hitops

CMHC is a subsidy. It is not self-supported, ultimately if it fails, the taxpayer backs it. That's not self-supported. It makes it possible for people to get massive mortgages, and this itself massively inflates housing. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. It drives home prices up, therefore making it necessary for people to have CMHC insurance to buy homes. In the long run everyone is hurt by this. Just in the last few years, its profits fell from a few billion to barley profitable. This correlates exactly with the loosening of the rules in the mid-2000's and subsequent increase in defaults. CMHC did not save anything. If fact it just dug our hole deeper. Today we are now the most over-valued home market in the world (according to OECD). We over-built a ton of homes during the recession. That's not real prosperity, it's just creating incentives for people to spend big time on homes. It doesn't mean they have, or make, any more money than before. It just means they spent now, and will have less to spend later. There's nothing wrong with mortgage insurance, the taxpayer just shouldn't be on the hook for it. CMHC should be sold to private interests or abolished.

As an energy exporter, by definition we lose more from falling oil prices than we gain by cheaper energy. This is basic math. Importers gain more, exporters lose more. The only way you gain from this an an exporters, is if you are the reason prices are falling (ie you are increasing market share), such as the US in this case. It's not just loss of oil-related tax revenue and oil-related the jobs. It's the beat-down the dollar takes which erodes all of our savings and our purchasing power. That analogy is pretty accurate. Moonbox you haven't thought this through. The fact that our banks are so heavily regulated is exactly why there is little competition in Canadian banking. It's directly related to the fees you pay. Heavily regulated industries are always more expensive to operate, and those costs get passed onto you. Furthermore, it's a free country. If you don't like banks, don't use them. Fill a sock with gold under your bed if you want to. Or just don't use banks that charge you fees. It's extremely easy to get a checking account that charges you no fees at almost any bank (or even places like superstore). What you mean by the fees are too high, is that the fees for specific type of conveniences you want are too high, such as special types of accounts or pulling money from atm's that are not your banks. However it's your choice to undertake those activities. I have not paid a fee to my bank in years, except those that I specifically choose to pay due to my own choices of the type of account and cc I want. I don't have to choose those, just as you don't, there are other options that cost nothing. Don't complain that you don't have 2-3K to buy bank stocks with. Stop smoking, cancel you cable, sell the car and take the bus, lose the cell phone and in a few months you'll have it. Or....just get a free basic bank account where you pay no fees, save the fees instead then buy the bank stock. We all make choices. You just don't like the results of yours.

Being in the profession, I'd say his anecdote is pretty much bang on. I can't think of a single exception to it in my experience. I've never met a single colleague or resident who went into it believing it was easy. I do however know many people who tried to get in an failed, and went on to get science education degrees.

Obviously you would have no idea if you did. It's not like they would tell you.

It's not really that different from mental illness in general. I'll give you my experience as a doc. We all did training in psychiatry at some point during our training. Basically my impressions from that are that we really have no clue what most mental disorders are caused by. We know very little about the brain. There are a few disorders where there are clear chemical imbalances. Most others, you would never know if not for the person telling you. 90% of the discipline is based on trial and error. Tons of people start meds, almost nobody ever gets off them. That said, war is a tough experience. Dealing with that can have varying results. I think our grandparents generation just had a different attitude about it as well, and attitude is a HUGE part of dealing with anything. They accepted that life isn't perfect, and you will endure hardship as part of it, and that this is normal and part of development. They were mentally prepared to encounter and process it. Today we see hardship as an anomaly, to be avoided at all costs. We believe that any form of discomfort or dissatisfaction should be immediately dealt with my somebody else on our behalf. Any form for less than perfect mental state, is a mental illness. Despite the fact that my grandparents dealt with far harsher life conditions, wars, lack of government programming, and various injustices, they are far more mentality intact and healthy than my own siblings who have dealt with nothing even close. War is very hard, but like going through a life threatening cancer treatment, ultimately you are the only one with final control over your own experience.

