Please allow me to present to you a day in the life of a civil servant today. I wake up and don't commute. I read and read and read. I then present proposals and input to my directors on what I'm reading and listening to help make such and such economic sector more productive, efficient and supported. I am then told that I can't use certain words, that the proposal is not possible and would never make it past other departments, and that what we need to focus on is whether the sector is diverse and fighting climate change. I then spend more hours in diversity and inclusion meetings, and then doing an end run around them to report their clear promotion of partisan activities. I then go back to reading to provide more examples and more evidence at how bad things are getting in said sector, and prepare more policy proposals to turn the ship around.
If you're referring to the Federal HR parasites attached to every department, DEI has been their mantra for the last 30 years and basically white males without a disability were told to take a hike right on the initial application page for not fitting into one or more of four categories. Luckily for me as it turns out... I am in the excluded class and never vaulted the wall into the federal employee enclave. Some of my friends did and believe it or not made significant contributions to environmental science, but personal experience with fine organizations like "service canada" and everyone's favourite predator "the cra" confirms the general impressions of the 99% of us who support these folks during and beyond their mostly lacklustre careers.
Yet the civil service still deems a large percentage of jobs to require fluency in both official languages. So DEI for virtue signalling, Laurentian insularity in practice.
The only cure the CBC needs is to be completely removed from any mandatory tax payer provided government funding, converted into a subscriber based voluntarily funded public broadcaster (assuming there are any subscribers willing to pay for it) and moved into the obscurity and irrelevance it so richly deserves.
I will never be in favour of defunding a government media. Look only to the sea of misinformation that comes from "for-profit" media in the US. CBC needs to be fixed not killed.
1) any media organization that depends on government funding is conflicted as it will be motivated to sustain that funding
2) government funding one organization in a competitive market confers an unfair advantage. The Canadian media market is failing and government money only makes unwinding the failure more complex
That would involve actual accountability by both the viewers and the providers of the CBC. One is too cheap and would rather the state pay for their subscription instead of themselves, the other fears even PBS levels of accountability because they know they are just mailing it in and are 3rd rate at what they do.
Regarding infrastructure deficits, I will simply say as a Mayor of a mid-sized city in Ontario - you don’t know the half of it yet. Happy to discuss if you’re ever interested.
As someone who is intimately aware of the government contracting scene in Canada, I can emphatically say that municipal is the (I'll say it) sketchiest level of government out of the four, if you include indigenous self government. So much small town monkey business. Out of the provinces, believe it or not, the Atlantic and Ontario are now sketchier than Quebec on the procurement side.
As someone who was recently working in the civil service (3 days in office each week in the last few months) and now hoping to get back in, I do agree that the union leadership came across as self-unaware and overly-righteous in response to the government's announced policy of a coming 3-day in-office per week work minimum.
That being said, there are other professions that have been permanently changed by the pandemic, as implied by your own work from home. The government itself does not claim that there is evidence that more in-person work is going to increase the productivity of the public service, and the potential for such improvement is limited by the current workplace format of most civil servants not being assigned to specific cubicles (i.e. not necessarily sitting within reach of co-workers). We can expect that the in-office work increase would worsen Ottawa's traffic congestion.
My own view is that the civil service should have more space for low-paying and low-skill jobs, given the predisposition of the civil service to over-representing middle-class and upper-class Canadians in its staffing.
As a recently retired civil servant (and a victim of Phoenix!) I hear you and Tony both. But the civil service is incapable of being fixed, as it is doubly hamstrung by (1) union ethos that requires “one size fits all” solutions (work conditions should be specific to the work, but members are inclined to be envious of “privileges” extended to others even if they are not applicable elsewhere), and (2) a senior civil service management cadre that has spent its entire career rise to the top “broadening” its experience without ever holding a specific accountable position for more than a year or two at most. Pile all the DIE crap on top, and I don’t see any easy resolution, you are doomed.
