namaste faggots posted:

That's therapy for our good old boys

quote:

An organizer of a golf tournament says he's not sorry for putting up a target displaying a photo of Premier Rachel Notley's face on a golf course.

Ernest Bothi, president of the Brooks Big Country Oilmen's Association, said the sign was displayed at a tournament held Friday at the Brooks Golf Club.

He said the photo of Notley was placed intentionally and was meant to be a target. Although he said no one actually hit the display, Bothi defended his right to have it there.

"I'm the president of the organization. I take full responsibility for it. And I did it because I see a lot of frustrated people out there," Bothi said.

"It's called freedom of speech. We're still living in Canada and as far as I know, it hasn't become a communist nation, not as of yet."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/sorry-for-what-golf-tournament-organizer-unapologetic-for-rachel-notley-target-1.3642248

PT6A posted:

Alcohol is easy to find in senior high because there's people old enough to buy it, as are cigarettes. Junior high is where weed was way, way easier to find than booze or smokes.

Ikantski posted:

vyelkin posted:

"I like he went for just a casual McDonald's, you know, he was kind of like one of us."

Seat Safety Switch posted:

Eh, Nenshi ate at Harvey's once while I was there.

infernal machines posted:

I thought CBC cancelled Air Farce

Seat Safety Switch posted:

Eh, Nenshi ate at Harvey's once while I was there.

quote:

The federal government is looking at increasing CPP contributions to prop up a middle class that's heavily in debt and has diminished buying power, Liberal MP Steve MacKinnon says.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau is set to meet with his provincial and territorial counterparts on Monday in Vancouver, where beefing up the Canada Pension Plan will be a focus of the talks.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/mobile/politics/liberal-mp-ties-need-for-cpp-changes-to-high-household-debt-1.2952108

Ikantski posted:

I'm 80% sure this isn't satire.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2zlPNGuPbw&t=16s

Ikantski posted:

I'm 80% sure this isn't satire.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2zlPNGuPbw&t=16s

quote:

Ottawa revives Harper-era legal arguments to block pensions for injured vets

Government's handpicked lawyers will argue that Canada does not have a social contract with veterans

By John Paul Tasker, CBC News Posted: Jun 15, 2016 5:10 PM ET Last Updated: Jun 15, 2016 5:25 PM ET

Justice department lawyers will revive legal arguments advanced by the former Harper government to try to block a lawsuit by six Afghan war veterans intent on restoring pensions for injured and wounded soldiers.

CBC News first reported last month that the federal government is taking veterans involved in the Equitas lawsuit back to court to try to block certain benefits for soldiers, despite a Liberal campaign promise to better support them after an era of Conservative cuts.

A peace agreement of sorts, reached by former veterans affairs minister Erin O'Toole, recently expired without any sort of resolution meaning the litigation will now proceed at the B.C. Court of Appeals.

The government's handpicked lawyers will argue that Canada does not have a social contract or covenant with veterans, and that a "scheme providing benefits cannot be said to amount to a deprivation merely because claimant views the benefits as insufficient."

The plaintiffs have argued in court that the lump-sum payment wounded veterans receive under the New Veterans Charter — as opposed to the lifetime pension that was offered to veterans before 2006 — is inadequate compensation, as they receive less money over a lifetime.

In court documents filed this week, the government's top class action lawsuit lawyer, Paul Vickery, said that "the submissions made by [former Conservative attorney-general Rob Nicholson] on hearing of the appeal, as set out in the factum filed by him, accurately reflect the current position of the federal government."

That is a controversial position among many in the veterans community as there is a long-held belief that Canada has a special responsibility to its veterans — a social contract — based on the promise politicians have made for generations to adequately care for those soldiers who are hurt in the line of duty.

"No set of principles exist that can be stated with certainty, understood with clarity, or accepted with unanimity among the people of Canada to define a 'social contract' or 'social covenant' as alleged," the government lawyers argued in 2014, adding there is no fiduciary duty "to place the interests of disabled veterans above the interests of all other Canadians."

Those arguments were later repudiated when O'Toole was brought in to replace the embattled Julian Fantino, who had a fractious relationship with veterans groups.

O'Toole removed Vickery from the case and replaced him with Joel Watson, a litigator from the private sector and himself a former veteran. But after the Liberals defeated the Conservatives last October, the new veterans affairs minister, Kent Hehr, put Vickery back in charge.

