Why is Canada also excluded from side-loading? 😭
I would welcome US and other countries to purchase drug made in canada. Whiles drugs imported by Canada should be restricted or some kind of reexportation fee should be levied to avoid shortages.
There are several manufacturer based in Canada such as Apotex Inc., Johnson&Johnson/Actelion, AbbVie, Novartis, Merck/Cubist, Pfizer/Hospira, Bayer, Roche, AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, etc… Statistics from 2020
I would love to see Canada become a major influence in making high quality generic drugs more afordable to every one on the planet.
Thus, our human brain are incapable of grasping or begin to comprehend the scale and severity of the climate crisis with just soundbites, anecdotes, news-rants and tiktok videos.
Understanding complex systems is hard and requires continuous concentration over months and years. Even more so for the Hyperobject that is ephemerally understood as Climate Change.
We can barely begin to collectively acknowledge that perhaps something is indeed wrong with :
- all the burning forests just because of the smoke/smog "inconveniently" smothers our cities (occasionally burning them for being too close)
- atmospheric rivers drowning towns and cities in flash floods
- high altitude glaciers irreversibly melting and disappearing
- Greenland and Antarctic have only accelerated their ice loss from sustained glacier retreat
- the thermohaline circulation slowing down due to all that melted water (less dense due to higher temperature and less salt) staying on the surface of the water column
- the migration of millions of humans mostly from regions with latitude between the Tropic of Cancer and Tropic of Capricorn due to drought, crops loss, famine, extreme storms, natural disasters and violence or wars
- the increase in frequency and length of heatwaves
Unfortunately, we will probably sooner or later go to war over made-up fantasies or leftovers of a ruined planet before finally collectively understanding and tackling the complex thing that is currently (for now) known as Climate Change.
Awesome, negative space Apple logo.
Man, is this seriously going turn into into the Iraq has WMD boondoggle/fiasco:
“Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a presentation to the UN on February 5, 2003, in which he detailed false intelligence gatherings provided by the Israeli government regarding Iraqi WMD.”
Source 1: Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence
Source 2: Israel knew Iraq had no WMD, says MP
I forgot it was Israeli Intelligence source back then 🤔. I only remember Bush insisting there are WMDs and Colin Powell's declaration at the UN. All of it was proven fake of course, and 20 years later it has become the biggest and most expensive Intelligence blunder.
Hopefully, I am wrong and we were smarter to verify everything before repeating the same reckless mistake.
I try to not comment on controversial issues particularly when I don't have any qualification or first hand knowledge/experience, however this is looking more and more like an unmitigated overreaction.
Please freeze your credit file at Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. It's free and you can unfreeze it anytime you want (or whenever you judge its a valid credit check for something you actually requested yourself).
Whether you have a low/medium/good/perfect credit score and are satified with the credit cards and mortgage/loans you already have or lived without ever having a credit card and loans, it is of utmost importance to freeze your credit files to preempt any future identity theft from becoming a life upending disaster.
Some helpful links:
American Express | How to Freeze Your Credit at All 3 Bureaus—For Free
Federal Trade Commission | What To Know About Credit Freezes and Fraud Alerts
For the fellow Canadians reading this, freezing your credit file has been enshrined in law in Québec since February 2023. I have frozen mine on the first week of February. However, I am unaware of the availability of that option in other provinces, please check with your bank or provincial service bureau (equivalent to Services Québec here) or directly contact Equifax and TransUnion.
