Oh yeah, I’d forgotten about this story. Interesting bit in that article also, having to do with the additional paperwork burden the MedsChecks cause for family docs. I hadn’t realized they needed to sign off on every single one of them!

Manulife

Believe me, I would love to.

Problem is, I’m low income, I need a couple of moderately expensive medications, and my spouse’s insurance is such that I have to pay double if I go to another pharmacy. Honestly it’s the only reason I switched to them. I held out for so long, too.

It should be illegal for insurance to provide a different coverage rate solely based on the pharmacy chain.

Absolutely, yeah. I’m just thinking it might be good to have a specific complaint that could be taken to regulators (or prosecutors)

You’re the one telling people that the public has no right to question an immediate pivot to spending +$150 Billion/year on warmongering and then telling someone else they’re pushing disinfo?

Go on then, tell me what specifically you’re referring to. This oughta be fun

The pivot was immediate, let’s not rewrite history just because of some personal distaste for criticism of dear leader

Carney didn’t run on a 5% target. That’s the point of calling it out.

It’s not like the already-governing Liberals wouldn’t have known about quiet NATO discussions before the election, so this criticism of the article makes zero sense.

Yes, and the CCLA’s brief on this is well worth reading. It looks far more closely at the lack of parliamentary oversight and vague wording (direct link to pdf) https://www.ourcommons.ca/Content/Committee/451/FINA/Brief/BR13838502/br-external/CanadianCivilLibertiesAssociation-e.pdf

And as I say, I’m not opposed to a thriving economy, but we have rules and regulations for a reason: to try to make sure that this “thriving” doesn’t come at someone else’s expense. And as we tumble further into climate catastrophe, “growth” often becomes one of those double-edged swords.

That aside though, sounds like we agree that this concentration of power is really concerning.

Anyway for anyone wondering if this is really a big deal, check out Palantir’s operations in the UK and consider the fact that Carney is doing much the same as Starmer in other aspects of governance.

https://www.thenerve.news/p/palantir-technologies-uk-government-contracts-size-nuclear-deterrent-atomic-peter-thiel-louis-mosley

Thanks for reading! Unfortunately the WEF took down the pages that showed the 2026 event schedule so that link (in the section about Larry Fink) goes to what is effectively a blank page. archive.is only has the Jan 22nd schedule and not Jan 20th. If anyone knows of another site that lists the full schedule, I’d be extremely grateful!

The AI industry in Canada has been pushing to essentially ‘self-regulate’, and (at least in this layperson’s opinion) seems like the legislative method for giving them what they want.

What happened to the rule of law? This is undermining public transparency and the role of parliament in much the same way that Trump has neutered the US Congressional branch and centralized power in the admin. If you’re pissed off at Danielle Smith and Doug Ford, this is just as bad!

maybe someone made a NFT of it

/s

Avi is honestly really great IMO and it’s awesome to have a leadership candidate who understands media

A recent episode of Tech Won’t Save Us about cars made a nice point about this stuff:

if you build near transit and remove rules around minimum levels for parking spots, you can lower the cost of development significantly, since you either need less underground parking, or less land for parking lots.

Cars make housing less affordable!

I’ll give it a go, sure :)

If they still have the old seasons of Commons available, there’s some incredible work there by Arshy Mann (who now runs an outlet/podcast called The Hatchet which I really need to check out). The season called ‘Corruption’ is fantastic

yeah the last time I checked out one of their shows was maybe a couple years ago and I was pretty shocked at how bad it had gotten. I was a regular listener once upon a time, but no more.

Suddenly realising most of my podcast lineup is US-based - but here are a few Canadian standouts:

‘Tech Won’t Save Us’ is a fantastic tech-critical podcast;

‘Theory & Philosophy’ is David Guignion, from Montreal(?), doing excellent and accessible explanations of a wide range of thinkers;

‘The Breach Show’ is journalists Desmond Cole and Martin Lukacs talking about Canadian politics from a left perspective.

Edit: Oh, and Front Burner is a relatively listenable CBC politics podcast.

Just curious if you knew that CUPW decided to move to rotating strikes right now precisely so that people who rely on paper bills aren’t unfairly burdened. The union gets it. Maybe we should listen to them more.

I can’t remember where I heard it (maybe on a CBC panel?) but MPs can vote remotely now, like on their phone or whatever. I wasn’t aware of this before, but it does mean that an abstention can no longer be handwaved away.