The "considerate culture" you are advocating for is only possible when the material conditions for poverty are absent. You need a really strong social safety net.
Poverty is more strongly correlated with criminality than any other factor. If you want a world where everyone can feel safe leaving their door unlocked then you need a world where no one is left behind.
The problem with liberalism is that it is an individualistic ideology and the further we have gone down that road (now, neo-liberalism) with austerity and cost-cutting measures, the social safety net is bad and only getting worse.
In the UK (and, AFAIK, across the EU) we have IFAs (Idependent Financial Advisors) who follow rules, such that they are nit permitted to get kickbacks from investments. Does such a thing not exist in the US?
In Canada we have fiduciaries, but most people aren't that financially literate. If you walk into a bank and ask for a financial advisor they're just going to pass you to a sales rep. Enjoy your TD e-Series!
(Although, admittedly, mutual fund MERs have dropped substantially with the rise of low-cost ETFs...)
True, and absolutely the most crazy part of this whole debacle so far. Even if the old plates were launched by the previous Liberal government... so what? They were as neutral as possibly imaginable.
In fairness, the Liberals did change the black on yellow plates to red on white, the Liberal party colours, in 2007. They also added a french slogan to the blue and white plates in 2008.
So what indeed. It really doesn't matter. But, there is at least a modicum of truth in the statement.
Additionally, the previous blue on white design was really on the NDP. The Conservatives' only contribution to the design was accommodating the seventh character when valid six character combinations ran out.
It works. The US has a remarkable ability to aim for the lowest common denominator -- in movies, in food, in technology -- and export that to the rest of the world. We're very good at finding things that are broadly appealing, and rewarding the people who create them.
Politics is no exception. The world watches us, and they take what works. None of it is ever really novel, but a lot of it lies fallow until somebody says, "Hey, we should try that again." And at first people may say, "You can't do that, because mumble mumble," but the reply is "I can't hear you over the sound of you losing."
Trolling your opponents is hardly new, but we've polished it off and discovered that it's a great way to bond a political party. They feel enthusiastic, and they go out and vote for more of it, while demoralizing your opponents -- who go out and try to make sense even harder, and fail worse, because it's the reason they lose in the first place. They remain baffled that people fall for cheap tricks, without ever accepting the reality that they do.
I loathe so much about my America's politics right now, but the US is not the source of all negative political activity. It's such a broad, incorrect assertion on its face.
No offence to any American looking to feel influential, but the Ford brothers were operating this tabloid populist bandwagon up here before Trump stepped up.
I thought Doug Ford entered politics in 2010. Before Trump was elected but after he became a Republican attack dog on Twitter, spreading lies about candidate Barack Obama.
Before Trump launched a serious populist political machine. Rob Ford started rolling the ball in 2001.
The start of political office Trump, when the actual machinery was put into motion as an organization, was 2016. They would have been crazy to not be using the Ford brothers as a useful model.
"Thompson added that the technology on the new plates has already been adopted by provinces like Saskatchewan and Manitoba and can be read by Highway 407’s automated toll cameras."
If this assertion is true, bulk surveillance is not impaired; only the ability of individual humans to identify the vehicle.
* FOIA is American, ATIP is Canadian. Anyhow, of course they aren't "free", no one said they were. It's (at best) incoherent to make straw-man arguments against the wrong thing...
* Just because there are worse things in the world doesn't mean we can't consider lesser ones. It's not like journalists are all only ever allowed to write about whatever you consider to be the single most pressing topic at the time.
* Just because this article doesn't interest you, personally (it obviously interests other HNers, considering it's on the front page) doesn't mean that it's a "Buzzfeed-tier piece of shit article".
* Not all government spending is bad, as you seem to imply, and some oversight is absolutely necessary to prevent corruption.
* This ATIP request resulted in an interesting article that covered Canadian culture, geo-location games and trespassing issues, the health of the ATIP program, as well as humourous anecdotes on how military policy discovered and handled the issue of PokemonGo.
The U.S., through employer-provided private healthcare, has not just wage slavery, but pseudo medical-slavery. If you quit your job (In the U.S.), you lose health your employer-provided health insurance and could be stuck footing the $28k bill (or at least having to negotiate / deal with it) for a sore throat.
Canada does not have such a system. Canada has taxpayer-funded healthcare. Therefore you have the liberty to quit your job and find more favourable employment without having to deal with the risk of one surprise hospitalization from bankrupting you.
GP is saying Canada did that right. The confusion arises because GP said "here" right after praising Canada, possibly misleading you to think they were referring again to Canada, which they were not.
Poverty is more strongly correlated with criminality than any other factor. If you want a world where everyone can feel safe leaving their door unlocked then you need a world where no one is left behind.
The problem with liberalism is that it is an individualistic ideology and the further we have gone down that road (now, neo-liberalism) with austerity and cost-cutting measures, the social safety net is bad and only getting worse.
What we need is socialism.