Shifting to a bike-centric cityscape is a huge shift in infrastructure, if you start mapping out all the components that need to come together for it to happen at this stage. Like I live in Vancouver, where our council has for a few decades put a heavy priority on building segregated bike lanes and connecting paths that are pretty well totally removed from cars. I happily ride my ebike around the seawall during the spring/summer/fall a couple times a week. The weather is mild, albeit rainy, pretty well all year. The terrain is generally pretty darn flat. We’ve had local e-bike vendors for a long time. We have bike share stations provided by Rogers (formerly Shaw) along most major transit routes. That’s still not enough to make vancouver into a bike-primary transportation city. Hell, with reports of ebike batteries exploding periodically, one thing you’d need to add in is mandatory secure ebike parking in condo buildings (we recently had an apt building go up because of it, causing something like 24 people to become homeless) – which’d mean all the older buildings would need to retrofit things. The list just goes on and on.

And again, in the context of “change all cities in the country to preference ebikes and alternative transport” vs “build EVs in Canada”, the former is far more drastic. So if someone wants to put it forward as a realistic/plausible option, beyond just fantasy, they need to really spell out how it’d function, the cost variances / savings they claim would occur, and all that jazz. I’d love to see how it’d be economical for tiny towns in northern BC/Alberta to switch to e-bikes as a primary mode of transport, I just don’t think it’s realistic. It’s the more extreme position to take, so someone should back it up. And, like I said earlier, if they can do that they ought to pitch it to the greens.

Women generally have enough advocates already. They have over 5 years more average life expectancy than men, yet the media is flooded with women’s health care needs/concerns. There are reasons why the right-wing message is appealing to so many men these days, and it isn’t because they’re doing great – just looking at the statscan info on university grad demographics, where white guys were around 20%, white girls were around 30%, and asians were around 50%, and I gotta wonder why we keep treating the white guys as a privileged group. The data doesn’t support it so much anymore. Just because one group was treated poorly in the past, it doesn’t justify treating others poorly in the present – especially as that generation has/had no say in the matter that they’re being punished for.

That said, yes, when an equity issue is raised that impacts women, I’m staunchly in favour of having it addressed. I mean, heck, I highlighted gay men as a group that was specifically screwed by the move, which isn’t ‘typical’ cis white right wing guy speech. I like to think myself more an egalitarian in that sense.

Already hashed this out with another poster. If you look through it, there’s a link to articles where university profs were admitting that it was an equity issue, and that they’d failed boys.

As far back as 2007, when the vaccine came in, there was evidence it’d help men / boys out with HPV related cancers and issues. Some of the studies explicitly stated that they should be doing more work to highlight the situation for groups such as gay men, who were left out of the whole ‘herd immunity’ concept altogether when it came to the govt policies and initial roll outs. These studies and the gender-biased implications that were noted, were ignored while the government made the vaccine free for girls. They only looked at cervical cancer, and with those blinders they only funded it for girls. Until boys/men started protesting more, and people pointed out that male rates of various HPV related issues were far higher than that of girls, because ‘duh’ vaccines, and the policies slowly started changing.

If things like historic approaches to heart attack treatments, having things like symptoms only track what “male” symptoms look like, is systemic sexism against women – then this is easily an example of system sexism against men. And again, there’s third party sources of univ profs cited in Canada’s national news agency in the other discussion thread, supporting this statement, so its not just some rando online alone making this assertion. I don’t really care to debate it more.

I’ve had enough discussions with people on lemmy so far, where they demand I source/cite a bunch of stuff, while they choose not to cite anything. So I’m not overly fussed, and I find your response kinda funny given how the site seems to trend.

I’m fine with people stating opinions and not sourcing stuff, but to that effect it doesn’t make all that much sense to try and pick apart an opposing opinion without citing things, if you’re wanting to get into a back and forth. If people want to ‘dream’ about some ‘Freedom city’ that’s designed with eco sustainability in mind from the ground up, that’s great, but it’d need to stay in the realm of fantasy until it’s costed/proven viable.

Like in his response he goes on about montreal’s infrastructure, but doesn’t acknowledge that Quebec receives the most in equalization payments by far as a province – the amount of money that province receives, as the second largest in the country, has often been a bone of contention from the West. Most likely if they have the funds to build a bunch of that stuff in Montreal, it’s because of these sorts of uneven supports driven by the federal parties wanting to cozy up to Quebec, moreso than it being realistically viable for a small town in northern BC/Alberta. I don’t need to “prove” that explicitly, because I’m not the one arguing Montreal as the poster child of his approach – so he/she/they should be providing that information in more detail for consideration, if wanting to convince readers that ditching cars is the way to go.