100% agree with your remarks on unions. I fear they will ultimately bankrupt my own province (Quebec). They seem to run everything here and show little interest in anything outside of their own desire for power.
The rot always starts from the top. It's the middle managers and directors of the federal civil service who know their stuff and who keep it all together.
I agree, the nature of work has changed. I should not be on the road gumming it up for plumbers and builders just so I can read and chit chat with colleagues in a different building. But the union has so over reacted, that they have effectively destroyed any argument about efficiency and well being. Shame on them.
Accountability ensures everyone is pulling their weight, which helps ensure team members can trust each other's. Trust is essential if a team is to reach its full potential.
This also enables trust with all stakeholders in the process, something I highly suspect is an issue within the civil service between different working groups and ministries.
This is why directors are so key, they lead the day to day operations of both public and private organizations. (The deputy ministers enable them by playing defence and offence with the top brass)
Ensuring that "everyone is pulling their weight" seems to be nothing different than promoting general productivity. The government does not claim that there is evidence that the new rule is going to help that.
No, unions want to obfuscate the purpose of the civil service and want to imply that the work exists to serve the interests of its workers. All discussions of productivity are discussions of the quality of the service of the bureaucracy relative to money invested.
The civil service should be productive, and maybe requiring a 3-day in-office minimum would help with that. But the government at this time has not claimed to have evidence that it will contribute to productivity.
Across the private sector, management has been working to get people back into the office because they've observed a decline in productivity and problems in organizational culture.
What has happened to private sector employees who have resisted the return to the office? The audacity of public sector privilege continues to both surprise and disgust.
Because the podcast isn’t paywalled. Content behind the paywall won’t be sold for ads (as of our current plan). Stuff that’s available to everyone may have ads so that we can monetize the freebies.
It is possible, with Substack, to do a separate feed for paid subscribers with an add-free version of the podcast.
For some of us, avoiding ads is even more of a draw than accessing additional written content (as there is already too much good content out there on the Internet to read in a day, anyway). I understand the economics for adding ads to the podcast, but not giving an ad-free option seems like burning subscriber goodwill.
I suggest considering doing a ad-free subscribers’ feed. After a couple weeks of running ads on the default feed, it may even increase your overall subscriber base as previous free listeners join up just to avoid ads.
also, the 'like & subscribe' tag line is repeated SO many times now that it often feels like an ad. I do like. I do subscribe. I do pay (since sept 2021 - with a brief unsubscribe when you stopped comments)
Ha, I take the “like & subscribe”s as a wry in-joke, as in “who wouldn’t want more delightful content like this? [while talking about something horribly depressing]”.
Some audio podcasts use a short sound cue to clearly indicate switching from the editorial content to the advertisements and another cue to indicate switching back. This is especially important when an advertisement is read by the same person presenting the editorial content. In this weekend's podcast, the difference was fairly clear, but I could imagine a paid advertisement for a political party where the cue would be essential to avoid misinterpretation.
If, as suggested by another commenter, someone is preparing a separate ad-free version for paid subscribers, the cues could be inserted for one version at the same time the ad is removed for the other, since the audio file needs to be positioned to the same point for both processes.
Fair enough, you do you. I will do what I want with my money and those are things I actively avoid now. I value my time and attention more than that.
As Matt said, it’s a business decision. I think it’s a bad one. Perhaps I’m unique. Perhaps not.
I think they’d be wise to run two separate feeds as other publications do. And not just to make me happy.
It’s because an ad free feed gives people a compelling reason to pay for a subscription. Or they could give the milk away for free and maybe the ads make it worthwhile.
A public broadcaster is valuable when there is a surfeit and plethora of news and opinion as well as when there are (as there was historically) deficits in these areas. Canada's media ecology is healthier than the American one in certain respects, and the CBC is a positive factor as well as a negative one. An aspect of this is that Canada 's smaller size makes it easier for the public broadcaster to influence standards: The current media ecology in the United States has allowed extreme and false conspiracy theories to become normalized, with disturbing implications for the legitimacy of political and civic institutions. https://theconversation.com/size-doesnt-matter-a-small-population-may-enhance-canadas-media-and-its-democracy-193878
Healthier? Isn't the mark of a healthy media one that is financially not on the government payroll?
