What would the homeless numbers be without a plan to reduce it? When NatPo's done with its crystal ball, can we use it for other things? What would (US Republican-tied) Chatham Asset Management suggest as a better plan? Declare homelessness illegal and house people in jails for profit?
Prior to the Liberals coming to power Ottawa was responsible for about seven per cent of the money spent on reducing homelessness, a number that rose only to 14 per cent with all the new money. Most of the money spent on reducing homelessness was spent by provincial and municipal governments.
This is the most important take away.
The Liberal government doubled their funding, but it's the provinces and municipalities who are responsible for spending it in ways that help the homeless.
Any failings are on them, and the headline makes it seem like Liberals are at fault.
They only think that spending public money on social issues is literally the devil.
I thought that I've seen Natpo take money from the rich to post ads disguised as articles about how good those rich people are for donating to things, but it was hosted content from other "Post Media" outlets. So, it's still basically them, just not them-them.
Keep in mind that our standard of living while at its lowest point in 40 years is still among the top two or three in the world. The propagandist never mention that while they're pushing their grievance politics.
And to be very clear, electing a Conservative government that will cut taxes on the rich and cut services to everyone else to pay for it will crash or standard of living. Never trust s politician who says, "Elect me because I'm not the other guy and I'll fix everything" but never tells you how. The one thing you can be absolutely sure of is the fact that he's not going to fix everything.
I highly doubt the average canadian standard of living is higher than the average in countries like Switzerland, the scandinavian countries and some other well developed countries. They all have better social services, better access to public transit. Finland almost comepletely solved homelessness. We might still be in the top 10, but I doubt the top 3.
Edit: it can be difficult to gauge exactly how to measure QOL. This website tries to break down a few different metrics. Canada has a high QOL when reading US based news, otherwise well developed European countries dominate the list.
Conservatives always do the same thing. They cut taxes giving billions of dollars to the rich and cut services for everyone else. (Just a note, here...if you don't use a million dollar yacht as a runabout for your billion dollar yacht you are the poor that they are referring to when they say, "We don't want our tax dollars going to support the poor." They're taking about you, not for you.) They cut revenue and try to cut spending to make it up but always fail, running up the deficit and the debt, neglecting the military, government, and infrastructure leaving not only a fiscal debt but also an operational/maintenance debt until they are voted out of office. Then the next Liberal government has to pay that debt by spending and the Conservatives complain that they are spending money like drunken sailors, run on, "We're not them and we're going to fix everything" without ever having a plan for HOW they're going to fix everything let alone the intention to fix everything, win, and start the cycle over again.
It's been my experience that international students are more at risk of insecurity due to outdated regulations on the amount of money they must have, increasing costs all around, and restrictions on their ability to work and for their spouse to work.
Combine that with social media culture and communication challenges and we get situations like this, I work with a number of students from India and they speak English well, but differently from a long term Canadian. Often, the english is more direct in word choice and more... bombastic or sales oriented. Combine that with social media presence and you are bound to get culture clash.
So instead of using a more Canadian culturally appropriate phrase, like "here is where to turn when in need" or "this helps me afford rent", many will just be less cautious and might say "here is how I save hundreds of bucks" or "here is how I get free food".
That it turns out this guy was struggling like many others, and trying to help people like him is honestly no surprise to me.
This is true. As an immigrant myself, I have struggled with expressing my thoughts for the longest time. Different cultures and different ways of learning English. Trying to translate my thoughts from my own language to English often comes out either rude, or just wrong. I've learned to take moments before expressing my thoughts and then also explain just in case. I also throw in a disclaimer when I meet new people, especially at work. I'm getting better. It gets better with time. I feel bad for him. People on the internet are just brutal.
I'm an immigrant from Australia and I remember having to change my word choices even though Canada and Australia are nearly culturally identical. It must be a lot more work coming from less culturally similar places.
Beyond the issues of it being NaPo and the Fraser Institute being the main interviewee, using per person GDP as a measure of living standards seems.... Wildly out of touch. There are no comments on consumer pricing index (with all its flaws).
Literally they hinge their proof of "living standards" on average GDP.
Per capita GDP is far better than what the government is using, which is total GDP that is technically slowly rising but not faster than our population growth rate.
CPI doesn't give near a good picture as per capita GDP does. CPI increases can be at or below target levels but if per capita GDP growth is negative it's still very bad. Having good per capita GDP data and bad CPI data and way, way less common, I'm even actually sure it's ever happened in modern times.
I wound up doing more of a dive into per capita GDP as a metric, and see more of the benefits of it, as well as why its used. I'm still not entirely sold on its benefits overall due to concerns over wealth inequality and "living standards" being averaged.
In theory wealth inequality can be getting worse as GDP per capita gets better, for sure.
But conversely, if wealth inequality is getting better while the GDP per capita is going down, most people will still be worse off which definitely isn't good.
Forty years... forty... years... I wonder if there was something *new *that our liberal democracy started forty years ago, where the focus shifted towards expanding economic growth at all costs.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but that responsibility is limited to during working hours and/or inside the workplace. (And to be clear, I'm referring to their employer, Canada Post, not the Canadian Government, who does have the right to enforce similar mandates in a Public Health Emergencies like the one we just had)
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