There’s an old line where extreme claims require extreme evidence/proof – so on this one, calling for abandoning cars, is a far more extreme change than saying we should switch to in-canada EV production. The onus of providing evidence is on the other poster.

Prove it with a fully costed source / platform. Maybe push it to the green party. Run for election.

Otherwise your stated dissent against my points basically amounts to is just two assholes arguing on the internet, with both getting covered in shit.

Not a bad bit. None of the choices are good, even looking at fringe ones these days.

Greens are back with May as co leader, after having previously appointed a person based solely on DEI principles and watching that person burn the party horribly. Turns out appointing a black lesbian jewish pro-palestine lawyer woman didn’t automatically make her a good leader. Like their own party history is now a very clear, tangible, and credible argument against those sorts of initiatives. DEI is good in principle, but implementation has a bunch of issues – and the lefts inability to recognise that, even when literally suffering the consequences, is a problem that will alienate many voters. Even returning to May, is like saying the party has no other viable / worthwhile leaders around, which is a huge mark against in terms of stability for the party. The “pro-environmental” party should’ve had a significant uptick given all the climate disasters, like seeing towns burn to the ground. But they’re so warped in their politics now, their core messaging so scattershot amongst a bunch of harder-left wing concepts, that it’s dysfunctional as a party at best.

The NDP have Jagmeet Singh, who’s overtly racial in his politics. He’ll always rush up and hug his ethnic group / favour them at rallies etc – the optics of which isn’t lost on people who aren’t part of his demographic. The basic fact that his leadership win, and support, is heavily racially biased is not exactly a secret, nor is it something that will appeal to anyone outside of his race. Demanding that people who question/highlight this issue be labelled as racists, isn’t going to help the issue. Jagmeet also cratered Weir’s political career based on BS accusations, weaponizing inclusivity policies against a caucasian guy who could’ve been a rival for the leadership. Singh shielded Weir’s (non victim) accuser, when she was accused of misconduct with more tangible evidence (ie. an actual victim stepped forward to accuse her, where none stepped forward to accuse Weir – the victim was a guy though, so apparently the ‘believe the victim’ thing didn’t apply) – Weir got the boot immediately, Moore got coddled. Singh seems like a pampered lawyer from a wealthy background – his private sector work experience being working at his family’s law firm for a couple years. When elected, he just picked up a house in one of the more expensive areas of Vancouver like it was nothing – what’s a few million to a ‘working class’ leader afterall, pocket change. Draped in expensive swag, and with that background he masquerades as a candidate for the working class. Singh stands up and opines about the evil landlord class, while his wife is busy buying up investment condos to provide their family passive income as landlords. Even more, as an overtly religious guy from a minority religion, he alienates many – and faces really difficult challenges in areas such as Quebec. While many attest that it shouldn’t matter, real politics demands a realistic take on the electorate – if your party wants to win, don’t run leaders that explicitly alienate large segments of voters.

Neither alternative party tends to put together a proper platform. The less likely you are to have to make good on your commitments, the more extravagant you can make your promises. Yes, the two main parties fail frequently to deliver, but they’re still more realistic in scope during election time.

Just because one step doesn’t get you to your destination, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take that first step.

Bikes aren’t practical in a large number of Canadian cities, especially ones with -30 degree seasons. They aren’t practical for disabled people. They aren’t practical for families with young children.

A lack of road infrastructure also hobbles emergency services such as ambulances. It reduces the ability of trucks to deliver goods to stores. It reduces the ability for utility crews to service utilities such as power lines and sewers.

There are a lot of potential issues with aggressively pursuing what you envision. At the very least you’d need to massively re-work city design and zoning, rebuild a ton of stuff. That will take time. Shifting to electric cars will take less time, and be a net ‘win’ for the environment, generally speaking. I see no issue with the first persons response saying we should try to make evs in country.

not practical for many canadian cities – especially ones further north, with temps frequently around -30 degrees. Also not practical for disabled folks.

Also not practical in areas of higher crime, as we dont have secure ‘parking’ options.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU

Yeah, the drop in travel and drop in spending on American stuff is sharp – not sure the specific %, but it’s definitely up there. What’s interesting is that it’s a “spontaneous” reaction from many Canadians, not so much a result of leadership. Like, yes, Trudeau made a speech or two that were fairly clear on the sentiments, but people’d already been booing at hockey games / cancelling trips etc before that. Sorta like our armed forces reserve applications going bonkers / crashing the website frequently due to volume, without any specific reason.

