Moonbox

Undoubtedly, but was an idiotic thing to assume. It's social media. It's not like these guys were unwittingly recorded conversing among friends. They published their statements openly on broad-reaching multimedia. It doesn't need to be made clear. It can be reasonably assumed by an intelligent and responsible human being. That sort of behavior isn't acceptable anywhere and, as I mentioned, I'm sure these folks also signed Code of Conduct clauses in their contracts. As for what an organization can do to maintain their public image (which has significant monetary value), their options are unfortunately limited. Comments like we're talking about here demonstrate significant flaws of character to the public. Whether or not the organization disciplines this person, he's still the vicious bigot/idiot who promoted sexual violence or abuse against women and that's going to stick. The organization has a fairly permanent image problem in maintaining his employment. because you're wrongly assuming that brand/public image don't have immense value. They do. You're right. Becoming a firefighter is hard and being one is a privilege. The departments are flooded with applicants and only a select few are given positions. Knowing this, and knowing that you're employed by taxpayers, a certain modicum of human decency should be expected when communicating with the public.

Either way, the government does not choose the reserve's leadership. The reserve chooses it, plain and simple. What's worse is that the government doesn't even have the power to remove a band leader who's essentially stealing from his people. Even trying to open the books or criticize the fraudster is met with hostility from most of the reserves. That's 100% their own stupid fault. Yes, the band leaders stealing from their own people make ample use of this characteristic of ignorant human behavior. Rather than see how one of their own is stealing right from underneath their noses, they are easily duped into believing he/she is championing their cause against 'outsiders'. So you're saying these band leaders are thugs as well as fraudsters?

Um, no. Are the chiefs appointed by the government, or chosen from the reserve members? If the natives on the reserve were interested in accountability and where the money is going, why so much outrage when the government demands the books to be opened? No, this is classic example of a people getting ripped off by their leadership and then being too ignorant/misguided/lazy to fix the problem themselves.

Yes, at least in Ontario. They're accepting significantly fewer students and requiring them to complete a two year program at Teacher's College. This is long overdue, but says nothing about existing and (especially) older teachers.

Subsidies for nuclear/hydro pale in comparison to those for green/renewable. Nuclear and hydro actually provide signficant sources of electricity, whereas solar/wind have not. The epic scale of Tim Hudak's bumbling failure becomes more and more apparent as we learn more and more about the sheer incompetence of the McGuinty/Wynne Liberals. This has been quite literally the most fiscally incompetent government Ontario has ever had. Bob Rae looks great in comparison.

I'm not sure we're actually agreeing on much. While I can certainly agree that aboriginals are upset about the pace of land-treaty settlements, that's only a cause for protests. Obviously protests are undesirable, but it's a brutal logical fallacy to conclude that the government not complying with a group's demands/wants/needs leads to police shooting protesting members of that group. The Ipperwash Inquiry was full of non-sequiturs like that.

When the chiefs of tiny reserves earn significantly more than the Prime Minister, something's wrong at the reserve.

Police deal with protests on a regular basis. People usually don't get shot. Unhappiness with the government over land claim settlements is a conceivable cause for protests, but not for individual cops lapsing in judgement and shooting unarmed protesters.

No, you're right. They're probably a lot smarter and more engaged than the majority. They also also spend far less time crying over the sweet deal they have and are overall just better human beings than most teachers. No, you simply don't like what I have to say. You're a teacher and rather than speaking facts and numbers (you've been asked several times for cites/references which you've refused to provide), you're peddling lame and self-serving testimonials about how you deserve so much more. Except the training you receive is mostly a joke. I know you like to think you went through an intensive/grueling training program among the intellectual elite, but that's a delusional conceit you hold only because you're a teacher. The fact is that Teacher's College is easy to get into, even easier to complete and it only takes a year to do so!

First, we're doing it to protect foreign partners in the world. A Canadian blowing up a bunch of people in Turkey or something would be bad news. Second, letting them go essentially gives the enemies we're fighting more reach/manpower. Third, allowing our citizens to fight for our enemies is a propaganda win for them. Lastly, the concern is that once these people leave they'll come back to be even more of a danger to us than they otherwise would have been.