You're right, that experience is actually a lot harder than what most people go through, in particular those who grew up in Canada. It's incredibly how the loudest complainers can be those from a country where they have the most protections, best safety nets, etc.

Exactly. When you come from somewhere without a functional system, without as many opportunities, you realize how absurd people are who claim victimhood in this system.

I make the opportunities I have. I was poor once, now I'm not. My family lived in India once, started out very modestly, and now are very secure. Liberals in western countries are so annoying and actually arrogant. I think it's because they are actually just lazy, both in thinking and in action. Woman have more rights here, more opportunities than nearly anywhere in the world. The court system actually functions and cannot often be bought. Rambling on about workplace harassment won't make a court of law hire mind-readers to scour the country and pluck out all women who've been victims and make a case on their behalf. Those woman have to actually do something to initiate the process. This is......just like every single other breathing human in the nation who wants to address a grievance of some kind.

Well I guess we should all get hooked on heroin the, since that's the only way we can possibly understand what they go through to make appropriate policy. I guess we should allow industries to regulate themselves, because you know, us peons have no inside knowledge of what it means to be in that industry. Obviously terrible arguments, just as yours is above. Now THAT's what a correctly applied analogy looks like. 'The systemic barriers' argument is cute. Firstly, there's no evidence of any systemic barriers beyond the word of a few loud complainers. Secondarily, while woman can be a more vulnerable position because of being physically weaker that men do not, men have a different barrier - the possibility of being falsely accused, that women do not, due to current social attitudes. Anyway my immigrant family laughs at this kind of nonsense. Being Indian, when you are not the right 'colour' yet you succeed well beyond the average white (which Indians and Chinese do statistically), you realize how silly the race arguments is. To be more specific to your comment on blacks, black immigrants in the US outperform the average white, and FAR outperform the average black, putting to bed the racism argument. Nevermind the fact that black women widely outperform black men, despite being the same color. It has very little to do with how you believes people see you, and everything to do with how you see yourself. Different people, different cultures have different outcomes. Successful women do not spend time lamenting the possible male predators out there, they spend time being successful (like the women in my family). Successful immigrants do not think about their color, they think about bettering themselves and accomplishing their goals (like my family). Your attitudes are insulting to immigrants who don't see themselves as the victims, because when it results in pointless navel-gazing and affirmative action approaches, it diminishes the success of those immigrants.

Still nothing here with any real meaning. Sounds like a politician.

I feel the same way. It's not clear why you would make efforts or spend money to encourage people who don't care, to get out and vote. People who don't care about it, don't know what's going on. Why would you specifically want to get the least informed to the polls for decisions that affect everyone? The fact that the most uninterested, unmotivated, disorganized and lazy don't vote is a feature, not a bug.

None of those are analogous to this debate, or even to each other. The sad thing is, on their own (though irrelevant to this debate), you probably actually believe they make sense.

Nobody knows that this means. Do you?

Couldn't agree more. But that doesn't seem to be the public discussion. What we're hearing is that this is all over the place and women can't talk about because this, that, or the other, and so we should all 'do something about it'. Ok, so....what exactly? Should we launch a government program to hire mind-readers? Even Sheila Copps didn't name her assailant. If it's a problem, make a formal accusation. There SHOULD be a social cost to doing that though, it shouldn't be free, because there's the downside of messing up the lives of innocents as well. My wife is a nurse and I asked her if she had ever in her career felt she was sexually assaulted or harassed. She said once somebody (a clinician) worked on her floor who was known for making inappropriate comments and he was eventual fired for such. Other than that, no. This is a profession that, if any, is dominated by women in positions of traditionally 'service' and men (docs) in positions or authority. She also said that she feels really sad for women who are truly 'raped', and that those women who label a lewd comment or an unwanted tap on the bum as 'sexual assault', cheapen the true trauma that raped women go through, and that this is offensive. Could not agree more.