But these things are still driven by what seems like mass paranoia / potentially media trends, to some extent - especially as there’s been few ‘real’ controls/measures implemented. Canadian media is heavily skewed/oriented towards the USA, so we’ve seen a fairly constant blast of negative Trump/American perspectives. Social media makes it really easy to fan those xenophobic flames – like you’d just need a small batch of bots/agents upvoting/downvoting posts to shift the herds perspective on sites like reddit, as, if they catch posts ‘early’, that’d essentially allow control of which comments are visible, allowing for control of the discussion. The anti-american stuff feels a lot like a social media trend in this respect – like people ‘spontaneously’ recording themselves dumping buckets of ice water on their heads, or taking photos of ‘planking’, or some random dance move, or stealing stuff from public washrooms, etc. Those sorts of things were basically coordinated through algorithms on social media, moreso than people rationally/objectively deciding to do them. It’s not like people across the country woke up one day and all thought “I know how to support ALS research, I’ll film myself dumping a bucket of water on my head!”. It was a nonsensical behaviour pattern spurred on by oligarch controlled algorithms, demonstrating the power of those algorithms to manipulate the masses.

Very difficult, as most traded goods pass through US boundaries via train/truck.

More “regular” trade agreements between individual states is generally more likely going forward I imagine, but the sort of integrated supply chains that we’ve all benefited from in North America for like… decades and decades… is pretty well toast.

Eg. the US wants to build their own cars, in country. This means Canada and Mexico will likely also need to build their own cars, in country. Mexico has a bit more of an opportunity to build up integrated supply chains with countries in south america, though they tend to be a bit less stable – the proximity is a win. It’d be really cool to see if they did though – not sure what sorts of free trade agreements are around in the south, honestly.

Canada is busy trying to shore up agreements/trade with areas like asia and europe, as those are ‘sorta’ the same distance/calculus as shipping things via sea to mexico / south america.

It’d also be interesting if the waning of the US hegemony results in more western countries trading with traditionally ‘blockaded’ countries. Cuba has long been a Canadian vacation spot, but trade with Cuba has been limited due to US pressure. Given the current state of things, I don’t see why Canada wouldn’t increase trade there. And given the state of Cuba currently, it could be really beneficial for both country’s people.

I’m mostly familiar with the Canadian situation due to my locale.

What I’d say on this front, is that the government of Canada has generally taken preformative steps so far in regards to the issues in the USA. There’s a lot of chest thumping and pageantry. Our largest province, Ontario, recently re-elected a fairly hard right Conservative politician – one who is well known for doing things against the public interest (like selling off what little green/parkland exists around toronto, to his developer buddies)… he was re-elected because he draped himself in pro-Canada trappings. He’s the guy who made the “Canada is not for sale” hats more popular. Branding yourself as captain Canada works for elections currently – which is why, for example, its very likely we’ll see a Liberal party returned to power federally, even though until very recently they were looking at a significant routing (that, plus them changing to Carney, who is probably the most right-wing/conservative leader of the Liberal/“centrist” party in history).

When I say preformative, I mean things like… there have been no explicit calls from our government to businesses/industry to follow suit on untangling supply chains or shifting trade relationships explicitly – they’ve taken some steps to try and lay ground work for further diversification of international trade, but haven’t pushed any levers, outside of allowing market forces to do their thing. Our banking regulators, for example, happily remain within Microsoft’s cloud ecosystems – and they have seemingly no interest in the financial industry outsourcing all of their websites to foreign countries / the USA. Many of our levels of government have made overtures of “buy local” procurement policies, but when you ask for details they’re all just “planning/reviewing/considering”, without direct action on the table. It’s not what you’d expect, given the ‘rhetoric’ of it being an existential threat / crisis. Our politicians are full of sound and fury, but they aren’t bothered enough to take direct action at this point.

If you rely on concrete / verifiable data points from our government, trade and relations are deteriorating, but there’s no overt cautions/warnings/mandates to take action. Media posts that hype up the fear by changing words feed into the public paranoia, and ignore the relative calm seen in our government agencies.

I ain’t American. I’m from one of the countries most irked by America at present (Canada) – if you look at my @, I’m on a Canadian lemmy server.

But its still true that Russian propaganda is mostly about disrupting allied nations and fostering civil unrest / animosity between countries. They have literally stated that they seek to amplify things like race-oriented conflicts and stories, because it helps to destabilize western countries (so things like Tiktok, where any anti-black event is automatically on the front page, is part of that routine – compared to other nations, where it shows more benign things, such as “child prodigy plays piano”). Things like “BuyCanadian” campaigns are likely supported/partially funded by Russian interests – because it’s not just “avoid american products”, but “avoid all traditional allies” in tone. Sorta like how Russia didn’t need specific ‘agents’ in the US, but could instead fund “influencers” that were saying things that promoted Russian geopolitical goals.

Is there a reason to be concerned about what’s going on in the states? Yes. Doesn’t mean that we should hype up negativity beyond reason / create anti-american echo chambers.

