Also, the gun thing makes me think people don't understand statistics. The number of gun related deaths in the usa was 14.6 per 100k people in 2021 and around 0.5 per 100k in Canada, so yes it's drastically higher in the usa but that ignores that 60% of those are suicides and it ignores the highly geographically concentrated nature of the problem.You avoid a handful of neighborhoods and think happy thoughts and your gun death risk basically disappears. unadjusted its a ~1% risk over an 80 year lifetime in the USA vs 0.04% in canada. When you take into account reality and realize you aren't suicidal and you aren't going to visit or live in that tiny handful of extremely high risk neighborhoods the USA risk also drops to almost zero, even over a lifetime.
I lived for a few years in the UK and it reminds me a bit of that.
This country is the second largest in the world and filled mainly of forests. Only an organizing genius could produce a shortage of land and construction materials at the same time.
To add more context, the point of the original quote* (and the paraphrase) is to draw attention to an ironic situation and perhaps offer some hope that the situation is fundamentally solvable.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Wales/Selected_quote/12
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/carney-double-pace-home-bui...
In the 1980's a British researcher living in the U.S. became angry with the election of Ronald Reagan and his desire of using A.I. research for military purposes. He then moved to Toronto.[1] Last year that scientist, Dr. Geoffrey Hinton, received the Nobel Prize for his research in A.I. that helped turn Toronto into a world hub in technology.
In the early 2000's it was the turn of an American scientist, angry with the policies of George W. Bush, moving to Edmonton, Alberta. This year that scientist Dr. Richard S. Sutton won the Turing prize for his research on Reinforcement Learning.
I have hopes that Donald Trump might become the best president that Canada never had.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/23/world/canada/the-man-who-...
Then you have your answer. Canada is not "US with free healthcare". It has a different history, economic and political setup. A quarter of the population are Francophone, and they govern very differently from the rest of Canada. Canada's wealth is also concentrated in the mining and natural resources industries, not in knowledge economy services. You cannot tweak policy here and there and turn it into a nation of SaaS billionnaires any more than you could in the UK or France.
For a real-world juxtaposition of the differences, think of Blackberry. In 2007, they saw the iPhone and told their partners at AT&T that the bandwidth load a portable Youtube/Internet device would put on AT&T's towers would cause call interruptions. Lo and behold, they did: AT&T was synonymous with dropped calls from 2007-2010 [0], when they finally spent billions into upgrading their towers to 4G. Blackberry ultimately lost the handset market, but for many other reasons besides their oft-mocked reaction to the iPhone.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/12/08/cnet.iphone.att.dropped....
Why would any country *want* to do that?
The leader of the social democratic party NDP did announce his resignation last night as he also lost his seat in parliament.
Lots of change in the upcoming weeks and months.
His campaign against Mark Carney came down to his argument that Carney was not a legitimate PM due to being appointed by his party following Trudeau's resignation, rather than by competing and winning a parliamentary seat in an election.
Now the tables have turned: Carney has won his seat in the election, Polievre has lost his. Will Polievre hold himself to the same standard he held Carney to?
Before Election:
Liberal: 152 Conservative: 120 Bloc Quebecois: 33 NDP: 24 Green: 2
Election Results:
Liberal: 155 (+13 leading) == 168 Conservative: 133 (+11 leading) == 144 Bloc Quebecois: 21 (+2 leading) == 23 NDP: 5 (+2 leading) == 7 Green: 1
This is a surprising win for an incumbent party. Whenever I look at basic life issues in Canada I'm blown away. Somehow salaries for engineers are about half what they are in the US, but real estate prices are comparable in large cities. And nation wide the national come price is 678k compared to around 420k in US. Who does this work for?
The liberals have moderated a bit. I remember seeing an ad saying that if elected they would remove trade barriers between Canadian provinces, which is pretty crazy that they exist in the first place. Free trade within your borders should be the starting ante for a country
Finally, there was the increase in immigration which no one really seemed to ask for, that they're also pulling back now due to backlash.
Anyway, I don't really see the tide stemming but who knows. I can't remember a time in the US where an incumbent party has won on so many negatives.
But the 51st state/tariff talk from the south overrode whatever problems Canadians seemed to bitch about daily in 2024.
The immigration increase was a surprise for most Canadians - increase immigration by 4x without corresponding increase in support costs???
Extremely rare and improbable. It took the left wing of Canada to intentionally sabotage themselves and shift politics to the right. A bizarre choice with no benefit to themselves. Canada is no longer left wing I guess?
>Whenever I look at basic life issues in Canada I'm blown away. Somehow salaries for engineers are about half what they are in the US, but real estate prices are comparable in large cities. And nation wide the national come price is 678k compared to around 420k in US. Who does this work for?
Senior IT positions are more like 3x the salary in the USA.
Housing is much worse than that. Shack in Canada, Mansion in the USA for the same pricing. Housing supply is greatly reduced by governments, housing demand is greatly increased by the federal government.
>The liberals have moderated a bit. I remember seeing an ad saying that if elected they would remove trade barriers between Canadian provinces, which is pretty crazy that they exist in the first place. Free trade within your borders should be the starting ante for a country
Mulroney, Chretien, and Harper had significant majority governments who attempted multiple times to remove those trade barriers. there's a 0% chance Carney will be able to remove these barriers. In fact I predict more trade barriers will be going up soon.
It's not typically a huge problem because Canada is ridiculously wide. We are 2 hours from the USA for trade; but multiple days away from trading interprovincially. So we traditionally just trade with the usa, but TRUMP.
>Finally, there was the increase in immigration which no one really seemed to ask for, that they're also pulling back now due to backlash.
Basically didnt even come up in the election. It was one of the censored subjects.
>Anyway, I don't really see the tide stemming but who knows. I can't remember a time in the US where an incumbent party has won on so many negatives.
Consider the media. The incumbents gives billions of $ to the media who write puff pieces.
China interfered in our election to benefit the liberals. The state media wrote "Carney being targeted by china" but that is to say Carney was being targeted with SUPPORT.
That was your takeaway: China did it? Liberals were projected to lose more than 100 seats nationally as late as February 2025.
You can't think of any other major foreign figure that tried to insert himself into the conversation and thereby swing the election?
I would also say the liberals have not moderated a bit, they just said and did some disingenuous things to trick people into thinking this guy was more like Chretien, when his books read like the green party mixed with greed. Time will tell if this view proves correct or not.
Liberals at 45 year high.
Pierre Poilievre(leader of conservatives) in a safe conservative riding lost. Bucking multiple political science theories.
Conservatives at 37 year high, gaining significantly in the election.
Jagmeet Singh(leader of NDP) resigns after losing the NDP party status and his own riding; at their debt level they likely stop existing as a party.
Green Party only earnt 1 seat; Elizabeth May's riding. Her co-leader came in 5th place in his riding.
Very significant national unity crisis is now happening. Left wing no longer exists in Canada.
Carney to immediately start negotiating new trade and security agreement with Trump. Which is significantly more than CUSMA ever was. Estimated to add ~150 billion additional to the deficit. Trudeau said Canada would stop existing as a country if this happened.
The left wing has been rotting out from under the NDP's guidance for years. They are no longer a grass roots party and are primarily controlled through their central offices (both federally and provincially). Provincially the NDPs have been moving towards the center to govern for years as well, just look at the Alberta and BC NDPs and their policies/actions.
2OEH8eoCRo0•9mo ago