I missed that sorry. Young men do try to be rude and vulgar. I am guilty of it myself. The difference is that I choose my audience carefully. In the hockey dressing room? Absolutely. Among friends that I feel will get a laugh out of it? Sure. Do I mean it? Generally not, and people I'm with and know are aware. Online, however, you do not choose your audience. Your potential audience is everyone. The target of your jokes/demeaning comments may very well read them and be angered/hurt by them. You might have idiots who don't know any better be influenced by those comments. They can also digitally captured and all sorts of information can be gleamed from your profiles. When someone says stuff like this and you can link the speaker to an organization, that organization is harmed by association. Not disciplining the offenders can potentially be seen as supporting/condoning their behavior. You're minimizing the damage caused to the organization by the tweeting and exaggerating the punishment on the offender.Their lives aren't 'destroyed' and the damage a few vicious/moronic tweets can cause is significant. These fools didn't just say something stupid online either. They said some really disgusting and vicious stuff and one of them was dumb enough to make his association with the City painfully obvious.

It's not much more complicated than that. Ken Deane died 13 years later and his testimony in 2006 wasn't likely to be much different than on any previous occasion. It was his and the local OPP's lapse in judgement that led to George's death. Blaming the provincial or federal legislators at the time is just the by-default redirection of blame up the chain of command.

Well they had to do something. It's sad that you had to have a formal inquiry and to set up guidelines to ensure that unarmed protesters don't get hit by snipers, but neither Mike Harris nor the federal government could have foreseen what a yahoo cop might do under the circumstances. regardless of whether they may or may not have said something racist.

Argus these guys weren't tweeting 'mildly' offensive stuff. They were tweeting incredibly rude, offensive and vulgar garbage and were promoting violence against women (tongue in cheek or not). The're no better than the idiots in the US tweeting racist crap against black people in Ferguson who are finding themselves unemployed when they get caught. I imagine the city of Toronto, like most private companies, has a code of conduct that its employees must adhere to. Your private life is your private life, but when you go out of your way to say idiotic stuff like that on social media where it can be screen captured and you're advertising where you work (or it can be easily traced), you're causing real harm to your employer. If these morons worked for a private company, it's very possible that people would complain and boycott that company as a result.

I guess you missed all the times I suggested we should be providing subsidies for families with too young for school so they can be sent to daycare. I like this solution better than full-day kindergarten (or even pre-kindergarten) because it also makes it easier for one parents to stay home if they so chose.

but still the majority of teachers don't have one. No, numerous friends with permanent contracts. Testimonials for online arguments are really solid right? Becoming a teacher takes the same 4 years of hard work getting an undergraduate degree does. The 1 year of teacher's college on top of that is a complete joke that's virtually impossible to fail. As for being life long learners, so are the majority of people. I don't have a hate on for teachers. Probably 1/4 of my friends are teachers. I simply have zero respect or patience for whining from unionized public sector servants who, by virtually all objective measures, are already paid better than they should be.

The inquiry was a joke. Linden's made highly subjective conclusions and ended up doing little aside from spreading the blame around everywhere. The OPP are responsible, but the province and premier are also responsible, and hey why not the federal government as well?

Basic math huh? While you're talking basic math, maybe look up basic economics and a basic understanding of who collects the royalties on oil extraction (it's not Ontario). Except we've seen very clearly that our stronger dollar has categorically not translated to higher purchasing power. The OECD concluded in 2011 that the Canadian dollar didn't buy anything more than it did in 2002 when the dollar bottomed out. No, these are not the costs of regulations being passed on to consumers. Regulation of the Canadian banking industry has decreased over the last thirty years. Fees and whatnot have increased dramatically. What we're actually seeing is the banks leveraging the benefits of past regulation (their prior monopoly on transaction banking) to squeeze out potential competition. I was going to try to be civil but that's just an idiotic argument. Living today without a bank account is virtually impossible. The only banks that manage to offer no service-fee accounts are ones that don't provide any service. The people who use them generally leave the first time they need help with anything. I work for a bank genius, and I pay fewer fees than anyone. I also know exactly what the costs are of providing banking services and how the vast and overwhelming majority of them are almost literally pure profit. I also shake my head at how little my lower and front-level staff gets paid and wonder at the fact that the tellers at least haven't unionized. 5% of my income for the last 10 years has been invested in chartered bank stock and the company matched that as a benefit. Unless you're a giant millionaire I likely own more bank stock than you.

because the Credit Unions are so far behind in branch network that you don't save any money by banking with them. The biggest competitive disadvantage they have is that they don't have expansive ABM or service networks. To achieve the growth necessary to get there, they have to (at least for the time being) be very profitable. Their offerings, therefore, are only slightly more competitive. The amount of money you save dealing with a credit union is pretty much zero after you account for network withdrawal fees.