That assume social engineering has anything to do with that, or that if it does, that the relationship is positive. We can't affirm either. There's no evidence for that. First, you'd have to show that $160 a month vs $100 (or $100 vs nothing) actually enables women to go back to work in a greater number than they otherwise would. Not that it seems logical it would, but that it actually DOES in reality. Or, you're have to show that $15 daycare in Quebec costs less than the ROI on that women working. Neither are evident. Sorry I got us off track with the government work comment. I don't mean that they will all go to government work. I was simply using government employment as an example of how government economic intervention does not create wealth but rather just moves money around. See yes, those women in particular would be free to return to work. But no, society as a whole has not offloaded the costs of caring for those children. Society as a whole is still paying for that, which is a cost. Do the women returning to work provide more tax dollars down the line than the cost of that daycare? Pretty unlikely. The question is not whether the women return to work and generate taxable-income and taxable increased consumption. The question is whether that number is greater than the cost of the state sponsored daycare. And indeed, that is very unlikely. Furthermore, it's not even effective, as per Quebec. Whether I'd have good luck with it, isn't related to whether it's a good idea. Not on the scale we might want, but if we choose the immigrants carefully, it makes a net positive difference. Regardless, you've implied there is a better one. If you can think of a supportive-of-reproducing policy than Quebec, I'd like to hear it. That policy has not been effective. What would? The questions is not the cost, but the net cost/benefit. Given that certain immigrants are far more productive than others (and indeed, than Canadians) and their kids far more educated, the net value is a large positive. Not so for every group, which is why judgement needs to be used on who we let in. I'm using Quebec because it is the best possible comparison to the ROC in terms of similar culture, demographics, laws, etc. While with differences, certainly better than comparing to any other country. Nordic countries are not a good comparison, because their demographics are highly favorable compared to ours. They are HIGHLY restrictive on immigration, and therefore have a very homogeneous population. Comparing Canada to Nordic countries has some value, but the BEST, most controlled comparison would be comparing Scandinavians to Canadians of Scandinavian descent. Know what? White Scandinavians (pretty much all of them) do very well. White Canadians of Scandinavian descent also do very well. Finland often has a high-ranking education system. What if you took Canadians of Finnish descent, and looked at their performance? I'm certain it would be just as excellent. Hong Kong has always performed VERY well on math scores. Chinese from Hong Kong in Canada also wreck the average. Etc

This is true, it's utterly meaningless. Chinese leaders will not honor this in 2030, and Xi doesn't care because he won't be in charge then. Same with Obama. Fortunately it probably doesn't matter. However for the average Chinese, the air pollution will still be a major problem.

That is exactly the crux of the matter. There is no reasonable way this could be improved, in the absence of imposing some kind of immediate punishment for merely an accusation. French revolution guillotine-style. When I say improved, I mean improved through the legislative process. Obviously there are far simpler, far easier and totally free methods of improving things that involve individuals taking responsibility for themselves and acting with 3 seconds of forethought in their daily lives. Can't mention that though, since today we believe that if government can't solve a problem, it's unsolvable.

Whether government should be in the business of social engineering of people's family structure is entirely debatable. When I'm talking about poor returns on government employment, I'm talking about on a macro scale. The point about added production is redundant. The increased production is exactly the same (or much more likely, quite a bit less) than what the person is being paid. So there's not real net increase in production nor any generation of wealth, there is just some shifting around of taxpayer money. The point about moving somebody from welfare (total loss) to government employment (some loss but not total) is valid economically, however even better would be to shift to non-government employment (some gain). The only reason immigration doesn't solve the overall problem is because of the scale of the native born vs immigrants. But per capita, obviously immigrants have move kids. But for the same reason that addressing the majority of women who might return to work would have a large reach, it would also have an enormous cost. Inevitably that cost gets passed onto everybody, and puts another anchor onto economic activity, lowering our competitiveness. The primary driver for anybody, including women to relocated somewhere and enter the workforce is the availability of quality employment. And that's not even considering the fact that it doesn't even work, as per the Quebec example. Not only have they been unsuccessful in increasing employment beyond the Canadian average, they are also broke, and they are losing people to other parts of the country.