"I cannot discuss the specifics of an ongoing court case," Hehr said in a recent statement to CBC News.

The case returns to court on Friday.

Trudeau promised lifetime pensions

The Liberal platform in the last election explicitly promised to restore the pension benefit. "We will re-establish lifelong pensions as an option for our injured veterans, and increase the value of the disability award," the platform reads. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reaffirmed that commitment in a stump speech on the campaign trail.

The promise was also included in Hehr's mandate letter from the prime minister, but was notably absent from the government's first budget introduced in March, although the government did make substantial new funding commitments to other veterans programs.

Moreover, all parties voted unanimously in favour of a motion introduced by NDP MP Fin Donnelly last May, which recognized a "stand-alone covenant of moral, social, legal and fiduciary obligation exists between the Canadian people … and members of the Canadian Armed Forces who have been injured, disabled or died as a result of military service."

Don Sorochan, the lawyer representing the veterans, said it would be the height of hypocrisy if the Liberal government now rejects those principles in court.

Resolution symbolic, Liberals argue

But government lawyers will do exactly that, according to their memorandum, arguing that the resolution was largely symbolic and does not oblige the government to provide pensions to injured veterans.

"The House of Commons motion referred to by the plaintiffs, while it records the opinion of the then members of Parliament on the matters referred to in the motion, does not have the force of law and cannot bind the federal government," the lawyers wrote.

Trudeau promises lifelong pensions for injured veterans
Sorochan has said that the appeal court should not render a decision in the case without hearing additional evidence, namely that the Liberals explicitly campaigned on restoring pensions and voted for Donnelley's motion. He said the original Harper-era appeals case, from December 2014, is outdated and does not reflect the change in governance.

But the government lawyers batted that suggestion away, saying the plaintiffs have no right to introduce evidence at this stage of the legal proceedings.

"It is not open to the plaintiffs to attempt to introduce evidence on the appeal, since the appeal is from an order made on a pleadings motion, in which no evidence may be tendered," the memorandum reads.

PT6A posted:

As far as I can tell, they are concerned that people with severe PTSD, or spinal cord injury, or whatever could opt to die if they felt their suffering was intolerable, because such people are uniquely "vulnerable" for some unstated reason and we can't treat them as we would any other adult.

I mean, if you have such bad PTSD that you honestly think dying would be a preferable alternative after exhausting other possibilities for treatment, who is the government to say you MUST continue to live? Likewise, although many people with physical disabilities live fulfilling lives, if you honestly would prefer to die and you make the choice to do so rationally, why should the government tell you you can't? At most, we'd need a waiting period after something like that, to make sure you actually want to go through with it after sober consideration.

It's not like the alternative is some sort of walk-in clinic where they take your name and next-of-kin and assist your death in under 10 minutes (or it's free!) or something.

Albino Squirrel posted:

My issue with physician-assisted dying, in the context of mental health issues like PTSD or depression, is why are you bringing the doctor into this in the first place? If you can do it yourself, don't drag me into it.

I mean, aside from the point that those are generally treatable illnesses and should REALLY not be covered under MAID, there's nothing preventing people in that situation from exercising their own autonomy. The human body is spectacularly frail in a few ways, and as CI will no doubt point out our vets seem to have little issue with committing suicide.

Albino Squirrel posted:

My issue with physician-assisted dying, in the context of mental health issues like PTSD or depression, is why are you bringing the doctor into this in the first place? If you can do it yourself, don't drag me into it.

I mean, aside from the point that those are generally treatable illnesses and should REALLY not be covered under MAID, there's nothing preventing people in that situation from exercising their own autonomy. The human body is spectacularly frail in a few ways, and as CI will no doubt point out our vets seem to have little issue with committing suicide.

Ikantski posted:

I'm 80% sure this isn't satire.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2zlPNGuPbw&t=16s

namaste faggots posted:

All Canadians should kill themselves

namaste faggots posted:

All Canadians should kill themselves

namaste faggots posted:

All Canadians should kill themselves

Ikantski posted:

Life insurance pays out if you do it legally.

Lars Blitzer posted:

Was anything like this done when Klein, Stelmach, or Redford were Premier?

