Someone @ Someone @lemmy.ca

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2 yr. ago

On the flip side, could we as a country or province agree to only accept USD at par? I doubt it would actually benefit us a significant amount, but personally I just hated being in a cashier position and needing to do extra work just for the entitlement of the American tourists to pay in "dollars".

In fact we have a land border.

Yank wanker

What a Yank wanker.

The point is we need alternatives that are an improvement over the status quo, not making the current options worse. In some cases it might mean making things cheaper (EVs), in other cases it might be improving the service even if the cost goes up a little (public transit). In any case no one's going to switch to a much worse or more expensive product or service for environmental reasons, it needs to be better on its own merits.

We have our own system on the west coast and it works by just not getting cold enough. Some years it doesn't work too well but this year it's quite successful.

That's not really what I meant. Most of the similar proposed proportional systems break down the proportional "evening out" to provinces or smaller regions. Theoretically (although extremely unlikely) if the Bloq lost with 50%-1 votes in every riding they'd have about 12.5% of the overall vote with 0 seats. They'd get 50 of the 62 seats regardless of anything else that happens anywhere else in the country.

The only positive about this idea is that strictly as a thought experiment you could look back at any given election and see how it would've turned out differently. As a real system this doesn't account for regional representation.

We should be looking at (disincentivizing) plane trips, cruise ship trips, gas plants, etc - not fixating on the price at the gas pumps.

And therein lies the problem. Disincentivizing the bad vs. incentivizing the alternatives. A couple bucks here and there make a lot of difference to lower income people. A small tax adds up quick and quickly feels like a punishment for not being able to afford the alternatives (EV, moving within biking distance, taking public transportation, taking a train, owning a house where you can choose what energy to use/make efficiency improvements).

As a side note, cruise ships are the odd one out as they're strictly a luxury and no alternative is needed, however they're specifically exempt from both the carbon tax and regular fuel taxes. Interesting.

That's seeming a bit iffy after whatever's been going on in Alberta in the last year or so, but if you account for rural/city for both places then you're probably right.

I live on Vancouver Island so I probably could ride an ebike 11-12 months a year, but I also live in a small town and work significantly further away than ebike range. So the only trips I could replace my car with an ebike would be in town, less than 10km round trip which is less than 1L of gas for even inefficient cars. Even if I went on one of those small rides every day off, best case scenario I'd save $350/yr. That would take a long time to pay off an ebike, not to mention the trailer I'd have to have for my kid and/or groceries to actually effectively replace a car trip.

I wonder how many current university students were old enough to vote nearly 20 years ago? It would be surprising if there was even 1.

Same on podcasts. I don't even listen to anything related to sports.

It shouldn't make a difference, and I think this would set a terrible precedent, but I have much less of an issue with special treatment for players than for "VIPs". The only way I'd truly be ok with this is if FIFA paid to have increased capacity and/or some kind of lasting improvement to the hospital. But we all know with FIFA's track record their more likely to demand the hospital pay them for the privilege to and publicity from treating their executives.

The small routes are already so heavily subsidized (directly by the government as well as by the the 4 profitable routes) that this won't make a meaningful difference.

Yeah, if someone can't afford a toy at $56, they're not going to be able to afford it at $53.50 even one of the most expensive exempt items I can think of, a PS5 Pro ($1075.20 after tax, not including electronic eco waste fees or whatever), only goes down by $48. Not nothing, but hardly a meaningful impact. Someone on fulltime minimum wage who spent 100% of there income on newly tax exempt stuff would save about $200 over the 2 months, but that's not even including the necessities that don't get any cheaper like rent and other bills.

I see where you're coming from, but that's kind of a lazy excuse (on a wider scale, not you personally). If candidate 2 is the crappy incumbent ABC people will vote for them to keep out candidate 3 because they think they have a shot, even if they all would've preferred candidate 1. And then the cycle repeats and gets more entrenched.

Finally we can agree on something.

Clearly I'm not good at articulating my point so I'm going to stop trying. I don't know what I'm saying that would benefit the Conservatives in any way. My riding is NDP with the cons playing catch up and the Greens have a better chance than the Liberals. So maybe we're just coming from different perspectives. Voting for Liberals here is a vote for conservative.

No, I was speaking more generally. When I said center/left I meant it in the way the ABC people use it. I don't like the Liberals, but I also do not want the Conservatives to win. Unfortunately that looks like where we're headed. I just hope that if the Cons do win (which once again I do not want but I have just 1 vote), the Liberals lose big and take it as a wakeup call to change or be relegated to the perpetual 3rd place party. None of those other posts were trying to say what party I would like, sorry for the confusion.