Hmm… some interesting things to perhaps review :
In total, these four provinces provided at least CAD 2.5 billion in fossil fuel subsidies in fiscal year (FY) 2020/21 and 1.5 billion in FY 2021/22 (as of December 2021)
Source: Blocking Ambition: Fossil fuel subsidies in Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Newfoundland and Labrador by the International Institute for Sustainable Development
based on recent data from governments and the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), the leading research organization analysing data on fossil fuel subsidies in Canada, there is a conservative estimate: the combined federal, provincial, and territorial fossil fuel subsidies in Canada total at least $4.8 billion annually in 2018 and 2019, and most were given by provincial and territorial governments. Federal subsidies tend to take the form of grants, but provincial and territorial subsidies are often from tax programs such as waivers and breaks as well as uncollected or under-collected resource rents or royalties
Source: Fossil Fuel Subsidies in Canada: Governance Implications in the Net-Zero Transition by the Canada Climate Law Initiative
These are simply about explicit funding by different government bodies in Canada. However, there are larger implicit annual subsidies (externalities born by government, society and the environment which tend to be completely ignored by most vested interest) of:
US$ 36 billion
Source: IMF Fossil Fuel Subsidies Data: 2023 Update; annex III. Total (Explicit and Implicit) Subsidies
Compared to the portion of government funding received by CBC•Radio-Canada annual report (2022-2023, p.27) :
Government funding: This year, operating funding was $1,174.9 million, capital funding recognized in income was $92.9 million and working capital was $4.0 million
I dont mind cutting funding/subsidies where there is inefficiency/mismanagement. However, shouldn't we start with the most obvious mismanagement? Why does our government pay subsidies (not loans, not investments, not shares, which I completely excluded for my comparison above) for large very profitable multi-national corporation?
It is sad to see important, if not critical, environmental regulations and climate change mitigation be traded/bargained off due to the inconvenience of the few. There was so many other ways to help them transition to better efficient heating system (namely heat pumps + good isolation) instead of a “temporary” tax suspension.
Unfortunately, I am more and more inclined to think our specie will probably be not make it past 3 more centuries, let alone another millennia if there we continue to argue over facts and fight each other over pride, imaginary points and religious/financial/paranoid dogmatism.
Random shower thought:
When a group of people that have been historicaly subject to genocide, take measures to commits genocide themselves; do they lose their “Victim of Genocide” card?
As in two opposite cancels each others? Or as in two negatives becomes a positive?
(An awful way too put it, but I kind of wondered about that just now)
I wonder if there are information or anonymised statistics regarding the portion of elected representatives, senators and members of the judiciary from municipal, provincial and federal bodies/institutions that own more than a property (principal residence).
How many properties? What type of properties (from residential single family to high rise residential appartments/condominium, from empty/rundown/abandoned farmhouses/buildings to unused farm/land, etc…) What purpose do they have for those properties? Do those properties generate some kind of revenue? If so, how much? How is the revenue generated?
While thinking about it, how much of all properties in Canada are tied up behind a corporate veil by companies/fondations/trusts and various legal entities? Are there statistics on that?
There are too many unknowns and legal protections behind those unknown to be able to make a clear picture of the housing crisis.
I don't want the scapegoat excuse of too much RED TAPE to build new housing or that IT'S THE IMMIGRANTS and the FOREIGN WORKERS or FOREIGN INVESTORS/SPECULATORS took all our housing. That's too easy of a excuse to avoid the real and difficult work of understanding this whole mess.
I want real data, not proxy data. Full information on every transfer of property; from whom to whom, by which financial institution, for exactly how much, timespan elapsed between transfer of ownership, who is the mortgage holder if a loan is involved, renovation details if there has been any, every inspection report and details should always be public and attached to the property for the life of the property as a historical snapshot of the property, etc…
It's not that hard to implement these data gathering services but there are always deeply vested interests that would do everything in their power to discourage such endeavors and make up any excuse to avoid providing it.
Anyways, sorry this became a long rambling rant on my part.
Xavier
joined 1 year ago
Hmm… I may be mistaken but can they not already arrest troublemakers, arsonists, violent/aggressive individuals and other sort of rioters/agitators with preexisting laws/bylaws/regulations ?
On the other hand, I'm trying to see the silver lining here… perhaps this new law will make it difficult for agent provocateur¹ from operating without repercussions and anonymity unless the law specifically has a carve out for them (I wouldn't be too surprised, but it would be another major blow to the resiliency of democracy in the United Kingdom).
Source: Pentney, K. (2021). Licensed to kill…discourse? agents provocateurs and a purposive right to freedom of expression. Netherlands Quarterly of Human Rights, 39(3), 241-257