I trace the collapse in state capacity to the election of the Trudeau Liberals in 2015.
When the Harper government failed to get things done, it often seemed to be the result of concerted political opposition as in the case of pipelines or simply being a minority government facing a hostile but fractured opposition. Oddly, though, most of the Harper government’s accomplishments seem to have occurred during those years of minority government.
During the Trudeau years, there’s been further centralization of decision making in the PMO. Harper era ministers would complain about being given directions by “boys in short pants”, but Trudeau’s ministers largely seem barred from making any decisions. The problem is that the micromanaging PMO hasn’t got the bandwidth for something as big as the federal government. They’re also led by an incompetent PM - great at campaigning, terrible leader and manager.
I understand your jaded expectation that the Poilievre Conservatives will be unable to fix these problems, but I think we need to start by removing the guy who seems most responsible for facilitating the decline since 2015. Get somebody other than Justin Trudeau, and let’s see what happens.
"no one in Canada is against rail" is correct maybe on abstract level. Once the project actually planned, there will be money that needs to be allocated, people living in the area, pro-environmentalist that doesn't want it to run past nature preserve, government bureaucrats, etc.
I for one am happy that High Frequency Rail isn;t getting built, and likely never will. When I was young I worked as a transportation engineer for the federal government. I was involved in three separate studies of High Speed Rain between Toronto and Montreal, and all three showed that the service was uneconomic, even counting all those phantom indirect benefits that consultants and politicians love to point to.
While HFR would be cheaper than HSR, the demand would also be lower. How much lower? I don't know. But I do know that, on the Toronto-Montreal route, end-to-end speed was crucial. That included from and to final origins and destinations. HSR cuts just enough time off the Toronto-Montreal run to make it an attractive alternative to air and private automobile (with its flexibility). I can't imagine how HFR would be attractive enough, absent a huge carbon tax on gasoline AND on aviation fuel.
As for Bill C-63, I suspect that the hate speech provisions are what the government really wants. The measures against child porn and reverse porn, while undoubtedly meritorious on their own, are bundled here for camouflage. I mean, how can a reasonable person oppose these measures? So unbundling would defeat the very purpose of the way the Bill is structured.
If you did a little deeper into HFR, it will make you throw up a little. They've already spent more than a billion dollars, don't have an exact route or a foot of track. They still haven't decided what speed of service they're going to run; it can't be a true HST because they can't have crossing of any kind for obvious reasons, and that becomes a cost roadblock. This is just like Metrolinx.....a bunch of 3P partnerships lining their own pockets while accomplishing next to nothing, with a non-existent building schedule.
VIA was created to fail. No government has put the desperately needed money into it. The Canadian is still using 75 year old cars on a schedule 24 hours longer than it was in 1975 to cross the country. Geography meant Canada's government put its money into air for mass travel. But we've grown, and Toronto-Montreal is HST worthy. But as you've mentioned numerous podcasts ago, we don't do big things anymore. We're too risk averse. HFR might be built by 2050. It will probably have a top speed of 100mph.....but a lot of people will have gotten rich off it.
The NIMBYs will fight the train every single foot. They want it....just not close to them. And then Kingston will complain that they didn't get it, and the political paralysis will continue because these idiots still don't accept that you can't please everyone.
Isn't the biggest problem that Canada is facing is that no one from any party has solutions to the issues in front of us?
Jen and Matt - Tghanks for noting that the results of the byelection are indicative of the trend that is in the polls!
Ah, just so you are aware, there is a s**t load of country that doesn't have rail service and that is outside the golden horseshoe folks. Yes Jen, you live in Calgary but you have an LRT don't you. Would Canadians outside the Totonto Montreal corridor want our tax money to go to the project? How be we build the LNG facilities in jig time to, you know, get some capitalin the country and good jobs for taxes to build - oh I don't know ... train lines??