I guess that makes the entire point doesn't it? There are varying degrees of assaults, and when somebody says they were assaulted you really have no idea what they are talking about. I once visited a hospital in pretty much the worst place on earth where the most frequent presenting complaint was fistula formation between the urethra and rectum due to gang-rape using weapons and other objects. That's not the same as somebody giving an unwanted squeeze. Much as neither is acceptable, it would be ludicrous to suggest both parties were victims to the same crime, or would fittingly benefit from similar types of support. So when we hear that all kinds of people undergo sexual assault in the workplace, that tells us effectively nothing about the scope nor severity of what is actually going on, and thus gives us zero context on which to base any changes geared towards improving things.

I've never used it because they don't have it in my city, but my understanding is that the vehicle registration and licensing/insurance info has to be confirmed before uber will let you sign on.

The argument that paying people or subsidizing them in some way so they work and pay more taxes has never really made much sense. If you pay a dollar to somebody in a government job for example, you don't get a dollar back. You get an average of say 25 - 30 cents back on income tax. Then you get 5-14 cents more on the portion then on taxable consumer goods. Still not even close to what you put in. If you subsidize daycare that would normally take, let's say, half a persons gross income (using the number you used earlier), you're still not getting back even half the money. If the goal is economic, the argument is a total fail. But as you say, the goal might not be economic, it might be simply getting more kids and growing the population. Well in that case it would be far more efficient and FAR cheaper, to just increase immigration. Immigrants have way more kids, and they tend to have cohesive families as well that don't require state-sponsored family replacement such as daycare.

I would also agree to 25-30. Realistically there's no perfect criteria, how do you judge? But I think some basic exposure to life and the effects of public policy on said should be the bare minimum. Kids at 16 have not the foggiest clue what it really means to support yourself and conduct yourself in society. Nearly all are totally financially dependent on their parents, and don't even come to close to understanding what it would be like without that safety net. This leads to beliefs that are not based in reality, but in a pseudo-reality bubble that is created for them. When you provide your own roof, food and clothes for a few years, is when you get the first inklings of what it really means to hand over 20-30-40% of your income to gov. All of a sudden where they spend that money starts to matter. I would be willing to bet your average 16 year old could not even describe the structure of our government, or correctly assign the major services to their respective level of government, much less make an informed voting choice.

There's no way to know how many rape accusation are false, since there are no means by which to find out, nor any efforts employed to collect that information. Basically you would need to read minds. The only hard data we can look at are rates of conviction and acquittal. It also depends what you're talking about. When you say the word 'rape', do you visualize forced kissing in an elevator then nothing else? Probably not, yet that's exactly what Sheila Copps reported, calling it rape. And the media story uses the same term. When we're talking about sexual assault, we have to know what we're talking about. The greater the crime, the greater the risk, which is why more severe violent crimes happen far less often than petty crime. Just as there will be many-fold more auto thefts than carjackings, there are many-fold more pats on the bum than violent penetrating rapes. The range of offense, obviously, has a vastly different level of physical and emotional trauma depending where on that spectrum it falls.