Lars Blitzer posted:

Was anything like this done when Klein, Stelmach, or Redford were Premier?

namaste faggots posted:

All Canadians should kill themselves

apatheticman posted:

Still wont help vancouver home prices.

namaste faggots posted:

All Canadians should kill themselves

Weird BIAS posted:

I remember Ralph Klein Big Oil Pimp

quote:

Robert Fulford: No need to panic about rising real estate prices — it’s a sign of a healthy economy

Robert Fulford | June 17, 2016 12:46 PM ET

Once I saw a man cry real tears when talking about real estate. It was some years ago, early in the boom, and of course he was from Vancouver. It was at a dinner party in Toronto. The talk turned to houses and this fellow saw a chance to air his grievance. “You know what’s happening, don’t you?” he said. “They’re pushing the prices up so high that soon I won’t be able to buy a house (gasp) in my home town, the city where (tears) I grew up.” He fell silent, overcome by the sheer awfulness of it all.

He was ahead of his time, but these days much of Canada has caught up. When he used “they” he of course meant the rich Chinese who (according to popular belief) have bid up real-estate prices to unprecedented levels. There was more than a trace of anti-Chinese prejudice behind his words. He spoke of his home town, as if that gave him a special right to live there and a reason why everyone else should be less welcome. It was so unfair! And he wrapped his resentment in an impassioned nobody-knows-the-trouble-I’ve-seen tone. Clearly, he had turned real-estate costs into a personal matter.

Something about this subject muddles Canadians, or at least a lot of us. In print or in conversation, we see the rise in real estate as an affront to our values. We are good, solid people, in our own eyes. Perhaps all those long numbers are just too strange for us.

Competition naturally inflates prices, as it alway has. For various reasons there are more buyers than sellers in prosperous cities. Chinese house buyers, fearful of instability in China, look on Vancouver as a safe place to invest. They are not doing something underhanded when they invest in Vancouver, Victoria and Kelowna. In fact, they (and other foreigners) are embracing the Canadian government’s business-immigrant program on precisely the terms it was offered and for precisely the reason it was designed: to stimulate the Canadian economy.

Others might see a welcome infusion of cash from across the Pacific as a benefit, a return on the money we send China for our T-shirts. Certainly many sellers of houses are generously enriched. But a resentful attitude seems to me a form of hysteria that arises from changes in the population.

A favourite theme in conversation is the craziness of it all, the sheer insanity of paying $2.5-million for a house that wouldn’t bring more than a quarter of that a decade ago. But how can it be crazy? Buyers can pay those prices, sellers are happy. A sane response might be satisfaction: if prices go up, it suggests that there’s some health in the economy. But Canadians greet this news as something close to a tragedy. The other day The Globe and Mail called it “the affordability crisis.” There’s a growing opinion that something is wrong and needs fixing, by the government.

The Tyee, an on-line Vancouver news outlet with generally liberal views, ran a piece headed: “Serious About Housing Costs? Ban Foreign Home Sales for Six Months.” The author, Bill Tieleman, a former NDP strategist, wrote that “A six-month ban would give us time to start finding longer term solutions and send a signal to the world that Metro Vancouver is not for sale to the highest bidder as a blue chip investment.”

He insisted that “People with no commitment to B.C. have no business buying residential property purely for speculation.” That’s a federal matter and would require a long wrangle in Ottawa, especially when someone remembers that this wasn’t mentioned when Canada was soliciting wealthy foreigners. And as Justin Trudeau said in December, “We have to be very, very cautious about restricting foreign investment in our country.”

The Vancouver mayor, Gregor Robertson, announced this week his latest creative plan: he will tax people who own empty houses. He claims there are 10,000 houses in Vancouver with no one living in them, presumably because the owners treat them as assets and want them instantly available. That disturbs the mayor, who thinks they should be rented. No one, even the mayor, knows what tax will be. How high would such a penalty have to go in order to persuade owners to rent their houses? And it’s hard to say whether the tax would prove legal if it were challenged in court.

Still, politicians confronting angry voters must be seen to be doing something, even something that the future will consider cockeyed.

National Post

robert.fulford@utoronto.ca

JohnnyCanuck posted:

Guys it's okay that nobody can afford to live in Vancouver that's just the magic of the free market isn't it wonderful???