to avoid the clusterfuck that the USMCA resigning is likely to be by getting ahead of it.

Its not hard to double exports to other countries when your main trading partner (US) stops taking your stuff. Talking out of my ass, but it seems like doubling exports to other countries wouldn’t be that hard when we wind up having a surplus because US trade dries up. Seems like it’d push prices of our goods lower and hurt Canadians, which is what he seems to be implying to me.

I mean I see a number of factors that contribute to this that arent ridiculous.

1. 4yr post secondary degree vs 1 yr post secondary degree. Cost and lost wages for the extra years means I’d expect most 4yr degrees to earn more than jobs without that requirement. Fix: eliminate university costs is a good first step. That’d reduce some of the burden of school/lost cost opportunity.

2. That position is a senior role. The job posting sounds like the role is largely required to analyze and make decisions for the company. The PSW role doesn’t generally have a lot of decisions to be made. Generally, the more decisions and responsibility a role needs, the more it should pay.

3. The position requires a professional accounting designation, unlike the PSW role which doesn’t require any. This represents additional standards and requirements they needed to meet and maintain.

A better example is a senior RN vs the senior BA, which are both paid similarly (See ONA agreements which show $50/hr for 5-yr experience RN).

The union said lifting the surtax now would risk undoing recent investments in vehicle assembly, battery production and critical minerals. It is asking Ottawa to extend the surtax for at least 24 months, broaden it to include EV and battery components, and reinstate federal EV rebates restricted to Canadian and North American-built vehicles. The union also wants stronger enforcement against goods made with forced labour. Unifor said Canada should align its approach with the United States and Mexico. The U.S. has combined tariffs of 127.5 per cent on Chinese EVs and plans to restrict connected car technology by 2027, while Mexico raised its EV import tariffs to 50 per cent this year after Chinese vehicles surged to 70 per cent of its market.

I don’t disagree that China is going to flood our markets with cheap EVs, with huge impacts on our own auto plants.

But holy fuck guys, we just dropped our previous pledge of 30% EV by 2026. What’s the plan - indefinitely push off electrification? We’re getting lapped by China on renewable and electrification technology, and its only going to get worse if we dont FORCE companies to electrify and move faster.

On top of that, the US companies are all starting to move their car manufacturing back inside the US. Our auto sector is in serious trouble regardless of our move here, and continuing to put our eggs in the US basket is a mistake, IMO.

Keep a 50% tariff, which still places these cars into an affordable price point here. Given the problems the China auto sector is in, they’ll likely still move cars with that rate. Then earmark those tariffs to retrain those auto workers, or support a canadian EV manufacturer.

As someone who has studied traffic engineering in school and works in road design, I’d be very curious what studies these were.

Look into it, there’s a heavy increase in collisions where cameras are present.

Only place I’ve seen this data was as an example in school of what not to do - several states had low yellow times (1-2s shorter than Ontario’s), and added red light cameras at large, wide intersections that took longer to cross than the yellow timer, meaning if you entered on a green you could theoretically get hit with a red light violation. But those studies were late 90s, early 00s.

Every piece of data I’ve seen shows either a reduction in speed (even post camera removal), or minimal change after removal.

Note that studies need to reflect current state cameras in Ontario - only allowed to be used in school zones, and need to have signage present indicating their use. They’re not used specifically at intersections.

Additionally, the fees for traffic cameras go back to road redesign budget, which is used (on the projects I’ve worked on) to provide traffic calming measures like narrower lanes, AT facilities, etc. Cameras should be a stop gap measure, and are vastly preferable to an increase in the polices budget to have increased traffic enforcement presence.

CAA reports as well as studies conducted of driver behaviour before, during, and after shows that speed cameras do.

I don’t want to balloon cop budget to allow proper enforcement. This is a better route with fines going to something useful