myata

Well for once MP salary in Norway is about double average while in this country it's out of all bounds; and I wouldn't be surprised if effective taxes are at a similar level while healthcare actually works rather than being in a state of permanent crisis Covid or not. That's what one always gets for blindly worshiping the government and turning off both civic oversight and critical mind.

Finland and Norway with populations greater than the whole of BC report 1, 2 or zero Covid deaths daily. How long are you going to use ineptitude, gross overspending of public resources, dumb and ineffective management as a rationale for restrictions on the general population? What kind of people these quasi arguments work for anyways? I paid to myself, I failed to deliver so now you must.

Is there evidence of that (literally, as said) or another case of stretching and massaging the numbers? Besides, numerical probability does not guarantee anything in individual cases. One can be non vaccinated and very careful avoiding risks of infection; and one can vaccinated and involved in all kind of risky behaviors, with an established fact that vaccination does not prevent infection and transmission. Which individual would be of higher risk to the public? This is like prohibiting drunk driving and completely ignoring all other cases of dangerous driving. Using such broad and simplistic arguments to undermine and compromise individual freedoms is a path to authoritarianism; and moreover it won't lead to effective solutions as any blind and simplistic approach. Just as seen in "travel from Wuhan" fiasco, after two decades of warnings and direct experiences.

Blind and unnecessary promotion and imposition of vaccine mandates causes backlash and unnecessary politicization of a public health issue. Texas joined Montana and Florida in banning vaccine mandates for all organizations, including private.

Healthcare, post secondary education, inflation, housing, food market not to mention democracy and the state of democratic institutions, the country is seriously broken. And in the great Canadian tradition, we'll be the last ones to notice it. We'll resist noticing and understanding it, till it's no longer possible to look the other way till it bites in the a..., the eyes and everywhere. And it may be too late even now. Like, where are the alternatives?

I go to a market in Europe to buy food at prices considerably lower than in the supermarket. The market works for local people if they couldn't afford the prices, nothing would be sold and it would close. I go to a farmers market in my city and nothing is below $5. A box of tomatoes, $5. A small bag of potatoes, $5. And it was a while back when I was still checking. Who are these prices working for? Who can afford the food basket at 5 times the price? Great, fresh and tasty bread and pastries can be bought every morning for pennies. A bakery opened recently in my area I went to check it, the pastries $8 and up. A pastry with a morning coffee, well over $10. Who are these prices for? Who's buying? Let's see: higher echelons of PS; high tech and similar; and CEO. The first group squarely depends on the public budget and it will go bust at some point, possibly in the near future a mathematical certainty as there's no eternal and bottomless source of dough however you dance and sing. The second is moving offshore, to Vietnam and such with mostly higher echelons and business side remaining. And this seems to be the foundation and the driver for economy in a country of 40 millions dreaming itself about 100. Sounds like a plan? How many of them are CEO or work in higher echelons of management? Does a country exist where it's true if not for majority then for a large part of population? That and yes, selling the country outside, wholesale, while it lasts. Is it only negativity? Do you see and know other, success and progress story? The one with automatic annual raises for a regular worker, not only MP and CEO? Please do share it, everybody needs a bit of heart warming in these times.

"Travel from Wuhan is not a problem".... "mandatory annual and indefinite experimental vaccination, not a problem". Dr Charlie Smith, not a problem. There are no problems in our system, just as long as salaries and benefits keep rolling in.

There are so many experts in the country and no one thought of comparing the rate of MP's automatic annual raises with that at which pensions and benefits of regular commoners are indexed (if, that is). What if there were some wonderful discoveries there? If not for a Nobel then certainly Canadian Covid response prize.

Governments aren't there to challenge the status quo. That maybe the biggest naivity of all and why do we keep returning to it, while it's obvious that has exactly zero sense. Why would a $200K annually plus allowances, plus benefits etc with automatic annual raise MP (and a minister, at least twice that) want to challenge anything? What could go wrong for them, in this picture? Would you, just think about it. And if you thought there's a limit somewhere near, think twice. A happy brochure about Canada's parliament I read recently compares MP salaries to those of the NHL players. Probably just some fun numbers. May be.

Risk and benefit do not justify overwhelming restrictions on individual freedoms. This is right out of every single totalitarian playbook, for greater good / nasty enemy of the people and we're happily treading down this well beaten path under the muzak of "travel from Wuhan" exzperts.

For the uninitiated, healthcare management in Canada is managed by provinces and so you can compare the numbers for similar provincial jurisdictions like Quebec and Ontario rather than wholeness of the empty space. Minding that population density in Sweden is a double of Ontario's and more than 4 times that of Quebec. "Sweden has one-sixth of Canada’s population." Seriously? I'm not surprised though as this seems to be the level of expertise"" with which important decisions are made these days.