You haven't gone the one extra step that a lot of us in what passes for the real world have realized long ago - there is no plan for Canada in this government's agenda. We want to virtue signal, fund UNRA and every other two bit initiative in OTHER countries instead of building something here! Trudeau Sr had the Constitution repatriation and then messed that up with Multiculturalism (folks can come to Canada and live in their own little language/culture enclaves instead of becoming Canadians). Mulroney had Free Trade, ended teh manufacturers tax and replaced it with the GST knowing that he would end the Conservative government in the process. Harper had his six things we are going to do in the first mandate then that petered out and what have we had since in regards vision? Cretien lining his pockets and his home town with federal money plus all the other scandals then we have JT sho seems more interested in destroying the country than actually building anything as a legacy project even.
Don't you dare say that Canadians do not support the military either!! There is no will in the government to support the military. Harper ordered the jets and helicopters which were promptly cancelled by, who was it again?? The feds seem to believe that allowing soldiers to die their hair, grow a beard and so on will help recruitment while telling them that they are systematically racist and misogynist.
As to the online harms Bill why defend it by saying that PP will use it to lock up protesters chanting 'from the river to the sea? How bbe you look at how JT used the Emergencies Act to freeze bank accounts of those who held views different than his own - would what he said about the protesters in Ottawa be considered 'hate speech'?
OK, you generated a reaction in my heart Jen and Matt - if that was the point good on ya
As a resident of Ottawa, I know all too well what can happen when the government tries to build a rail line. Yikes! I think we're on our fourth or fifth delay for just the second phase of our broken-since-day-one LRT.
As for HFR, or whatever they're calling it, the end result needs to be affordable for most, otherwise it's just replacing air travel with train travel for the same number of well-monied travelers. An American friend once remarked that Canada has a "transportation problem" - the government doesn't want us to drive, so it heavily taxes fuel. At the same time, a lack of competition due to government involvement (plus taxes, etc) means that flying domestically is typically a four-figure expense. Meanwhile, the cheapest VIA tickets need to be purchased 6 weeks in advance and the system only serves a small portion of the country. And the train is comparatively slow and unreliable.
So, if we're to be a modern country where people leave the city during their lifetime (like people born after 1800), HFR needs to be significantly cheaper than flying. And can it be built for something less than a trillion dollars? I would suggest employing exactly zero Canadian consultants in the execution of this plan. Asian and European brainiacs only, please.
G&G, your larger point in terms of the delays for getting the HFR underway is obviously true. But there was a fair bit of mischaracterization in how Matt described the CURRENT state of the project. I can offer clarity as I work for a company that is part of one of the three consortiums shortlisted to bid on the Request for Proposal issued in Oct 2023.
The last announcement made in Oct 2023 is THE RFP - meaning this is it. The selected consortium will begin to design and construct the HFR based on this RFP (expected this Fall). Note that this RFP includes the evaluation of two primary options - one where trains run with a top speed of 200 kmph, and another where there is no upper limit to the speed. This is a fairly detailed, technical evaluation that will be one (early) part of the overall design/build package. To that extent, the 'route survey' that you refer to is still to be done to accommodate those train speeds. But the key here is that the RFP is not JUST for the route survey. The entire project itself will actually be underway by the end of this year.
But what I do take issue with, however, is Jen labeling the entire group of shortlisted companies as "a cult list of preferred service providers" who would win the project because they have some "connection to someone with the federal govt". Yes, SNC-Lavalin IS one of the companies involved (no association with them) and I make no comments about it. But every company on those consortiums is one of the largest design/ construction companies in North America and are involved in some of the largest infrastructure projects here in Canada. I have personally worked for or with multiple companies on that list and it is quite inappropriate to broadly label them in such a critical manner.
It's the Armageddon!
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The magnetic poles have reversed!
It's the end times!
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I trace the collapse in state capacity to the election of the Trudeau Liberals in 2015.
When the Harper government failed to get things done, it often seemed to be the result of concerted political opposition as in the case of pipelines or simply being a minority government facing a hostile but fractured opposition. Oddly, though, most of the Harper government’s accomplishments seem to have occurred during those years of minority government.
During the Trudeau years, there’s been further centralization of decision making in the PMO. Harper era ministers would complain about being given directions by “boys in short pants”, but Trudeau’s ministers largely seem barred from making any decisions. The problem is that the micromanaging PMO hasn’t got the bandwidth for something as big as the federal government. They’re also led by an incompetent PM - great at campaigning, terrible leader and manager.