Other than The Hub, Blacklock's, The Line (amd friends like Glavin, Ling, etc.) and Western Standard the media in Canada is on the PMO payroll which is pathetic. If Jesse Brown would stop beclowning himself trying to be friends with those who want him and his ethnic group dead, perhaps he could join that list.
We're past that. You can't win elections telling people they have to give things up. They all bought votes by offering programs paid for with borrowed money, and the voters are frankly, too stupid to see where things have gone. In Utopia, the government should excel at the things it's supposed to do. But status quo doesn't get people to vote for you. We're past the tipping point of sanity.....although it would be really interesting to have a leader of any party come out and tell the truth. Come out and say we're doing what we're doing because the oil will be gone by 2060, so change is coming whether you like it or not as an example. There are probably multiple levels of middle management in the civil service that could be cut tomorrow, and all that would happen to the workforce is moral would improve. On a normal day, they can likely all work without any supervision at all, and the work will get done.
The "made in Canada" solution has been an albatross on the country going back to the 1980's; probably a lot longer, that got us garbage like the LRC for VIA. It's still a massive roadblock to accomplishing anything. And it won't change.
We're not getting good results from civil service any more than we're getting good value for the dollar on all the 3P projects that governments say are essential. Take Metrolinx for example; billions spent, and nothing useful to show for it. Don't get me started on the disaster they are to moving passenger trains in Southern Ontario(they are responsible for half of VIA's daily delays despite the millions they've spent).
The country is broken. The big problem is that no one from any political party has the faintest frigging idea what to do about it.
The country is broken because the Feds have taxation powers far in excess of their constitutional jurisdiction. The Federal order of government deflects accountability within its actual jurisdiction through excursions into provincial jurisdiction and by conjuring new programs. The solution will be a Federal government focused on criminal justice, defence, security, international trade, immigration, Indigenous relations and enforcing absolute mobility of people, goods, services and capital within Canada's borders. This would entail retreat from health and education and significant transfer of taxation power to the Provinces.
I'll be as polite as I can be, and then I am leaving this conversation. In numerous comments to date, you have shown your self to be nothing more than a Conservative apologist. They are never responsible for the deficits they're run; so what if Harper inherited a surplus, and never balanced once. Ditto Mulroney. Once you've been in power for 4 years, you've had time to clean up the last guys mess. If you haven't, it's because you chose not to. Have a nice day.
Harper left an almost balanced budget, in spite of the curve ball of the oil crash. That is fact, not apology. So is the binary truth that Harper inherited a well running government and passed one on to his successor.
When it all dies, where do I get news? Not opinion, but news? Journalism - real Journalism - like we understood it in the before times? I love opinion but there is no grounding for it without some understanding of reported facts.
Its honestly much easier to think of the infrastructure deficit this way: When was the last time you changed the water in your water tank? Changed the anode rod? Vacuumed the back of the fridge? That's an infrastructure deficit.
Also, I can't help but notice that the water infrastructure is in much better shape. It just so happens to have a service fee.
Municipal water service also user pay and pay per use in most jurisdictions in Canada.
Municipal water and waster water service is the absolute most important aspect of health care, more important than our vaunted Medicare, yet on a user pay model and providing superior value and service quality. Medicare being "free" in the name of equality and anti-American othering and signalling, yet mediocre across the board.
There is a lesson to be learned here.
(and yes, I know Quebec has "free" municipal water service, in the name of "solidarity" "equality" and other French philosophical justifications of group over individual accountability. I'll just note that Quebec has scandalous level of water waste and untreated waste water)
If it keeps The Line profitable, go with God. The ones in the middle are the most annoying. I get why they're there, I just hope you're charging at least 5x the price for a "middle" spot vs. a "beginning" spot.
