healthetank

If you're living in Ontario, email or call your MPP and ask why Ford is only imementing 14 of the 15 recommendations. It's very telling that the 15th is the ones that actually directly would impact his developer friends. And honestly, screw them. Screw them even more if they've started the development process already and would have to stop. Maybe then they'll learn to do things the right way, not push it through these back channels like we're some country without laws.

Something I never see mentioned in these articles/discussions is the design problems. I'm a civil engineer who works in infrastructure maintenance, including sanitary sewers up sizing/repairing. The minimum design guidine for slope is 0.5% for sanitary sewers, but there are many old neighborhoods where the slope is as low as 0.3%.

The way those pipes continue to operate is the large volume of water that is sent through those sewers regularly, flushing away the solid waste.

If, theoretically, every house swapped tomorrow to a grey water system, we'd seriously struggle with blocked sewers and backflows regularly.

Until someone solves that part of the issue, this system isn't practical for widespread adoption.

Interesting article. They really highlight how blindsided some people are while still showing that the government seems to have made an effort over the last 6 years to alert farm owners of the updates, including hundreds of thousands of notices and flyers.

Droughts are a mess, and ensuring residential access remains consistent is definitely a higher priority than business use, which isn't just food farms but sod farms, car washes, and other non-vital water use cases.

A good idea for them to set up the ability to turn off water access for those business ahead of time, as I'm guessing these droughts won't go away any time soon

The article goes into a good amount of detail and information from both sides without arguing/favouring one. It focuses on the legal side rather than the vaccines themselves, which is nice.

All that said, I can't see them winning this one. In the article they talk about the provision in the NDA (sec 126) which makes it an offense to refuse a vaccination:

Every person who, on receiving an order to submit to inoculation, re-inoculation, vaccination, re-vaccination, other immunization procedures, immunity tests, blood examination or treatment against any infectious disease, wilfully and without reasonable excuse disobeys that order is guilty of an offence and on conviction is liable to imprisonment for less than two years or to less punishment.

This pretty clearly defines that it is an offense, so unless the lawsuit is able to successfully argue that this section of the NDA is a violation, they're sunk. Additionally, the fact that the CAF was able and willing to accommodate those who were 'unable' to get the vaccine and chose only to attack those who were 'unwilling' to is another mark against the lawsuit.

The problem is bigger than that.

The government has had lobbying for years from the private sector, and the O/G sector has had big money to throw around. They get pushback from these companies when they try to up the 'just in case' fund that is there to cover costs of rehab in case the company goes under. But since that isn't enough, they're often left unmanaged. In the article above they talk about the two easiest examples - mine rehabilitation and orphan well cleanup.

If a company ignores well decommissioning, they can cut costs, suck up as much oil as possible, then declare bankruptcy and walk away from the requirements to clean up, leaving the public to pay for it.

Why should they be responsible for cleanup?

This one is easy. You make the mess, you clean it up. Basic kindergarten levels of societal responsibility.

There’s no law or contract that compels this.

There is, actually, but they're avoiding it by a number of legal loopholes (as mentioned above). Socially/morally, they have the responsibility to do so, but they've managed to legally avoid it/ignore it. Hence the 'shirk'

The argument is that there should be a greater amount of laws and regulations surrounding the O/G or resource extraction sector and their impacts, but often you hear complaints from those employed in those sectors about government overreach and unnecessary bureaucracy/red tape hampering and smothering the free market.

This article is important as it highlights why we need more regulation and the danger of letting these companies continue to act they way they have for years.

Yeah but living in it for at least 2 yrs it is considered long term. From the article, the Town has been aware of it for at least that long, so who knows how long it's actually been

Yes and no.

RVs don't have to meet the building codes the same way that houses do. I'd be very skeptical of the covered porch the man built that houses a furnace - there's no comment in the article about that, but I'd be surprised if it met all the requirements for long term housing.

It's fair for the Town to enforce their bylaws and housing codes. We have building codes for a reason.

