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~*Official Canada Thread of Good Governance and Unnecessary Apologizing*~

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Jason

Jason

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

Fuck.

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/torstar-sale-nordstar-capital-1.5586033

 

The Toronto Star, Canada's left-wing paper (and second-largest paper) has been sold for pennies to right-wing racist chuds.

 

Canada effectively has only right-wing papers now.

 

Fuck. Getting sucked into a right wing news vortex has been the downfall of the rest of the Anglosphere.

 

And I only know about the Star because of Daniel Dale but it immediately raised their credibility that they were fine with Dale just openly calling Trump a liar.

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CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

Posted
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Would be nice, though of course the federal government can't do anything. Businesses can make whatever schedules they want provided that workers aren't working too many hours in a row, etc. They could lead the way by making changes to their workforce and for federally-regulated industries, of course (airlines, trains, banks, etc).

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chakoo

chakoo

Posted
Posted

I’ve been a fan of the 4 day work week but I think the work day would need to be longer to compensate. 32h a week isn’t enough to get as much things done in software and adding more people doesn’t solve the issue. Also I personally think the extra day should be mid week to be the most effective.

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Zaku3

Zaku3

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Old people buy newspapers.  Old people are almost all right-of-centre.

That fact makes me worry about myself in the future. I still want to be a socialist revolutionary when I am like 70. Though like Old Snake relying on a nanosuit to make up for being mad old.

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

Posted
Posted
4 minutes ago, Zaku3 said:

That fact makes me worry about myself in the future. I still want to be a socialist revolutionary when I am like 70. Though like Old Snake relying on a nanosuit to make up for being mad old.

You would be disappointed by The Star then.  They are Centre-Left.  They support the Canadian Liberal party (not the NDP) -- note outside of the US "liberal" still maintains the original definition, and is not associated with socialism.

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Brick

Brick

Posted
Posted
On 5/26/2020 at 10:23 PM, CitizenVectron said:

Fuck.

 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/torstar-sale-nordstar-capital-1.5586033

 

The Toronto Star, Canada's left-wing paper (and second-largest paper) has been sold for pennies to right-wing racist chuds.

 

Canada effectively has only right-wing papers now.

 

Right-wing racist chuds? Please do explain. This isn't as bad as Rebel Media, is it? 

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

Posted
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9 hours ago, Brick said:

 

Right-wing racist chuds? Please do explain. This isn't as bad as Rebel Media, is it? 

One of the new owners, Jordan Bitove has been on the board of directors at SickKids since 2012 -- so fuck that guy.

They also brought in former Ontario Premiet David Peterson to help as a vice-chair, and have said that they don't intend on changing the editorial direction (or management) of the paper.

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

Posted
Posted

Ontario needs to be more transparent with COVID-19 data, critics say

Quote

If information is power, Ontario seems to be experiencing a brownout.

Three months into the COVID-19 crisis, one of Canada's hardest-hit provinces is still unable to share some basic details about the spread of the disease, including the number of tests being performed per region, statistics on the success of contact tracing, the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) or the location of outbreak "hot spots."

The sort of data that is often readily available in other Canadian provinces and jurisdictions around the world.

On Wednesday, Toronto Public Health bowed to public pressure and released COVID-19 case numbers for all of the city's postal codes — information that may well spur more residents to get tested. This came just one day after Ontario Premier Doug Ford had rejected calls for a similar province-wide disclosure, saying he worried that the information could be "very stigmatizing" for people living in those areas.

Now, critics are calling for even more COVID transparency as Ontario struggles to flatten its curve and find a safe way to relax its lockdown.

"The province's unwillingness and inability to collect the appropriate data, and in turn share it with the public, and public health units, is hindering our response to COVID-19," said Joe Cressy, a Toronto city councillor and chair of the Board of Health.

Absence of information

He said this was especially crucial in the Greater Toronto Area, which currently accounts for 76 per cent of all new COVID-19 infections in the province.

"In order to tackle a virus, you need to understand it," said Cressy. "So for us to be able to tackle COVID-19, to test for it proactively, to respond with the appropriate protections in place, we need to know who it's hurting and who it's hurting most."

It's a call echoed by Dr. Andrew Morris, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto's Sinai Health and University Health Network.