It’s a bad one. Pissing off a paying customer EVERY single week isn’t good. This isn’t something you do once, we get annoyed and then it’s in the past. You’re doing this every week. We will get continually reminded that you are pushing unwanted advertising despite us paying a monthly fee.
We'll lose some paid subscribers. We don't like this, but we know it's inevitable. It's an unavoidable feature in our line of work. Every decision — what to run, what not to run, what features to add, which to subtract — all land differently with our audience. We wish there was a way to run the business that was all upside, all the time. If such a way exists, we've yet to find it, so we're left making the best calls we can in line with our needs and priorities and hoping our truest fans trust our judgment and value our content enough to stick with us even when they don't love every call we make.
I’m sure you know your business better than I do, but it seems to me that simply NOT splicing in the bit where you read the ad and running a separate feed with the original for paid subscribers would be the better option. It’s a pretty obvious incentive for non-paying subscribers as well.
Like I said, I’m sure you know your business better than I do, but don’t underestimate the irrational undying hatred some of us have for advertising and how much we’ll pay to avoid it.
A couple of thoughts after listening to this podcast:
1) I experienced a great deal of schadenfreude regarding the Phoenix pay system. This was a government IT project run by the federal civil service concerning *their paycheques*, and they still botched the execution and suffered the consequences. They wouldn't rise to the challenge when it directly involved their own self-interest.
2) Are we sure that the political malaise described in this podcast isn't a product of Ontario and Toronto political culture? For all the problems I can describe in BC provincial politics and the municipalities of the Lower Mainland, they don't seem to approach the dysfunction of Toronto and Ontario. It's also notable that much of the current Liberal federal government is drawn from Ontario, and a lot of the politicians and staff came from the McGuinty government.
I'm willing to be the really issue the public service returning to office is all about take home pay. An employee can only deduct home office expenses when they spend the majority of their working hour in their home office. Going back to the office removes this deduction. The loss of this deduction would likely mean a reduction in take home pay of thousands of dollars...let alone a discussion about clothing expenses, childcare etc or heaven forbid moonlighting??
Employees also can only deduct it if the home office is “required by the employer”. Most public service employees only qualified during the pandemic proper, when they were not allowed to go into the office.
Most have not been eligible for the deduction for the past 2 years, because their work from home situation has been optional. (Some might still be claiming it, but they’re risking an CRA audit because they don’t qualify.)
However, I would agree that commuting costs, etc., are a big consideration. Gas and parking in the downtown core (of any city) is increasingly expensive. Not to mention, very environmentally unfriendly.
AI to the rescue? There is some reason to hope that future technological change will actually reduce costs, especially in the health sector. Security and civil infrastructure as well.
Please allow me to present to you a day in the life of a civil servant today. I wake up and don't commute. I read and read and read. I then present proposals and input to my directors on what I'm reading and listening to help make such and such economic sector more productive, efficient and supported. I am then told that I can't use certain words, that the proposal is not possible and would never make it past other departments, and that what we need to focus on is whether the sector is diverse and fighting climate change. I then spend more hours in diversity and inclusion meetings, and then doing an end run around them to report their clear promotion of partisan activities. I then go back to reading to provide more examples and more evidence at how bad things are getting in said sector, and prepare more policy proposals to turn the ship around.
I hope Canada will follow the trend away from DEI we're seeing across the west.
If you're referring to the Federal HR parasites attached to every department, DEI has been their mantra for the last 30 years and basically white males without a disability were told to take a hike right on the initial application page for not fitting into one or more of four categories. Luckily for me as it turns out... I am in the excluded class and never vaulted the wall into the federal employee enclave. Some of my friends did and believe it or not made significant contributions to environmental science, but personal experience with fine organizations like "service canada" and everyone's favourite predator "the cra" confirms the general impressions of the 99% of us who support these folks during and beyond their mostly lacklustre careers.