I understand your jaded expectation that the Poilievre Conservatives will be unable to fix these problems, but I think we need to start by removing the guy who seems most responsible for facilitating the decline since 2015. Get somebody other than Justin Trudeau, and let’s see what happens.
"no one in Canada is against rail" is correct maybe on abstract level. Once the project actually planned, there will be money that needs to be allocated, people living in the area, pro-environmentalist that doesn't want it to run past nature preserve, government bureaucrats, etc.
I for one am happy that High Frequency Rail isn;t getting built, and likely never will. When I was young I worked as a transportation engineer for the federal government. I was involved in three separate studies of High Speed Rain between Toronto and Montreal, and all three showed that the service was uneconomic, even counting all those phantom indirect benefits that consultants and politicians love to point to.
While HFR would be cheaper than HSR, the demand would also be lower. How much lower? I don't know. But I do know that, on the Toronto-Montreal route, end-to-end speed was crucial. That included from and to final origins and destinations. HSR cuts just enough time off the Toronto-Montreal run to make it an attractive alternative to air and private automobile (with its flexibility). I can't imagine how HFR would be attractive enough, absent a huge carbon tax on gasoline AND on aviation fuel.
As for Bill C-63, I suspect that the hate speech provisions are what the government really wants. The measures against child porn and reverse porn, while undoubtedly meritorious on their own, are bundled here for camouflage. I mean, how can a reasonable person oppose these measures? So unbundling would defeat the very purpose of the way the Bill is structured.
@jengerson: "Assuage?"
@mattgurney: "Ass...Wage"
@jengerson: That's very OnlyFans, Matt!
Now THAT'S funny 🤣
If you did a little deeper into HFR, it will make you throw up a little. They've already spent more than a billion dollars, don't have an exact route or a foot of track. They still haven't decided what speed of service they're going to run; it can't be a true HST because they can't have crossing of any kind for obvious reasons, and that becomes a cost roadblock. This is just like Metrolinx.....a bunch of 3P partnerships lining their own pockets while accomplishing next to nothing, with a non-existent building schedule.
VIA was created to fail. No government has put the desperately needed money into it. The Canadian is still using 75 year old cars on a schedule 24 hours longer than it was in 1975 to cross the country. Geography meant Canada's government put its money into air for mass travel. But we've grown, and Toronto-Montreal is HST worthy. But as you've mentioned numerous podcasts ago, we don't do big things anymore. We're too risk averse. HFR might be built by 2050. It will probably have a top speed of 100mph.....but a lot of people will have gotten rich off it.
The NIMBYs will fight the train every single foot. They want it....just not close to them. And then Kingston will complain that they didn't get it, and the political paralysis will continue because these idiots still don't accept that you can't please everyone.
Isn't the biggest problem that Canada is facing is that no one from any party has solutions to the issues in front of us?
Jen and Matt - Tghanks for noting that the results of the byelection are indicative of the trend that is in the polls!
Ah, just so you are aware, there is a s**t load of country that doesn't have rail service and that is outside the golden horseshoe folks. Yes Jen, you live in Calgary but you have an LRT don't you. Would Canadians outside the Totonto Montreal corridor want our tax money to go to the project? How be we build the LNG facilities in jig time to, you know, get some capitalin the country and good jobs for taxes to build - oh I don't know ... train lines??
You haven't gone the one extra step that a lot of us in what passes for the real world have realized long ago - there is no plan for Canada in this government's agenda. We want to virtue signal, fund UNRA and every other two bit initiative in OTHER countries instead of building something here! Trudeau Sr had the Constitution repatriation and then messed that up with Multiculturalism (folks can come to Canada and live in their own little language/culture enclaves instead of becoming Canadians). Mulroney had Free Trade, ended teh manufacturers tax and replaced it with the GST knowing that he would end the Conservative government in the process. Harper had his six things we are going to do in the first mandate then that petered out and what have we had since in regards vision? Cretien lining his pockets and his home town with federal money plus all the other scandals then we have JT sho seems more interested in destroying the country than actually building anything as a legacy project even.
