Jen and Matt, this was entertaining though my dogs ears are ringing from the F bombs but I've stated my thoughts onthat one before.
I have to say that the whole 'we have decided not to build more roads and then the 'that's not what I sad' which shifted to 'I was misquoted' then 'I was taken out of context' followed by 'perhaps I should have been more clear' and should have ended 'you guys are so mean!!' SG is the gift that just keeps on giving!
Charlie Angus - you can write him off all you want and most are BUT did you think for a second that that he is angling for the disatisfied Liberals (who are sick of JT) and trying to woo them to the NDP as opposed to staying home or (the horror!!) voting CPC? I will not take credit for that idea as I heard it on Northern Perspective just after it hit the air waves. Take your time and think about it and it makes sense, granted in a twisted sort of way, but what better way to show that the NDP will take up the environment flag and march it forward?
You are bang on about the current LPC party not knowing how to govern or even deal with more than one or two issues at a time but a lot of us saw that from the first year in office. Spoiler alert - I actually THOUGHT that JT just might be able to bring a new way of governing to Canada. I didn't vote for him but was prepared to see what he could do (like I had a choice). Even my better half, sho has a photo with Trudeau senior has come to the dark side and will vote CPC in the next election because she is impressed with PP, his policies and his spouse.
I suspect that the current government doesn't admit errors because - wait for it - they are of the generation that was never responsible. It was the teacher's fault if they did poorly in a class, everyone got a participation medal, everyone was 'special' and so on. I actually laughed when JT blmaed Harper for the increase in car theft because he cut funding for police - you can't make this stuff up folks!!
Oh, jsut a note - you two and Blacklocks are not the only news outlets that are not government funded. How about True North, the afore mentioned Northern Perspectives or even Rebel News ... oh right those are more conservative leaning commentatiors so don't count but thanks for the shout out to Blacklocks!
Happy Family day weekend to those of you who have Monday off!
Setting aside the fact it rankles every libertarian bone in my body to even consider the possibility (the cartels should be destroyed rather than having their ill-gotten gains funneled to the legacy media) the suggestion that we take a billion dollars from the cartels and hand it to the "legacy media" still overlooks an insurmountable practical obstacle: who will ever be trusted enough by the population to decide how to allocate those funds?
G&G have themselves made the point repeatedly that you simply can't have government doling out cash like that (and their own integrity on this point is to be admired). This is an obvious point which even many of those who take the cash must be aware. And every time PP eviscerates another reporter the way he did that CP reporter this week it further drives home the point to the public - and this is so regardless of whether PP's substantive claim is correct in a given case. Much like "justice must both be done and be seen to be done", the media must at least appear to be able to stake a legitimate claim to total independence from the government. You can't be sorta' dead or sorta' pregnant and you can't be sorta' independent from the government - if you're sorta' independent you're essentially Pravda. You just are.
It may be time to face the reality that there simply is no solution to this particular problem and focus on other problems - like demolishing all the cartels in this Country.
So this episode has made me do something that I really didn’t think I would do, which is offer a semi-defense of the Liberals (yes, I’ve slightly puked in my mouth writing this).
The suburbs are not financially sustainable. The density is too low to pay for the infrastructure required [1,2]. Furthermore, most of our major cities are at their Marchetti limit when it comes to commuting by car, and rail infrastructure is a great way to bypass that (no, I won’t rant here about construction costs - read Alon Levy).
Now, this doesn’t mean that we all need to live in Hong Kong style apartments- we can densify by living in townhomes and walk up apartments. That would not only reduce congestion as people take more transit, but also make our cities more financially sustainable. Nor does it mean that we need to stop building roads to First Nations communities or rural resource development sites (we need both!). But as it comes to cities, the urbanists are correct.
Matt’s complaint about how suburban bus stops are bad suffers from a lack of reflection - suburban transit sucks because it’s hard to provide transit when density is low. [3]
Furthermore, the Line doesn’t seem to understand that road building for suburban access is an unwinnable game. Houston has massive freeways and still has horrible rush hour congestion. Why? Induced demand [4]. Especially if we take Jen’s suggestion that all the immigrants will live into the sprawlburbs - enjoy Houston or Jakarta level traffic.