That's just smart. But you might me missing out on something you do have to fear - the chance that a disgruntled student (you benched them, gave bad mark etc) deciding to accuse you of something to get back at you, knowing the accusation alone can do you in. You are acting wisely in your actions here to avoid that. If you're out for drinks, it's pretty easy to decline to visit the hotel room afterwards. In the setting you described - it would be nearly impossible for a man to physically overpower a women right in the restaurant/bar (in public) and drag her off without her protesting without somebody/security doing something about it. If you DO visit the hotel room after being propositioned, it would be pretty tough to convince a jury you were not consenting. I have a very hard time believing a woman who is propositioned as you put in, and then agrees to visit the room is expecting anything but a sexual encounter. You are also forgetting that you might turn a woman down, and she might accuse you of something out of wounded pride. Humans are VERY emotional when it comes to rejection and can behave rashly. This is why the steps you take, similar to those I described, are prudent. Are you sure? A technie professional with gadgets in his pocket in the parking garage? Sounds like a textbook mugging story to me. And it happens frequently. I do agree that it would nice if this changed, but this discussion (and the wider discussing nationally) does nothing about that circumstance you described. That is a simple calculation of a physically weaker victim and an opportunistic criminal. We're talking about public awareness here. Do you think criminals care about that? No. A national conversation does absolutely nothing to dissuade the perp lurking in the parking garage. That doesn't make a lot sense, since what you are responding to here is precisely an example of a woman who went and out and worked and took care of things without fear of being victimized. No, that's the whole point - that's it's NOT the same. The seriousness of a physically sexual assault is obviously much greater than a neglect contractor, so the threshold for prompt reporting and action would logically be much lower than a lack of a fence. Who knows what he could do. Might slash my tires, vandalize something (he knows my house, obviously). Your assumptions about what might happen to this woman who reports, are just your opinion. You are wrong about court - there are sections in the criminal code that prevent past sexual history or sexual reputation from being admissible, the 'rape shield' laws. The judge can use discretion here. Your buying habits are also not admissible, unless they directly related to the offense. Just like the police can pull your phone records to prove you were calling a drug dealer, but they can't show your netflix history to prove a bad taste in movies just to discredit you. That's not all at true (regarding the aggressor). The accused faces just as much reputation and professional damage as the accuser, and all the more so if they are a higher-ranking person known to more people. Today, your whole career can be gone with only an accusation, even if you are completely vindicated in court. As docs we are reminded of this all the time, and if there's any work relationship with a power differential, it's doc-patient. Politicians entire campaigns go up in smoke when a few women come forward, and there are many examples. Jian Gomheshi is the perfect example - its look really compelling that he is guilty. But let's say for the sake of argument that he's not, and it turns out there is a vast conspiracy against him. Let's then say he is no indicted as a result. Doesn't matter at all - he's still done. Many teachers can tell you the exact same story. It would be great is a magical fairy roamed about with perfect knowledge of everyone's actions and intentions, and we always know who was a predator and who was a false accuser. But since we don't, we have the court system. The point of the debate should be - can something be changed to improved the situation? Improving, by law, the rights of one person will always reduce the rights of somebody else, also innocent. That's life, so we need to be balanced. Also you referred to me multiple times with personal insults, which shows exactly the strength of your argument.

I'm sure it's difficult. That's not unique to perceptions of sexual harassment. It's true for everyone, in any job, anywhere. In any circumstance, it's difficult and it's a rick to complain. This could apply to perceived sexual harassment, bullying, aggressive boss, jerks at work, etc. So it's up to each individual wot weight the consequences and decided whether it makes sense to complain. At the same time, we all know people in exactly the same job, where one person sees a predator or conspiracy to get them, or some problem in their life, or some other type of persecution around every corner, and the other just happily goes on with things. Perception is a big part of it. 'Sometimes difficult things are difficult', is not really a ground-breaking or even helpful revelation. Welcome to life. If the offense is THAT egregious, then complain. If you don't, that's your choice. If it's not worth the friendship with the boss's wife, or it's not worth the effort to find a new job, or it's not worth risk to your own reputation etc, then I guess it's not. That's not me saying it, that's the alledged victim, according to you. If that's the calculation they've made, it's free country and they can make that conclusion for themselves. But if that's the decision they make, then the 'offense' probably wasn't REALLY that bad. If somebody murders your loved one, you don't hold back on a police report because if might make the next work party awkward with the boss's wife. Or if somebody defrauded you, or stole your car etc. So it's not like there's this stranglehold boss's have on employees life where the employee would never complain no matter what. ANY reasonable person would complain in those circumstances. So what it comes down to is degree - and if the women does not complain, that tells me where she ranks it on that scale.