Don't you dare say that Canadians do not support the military either!! There is no will in the government to support the military. Harper ordered the jets and helicopters which were promptly cancelled by, who was it again?? The feds seem to believe that allowing soldiers to die their hair, grow a beard and so on will help recruitment while telling them that they are systematically racist and misogynist.
As to the online harms Bill why defend it by saying that PP will use it to lock up protesters chanting 'from the river to the sea? How bbe you look at how JT used the Emergencies Act to freeze bank accounts of those who held views different than his own - would what he said about the protesters in Ottawa be considered 'hate speech'?
OK, you generated a reaction in my heart Jen and Matt - if that was the point good on ya
You guys both have young kids. What country would you advise them to emigrate to? Canada's future is grim.
As a resident of Ottawa, I know all too well what can happen when the government tries to build a rail line. Yikes! I think we're on our fourth or fifth delay for just the second phase of our broken-since-day-one LRT.
As for HFR, or whatever they're calling it, the end result needs to be affordable for most, otherwise it's just replacing air travel with train travel for the same number of well-monied travelers. An American friend once remarked that Canada has a "transportation problem" - the government doesn't want us to drive, so it heavily taxes fuel. At the same time, a lack of competition due to government involvement (plus taxes, etc) means that flying domestically is typically a four-figure expense. Meanwhile, the cheapest VIA tickets need to be purchased 6 weeks in advance and the system only serves a small portion of the country. And the train is comparatively slow and unreliable.
So, if we're to be a modern country where people leave the city during their lifetime (like people born after 1800), HFR needs to be significantly cheaper than flying. And can it be built for something less than a trillion dollars? I would suggest employing exactly zero Canadian consultants in the execution of this plan. Asian and European brainiacs only, please.
“The Octopus Economy”. Love the analogy, this one needs to go mainstream.
I would happily pay a year's fees for a poster of Trudeau and the Buzzard. Brilliant!
G&G, your larger point in terms of the delays for getting the HFR underway is obviously true. But there was a fair bit of mischaracterization in how Matt described the CURRENT state of the project. I can offer clarity as I work for a company that is part of one of the three consortiums shortlisted to bid on the Request for Proposal issued in Oct 2023.
The last announcement made in Oct 2023 is THE RFP - meaning this is it. The selected consortium will begin to design and construct the HFR based on this RFP (expected this Fall). Note that this RFP includes the evaluation of two primary options - one where trains run with a top speed of 200 kmph, and another where there is no upper limit to the speed. This is a fairly detailed, technical evaluation that will be one (early) part of the overall design/build package. To that extent, the 'route survey' that you refer to is still to be done to accommodate those train speeds. But the key here is that the RFP is not JUST for the route survey. The entire project itself will actually be underway by the end of this year.
But what I do take issue with, however, is Jen labeling the entire group of shortlisted companies as "a cult list of preferred service providers" who would win the project because they have some "connection to someone with the federal govt". Yes, SNC-Lavalin IS one of the companies involved (no association with them) and I make no comments about it. But every company on those consortiums is one of the largest design/ construction companies in North America and are involved in some of the largest infrastructure projects here in Canada. I have personally worked for or with multiple companies on that list and it is quite inappropriate to broadly label them in such a critical manner.
Just a minor point regarding the practice of Human Rights Tribunals as it relates to screening out frivolous complaints. Yaniv was NOT screened out on a preliminary basis - those cases proceeded to a full hearing on the merits of each - see link to decision. https://www.canlii.org/en/bc/bchrt/doc/2019/2019bchrt222/2019bchrt222.html?autocompleteStr=Yaniv%20&autocompletePos=1&resultId=67e9829560fa48409d6a7254e9652414&searchId=2024-03-08T22:03:43:314/f919a23de29a4ae09a26a92f673f3114
More Stupidity. This time from Chrystia Freeland.
Fantastic rebuttal by QuickDick.
https://twitter.com/QuickDickMcDick/status/1767747680782971325?t=tJ40Vfs8Ou0BeujOiwt8Rg&s=19
Just wanted to throw it out there that I'm totally down with the Line Editors veering into Arts and Culture and posting articles about Dune.