Parting comment: it’s disappointing to hear the standard “we are a large country so sprawl baby” from a podcast that’s usually quite smart. Yes, we are the 2nd largest country on the planet, but most of the landmass is marginally habitable at best and if you look at a map of population density, it’s very concentrated along the US border. People aren’t going to flock to Nunavut to build giant suburbs.
Or is he saying no more big road projects as a thinly veiled message to Doug Ford, and his highways to create donor cash plans? It's equally clear they haven't figured out how to mesh protecting the environment with Canada's economic needs; a massive tug-of-war.
There is no excuse for a lack of judges. Period. Deliverology? Again?
I still believe any pro-Palestine/ pro-Israel protest happening in Canada is a complete and total waste of time and energy. No one in a position to address the ongoing calamity could give a rats ass about these "whine-a-thons". They serve no purpose except to piss people off. If you want to protest anything, go to the place where it's actually happening, or shut up. But stay away from the hospitals FFS.....you may need them one day.
A big thank-you to Jen for putting into words the pervasive class blindness of this federal government. The lifestyle bubble at the heart of each and every "great" idea that emerges from the PMO and various ministers drives me nuts - the overbearing micromanagement of the average Canadian's life is like something out of a silly dystopian comedy. May as well release pamphlets titled "In Our Image" to sell these policies.
As for Guilbeault, his vision of Canada's future might earn high-fives from patchouli-scented downtown activists and aging, overvalued home-owning, NDP-voting retirees, but the average working-age voter in Brandon, Bathurst, Truro, and Swift Current will demand a salary increase of 100% from the feds to fund their transition into a downtown Toronto/Montreal lifestyle.
Same reason Minister Joly is in the Cabinet, they are popular in Quebec & that’s all that counts - the only place where the Liberals can keep a few sticks of furniture!
The 2 election strategy Jen describes for the NDP to become the opposition and a potential government is basically what was happening pre-Trudeau and pre-2015. The Liberals were steadily declining election after election, and the NDP won official opposition status thanks to the Orange Crush in Quebec in 2011. Then Justin Trudeau came along, stole the NDP’s traditional progressive positions to sweep to victory in 2015 while the NDP tried to look sensible and moderate. In the subsequent years, the NDP completely lost its mind and tossed away its credibility, and the federal Liberals decided nature had healed itself and returned the Natural Governing Party to its rightful place.
I’d guess that the Liberals will return to their previous trajectory after Trudeau. There’s just nothing *there* to that party after having molded itself into a Trudeau personality cult. The raison d’etre for the Liberals was they were the route to power for ambitious people. They lost a generation of those ambitious people between the Chretien-Martin civil war, the decade of decline during the Harper government, and Trudeau’s purge of anybody who looks like a challenger. They’d need to mold themselves around another charismatic leader, and we don’t have those kinds of people in Canadian politics.
The NDP has its own problem in that they don’t know who they are, and don’t seem ready to handle the transition from activist protest party to responsible people holding power. The only successful NDP governments in Canada have been sensibly moderate Western ones. Jack Layton and Tom Mulcair tried to lead them that way, but the core of their federal cadre are the activists whose approach wins them the safe seats for the NDP. Jagmeet Singh certainly isn’t going to be the transformative leader they need.
I’m guessing what we’re going to get is something like Ontario: a somewhat shambolic Conservative government that can win mainly because the opposition parties are shattered and disorganized. That buys time for the Liberals to search for another messianic savior leader, and perhaps avoid total collapse because of the ineptness of the NDP.
Congratulations on another provocative edition. Given the assassination of Navalny, I am interested in what plans conservatives have under Poilievre (nee Harper, Roman) for protecting Canada when Trump destroys NATO and our North becomes ripe for invasion. Could Matt write something about our vulnerability and the need to stand up to Russia?