Yet the civil service still deems a large percentage of jobs to require fluency in both official languages. So DEI for virtue signalling, Laurentian insularity in practice.
Forgot to mention: check the count-down timer to risk-free retirement income
Nah, that's for people who have no meaning in their lives.
I had two gov jobs like that in the last 40 years. I quit and made an honest living.
It's honest to work for the Crown, if those who do so understand their role. Many don't, and that's not honest.
The only cure the CBC needs is to be completely removed from any mandatory tax payer provided government funding, converted into a subscriber based voluntarily funded public broadcaster (assuming there are any subscribers willing to pay for it) and moved into the obscurity and irrelevance it so richly deserves.
I will never be in favour of defunding a government media. Look only to the sea of misinformation that comes from "for-profit" media in the US. CBC needs to be fixed not killed.
How can it be fixed?
1) any media organization that depends on government funding is conflicted as it will be motivated to sustain that funding
2) government funding one organization in a competitive market confers an unfair advantage. The Canadian media market is failing and government money only makes unwinding the failure more complex
That would involve actual accountability by both the viewers and the providers of the CBC. One is too cheap and would rather the state pay for their subscription instead of themselves, the other fears even PBS levels of accountability because they know they are just mailing it in and are 3rd rate at what they do.
Regarding infrastructure deficits, I will simply say as a Mayor of a mid-sized city in Ontario - you don’t know the half of it yet. Happy to discuss if you’re ever interested.
As someone who is intimately aware of the government contracting scene in Canada, I can emphatically say that municipal is the (I'll say it) sketchiest level of government out of the four, if you include indigenous self government. So much small town monkey business. Out of the provinces, believe it or not, the Atlantic and Ontario are now sketchier than Quebec on the procurement side.
Where would that conversation be? You're on to something here YH.
As someone who was recently working in the civil service (3 days in office each week in the last few months) and now hoping to get back in, I do agree that the union leadership came across as self-unaware and overly-righteous in response to the government's announced policy of a coming 3-day in-office per week work minimum.
That being said, there are other professions that have been permanently changed by the pandemic, as implied by your own work from home. The government itself does not claim that there is evidence that more in-person work is going to increase the productivity of the public service, and the potential for such improvement is limited by the current workplace format of most civil servants not being assigned to specific cubicles (i.e. not necessarily sitting within reach of co-workers). We can expect that the in-office work increase would worsen Ottawa's traffic congestion.
My own view is that the civil service should have more space for low-paying and low-skill jobs, given the predisposition of the civil service to over-representing middle-class and upper-class Canadians in its staffing.
As a recently retired civil servant (and a victim of Phoenix!) I hear you and Tony both. But the civil service is incapable of being fixed, as it is doubly hamstrung by (1) union ethos that requires “one size fits all” solutions (work conditions should be specific to the work, but members are inclined to be envious of “privileges” extended to others even if they are not applicable elsewhere), and (2) a senior civil service management cadre that has spent its entire career rise to the top “broadening” its experience without ever holding a specific accountable position for more than a year or two at most. Pile all the DIE crap on top, and I don’t see any easy resolution, you are doomed.
100% agree with your remarks on unions. I fear they will ultimately bankrupt my own province (Quebec). They seem to run everything here and show little interest in anything outside of their own desire for power.
The rot always starts from the top. It's the middle managers and directors of the federal civil service who know their stuff and who keep it all together.
I agree, the nature of work has changed. I should not be on the road gumming it up for plumbers and builders just so I can read and chit chat with colleagues in a different building. But the union has so over reacted, that they have effectively destroyed any argument about efficiency and well being. Shame on them.
There is plenty of evidence that civil service productivity has declined. That may or may not be due to WFH.
The union is attempting a power play now as the clock is ticking down to the start of The Purge.
If not productivity, what about at least increased accountability?
Also, can you call it a profession if it is unionized? Professional denotes a certain level of autonomy and management.
Some professions in fact have explicit bans on union membership in some provinces, such as engineers.
