The CBC is little more than crass government propaganda at this point. Canada in general should be viewed as a cautionary tale for anyone who thinks more government intervention in our lives, is a good thing.
As someone that has lived in several countries, and currently in Canada, I will respectfully have to disagree both about your opinion of the CBC and beliefs about government intervention. Some parts of Canadian local/provincial/federal government seem deeply dysfunctional, but some are extremely helpful and better than I’ve seen elsewhere.
You're seeing what remains of a strong and healthy period of Canadian history. But almost every facet is currently under threat and significant stress.
You can't fund a "news" organization with public money and expect them to be an independent agency that holds the government's feet to the fire. They don't do much more than add a thin veneer of objectivity and independent analysis for any significant government initiative.
The article posted above is just a small piece of evidence for the broken nature of the media. There is a torrent more spewing out daily.
Counterpoint: You can't fund a news organization with private money and expect them to hold private organizations' feet to the fire. Any time they are critical of a major business, they lose advertisers.
Personally, I have a problem with the viewpoint that democratic governments are some sort of adversary when in actuality, private businesses are the entities that have no accountability and we have zero direct control over. I agree there should be independent criticism of government, but IMO state media from a democratic government is naturally going to be better overall than only having private media.
Without government picking winners and loser (through protective legislation and regulation) the free market means that honest competition keeps corporations in check. There is an adversarial element inherent in the system. The reason we have so many entrenched monopolies is because they have captured the government.. a government that has no adversary and isn't even properly monitored by the corrupt and complicit media.
Everyone has their own interests in mind and so everyone has to be balanced against each other. Come on people we figured this out hundreds of years ago.
As a person who has very close familial ties to other countries (US and Europe), and been around a decent bit, I still think life in Canada is better than in other places (for me). Sure we have problems, some of them are getting even worse than before, but comparatively we’re doing okay. It’s easy to say everything sucks here, but it also sucks in other places for different reasons.
Full disclaimer, I consider myself politically moderate/centrist and still think CBC is very valuable. And again, I understand everyone has different priorities in life and Canada might not be suitable for them. But implying “we have it the worst and nobody would want to live here if they had a way to get out” is also wrong.
But isn't perhaps the relatively better life simply due to the truly stupendous ratio of land and natural resources per person that make up for the deficiencies of the system?
I mean, yeah? Every country uses (if they can) their natural resources to prop up everything. Some better than others (e.g. Norwegian generational fund), some invest basically into every possible thing imaginable (Saudi and Aramco), and Canada does it in just in an average way. Either way, nothing is perfect, things might go for worse, but as of now, it’s a good place for me and others that I know.
Yes. But it's still an objectively better life compared to other places in the world. Hopefully Canada has enough time to correct any system deficiencies before our natural resources run out.
>I don’t see as many exploited illegal immigrants in Canada.
There is not a large land border with Mexico in Canada, but Canadians are happy enough to exploit what they call temporary foreign workers who do jobs they don't want to do and have rights which fall short of a citizens on paper and in practice.
This difference seems less due to Canada's superior nature than it seems due to Canada being surrounded by oceans on three sides and by a wealthier country on the fourth side. In fact I think Canadians would do well to keep in mind that they don't face the same issues that other countries do before passing judgement on immigration issues. Almost all immigrants to Canada are immigrants Canada explicitly welcomed to the country who met every qualification.
Well in some cases the gain is mutual especially for things like seasonal agriculture work where demand for labour periodically peaks and the labour is utterly miserable. I've seen seasonal labour wages spike to twice the minimum wage, and still seen fruit rot on the field and people continue working their minimum wage jobs at Tim Hortons. This is an area where the poor of the nation arguably benefit from the underclass by driving down the cost of fresh produce and not having to do this back breaking labour.
For other things, like the aforementioned jobs at Tim Hortons, hiring temporary foreign worker is nothing but a wage suppression scheme meant to solve the "problem" of Tim Horton's being unprofitable and locations shutting down in a low unemployment environment, and the whole "temporary" thing is something to be worked around.