Jen was talking about airwaves, but AM / FM radio is pretty much financially f'd. For TV, providing terrestrial signals via ATSC (digital) broadcast are mandated. This is a cost that the media companies would rather jettison, given the economics of streaming. ATSC is not spectrum that is profitable to broadcasters, unlike 5G.
Bell, Rogers, Corus, etc. are bound by the Broadcasting Act, and are subject to CRTC regs, but what's stopping them from going totally OTT with their content rights (a la Netflix) and circumventing the Act altogether? Broadcast + PayTV users < YouTube.
I think that there is a clear argument for why the logic of banning cigarette advertising cannot be applied to the logic for banning fossil fuel advertising. Even in its heyday smoking has never been a universal behaviour in human society in the way that fossil fuel consumption is. It is easily possible to live a full day of one’s live without consciously thinking for even a split-second about smoking products, whereas 99.99% of us are interacting with a fossil fuel product every single day. And while fossil fuel companies have at times manipulated societal climate change knowledge, their advertising does not really manipulate the end user against their own self-interest – the worst victims of fossil fuels are those who consume the least of it, whereas the worst abusers of fossil fuels will not forget about the products’ existence in the face of an ad ban.
Keep an eye out for whether the Ontario Liberals bring back policy conventions. The party isolating itself from policy feedback from its grassroots for more than a decade has been an obvious factor in its correlating decade of disappointments. If the party does not bring those conventions back (I am personally an activist but cynical party member on this file), then I expect the Ontario Liberals to get a similar result the next time around despite the quality Leader.
Jen and Matt, this was entertaining though my dogs ears are ringing from the F bombs but I've stated my thoughts onthat one before.
I have to say that the whole 'we have decided not to build more roads and then the 'that's not what I sad' which shifted to 'I was misquoted' then 'I was taken out of context' followed by 'perhaps I should have been more clear' and should have ended 'you guys are so mean!!' SG is the gift that just keeps on giving!
Charlie Angus - you can write him off all you want and most are BUT did you think for a second that that he is angling for the disatisfied Liberals (who are sick of JT) and trying to woo them to the NDP as opposed to staying home or (the horror!!) voting CPC? I will not take credit for that idea as I heard it on Northern Perspective just after it hit the air waves. Take your time and think about it and it makes sense, granted in a twisted sort of way, but what better way to show that the NDP will take up the environment flag and march it forward?
You are bang on about the current LPC party not knowing how to govern or even deal with more than one or two issues at a time but a lot of us saw that from the first year in office. Spoiler alert - I actually THOUGHT that JT just might be able to bring a new way of governing to Canada. I didn't vote for him but was prepared to see what he could do (like I had a choice). Even my better half, sho has a photo with Trudeau senior has come to the dark side and will vote CPC in the next election because she is impressed with PP, his policies and his spouse.
I suspect that the current government doesn't admit errors because - wait for it - they are of the generation that was never responsible. It was the teacher's fault if they did poorly in a class, everyone got a participation medal, everyone was 'special' and so on. I actually laughed when JT blmaed Harper for the increase in car theft because he cut funding for police - you can't make this stuff up folks!!
Oh, jsut a note - you two and Blacklocks are not the only news outlets that are not government funded. How about True North, the afore mentioned Northern Perspectives or even Rebel News ... oh right those are more conservative leaning commentatiors so don't count but thanks for the shout out to Blacklocks!
Happy Family day weekend to those of you who have Monday off!
Setting aside the fact it rankles every libertarian bone in my body to even consider the possibility (the cartels should be destroyed rather than having their ill-gotten gains funneled to the legacy media) the suggestion that we take a billion dollars from the cartels and hand it to the "legacy media" still overlooks an insurmountable practical obstacle: who will ever be trusted enough by the population to decide how to allocate those funds?
G&G have themselves made the point repeatedly that you simply can't have government doling out cash like that (and their own integrity on this point is to be admired). This is an obvious point which even many of those who take the cash must be aware. And every time PP eviscerates another reporter the way he did that CP reporter this week it further drives home the point to the public - and this is so regardless of whether PP's substantive claim is correct in a given case. Much like "justice must both be done and be seen to be done", the media must at least appear to be able to stake a legitimate claim to total independence from the government. You can't be sorta' dead or sorta' pregnant and you can't be sorta' independent from the government - if you're sorta' independent you're essentially Pravda. You just are.