How is "accountability" different from productivity?
Accountability ensures everyone is pulling their weight, which helps ensure team members can trust each other's. Trust is essential if a team is to reach its full potential.
This also enables trust with all stakeholders in the process, something I highly suspect is an issue within the civil service between different working groups and ministries.
This is why directors are so key, they lead the day to day operations of both public and private organizations. (The deputy ministers enable them by playing defence and offence with the top brass)
Ensuring that "everyone is pulling their weight" seems to be nothing different than promoting general productivity. The government does not claim that there is evidence that the new rule is going to help that.
Obfuscating productivity and accountability sounds like a union tactic.
No, unions want to obfuscate the purpose of the civil service and want to imply that the work exists to serve the interests of its workers. All discussions of productivity are discussions of the quality of the service of the bureaucracy relative to money invested.
The civil service should be productive, and maybe requiring a 3-day in-office minimum would help with that. But the government at this time has not claimed to have evidence that it will contribute to productivity.
Across the private sector, management has been working to get people back into the office because they've observed a decline in productivity and problems in organizational culture.
What has happened to private sector employees who have resisted the return to the office? The audacity of public sector privilege continues to both surprise and disgust.
I’m a paid subscriber, why am I hearing these ads?
Because the podcast isn’t paywalled. Content behind the paywall won’t be sold for ads (as of our current plan). Stuff that’s available to everyone may have ads so that we can monetize the freebies.
It is possible, with Substack, to do a separate feed for paid subscribers with an add-free version of the podcast.
For some of us, avoiding ads is even more of a draw than accessing additional written content (as there is already too much good content out there on the Internet to read in a day, anyway). I understand the economics for adding ads to the podcast, but not giving an ad-free option seems like burning subscriber goodwill.
I suggest considering doing a ad-free subscribers’ feed. After a couple weeks of running ads on the default feed, it may even increase your overall subscriber base as previous free listeners join up just to avoid ads.
also, the 'like & subscribe' tag line is repeated SO many times now that it often feels like an ad. I do like. I do subscribe. I do pay (since sept 2021 - with a brief unsubscribe when you stopped comments)
Ha, I take the “like & subscribe”s as a wry in-joke, as in “who wouldn’t want more delightful content like this? [while talking about something horribly depressing]”.
Some audio podcasts use a short sound cue to clearly indicate switching from the editorial content to the advertisements and another cue to indicate switching back. This is especially important when an advertisement is read by the same person presenting the editorial content. In this weekend's podcast, the difference was fairly clear, but I could imagine a paid advertisement for a political party where the cue would be essential to avoid misinterpretation.
If, as suggested by another commenter, someone is preparing a separate ad-free version for paid subscribers, the cues could be inserted for one version at the same time the ad is removed for the other, since the audio file needs to be positioned to the same point for both processes.
I get that it might take a little bit of time to roll out a separate feed, but ads for paid subscribers is not okay.
If the rates need to go up I can make my decision then, but I loathe ads and to not having them at all is a big part of the value for me.
So when will those be gone?
Good grief. Ever subscribe to a newspaper? A magazine? Watch cable TV? Ads for paid subscribers is NORMAL
Fair enough, you do you. I will do what I want with my money and those are things I actively avoid now. I value my time and attention more than that.
As Matt said, it’s a business decision. I think it’s a bad one. Perhaps I’m unique. Perhaps not.
I think they’d be wise to run two separate feeds as other publications do. And not just to make me happy.
It’s because an ad free feed gives people a compelling reason to pay for a subscription. Or they could give the milk away for free and maybe the ads make it worthwhile.
A public broadcaster is valuable when there is a surfeit and plethora of news and opinion as well as when there are (as there was historically) deficits in these areas. Canada's media ecology is healthier than the American one in certain respects, and the CBC is a positive factor as well as a negative one. An aspect of this is that Canada 's smaller size makes it easier for the public broadcaster to influence standards: The current media ecology in the United States has allowed extreme and false conspiracy theories to become normalized, with disturbing implications for the legitimacy of political and civic institutions. https://theconversation.com/size-doesnt-matter-a-small-population-may-enhance-canadas-media-and-its-democracy-193878
Healthier? Isn't the mark of a healthy media one that is financially not on the government payroll?