The previous government got in a world of shit for doing the latter and eventually stopped and banned much of the wage suppression aspect of this program. A few years back the incumbent government figured enough people aren't paying attention and re-legalised the fast food underclass again to suppress wages to address the "labour shortage" because fast food workers were faint making more than minimum wage and shudder taking a greater share of the profits of the fast food business.
I don't know why they are homeless, but there are quite a bit of homeless there; along with 15-people illegal boarding homes. Canadian real estate market is also quite a miracle.
Compared to US, I suppose. Canadian homicide rate is comparable to Balkan countries, each famous in their own way of dysfunction and corruption.
Drop the word "illegal" and you will see a lot. How do you expect illegal immigrants to get to Canada when they only border US?
The final point is quite amusing since it's the Canadian Government and the regulatory capture it creates that screws up a lot of things in Canada and pushes prices to insane levels (mobile phone plans, housing as two examples that came to my mind) while also depressing wages via immigration.
If being Balkan-like is good enough, then yeah I understand why you wouldn't complain. After reading the other comments on this page it seems that "Well, it's good* enough." should be the national Canadian slogan or something.
There are major differences between legal immigrants, who have to pass some pretty strict tests of suitability, and uncontrolled immigration. Legal immigrants have most of the rights and obligations of citizens, including access to healthcare and paying taxes.
> How do you expect illegal immigrants to get to Canada when they only border US?
Canada has thankfully developed enough by now to have airports.
> Canada has thankfully developed enough by now to have airports.
Truly spoken like someone who has no information about illegal immigration. I suppose the border control just lets everyone in? Or flights to Canada just let everyone board without checking their visas? Or Canadian embassies just throw around visas without checking for illegal immigration risk? For those who don't need visas, anyone interested in illegally immigrating from this list of countries (https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/se...) are much better served by buying a bus ticket to Germany.
> Truly spoken like someone who has no information about illegal immigration
Quote from this [0] article: "But in the past 10 years, visa overstays in the United States have outnumbered border crossings by a ratio of about 2 to 1, according to Robert Warren, who was for a decade the director of the statistics division at the agency that has since been renamed U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services".
US and Canada are two entirely different countries with entirely different approaches to immigration, and the numbers are wildly different:
> There are no accurate figures representing the number or composition of undocumented immigrants residing in Canada. A guesstimate of about half a million has been proposed nationally [1, 2], but this number varies among other sources which suggest anywhere from 20,000 to 200,000 undocumented workers [3–5]. In 2003, Ontario’s Construction Secretariat purported that there were 76,000 non-status immigrants in Ontario’s construction industry alone, while other sources confirmed that at least 36,000 failed refugee applicants had never been deported, and another 64,000 individuals overstayed their work, student or visitor visas in 2002 [5]. If it is assumed that workers are accompanied by family, the numbers in Ontario would rise to the highest figure previously estimated for all of Canada. With respect to settlement, Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto have the highest number of undocumented migrants [6], with nearly 50% residing in Toronto alone [7].
The total number if illegal immigrants is probably around 10% of the yearly intake of legal immigrants.
First you rudely accuse me of being an ignorant for pointing out that illegal immigration often occurs through airports, and when proven wrong you deflect and try to switch the subject instead of admitting that you were mistaken.
One of the few things we can take solace in as Balkanites: at least it's not as bad as it could be. Thank you US for showing that money does not necessarily fix all your problems.
Yea sure sure but it's significantly worse now that before. As more people become more desperate, they will turn to crime. Canada needs an embodiment of Theseus to defeat the Procrustes like progressives.
There's no government system that has been proposed that can not be captured. The only option that has proven to work so far, is to limit the government, so that regulatory capture doesn't matter that much.
Spoken with the same tone and language that the nanny state and media use. It's inappropriate and shameful. I hope more people start to see through it before civil society is completely lost.
I am Canadian and am in agreement with the point to which you replied. There is no misinformation about Canada moving backwards comparatively to what it once was.