Oh, wait, ok, let me go do up a massive post with a ton of cited sources and detailed research in order to support an online opinion about the general feeling I get when seeing these sorts of articles – specifically ones where the social media site (this lemmy OPs post) re-words the title of the article from “travel update” to “travel warning”, and aims to get people going on about how the USA is evil.

Or, no, I won’t bother. It’s an online opinion meant to draw some additional thought / criticism towards these sorts of posts, and the intentions behind them.

Yeah, so it definitely gives the vibe of social media over hyping / trying to drive further wedges into western relations and opinions. Which is basically a Russian goal / propaganda tactic…

As another poster commented, the actual article doesn’t call it a ‘warning’. So, this does look like social media/bubble hyping up the issue.

Not sure – but it’s plausible that the media/bubbles are hyping up that sort of event, even if it’s an outlier. Like there are millions of visits to the US from Canada on a regular basis – one lady got put in a detention area, as a result of having wonky paper work on a longer term work visa (something most regular tourists/travellers don’t have to worry about).

As far as I know, travel advisories aren’t issued as a result of ‘cost to insurance companies’, but rather danger/risk to citizens travelling to those countries, imposed by governments. Travel insurance providers look at those, and determine risk/coverage based on that sort of information. So no explicit warning, implies there’s no significant risk, for most visitor types.

Advising something like “If you use X as a gender, make sure to carry additional paperwork/figure out additional rules”, isn’t something that’s going to cause a “generic” family to worry about going to Disney Land.

All these reports of travel warnings feel misleading to me.

A proper travel warning equates to insurance companies refusing to provide travel insurance, which directly impacts whether people would travel to the USA. None of the “warning” updates have gone to that level.

Updating travel guidance isn’t that big a deal.

They literally detail it as a cost thing in some of the reference material i linked. Protecting men’s health wasn’t worth the cost in the eyes of the government. I’m pretty sure that’s not a gender-neutral medical opinion, but rather an ideological/political decision layered on top. They further clarify that the studies used to support women-only treatment, only looked at women’s HPV related issues – ie. “We looked at just cervix/ovarian cancers, and based on that we’re just providing this to girls”. Basing medical policy decisions on biased studies is not a neutral ‘board of doctors wanting the best for all patients regardless of gender’ type of move. Here’s a quote from that university prof that sums it up, from the linked CBC article (my emphasis added):

“Many of the studies that have been done that have looked at cost-effectiveness regarding HPV vaccination coverage for boys have not taken into account cancers related to anal, penile and oral cancers. Most of those studies have been conducted around cervical cancers.”

Sorta like how if the USA says they don’t want to support trans/womens rights initiatives, because it’s too costly, it’s viewed as anti-woman/ideologically motivated. Even if they have some doctors that say “Yes, given our budget, we can’t cover women’s health needs”, it’d still be discriminatory. And if they conducted studies that only looked at the ‘men’ situation, and issued policy excluding women as a result of those biased studies, you’d justifiably call the policy/process discriminatory.

I don’t see your point as an issue with anything I’ve stated.

Eh? O… k… here?

http://www.bccdc.ca/resource-gallery/Documents/Guidelines and Forms/Guidelines and Manuals/Epid/CD Manual/Chapter 2 - Imms/HistoryImmunization.pdf

There’s your source for the HPV vaccine being available to girls in 2008, and only made available to boys in 2017 A doc straight from the BC CDC website.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/hpv-vaccine-the-growing-campaign-for-including-boys-1.3127916

There’s a CBC article showing that there was a growing campaign to try and include boys in the HPV vaccine around 2015. They literally quote David Brennan, an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Work at UT, saying “I know our health ministry is committed to equity and I believe that we’re a little bit behind the times in terms of addressing this equitable health issue for boys and men”. So you literally had health care professionals calling out the gender-based discrimination that had lasted for about a decade. Some provinces started including boys as early as 2013 – others waited till later.

Providing you internet sources in regards to my specific case from the 90s is more difficult, because there was… barely… an internet at that time. It wasn’t common for schools to communicate via email, or for govt to post information online. I did have an explicit chat with my mom at the time, who was annoyed that I couldn’t get the shot because I was a boy – and we couldn’t afford to get it privately at the time, so I was not covered until much later in life. Apologies if I didn’t remember the specific vaccine from when I was a kid, but your response and open antagonism is unwarranted. Especially given that a quick google search, brought up those above links, and support my overall statements. I removed the specific example, as explaining the differences between vaccines / time lines, was going to be overly onerous, and would’ve muddled the rest of the items I’d listed – and as it was a later point that got added, it made sense to just clip it. It’s not some “cry victim” thing where I turn tail and run when you challenge my stance. As I’ve hopefully demonstrated by responding to your comment here.