Other than The Hub, Blacklock's, The Line (amd friends like Glavin, Ling, etc.) and Western Standard the media in Canada is on the PMO payroll which is pathetic. If Jesse Brown would stop beclowning himself trying to be friends with those who want him and his ethnic group dead, perhaps he could join that list.
That's it though from what I know.
Really? American media has far more varied (I'm intentionally not using the word "diverse") points of view.
We're past that. You can't win elections telling people they have to give things up. They all bought votes by offering programs paid for with borrowed money, and the voters are frankly, too stupid to see where things have gone. In Utopia, the government should excel at the things it's supposed to do. But status quo doesn't get people to vote for you. We're past the tipping point of sanity.....although it would be really interesting to have a leader of any party come out and tell the truth. Come out and say we're doing what we're doing because the oil will be gone by 2060, so change is coming whether you like it or not as an example. There are probably multiple levels of middle management in the civil service that could be cut tomorrow, and all that would happen to the workforce is moral would improve. On a normal day, they can likely all work without any supervision at all, and the work will get done.
The "made in Canada" solution has been an albatross on the country going back to the 1980's; probably a lot longer, that got us garbage like the LRC for VIA. It's still a massive roadblock to accomplishing anything. And it won't change.
We're not getting good results from civil service any more than we're getting good value for the dollar on all the 3P projects that governments say are essential. Take Metrolinx for example; billions spent, and nothing useful to show for it. Don't get me started on the disaster they are to moving passenger trains in Southern Ontario(they are responsible for half of VIA's daily delays despite the millions they've spent).
The country is broken. The big problem is that no one from any political party has the faintest frigging idea what to do about it.
The country is broken because the Feds have taxation powers far in excess of their constitutional jurisdiction. The Federal order of government deflects accountability within its actual jurisdiction through excursions into provincial jurisdiction and by conjuring new programs. The solution will be a Federal government focused on criminal justice, defence, security, international trade, immigration, Indigenous relations and enforcing absolute mobility of people, goods, services and capital within Canada's borders. This would entail retreat from health and education and significant transfer of taxation power to the Provinces.
I'll be as polite as I can be, and then I am leaving this conversation. In numerous comments to date, you have shown your self to be nothing more than a Conservative apologist. They are never responsible for the deficits they're run; so what if Harper inherited a surplus, and never balanced once. Ditto Mulroney. Once you've been in power for 4 years, you've had time to clean up the last guys mess. If you haven't, it's because you chose not to. Have a nice day.
Harper left an almost balanced budget, in spite of the curve ball of the oil crash. That is fact, not apology. So is the binary truth that Harper inherited a well running government and passed one on to his successor.
Hello,
When it all dies, where do I get news? Not opinion, but news? Journalism - real Journalism - like we understood it in the before times? I love opinion but there is no grounding for it without some understanding of reported facts.
SO you think that the American media landscape is healthier, because it is more responsive to the marketplace, capable of greater economies of scale, and comparatively less dependent upon public subsidy? Then you won't agree with my article in the Conversation: https://theconversation.com/size-doesnt-matter-a-small-population-may-enhance-canadas-media-and-its-democracy-193878
Its honestly much easier to think of the infrastructure deficit this way: When was the last time you changed the water in your water tank? Changed the anode rod? Vacuumed the back of the fridge? That's an infrastructure deficit.
Also, I can't help but notice that the water infrastructure is in much better shape. It just so happens to have a service fee.
Municipal water service also user pay and pay per use in most jurisdictions in Canada.
Municipal water and waster water service is the absolute most important aspect of health care, more important than our vaunted Medicare, yet on a user pay model and providing superior value and service quality. Medicare being "free" in the name of equality and anti-American othering and signalling, yet mediocre across the board.