"Having data is really important for all aspects of tackling COVID-19. It lets us know where we've been. It lets us know where we're going," he said. "If we don't have that information, we don't really have a good idea of the best ways for us to approach it. And we also don't have an understanding of where our blind spots are."

Morris said that hospitals in the province are still operating in the dark when it comes to things like the availability of hand sanitizer and PPE or localized surges in positive tests — something that might allow them to plan for busy emergency rooms days in advance.

Last week, Ford vowed yet again to "ramp up" testing, to levels that "this province has never seen."

"I'm going to be all over this testing," said the premier.

Meanwhile, his health minister, Christine Elliott, has defended his government's record to date. 

"Do we hit the targets every single day? No. There is an ebb and flow to this, but we are increasing our capacity on a daily basis," she said.

Complicated reporting systems 

Part of the problem, Morris said, are "archaic" systems that don't allow hospitals, regional health authorities and the province to readily and easily share and analyze the data they have on hand.

"I think a lot of this relates to the chronic underfunding of public health in Ontario," said Morris. "Many of the problems that we're experiencing today were experienced during [the 2002-03] SARS crisis as well ... Our public health infrastructure has really not ramped up to the level that we've needed to."

Even the flow of basic information between the province and its 34 public health units is complicated. For example, Ontario's daily COVID-19 update pulls together information from four different databases — the provincial integrated Public Health Information System (iPHIS), which dates back to the early 2000s, as well as newer, municipally run reporting systems in Toronto, Ottawa and Middlesex-London.

Meanwhile, in the hastily constructed testing system — which is administered by the province — samples travel all over Ontario to both public and private labs for analysis. As a result, many local health regions say they don't know how many tests they have performed, and can only disclose how many positive results have come back.

The way that news of positive tests is shared with public health officials depends on which lab or hospital has processed the swab. A Toronto Public Health spokesperson told CBC that it has been receiving lab reports through a variety of ways: electronically, by phone, fax, even through the mail. 

As of Wednesday, Peel, York, Ottawa, Durham, Waterloo and Windsor-Essex County followed Toronto as regions with the greatest number of COVID cases. 

Scattered data

CBC News canvassed these additional six public health units to determine recent counts of COVID-19 swab testing. The response was scattered. 

While each unit publishes detailed COVID-19 updates online, York Region Public Health Services, Windsor-Essex County Health Unit and Ottawa Public Health are the only regions in the group that publish daily testing numbers. York's website provides the most comprehensive daily counts, broken all the way down to specific testing centres. According to the data, the entire region tested 705 people on May 25.

All of this is a sharp contrast to British Columbia and Alberta, which have both managed to share regional testing numbers throughout the crisis. Or Quebec, which provides case numbers by district for its major urban centres. 

New York City, perhaps the hardest-hit spot in the worldwide pandemic, has a municipal website that tracks everything from hot spots to local testing levels to the distribution of PPE and free meals.

Then there's South Korea, where the government has been providing the public with detailed information on where novel coronavirus patients reside, so they can steer clear of specific streets or neighbourhoods.

False impression of spread

The man quarterbacking Ontario's COVID-19 response, Dr. David Williams, the chief medical officer of health, defended the provincial approach on Wednesday, suggesting that things like Toronto's list of postal code hot spots might actually give a false impression of the spread of the disease. 

"You may find that you have a number of people in an area because you have the same postal code," Williams said. "Does that mean that neighbourhood is the problem? Or that the people went and worked in different companies that happen to have outbreaks in those companies?"

Government transparency advocates say they don't buy such claims.

"We feel that governments in general should be more open with the information that's coming out," said Ian Bron, a project co-ordinator with the newly formed Canadian COVID-19 Accountability Group.

"Many Canadians don't know where the hot spots are. And that's the kind of information that citizens should have in order to make informed decisions about where to go and where to go afterwards. For example, if you're going to visit a loved one in a long-term care facility."

Bron acknowledged that governments have been forced to improvise during the crisis but said that shouldn't be an excuse for obscuring information that could be ultimately useful for public health.

"It's a little too easy to say we're in the middle of an emergency so we can't do anything right now. That doesn't mean you can't start taking steps in the right direction," he said. I

In a new report, his group is calling for measures such as federal and provincial COVID-19 ombudspeople to help improve transparency.

U.S. produces 'much better data than we do'

Bron points to American jurisdictions as a positive example for Canadian governments.

