Yeah me too. Everything seems to be over 1 million in my area nowadays, even shit houses, so I need 20% minimum downpayment instead of 5%... it's 200k just to begin to imagine making bids.

On the other hand, who the fuck buys a house in eastern Oakville for 2.55 million dollars? Even in this market, that's insane. If you look up that neighbourhood, the highest sold prices I can see apart from this one are around 1.3 million. Which is still nuts for eastern Oakville, but it's "market rate" nuts.

Years ago I went on a road trip with my close moron of a friend to the United States (from Canada). While crossing the border on the return home, he accidentally left a joint in his pack of cigarettes which was in the trunk.

They singled us out for one of those "random" searches (we looked kinda like stoner college kids, so I wonder). Drug sniffer dog picked up the scent of his joint. Then they found the joint. Total tone change. We were arrested on the spot as they read us our rights and threw us in a jail cell. They stripped searched us, questioned us. I was freaking out.

Hours later, in part because buddy made a full confession and in part because they found nothing else, they took pity on us. They had to put something in the "system" so they said they logged his license plate but otherwise there would be no record of the interaction. Car was fucked up from being searched but otherwise all was good in the world.

Luckily the Canadian border caught us as it's not uncommon for Americans to ban people from entering the US for stuff like that.

When I found out later that the reason he had pot in the US was that he smuggled it in taped to his scrotum I almost killed him. Also, then I remembered a police dog lunged at him when we were getting on the Staten Island Ferry but he got away with playing it off as it being interested in his bag of McDonald's. Convinced me too, the sheer audacity of this guy I'm tellin' ya. Poor doggo was right :P.

Just thinking of all the people that went to jail over minor drug offenses makes me sad. Was lucky that was all that happened.

What is it that I'm lying about you? I don't support major restrictions on what people do with their land, only restrictions that impact the health and safety of others. And even then, I think that's a very high bar to meet and in 99% of cases in this country we go too far. You, on the other hand, support restrictions based on preferences (you prefer detached housing and therefore think that should be the only type of housing that is legal to build).

They aren't "my" rules either. What rule are you against that I support? I guarantee it's zero. So it's not a question of your rules or my rules, it's less rules.

What if we were talking about throwing people in jail? If I said, "I only support throwing someone in jail that commits a serious crime", and you supported throwing people in jail for wearing socks with sandals, would you say "Hey, it's all very well to say that throwing people in jail is a serious restriction on freedom, but you think people should go to jail for murder... so it's clear that you believe only your rules are reasonable"? Come on.

So the only way to not be a hypocrite, in your mind, is to regulate everything or regulate nothing? You either have to be okay with a factory in the middle of your neighborhood, or you have to be okay with banning everyone from building anything other than a detached house? No in-between at all or you're a hypocrite?

That's a silly position.

I'm drawing a distinction on things that are preferences (NIMBYs that don't want other people to be able to build houses they don't like on their own private property), vs. health (industrial emissions and waste may make it hard to breathe and can give me cancer).

But fine, fuck it, in some ridiculous world where we are not allowed to regulate factories unless we force everyone to live in detached housing, I'd rather have factory in the middle of my neighborhood.

Those aren't "my rules" those are your rules too. You brought them up. I don't want any rules for residential development. I have to make a small concession to practicality for dirty factories (not residential), which you also agree needs to be rule.

Generally rules should be at an absolute bare minimum. I'm not proposing any rules based on my personal preferences like you are. Only in the case of health and safety with certain heavy industries.

Literally the opposite, what bad faith arguing. I don't want any rules for residential development. Industrial development should have a few rules.

There's a big difference between putting a factory near a residential district vs a townhouse or a 3 story walk-up apartment buddy. All the nicest neighbourhoods in Toronto for example were built before the excessive post-war planning era.

Lmao that escalated quickly. Nobody said we should eliminate detached housing. I'm in favour of eliminating nothing and letting people decide what they want to do with their land. It worked well for for all of history, it's only in the postwar era that zoning really took off.

You should be able to build your housing style of choice wherever you want, same as me. Returning private property freedoms to people will increase housing supply, and once we cut immigration that's how things will finally start to get better

Banning hotdogs does not decrease the cost of hamburgers. Quite the opposite.

Many people would prefer living in a gentle density "European-style neighborhood", but instead we're forced by the government into the market for a detached house, where we're competing with you.

Let people build what they want to build. It's more reasonable to focus on excess restrictions preventing SFH from getting built, like restrictive municipal rural-suburban boundaries, than to ban other types of housing.

Social engineering is restricting what people can and can't do with their own private land. Removing zoning restrictions will let the market decide rather than politicians.

Nothing is more conservative than private property rights.

We only got development fees in Ontario in 1989. Historically cities paid for infrastructure (including schools) with a bond issue, and property taxes over time. Schools were built in advance before 1989, not sure where you got the idea that cities can't borrow money.