Why shoot yourself in the foot and create a backlash and resistance with mandatory vaccinations when voluntary compliance is already very high? Why not make them immediately available with honest information and have a bit of patience for those who hesitate to come on board? One may think that it's another example of cheerful nonsense oops oh so new like travel from Wuhan? Wait, maybe not so. Just maybe it actually makes sense, from certain point of view. Think of it: you spent two decades investing countless public billions in fixing it for a generation aka in yourself. Annual automatic increases, obscene CEO salaries and million dollar golden parachutes, all going smoothly and happily and suddenly, voila, Covid. And, right out of the blue, you have to show something for the decades and billions. And what have you got to show? Travel from Wuhan? Retirement home fiasco? Bumbled and confused imitation of public communications on the level of a senior kindergarten project? Yet it needs to be explained, but how? How can you explain that Sweden without lockdowns is doing the same as several provinces in Canada? Why mortality now, almost two years on is two to ten times higher than in peer jurisdictions in Scandinavia? How do you avoid the nugging suspicion that the time and billions were spent for nothing, with very little to nothing to show for? Here's how - as always, by distracting and diverting. And so, mandatory masking and vaccinations. And then, aiii!!!, anti maskers and oiiiii!!! anti vaxxers. Look here is the source and the cause of most if not all our problems. Just think about how great it would be without them and will be! after the 99.99% shot in about a decade (with automatic raises and parachutes, never to forget fair is fair). No don't look there, don't ask those naughty question, better let's march to defeat it forever, one-two, one-two are you in? Just think how great it was before this thing, with hallway medicine and multi-year expeditions on finding a family doctor. Just don't think.

Sure. And between the two, are there good options? And where's if not guarantee then assurance that they wouldn't come down to the same thing, with time? Wisest and eternal Communist party or Liberal-Conservative party-corporation what is the principal difference, from the democracy perspective? In China there's no problem with mandatory experimental vaccination. And in Canada, neither.

Still we don't have an alternative to China's manufacturing as we don't have any means to rein in runaway public bureaucracy. Dreaming and preaching won't cut it, no need even pretending that it could.

This is not about science, but the rights and the democracy itself. We in this country have no meaningful separation of authorities and independent oversight over the bureaucracy. We thought that we had a good judiciary but now have to reassess that as the courts are looking the other way from these issues, under the pretext of emergency. All vaccines mandated before were backed up by decades of studies and provide lifetime or very long protection. Can it be stretched, only on a whim and by a bureaucratic decision without any serious consideration and discussion, to forcing you put something in your body every year? Given the quality of decisions and results so far, like travel from Wuhan? I don't just fear but see it quite well that Canada would emerge from this experience a different society and a country. Decades of blind trust in authority, mental laziness and aversion to any change may have accumulated into a runaway irreversible condition. Canada was not a full contemporary democracy before this; it will emerge still less of it. How much less, could it still be called a democracy in the full sense of the word, we would have to see.

So, less than 0.5 per million to less than one in Scandinavian countries, to close to 5 casualties per million, Quebec. That's like 10 times and more worse than the peers. Possibly the worst performance among the peers. So why are MP and CEO salaries skyrocketing, where's the connection and feedback? Canadian MP gets more in proportion to the average wage than in any Scandinavian country. Not to mention that there they are actually representatives of the people, while in this country, useless and voiceless figureheads for the party office. Not to mention self-appointed automatic annual raises well above the inflation rate. The answer to all these questions seems to be clear: disconnected runaway bureaucracy. From here it'll be a little bit worse, year on year, for automatic annual increase in cost a bit above the actual inflation rate the only direction in which things can move now and runaway means that there's no mechanism, neither practical or even theoretical to change or reverse this trend. Watch two decades of fixing it for a generation. Travel from Wuhan and rapid Covid response fund. The century is only beginning and there will be challenges and problems likely way more complex and demanding than this pandemic. Who will analyze and solve them, how? What the country will look like at bicentennial? And who will own it?

Check it out, only takes minutes with the information at fingertips: Norway and Finland reporting an average of 1-2 daily Covid deaths, population 5 million. Sweden is reporting 7, population 10 million, no lockdowns. Quebec is reporting the average of 42 daily deaths with a population of 8.5 million. Travel from Wuhan not a problem and let's defeat it forever just don't blow on the crumbling system. Not to worry, public hospital CEO salary at all time high.