"Although it seems like a terrible mess in the States, they produce much better data than we do. They go to much greater levels of granularity," he said.

There are worries about the consequences of too little information as the COVID outbreak grinds on. Morris pointed to a recent mass gathering in a Toronto park as evidence that the public might be at risk of losing the COVID plot.

"Today, I'm not sure that the average citizen really understands why there's a need to physically distance, self-isolate and [wear a] mask, and part of that relates to not having a clear [government] strategy," he said. "I think if there were one overarching challenge that we haven't overcome yet, it's a clearer message."

It's an absence of illumination that threatens to leave an entire province groping around for a way forward.

The lack of data coming out in Ontario is astoundingly low.

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CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

Posted
Posted
44 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

More sarcastic than facetious. 
He’d just been referred to as a racist right-wing chud, for, as far as I can tell, being a donor for the CPC. 

 

9 minutes ago, Brick said:

 

OK that's what I figured. 

 

Well, specifically for donating to Maxime Bernier.

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

 

Well, specifically for donating to Maxime Bernier.

1)  I have never seen any suggestion that Jordan Bitove ever supported Maxime Bernier in any way

2)  The only suggestion that Paul Rivett "supported" Maxime Bernier, was that he donated some funds to help pay off the debts from his failed campaign run 14 months later.  Serious question -- do you think that if someone is helping pay off the campaign debt of a failed candidate more than a year after the leadership campaign , he is 1) doing a favour to the party, or 2) is supporting the candidate?  If you want to support a candidate, do you donate in advance?  Or, do you donate more than a year later.

If you are sensing some passive-aggressiveness/hostility, then you are right.  Because, my take is that you have wrongly accused a couple of guys of being pieces of shit without any basis.  I'll happily eat crow if you can show me some evidence of these guys being racist assholes.  [If your POV, is that they are Bay Street elite, and that makes them somehow deficient, then you'll have no argument from me.  But, that is very different from being a "racist right-wing chud".]  FWIW, while I don't know either of these guys from Adam, everything I have read about Jordan Bitove has been VERY positive/complementary.

 

1 hour ago, SilentWorld said:

If he donated to Bernier he’s a fucken chud I don’t give a shit about any board he sits on 

Why do you think Jordan Bitove has done that?

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CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

Posted
Posted
59 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

1)  I have never seen any suggestion that Jordan Bitove ever supported Maxime Bernier in any way

2)  The only suggestion that Paul Rivett "supported" Maxime Bernier, was that he donated some funds to help pay off the debts from his failed campaign run 14 months later.  Serious question -- do you think that if someone is helping pay off the campaign debt of a failed candidate more than a year after the leadership campaign , he is 1) doing a favour to the party, or 2) is supporting the candidate?  If you want to support a candidate, do you donate in advance?  Or, do you donate more than a year later.

If you are sensing some passive-aggressiveness/hostility, then you are right.  Because, my take is that you have wrongly accused a couple of guys of being pieces of shit without any basis.  I'll happily eat crow if you can show me some evidence of these guys being racist assholes.  [If your POV, is that they are Bay Street elite, and that makes them somehow deficient, then you'll have no argument from me.  But, that is very different from being a "racist right-wing chud".]  FWIW, while I don't know either of these guys from Adam, everything I have read about Jordan Bitove has been VERY positive/complementary.

 

Why do you think Jordan Bitove has done that?

 

He not only donated after (to help pay off his debt), he donated during the campaign as well:

 

https://www.canadalandshow.com/political-donations-made-by-new-torstar-owners/

 

Also donated to Doug Ford.

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CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

Posted
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15 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

He donated to all of the provincial leadership candidates.

 

Anyone who donates to Bernier is scum because even if they don't agree with his policies, it means they are okay with them for some alternative purpose, which makes them pro-racist chuds.

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

Posted
Posted
18 hours ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

Anyone who donates to Bernier is scum because even if they don't agree with his policies, it means they are okay with them for some alternative purpose, which makes them pro-racist chuds.

I will take your point on Paul Rivett.  I think Bernier has a lot of good policy ideas, however he combines them a racist/xenophobic bent that I find personally disgusting.  He pretends like he is not a racist, and can speak in such a way as to try and mask it, but he clearly is.

 

Why is Jordan Bitove a pro-racist chud?