It may be time to face the reality that there simply is no solution to this particular problem and focus on other problems - like demolishing all the cartels in this Country.
Absolutely enjoyed every minute of this. Finally I could laugh at the blatant stupidity, thank you.
Thanks for the Fuck Yous. They were the best part of my day.
Cheers.
Loved that your transcript software printed "transit-dense community" as "transcendent community". If only, eh?
I ALWAYS like The Line and I subscribed oh, way back when, and you - very sensibly - keep hitting my credit card so my subscription is evergreen, no?
Anyway, I absolutely want to attend the April 19 even so please hit the old credit card once more and then tell me when and where.
Great podcast. April 19. Damn. Only a two hour drive for me but I will be on a beach in the British Virgin Islands. Count on me next time. I’m fun!!!
So this episode has made me do something that I really didn’t think I would do, which is offer a semi-defense of the Liberals (yes, I’ve slightly puked in my mouth writing this).
The suburbs are not financially sustainable. The density is too low to pay for the infrastructure required [1,2]. Furthermore, most of our major cities are at their Marchetti limit when it comes to commuting by car, and rail infrastructure is a great way to bypass that (no, I won’t rant here about construction costs - read Alon Levy).
Now, this doesn’t mean that we all need to live in Hong Kong style apartments- we can densify by living in townhomes and walk up apartments. That would not only reduce congestion as people take more transit, but also make our cities more financially sustainable. Nor does it mean that we need to stop building roads to First Nations communities or rural resource development sites (we need both!). But as it comes to cities, the urbanists are correct.
Matt’s complaint about how suburban bus stops are bad suffers from a lack of reflection - suburban transit sucks because it’s hard to provide transit when density is low. [3]
Furthermore, the Line doesn’t seem to understand that road building for suburban access is an unwinnable game. Houston has massive freeways and still has horrible rush hour congestion. Why? Induced demand [4]. Especially if we take Jen’s suggestion that all the immigrants will live into the sprawlburbs - enjoy Houston or Jakarta level traffic.
Parting comment: it’s disappointing to hear the standard “we are a large country so sprawl baby” from a podcast that’s usually quite smart. Yes, we are the 2nd largest country on the planet, but most of the landmass is marginally habitable at best and if you look at a map of population density, it’s very concentrated along the US border. People aren’t going to flock to Nunavut to build giant suburbs.
[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money
[2] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2023/7/6/stop-subsidizing-suburban-development-charge-it-what-it-costs
https://www.ft.com/content/dca3f034-bfe8-4f21-bcdc-2b274053f0b5
[3] https://humantransit.org/basics/the-transit-ridership-recipe
[4] https://www.wired.com/2014/06/wuwt-traffic-induced-demand/
Or is he saying no more big road projects as a thinly veiled message to Doug Ford, and his highways to create donor cash plans? It's equally clear they haven't figured out how to mesh protecting the environment with Canada's economic needs; a massive tug-of-war.
There is no excuse for a lack of judges. Period. Deliverology? Again?
I still believe any pro-Palestine/ pro-Israel protest happening in Canada is a complete and total waste of time and energy. No one in a position to address the ongoing calamity could give a rats ass about these "whine-a-thons". They serve no purpose except to piss people off. If you want to protest anything, go to the place where it's actually happening, or shut up. But stay away from the hospitals FFS.....you may need them one day.
Another delightful listen.
A big thank-you to Jen for putting into words the pervasive class blindness of this federal government. The lifestyle bubble at the heart of each and every "great" idea that emerges from the PMO and various ministers drives me nuts - the overbearing micromanagement of the average Canadian's life is like something out of a silly dystopian comedy. May as well release pamphlets titled "In Our Image" to sell these policies.