But seriously, what do we have to offer to the world in this century? Manufacturing, China, Thailand, Indonesia way cheaper, same quality. High tech talent? India, Vietnam, Ukraine. Quality, variety and enjoyment of life? Europe. Cheap life by eternal seaside? Greece, Caribbean, Thailand. OK maybe sustainable development? Climate change? Where are $10 bread, $8 beer and $150 passport taking us, in this century? And over that presiding eternally and invariably, a benevolent bureaucracy that paying itself (out of public, i.e. our pocket) generous salaries, entitlements, allowances with automatic annual raises, not to forget first priority beautification of its communities complete with high speed Internet in its cottages (paid for from the public pocket). Is it still a democracy or what an aristocracy looks, feels and quacks like? And please don't mention full of goodness self-gratifying preaching. Everyone knows exactly the number of copper pennies it's worth and so please try again for a seat at the United Nations or any forum where serious matters are discussed and addressed.

I buy fresh, warm out of the oven bread in Europe at $ 0.15 - 1 a piece. In Canada the equivalent goes for $6 - 8 and I'm sure will be 10 at some point soon if not already and why not if there's demand from the CEO etc crowd? Everyone else welcome to bland supermarket imitation still many times the price of the real product elsewhere. Good, freshly cooked home style meal, under $10. A burger, $18 plus tax and tip. Take a train anywhere for 10 - 20 Euro. Drive for hours spending as much on gas. OK that's bread but what is cheap in Canada, where is a good deal, what's there to offer to compete with, except cutting and selling raw (old growth) wood, oil and contents of the shield? Where is the vector pointing? Is the direction totally wrong in this century of global information and competition, or just me?

We already done the calc, with $50 K salary and double that for a family one cannot afford $100 for mediocre food and $8 beer, more like making it from paycheck to paycheck. The ones who prosper here are PS bozos, high tech and various CEO that's pretty much it. And so, Canada's train is on a one way trek somewhere with automatic annual raises and increases. Where to, anyone wants to know?

Or I could pay for the beer and food (and taxes maybe?) where I like them, and their prices? Who said there's only one choice, or two? This isn't 16th or 18th but 21st century.

Its tunnel vision to work your a.. off just to buy more and more expensive and at that, bland and mediocre stuff (like Canadian beer) while some of us enjoy automatic annual % on % raises, just because they can endow them upon themselves, and for little other reason while there are places where one could just enjoy life and have good value for one's work. The world is a large place no need to get stuck. I mean one always can but that would be a choice.

It's not gloom it's the dinosaur. When it's a law of nature, gloom or (pretense and unfounded) cheerfulness won't make a grain of difference. If in doubt, try it with eternal motion (or ask them from first-hand experience). P.S. trades make no sense too. I recently done my own roof because it simply doesn't make sense to have anything to do with trades unless you work in the government bureaucracy, banking etc or absolutely have no other choice. Why would you spend 20, 50 times the cost of doing it yourself? You want an honest opinion? Very little makes sense in Canada as things stand. $8 beer + tax and tip, nonsense. $18 burger plus tax/tip, not really. $2,000 rent like the heck. Healthcare system? Eternal quest for a family doctor? University tuition? The list goes on and on and we only have to get to that happy moment when everyone in the country would get an automatic annual raise (from where though? OK that's boring details) not only our employees-representatives. And worse, the vector is wrong. And worse still, there's nothing, like total near absolute vacuum that could influence that vector, even theoretically. Now just put on that happy tune and hope it all will fix itself somehow, that seems to be the chief strategy, not so?

Whole world has moved on already... living life with Covid not life for glorious war of Covid. Not here, no how could we? We slept through two decades of warnings, woke up to travel from Wuhan but now there's the Purpose! No money (taxpayers whose else?) spared, no restriction (however pointless or meaningless) forgotten march, march Canada to the bright new dawn right over the horizon just believe me. A poster as a snapshot not even allegory, year ten: mask on the face, stickers from vaccines on all arms and bums, feathers, tin hat let's defeat it once and for all are you in?

That is such a funny joke. In half of the countries of Europe university education is free. A fast and still affordable train takes you from one capital to another in less than an hour. For ten euros you can have a great meal with a great beer and what can you get for the equivalent in this country? Super expensive roof over head, super expensive transit (1 euro in Athens, end to end) forget train just doesn't make sense, super expensive bureaucracy super expensive next to everything why would anyone want to move here except refugees who have it even worse in their native places? How are you going to compete for the place and the talent in this century, with what? Canada is turning into a sad dead end train led by a driver that is both blind and deaf to the reality. There's still some of the country left to sell to China so it can go on for a while, but not like there are any alternatives for the destination, where are they, and how? Sure the government will figure out the housing crisis like it figured out the healthcare for a generation, just don't blow on the crumbling system! Only a few more decades, with automatic annual increases.