There is a lesson to be learned here.
(and yes, I know Quebec has "free" municipal water service, in the name of "solidarity" "equality" and other French philosophical justifications of group over individual accountability. I'll just note that Quebec has scandalous level of water waste and untreated waste water)
Since when do you start putting advertising on your podcasts.
Podcast bandwidth is much pricier than text. Having an ad or two is not outrageous.
I am a paid subscriber too. And I am untroubled by the minor interruptions of your "ad experiment".
I am also a paid subscriber, and I find it extremely irritating. Not to mention that acting as a shill significantly reduces your credibility.
It’s a business decision. We are aware it won’t be universally popular. We hope/expect the benefit will exceed any losses.
If it keeps The Line profitable, go with God. The ones in the middle are the most annoying. I get why they're there, I just hope you're charging at least 5x the price for a "middle" spot vs. a "beginning" spot.
It’s a bad one. Pissing off a paying customer EVERY single week isn’t good. This isn’t something you do once, we get annoyed and then it’s in the past. You’re doing this every week. We will get continually reminded that you are pushing unwanted advertising despite us paying a monthly fee.
We'll lose some paid subscribers. We don't like this, but we know it's inevitable. It's an unavoidable feature in our line of work. Every decision — what to run, what not to run, what features to add, which to subtract — all land differently with our audience. We wish there was a way to run the business that was all upside, all the time. If such a way exists, we've yet to find it, so we're left making the best calls we can in line with our needs and priorities and hoping our truest fans trust our judgment and value our content enough to stick with us even when they don't love every call we make.
Can you offer ad-free version of podcasts at a higher membership level?
I’m sure you know your business better than I do, but it seems to me that simply NOT splicing in the bit where you read the ad and running a separate feed with the original for paid subscribers would be the better option. It’s a pretty obvious incentive for non-paying subscribers as well.
Like I said, I’m sure you know your business better than I do, but don’t underestimate the irrational undying hatred some of us have for advertising and how much we’ll pay to avoid it.
Good luck with that. I hope you sell a lot of Garden Weasels.
Thank you.
Hey now!
Where’s the written version of this dispatch
This is addressed, literally in bold text, in the second paragraph of the above.
Yeah ok got me Matt .
You needed a long weekend, too!
A couple of thoughts after listening to this podcast:
1) I experienced a great deal of schadenfreude regarding the Phoenix pay system. This was a government IT project run by the federal civil service concerning *their paycheques*, and they still botched the execution and suffered the consequences. They wouldn't rise to the challenge when it directly involved their own self-interest.
2) Are we sure that the political malaise described in this podcast isn't a product of Ontario and Toronto political culture? For all the problems I can describe in BC provincial politics and the municipalities of the Lower Mainland, they don't seem to approach the dysfunction of Toronto and Ontario. It's also notable that much of the current Liberal federal government is drawn from Ontario, and a lot of the politicians and staff came from the McGuinty government.
I'm willing to be the really issue the public service returning to office is all about take home pay. An employee can only deduct home office expenses when they spend the majority of their working hour in their home office. Going back to the office removes this deduction. The loss of this deduction would likely mean a reduction in take home pay of thousands of dollars...let alone a discussion about clothing expenses, childcare etc or heaven forbid moonlighting??
Employees also can only deduct it if the home office is “required by the employer”. Most public service employees only qualified during the pandemic proper, when they were not allowed to go into the office.
Most have not been eligible for the deduction for the past 2 years, because their work from home situation has been optional. (Some might still be claiming it, but they’re risking an CRA audit because they don’t qualify.)
However, I would agree that commuting costs, etc., are a big consideration. Gas and parking in the downtown core (of any city) is increasingly expensive. Not to mention, very environmentally unfriendly.
AI to the rescue? There is some reason to hope that future technological change will actually reduce costs, especially in the health sector. Security and civil infrastructure as well.