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CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I will take your point on Paul Rivett.  I think Bernier has a lot of good policy ideas, however he combines them a racist/xenophobic bent that I find personally disgusting.  He pretends like he is not a racist, and can speak in such a way as to try and mask it, but he clearly is.

 

Why is Jordan Bitove a pro-racist chud?

 

My comments have been about Rivett as the one who donated to Bernier, not Bitove.

 

Some more research has been done, and it seems that the money for this purchase came from the same group that owns the debt of the National Post, and possible Globe and Mail. We are getting dangerously close in Canada to having large, right-wing groups effectively control our print media.

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

Posted
Posted
Just now, CitizenVectron said:

 

My comments have been about Rivett as the one who donated to Bernier, not Bitove.

 

Some more research has been done, and it seems that the money for this purchase came from the same group that owns the debt of the National Post, and possible Globe and Mail. We are getting dangerously close in Canada to having large, right-wing groups effectively control our print media.

I must have been thrown off by your use of "them" and "chuds".

 

What is the "large right-wing" group that controls our print media?  Who controls this group? (And is print media still a force in a country where somewhere ~15% of households actually read a newspaper?)  [Does being the largest debt-holder give you any management control?]

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CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

I must have been thrown off by your use of "them" and "chuds".

 

What is the "large right-wing" group that controls our print media?  Who controls this group? (And is print media still a force in a country where somewhere ~15% of households actually read a newspaper?)  [Does being the largest debt-holder give you any management control?]

 

National Post and Globe and Mail are already controlled by right-wing owners who push pro-Conservative messages and endorsements, hence my statement. The acquisition of the Star papers will likely see their editorial content go the same way. And while less people read the physical papers, a larger % read the online sites of these papers. Print media (online and physical) still dominates news delivery in Canada.

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chakoo

chakoo

Posted
Posted
48 minutes ago, CitizenVectron said:

 

I mention this on Resetra but I noticed multiple groups of them yesterday in North York (near the ikea for those in TO) just walking in packs crossing streets and hanging out in the grass next to a large parking lot. 

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CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, chakoo said:

I mention this on Resetra but I noticed multiple groups of them yesterday in North York (near the ikea for those in TO) just walking in packs crossing streets and hanging out in the grass next to a large parking lot. 

 

In Regina we have a long arterial road called Wascana Parkway. It runs from the University through Wascana Park (large park with lake and river), and then into downtown. The road is 2-3 lane on each side with a huge boulevard in the middle with flowering trees, bush, etc. It's very beautiful...and for 1/2 the year it is filled with geese and their goslings. They hang out 1/2 a foot from the side of the road, which is 70km/h. So you have cars slamming on their brakes all the time as geese step out, etc. Right now the geese are out of control, just going wherever they want due to lack of people. And the geese are dangerous, too. An adult goose can easily break your arm or leg if they get a good wing hit when they lunge. They're okay right now, but when the goslings come they will be assholes again.

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AbsolutSurgen

AbsolutSurgen

Posted
Posted

Racism In Canada Is Ever-Present, But We Have A Long History Of Denial

Quote

What we as Canadians should be doing, and white Canadians in particular, is looking long and hard at our own reluctance to examine ourselves. We need to address our unconscious biases, the ideas we buy into that allow freedom to white people at the expense of others.

I’m a white person who has done inadvertently racist things. I didn’t grow up in a world that forced me to be hyper-aware of how my skin colour or my ethnic background would affect the way people saw me. So, I had blind spots. I’m sure I still do.

 

Racism is very real in Canada, even though it is fundamentally different than that in the US.  After recently moving back to Canada, I was shocked at the amount of "racist comments" I heard -- both from white people directed towards minority groups, as well as minority groups directed towards other minority groups.  Even in the last federal election, listening to all of the political leaders refusing to fully condemn a fundamentally-racist law in Quebec was disheartening.  (I've even directly experienced it in Quebec, in how I've been treated by a small group of francophones.)  The holier-than-thou attitude I have seen on social media this weeks from Canadians baffles me.

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CitizenVectron

CitizenVectron

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, chakoo said:

So with all the horrible shit going on in the world right now, There looks to be a tiny bright patch for canadians. The dollar has been on a solid recovery trajectory this week. So there is a solid chance we might be able to recover back to north of 75c USD to 1 Cad. 

 

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/quote/CADUSD=X?p=CADUSD=X

 

 

 

How does that even make sense with oil the way it is.

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