As for Guilbeault, his vision of Canada's future might earn high-fives from patchouli-scented downtown activists and aging, overvalued home-owning, NDP-voting retirees, but the average working-age voter in Brandon, Bathurst, Truro, and Swift Current will demand a salary increase of 100% from the feds to fund their transition into a downtown Toronto/Montreal lifestyle.
Same reason Minister Joly is in the Cabinet, they are popular in Quebec & that’s all that counts - the only place where the Liberals can keep a few sticks of furniture!
The 2 election strategy Jen describes for the NDP to become the opposition and a potential government is basically what was happening pre-Trudeau and pre-2015. The Liberals were steadily declining election after election, and the NDP won official opposition status thanks to the Orange Crush in Quebec in 2011. Then Justin Trudeau came along, stole the NDP’s traditional progressive positions to sweep to victory in 2015 while the NDP tried to look sensible and moderate. In the subsequent years, the NDP completely lost its mind and tossed away its credibility, and the federal Liberals decided nature had healed itself and returned the Natural Governing Party to its rightful place.
I’d guess that the Liberals will return to their previous trajectory after Trudeau. There’s just nothing *there* to that party after having molded itself into a Trudeau personality cult. The raison d’etre for the Liberals was they were the route to power for ambitious people. They lost a generation of those ambitious people between the Chretien-Martin civil war, the decade of decline during the Harper government, and Trudeau’s purge of anybody who looks like a challenger. They’d need to mold themselves around another charismatic leader, and we don’t have those kinds of people in Canadian politics.
The NDP has its own problem in that they don’t know who they are, and don’t seem ready to handle the transition from activist protest party to responsible people holding power. The only successful NDP governments in Canada have been sensibly moderate Western ones. Jack Layton and Tom Mulcair tried to lead them that way, but the core of their federal cadre are the activists whose approach wins them the safe seats for the NDP. Jagmeet Singh certainly isn’t going to be the transformative leader they need.
I’m guessing what we’re going to get is something like Ontario: a somewhat shambolic Conservative government that can win mainly because the opposition parties are shattered and disorganized. That buys time for the Liberals to search for another messianic savior leader, and perhaps avoid total collapse because of the ineptness of the NDP.
Congratulations on another provocative edition. Given the assassination of Navalny, I am interested in what plans conservatives have under Poilievre (nee Harper, Roman) for protecting Canada when Trump destroys NATO and our North becomes ripe for invasion. Could Matt write something about our vulnerability and the need to stand up to Russia?
Jen was talking about airwaves, but AM / FM radio is pretty much financially f'd. For TV, providing terrestrial signals via ATSC (digital) broadcast are mandated. This is a cost that the media companies would rather jettison, given the economics of streaming. ATSC is not spectrum that is profitable to broadcasters, unlike 5G.
Bell, Rogers, Corus, etc. are bound by the Broadcasting Act, and are subject to CRTC regs, but what's stopping them from going totally OTT with their content rights (a la Netflix) and circumventing the Act altogether? Broadcast + PayTV users < YouTube.
I think that there is a clear argument for why the logic of banning cigarette advertising cannot be applied to the logic for banning fossil fuel advertising. Even in its heyday smoking has never been a universal behaviour in human society in the way that fossil fuel consumption is. It is easily possible to live a full day of one’s live without consciously thinking for even a split-second about smoking products, whereas 99.99% of us are interacting with a fossil fuel product every single day. And while fossil fuel companies have at times manipulated societal climate change knowledge, their advertising does not really manipulate the end user against their own self-interest – the worst victims of fossil fuels are those who consume the least of it, whereas the worst abusers of fossil fuels will not forget about the products’ existence in the face of an ad ban.
Keep an eye out for whether the Ontario Liberals bring back policy conventions. The party isolating itself from policy feedback from its grassroots for more than a decade has been an obvious factor in its correlating decade of disappointments. If the party does not bring those conventions back (I am personally an activist but cynical party member on this file), then I expect the Ontario Liberals to get a similar result the next time around despite the quality Leader.
The Macedonian onager is easier on the environment than the trebuchet.