festus

I was actually on this panel! A few things:

1. BC already has a few community health centers already (always pilot programs that succeeded but were never expanded).
2. They are actually non-profits - the idea is that they can focus on hiring experts for their specific area. So for an area with lots of physical labourers the center might offer physiotherapy, while an area with drug addiction might specialize in that support.
3. They're super desirable to work at for family physicians. Right now in BC to be a family doctor you essentially also have to run your own business, handle payroll, handle billing MSP, etc. Vacations are a pain to take - what if a patient needs to see you? With these centers the doctors can focus more on patient care and less on administration.

One recommendation in the report which I pushed for but only got as one sentence is to allow family doctors to supervise nurses as physician assistants and let them handle more basic care. Basically in the same way that a dentist has dental hygienists to handle cleaning or an engineering firm uses junior engineers under supervision, a doctor could use nurses to investigate symptoms and handle basic care, and then bring up items with the doctor. I know that's initially concerning from a patient perspective ("I won't see my doctor directly as much") but right now a huge proportion of people in BC can't get a doctor at all, and this seems like a more immediate way to expand care versus some of the other recommendations that will have more marginal improvements (like better document keeping methods).

Great idea - I like yours better than mine.

However, it should be a one-time notice that a user can dismiss and continue using the phone's complete functionality.

Hmm, I broadly agree with the idea that users should be able to dismiss these warnings and repair their devices however they want, but I'd imagine a dodgy repair shop would just press 'OK' on the counterfeit part warning before handing it back to the client.

Not sure what the solution is - maybe a screen in the settings that can list all parts warnings so an owner can view it after a repair? That relies on people actually checking, but at some point users need to show some responsibility for verifying a repair was done correctly if they'd care.

Yes but they also have to block foreign news too, not just Canadian news.

If they have news content, regardless of where the organization is based, they are a "digital news intermediary". As a digital news intermediary they are thus subject to the law and may be made to pay Canadian news organizations. Note that the law doesn't make them pay for foreign news, but the presence of foreign news is enough to allow the CRTC to make them pay for Canadian news.

Michael Geist explains it here: https://www.michaelgeist.ca/2023/08/why-is-meta-blocking-all-news-links-because-bill-c-18-covers-all-news-outlets/

I don't think the Liberals want to do electoral reform unless it's ranked ballot choice (where of course everyone's #2 choice is the centrist Liberal candidate ...) - they want to be able to govern with majorities which they'd never get under a proportional representation system.

This is unfortunately one of the frustrating things about getting electoral reform - only the winners can change the rules that made them winners, so they don't want to change them!

FYI for Facebook to be exempt from C-18 they had to ban all news and not just Canadian news.

I've read that Facebook has actually been trying to reduce their reliance on news in all their products, so the answer is actually a possible "yes", they would do a global news block.

Shortly after you posted it the announcement came out - they're building 2000 homes in London Ontario from a previously announced fund that will build 100K homes across all of Canada. That's it. CMHC says we need an additional 3.5 million units by 2030 above what we're already estimated to build, and the best the Liberals can do is 100K?!

Earlier Wednesday, Housing Minister Sean Fraser told reporters that when his government came to office in 2015, the housing shortage overwhelmingly impacted low-income families but the situation has now "fundamentally shifted."

Yeah, it wasn't a priority for the Liberals until they realized that it might lose them an election and yet their best attempts are still so far short of what's needed.

I'll buy Windows games at full price only if the developer has made efforts to better support Linux users (say by fixing a bug that only affects Linux users).

I can't speak for those two services in particular, but I know that Matrix will check https://domain.com/.well-known/matrix/server to see what (sub)domain is responsible for domain.com. I suspect other services also use .well-known too.

Seeing how the Liberals have behaved during this whole process makes me feel like they've traded the classic middle-of-the-road pragmatism they were known for for blind ideology. Which as a voter sucks, because I can't think of a single party right now that would actually make evidence-based, expert-informed decisions for our country.