If you want more of something, don't tax it. We need more housing. This shit is always passed on to the consumer. There are many ways to collect revenue, an effective tax on construction doesn't make sense in the current climate. It only benefits people that currently own their home and do not want to move anywhere new. Typically older, wealthier people. It's a regressive tax, that's also a tax on something we desperately need right now. We should tax literally anything else.

Growth pays for growth is bullshit. The suburbs in particular are massively subsidized by downtown, the cost of every service is higher to provide in a less dense environment. On top of that, cities charge massive development fees on the new buildings that are saving their ass in the long term to "pay for infrastructure"? Also, why should I be paying for someone in Scarborough to have the pipes on their street replaced while I also paid for mine with a development tax on my condo that only I paid? It's all just a racket to avoid raising taxes on homeowners, because that's who shows up for municipal elections.

It's alright, I wouldn't call cutting immigration to 50% of what it was under Stephen Harper moderate though (it was 1% under Harper).

The cutting "non-essential" spending point is the worst in my opinion as it sounds amateurish. The sum total of all of that would be <1% of Federal Government spending (~500 billion a year). Especially the Deer Cull, that's a really random call out. I'd just drop that point. If you give bigger examples it would look like you're advocating for an austerity budget (and that would turn off a lot of people), the smaller examples make it look like you can't do math.

The NDP isn't going to let the government fall with their poll numbers as they are. I would be surprised if the Liberal government completely runs out the clock though, they'll look to capitalize on something, anything in the last 6 months or so. The NDP might pull the plug too to seize the initiative, but only in the last few months unless something happens to their polling.

The Liberals would really love for interest rates to start dropping so average joe homeowner feels good about that and that's been a waiting game. The economy isn't exactly being co-operative on that one though as inflation is being more stubborn than anyone expected (went up last month). That would help them stem the losses even if winning is off the table.

The thing is, he was just a bartender (although he now works a white collar job but that was later). But yeah i just looked up the fees and they are way higher than I expected, it's $2300 to apply for a PR. I did hear grumbling from him that it took ages to process anything and the whole time you're wondering if you have to change your entire life around.

Let's see how that scandal plays out, it's also one guy so you can't paint a whole group of people with that brush. If we want people to feel and become fully Canadian, we shouldn't be making them second class citizens. I'm not going to say it wouldn't lessen the possibility at all, but it would come at too high a cost.

The solution to foreign influence scandals is to severely punish people involved. Senator Bob Menendez (Mr. "gold bars in my closet") for example was influenced by Egypt without any national connection. Money is a much bigger motivator I think than nationality.

What do they spend it on, a lawyer? That's interesting, the internet would have me believe that it's super easy to stay in Canada. My roommate went through the PR process while he lived with me, didn't seem that hard but I didn't do it so who knows. He didn't hire a lawyer or anything.

That's not been my experience. Nobody segregated at my school, and we didn't really celebrate any holiday at school because we had school work to do? We did Remembrance Day I suppose, a moment of silence over the announcements. That's all I specifically remember. I asked my Dad and they didn't do anything special to commemorate D-Day when he was in school.

In elementary school maybe where the curriculum was a bit more loose we "celebrated" holidays, but it always included the Canadian ones and was mostly an excuse to do a busy-work art project.

That's weird you're not friends with anyone at work who isn't white and don't feel any meaningful connections. You tell me what you think Canadian culture is, because honestly it's something that has always been unclear and debated. All the ex-British colonies are kind of the same, but it's especially unclear for Canada. We don't really watch our own media anymore, not since the 1980s at the latest. We have a few Canadian bands but only due to government regulation. We don't have our own cuisine. We like hockey? I couldn't think to explain to you what I believe Canadian culture even is. I'd like to give an answer, but most of us grew up in a generic middle-class existence that didn't seem anchored to anything, and where I grew up until I moved in grade 10 was 90% white (Hamilton) so it's nothing to do with immigration I think.

Then don't vote for them. Don't take that choice away from my vote.

The government is almost all people born in Canada but they fucked it up all the same. Once you become a citizen there should be no asterisks. Maybe we should make it harder to become a citizen, but I don't like the idea of second class citizens.

Debit transactions fees are typically <10 cents, and the cost of handling all the cash from an increased labour cost, cost of keeping a float, risk of robbery and all that are often higher. Credit cards are bullshit since they charge a percentage, we should regulate them like Australia does.

That requires that they invoke the Emergencies Act. It's been used once since it was passed in the 1980s.

Debit is generally 10 cents or less per transaction, flat rate. Credit is pretty bad though because it's a percentage.

They didn't "just decide" to freeze trucker protestors cash, they had to invoke the Emergency Act. It's not something they can usually do.

The government can also throw me in jail, fine me, tax me, and take away my passport. The government can do a lot of things to me. It's kind of necessary for an orderly society to work. If anything we need more order, deal with all the car thefts and stuff like that.

Cash is also great for crime and tax evasion.