healthetank

Something I never see mentioned in these articles/discussions is the design problems. I'm a civil engineer who works in infrastructure maintenance, including sanitary sewers up sizing/repairing. The minimum design guidine for slope is 0.5% for sanitary sewers, but there are many old neighborhoods where the slope is as low as 0.3%.

The way those pipes continue to operate is the large volume of water that is sent through those sewers regularly, flushing away the solid waste.

If, theoretically, every house swapped tomorrow to a grey water system, we'd seriously struggle with blocked sewers and backflows regularly.

Until someone solves that part of the issue, this system isn't practical for widespread adoption.

In addition to what the other comment says, the raised garden edgers would reduce/eliminate rain runoff and usually a variety of plants like this provide deep, wide roots which anchor and aerate the soil, increasing it's water retention ability and recuing water requirements, especially compared to shallow root grass

Interesting article. They really highlight how blindsided some people are while still showing that the government seems to have made an effort over the last 6 years to alert farm owners of the updates, including hundreds of thousands of notices and flyers.

Droughts are a mess, and ensuring residential access remains consistent is definitely a higher priority than business use, which isn't just food farms but sod farms, car washes, and other non-vital water use cases.

A good idea for them to set up the ability to turn off water access for those business ahead of time, as I'm guessing these droughts won't go away any time soon

Good! The greenbelt swap has to be some of the most blatantly crooked dealings we've seen from him.

To summarize, he removes chunks of land (owned or purchased recently by developer friends who went to his daughters wedding and/or paid for his staff to go to Vegas) from the greenbelt, and denies providing them forwarning despite one of them securing the land at a ridiculous interest rate recently (21%). Numerous reports have since come out showing that a) he knew this was coming well before he's claiming he did and b) there was significant conversations held between him/the housing minister and developers

He claims the land is required for the housing crisis despite reports from his own government showing that the greenbelt is not needed and we have plenty of land elsewhere. He also refuses to explain or provide rationale for how the land sections were chosen.

Finally, he then tries to claim he'll add other land to the greenbelt elsewhere, avoiding mentioning the fact that the other land is already protected by a different conservation policy, and so isn't really actually increasing the land in the greenbelt.

Ridiculous.

The article goes into a good amount of detail and information from both sides without arguing/favouring one. It focuses on the legal side rather than the vaccines themselves, which is nice.

All that said, I can't see them winning this one. In the article they talk about the provision in the NDA (sec 126) which makes it an offense to refuse a vaccination:

Every person who, on receiving an order to submit to inoculation, re-inoculation, vaccination, re-vaccination, other immunization procedures, immunity tests, blood examination or treatment against any infectious disease, wilfully and without reasonable excuse disobeys that order is guilty of an offence and on conviction is liable to imprisonment for less than two years or to less punishment.

This pretty clearly defines that it is an offense, so unless the lawsuit is able to successfully argue that this section of the NDA is a violation, they're sunk. Additionally, the fact that the CAF was able and willing to accommodate those who were 'unable' to get the vaccine and chose only to attack those who were 'unwilling' to is another mark against the lawsuit.

The problem is bigger than that.

The government has had lobbying for years from the private sector, and the O/G sector has had big money to throw around. They get pushback from these companies when they try to up the 'just in case' fund that is there to cover costs of rehab in case the company goes under. But since that isn't enough, they're often left unmanaged. In the article above they talk about the two easiest examples - mine rehabilitation and orphan well cleanup.

If a company ignores well decommissioning, they can cut costs, suck up as much oil as possible, then declare bankruptcy and walk away from the requirements to clean up, leaving the public to pay for it.

Why should they be responsible for cleanup?

This one is easy. You make the mess, you clean it up. Basic kindergarten levels of societal responsibility.

There’s no law or contract that compels this.

There is, actually, but they're avoiding it by a number of legal loopholes (as mentioned above). Socially/morally, they have the responsibility to do so, but they've managed to legally avoid it/ignore it. Hence the 'shirk'

The argument is that there should be a greater amount of laws and regulations surrounding the O/G or resource extraction sector and their impacts, but often you hear complaints from those employed in those sectors about government overreach and unnecessary bureaucracy/red tape hampering and smothering the free market.

This article is important as it highlights why we need more regulation and the danger of letting these companies continue to act they way they have for years.

I think the unsaid part is just time spent together- when you're a kid it's easy to have dozens of hours a week to hang out and bond. As you age, there's other time commitments - kids, spouse, family, maintaining a house, etc. In order to have that emotional investment you need to get past the awkward first stages of friendship.

I think a lot of people lose/drop their hobbies, or the things that let them bond and meet other people. It's hard to say "I dropped football and now I lost 50% of male conversation" without more info. If all your friends are only bonding over football, yeah. So find other things to do! There's a million of them, and people are always passionate about their own interests. Find people with similar interests.

The author also mentions "it feels like they're always just someone's partner" and that's very telling. Are the only men you're engaging with those who are partners of your own spouse? Well no shit you're not feeling like you have friends. I like my wife's friends partners, but they're firmly in the acquaintance category.

Yeah but living in it for at least 2 yrs it is considered long term. From the article, the Town has been aware of it for at least that long, so who knows how long it's actually been

Battery heating makes an enormous difference. I live in Ontario and generally average about -15 to -20 during the winter. Bought a Hyundai Kona EV in 2020 and it's been great. Actual range in summer is about 450km cuz I drive like an old man, and it drops to about 350km with my high traction winter tires, battery heating, and cabin heating.

The Kona also won for the best actual range during winter a few years ago

https://yourtestdriver.com/electric-vehicle-winter-weather-test/

Yes and no.

RVs don't have to meet the building codes the same way that houses do. I'd be very skeptical of the covered porch the man built that houses a furnace - there's no comment in the article about that, but I'd be surprised if it met all the requirements for long term housing.

It's fair for the Town to enforce their bylaws and housing codes. We have building codes for a reason.

Additionally, from the article

"We're required to enforce our bylaws and I think that it's demonstrated that we do sympathize with the situation they're in, because we've been working with them for the last two years," Crowder said.

It sounds like it's taken quite a while for them to prepare building plans. They say they 'have them in hand and plan to start the building process soon', which means they haven't actually applied yet. I'm curious what their sewer, water, and power situation is, as those hookups and/or septic beds also require permits from the Town. Living somewhere without running water or sewage removal is a concern for the neighbors.

Two years for just rough plans without having got approval from the Town yet? That's a slow timeline. Especially if they're living on the site the whole time. They haven't started the process yet? Why doesn't the Town say 'start the process and we can discuss extending your time allowed in the trailer'?

This is an odd situation, but the article doesn't go into enough details for us to get outraged about the Town's role.

I don't disagree - not being able to meet the minimum amount agreed on is not sufficient as a country.

But reading the article, it seems those in the actual combined defense meetings between Canada and the US have not commented or raised to the Canadian side their lack of funding. Additionally, Canada is looking to expand the definition of military spending - not sure how much that would actually change our percentage though.

And to call our military a joke isn't really valid - we do spend a shit ton of money on military. Not anywhere near the US, but we can't compare ourselves to the worldwide military superpower with 10x our population and 11x our GDP. Canada still places in at 6th in the NATO countries on raw dollar spending.

Agreed - really all that small talk is trying to find common ground or similar interests with those you don't know well yet.