Additionally, from the article

"We're required to enforce our bylaws and I think that it's demonstrated that we do sympathize with the situation they're in, because we've been working with them for the last two years," Crowder said.

It sounds like it's taken quite a while for them to prepare building plans. They say they 'have them in hand and plan to start the building process soon', which means they haven't actually applied yet. I'm curious what their sewer, water, and power situation is, as those hookups and/or septic beds also require permits from the Town. Living somewhere without running water or sewage removal is a concern for the neighbors.

Two years for just rough plans without having got approval from the Town yet? That's a slow timeline. Especially if they're living on the site the whole time. They haven't started the process yet? Why doesn't the Town say 'start the process and we can discuss extending your time allowed in the trailer'?

This is an odd situation, but the article doesn't go into enough details for us to get outraged about the Town's role.

I don't disagree - not being able to meet the minimum amount agreed on is not sufficient as a country.

But reading the article, it seems those in the actual combined defense meetings between Canada and the US have not commented or raised to the Canadian side their lack of funding. Additionally, Canada is looking to expand the definition of military spending - not sure how much that would actually change our percentage though.

And to call our military a joke isn't really valid - we do spend a shit ton of money on military. Not anywhere near the US, but we can't compare ourselves to the worldwide military superpower with 10x our population and 11x our GDP. Canada still places in at 6th in the NATO countries on raw dollar spending.

One of the bigger problems is the failure of the construction industry as a whole. Compared to many other jobs, typical home builder trades (carpenter, roofer, brick layer) aren't competitive with white collar jobs.

-The hours through the summer are awful, with 16+ hour days being the norm. Then you hit the winter and are laid off and have to go on EI. If you're not good at budgeting, that swing can fuck up your finances.

-Work is physically demanding and often leaves you going home, eating, and sleeping to repeat the next day

-Pay is highly dependent on your company. Many only offer you an hourly rate while on site and working. Commuting (which can vary from a half hour to 2+hrs each way per day) is either on your own dime or at a discounted "travel" rate.

-Often people have a hard time starting an apprenticeship even if they're great workers with the education requirement done. The boss won't fill out the paperwork and actually teach the stuff they're supposed to, just using them as cheap/subsidized grunt labour.

-Bosses and the culture is awful. There are likely those who don't mind it, and there are companies which are better, but by and large my experience with various trades is highly misogynistic, dashes of racism, and lots or brash yelling instead of actual instruction. Communication is awful, and new workers are treated like shit to "earn their way in"/"do their time".

So it's hardly a surprise when there's less interest in trades/manual labour, especially when the pay is good, but not great.

I hate the "turn to the government"/why didn't anyone foresee this and subsidize the training that these articles often have. Sure, a portion of it is that. But a larger portion is the last 30 years of "Go to University to get a good job" that parents and schools have been pushing, plus a general unwillingness of the construction industry to improve their culture or increase wages to attract good workers/talent.

I feel like even if they had just prioritized the rail line growth in the early 2000s we'd be fine. Barrie is just starting to get their second line so there can be two way trains all day. All of the other Toronto suburbs need to have dedicated rail service accompanied by densification near those stations.

So background - Civil engineer with ~5Years of experience. Now fully licensed in Ontario. Have a wife and expecting our first child this year.

My FIL is dual and has been harping on me to move there since I graduated. Pay is, on average, much higher. Current 85k CAD, likely 100-120k USD if I moved.

However as a P. eng I'd need to rewrite two massive technical exams before I'd be able to be licensed there, and not all states have reciprocal licenses, meaning if we moved in the states I may have to rewrite them again. Additionally, with a family, average insurance costs eat up all/most of the difference in salary - my FIL is C-suite executive and that's roughly what he paid for his insurance yearly between co-pays and premiums.

Then add on more tribalism, high prevalence of guns, and the generally huge wealthy disparity they get, and Ive decided it's not worth the move.

But weigh the factors for yourself. If you can, try to go work somewhere for a month or so to see how it feels