It's not apples to oranges and the scenario you describe is a fantasy. While their are certainly circumstances that may 'trap' you with your current lender for whatever amortization you agreed to, it's not because of any fine-print or terms on the agreement specific to the UK. If, for example, British borrowers fully-financed their house previously (or up to 125% which they used to be able to do), then a property price decreases or tighter government regulations would make it impossible for them to get qualified anywhere else. If their current lender knows this then they can almost dictate terms on a mortgage renewal. It's the same in Canada and all sorts of people have found themselves trapped to their lender because of the refinancing rules being changed a few years back. Because you're peddling the same tired argument we get from people defending the oil or telecom industries. "You're getting ripped off? Buy the stock!" I know the solution seems that simple, but consider a few things first. To start, obviously not everybody has a few thousand dollars to invest in every company they're forced to deal with that rips them off. Next, consider why banking fees are so high. It's not because the capital or operating costs need to be offset. It's because stock prices are so high that fees need to sufficient to offer investors a solid ROI. If, as you suggest, everyone invests in the banks to recoup those fees, what happens to the stock price? Extend that logic. Finally, we have to examine how the major banks in Canada cornered the market like they have. Understand that up until relatively recently the Canadian financial industry was far more heavily protected, segmented and regulated than it is today. The major chartered banks expanded over decades with little in the way of competition. Upon deregulation in the late 80's, they were in a position to buy up and consolidate the financial industry (buying the trust companies etc) because their previous monopoly/oligopoly of basic banking ensured they were the only ones with the resources to do so. The Big 6 banks now are so entrenched now (occupying all of the best locations and property) that it's near impossible for a smaller competitor to even get noticed. While you're certainly right that stable and profitable banks are good for the Canadian economy, low-risk businesses and investments should offer similarly modest returns.

Sure, that's understood. Not everyone plans a pregnancy either. Everyone should be able to afford private daycare, so if they need subsidies/tax credits or whatever to be able to then that's fine. The nice part about subsidies like that is that they could actually encourage a parent to stay home and give their 3-4 year old the attention he/she really needs rather than get a McJob that barely nets positive for them after paying for daycare.

No, I don't. Your self-interested and self-serving testimonials don't change anything. I've no doubt there are "many" teachers working on their Masters, but this amounts to a tiny fraction of the overall teaching population. Your pay increases based pimarily on seniority so most teachers don't bother. The sad part is that probably the best trained, most engaged and most enthusiastic teachers are the newer ones who are getting paid the least. It's pretty simple logic. Being a teacher yourself with an obvious bias, your testimonials are worth less than nothing. I can look up what the requirements are to become a teacher, what a teacher gets paid and what uninterested third parties say about teacher compensation in Canada (as in the OECD saying Canada's teachers are among the best-paid in the world and paid at least 5% more than similarly-educated non-teaching professions despite working FAR less hours overall). Also, for every self-serving testimonial you offer, I can get the opposite from close friends in the teaching profession who laugh about how easy it is and about what they do in the summer.

Don't worry I do own bank stocks. $2-3000 worth of bank stocks would also barely make up for the fees you'd pay on a basic chequing account. The idea of having to invest $3000+ in a company to not pay fees for having them lend your money to other people is BS considering the superior competition and offerings we see outside of Canada. No service/maintenance fees is standard for a basic chequing accounts outside of Canada. Here it's at least $4/month with all sorts of ridiculous fees tacked on.

Well fear-mongering and misinformation is pretty standard stuff, but outright lies are usually a bad idea and fly right back in the liars face.

If their profits go lower your fees will increase. That's sort of how those clowns operate. The profits never stay down for long. It's a pretty sweet racket.