It’s because there is no nuance anymore. With every issue you have to either be 100% on my side or 100% on the other side. So many times people argue for and against things that aren’t mutually exclusive. It doesn’t mean we should “both sides” everything, but sometimes both sides each have half of a good idea.

Yeah, I imagine if you’re in a city it’s a different story. TransLink has been great every time I’ve used it in Vancouver. Greater Victoria seems to be pretty decent if you’re in the core or you’re near one of the commuter corridors, Nanaimo seems ok but I haven’t used it myself.

I’m in the Cowichan Valley, and like I said all our routes seem to be big loops that go out to all the smaller communities and back to Duncan. The only way I see it being more effective with a similar amount of buses is if there was more of a direct highway route and/or a hub and spoke model. You could then put a local route in each community/ group of communities or even an on demand system if it’s more rural. Obviously that’s based on my area, but I can’t imagine it’s much different in many other small towns and spread out communities.

Honestly I wouldn’t start to use the current transit in my area if it was free. The issue isn’t cost, it’s that the service is stretched so thin it’s only usable as a last resort and your day has to be planned around the schedule. On the rare occasion I can’t use my car I have ended up walking for an hour and a half because it’s more convenient than the bus. I’m just glad I’m not disabled or I’d have to turn some of my outings into overnighters.

I’d rather live in a modern house I could afford to own that happens to look kinda boring than the poorly converted basement of someone else’s boring old house that also looks like every other house on the street.

Why would you assume they’re talking about a foreign election in a country that doesn’t even have a Conservative or Liberal party?

We have our own carbon tax in BC, it has nothing to do with the federal government.

The rest of us really dodged a bullet, look how they treat their own people…

Hold on, you can get an apartment in a major city for under $2000? Is the minimum wage in Quebec $10/hr? I don’t live particularly close to any city and you’d be hard pressed to find anything more than a studio for $1500, you’re looking at close to $2000 for something decent. I wonder how many months it would take to break even after moving costs from BC…

Might-E Trucks are pretty awesome, but I’m definitely not going to be commuting on the TCH in one.

And even if this was one of them, it clearly can’t be that secretive if we’re hearing about it.

Didn’t Harper kind of screw us over by signing FIPA back in 2014? I haven’t heard anything about it but those Chinese EV companies will probably sue us over these tariffs.

If we had vacancy control, we could swing almost every other policy way closer to what the landlords want. There’d be almost no incentive for bad faith evictions, and at the same time the financial impact of having to find a new place to rent would be minimized (if not initially, over time).

Right now we’re so far the opposite way, we have to have all these protections in place. Of course landlords would love to toss their long term tenants to get double or triple rent each month, and at the same time it’s financially ruinous for a tenant to have to suddenly find themselves an extra $1-2000/mo to afford even the cheapest rental on the market.

I’m not sure exactly what your point is, but we do ship a lot of raw logs across the Pacific right now. If China had good logs maybe Japan wouldn’t import them from BC.

Positive pressure hallways/staircases would make a huge impact on the spread of smoke. Smoke would still be an issue if the fire was in the hall itself, but no amount of staircases can help you if you can’t access them. The quote from the Fire Chiefs Association really makes me think we’re using the second staircase to skimp on every other aspect of fire safety.

I was going to agree with you, but I think after reading your points I actually feel the complete opposite. I think if there’s a role for heavy taxation to play it should be on new ICE vehicles, as opposed to on the gas itself. We’re talking about new vehicles here, there are millions of perfectly good used vehicles out there that would fill all the roles you’re talking about. Increasing gas taxes ends up punishing the people who can least afford it. Like the farmers who have to have to haul their equipment hundreds of kilometers between farms, the condo dwellers who aren’t allowed to charge at home, and the renters who can’t afford to install an EV charger, let alone buy a new car. The tax should also go towards making EVs more affordable at the low end (it would be nice to subsidize used EVs but I can see many ways to abuse something like that).

We need to get the percentage of new EVs up today so that tomorrow’s used market is where we want it to be. We can only do that by encouraging those who can afford a new car to pick an EV, not by punishing those who can’t afford a choice.

I think you nailed one of the biggest but least talked about factors in mass adoption. I’d love to get an EV, but the only used ones I could reasonably afford would require daily charging as I’d use well over half a charge per workday and I have nowhere to charge at home or work.

I’ve never seen ads inserted into an infographic before.

Just because a car is cheaper than the average new car doesn’t make it affordable. Lots of people can only afford used cars. I’m not suggesting we need new EVs to compete with used car prices, but we need the prices to come down so that the prices of current used EVs become more affordable and/or these cheaper new EVs become affordable when they’re resold in several years.

Honestly I’m not 100% sure. For context I’m in a much smaller union for a different essential service. Decades ago we (not me personally, I was a kid) were legislated back to work and the arbitrator decided to slip in a binding arbitration clause to our contract. The point is, we aren’t allowed to strike and from my understanding of an illegal strike there could be fines for the union, fines for the members striking, and possibly jail time for union leadership. Obviously they could likely fire everyone with cause, but that would be a terrible decision when they’re already struggling with retention of qualified people. Everyone could decide to quit at the same time, it’s not a strike if you aren’t employed, but that won’t really help anyone, especially if you have specialized skills. In this case you can’t really just go get a job as a railway engineer somewhere else.

Maybe check back with me in 2026, depending if our relationship with management gets better or worse I might have some more relevant first hand experience.

A friend of mine went to get a vasectomy after his second kid was born and the doctor either talked him out of it or refused. He now has a 3rd kid and went to a different doctor.