Dearche

I think there's a Spanish one being deployed to be EU's Starlink, not to mention the ones in Japan for their domestic usage, and China and Russia making their own.

Frankly, nothing is going to stop mass deployment of satellites, and aside from meterologists and astronomers, few really have a strong argument against them. Putting up a few thousand more satellites won't make space any less accessible if you spend two seconds to realize just how huge space is. I mean, it's like saying that a thousand car parking lot is running out of space because you dumped tens of thousands of grains of sand.

This is excluding the 100 million contract the Ontario government has with Starlink, which Ford (the premier) has said was going to cancel upon the initial announcement of tariffs, then withdrew when the tariffs didn't happen, but then never mentioned ever again despite tariff after tariff being applied to Canada, and especially Ontario considering that this province is the one hit hardest by both the metals and auto tariffs over any other province as far as I know.

Basically Ontario is hit the hardest by the actually applied tariffs, and yet our premier is giving public enemy #2 100 million in taxpayer dollars for a service that can mostly be fulfilled by local companies already.

Very minor feel-good pledge. Makes me wonder how much it'll actually cost the government, though I suppose it's probably very little.

Makes a great sound byte, though I wonder how many people will actually take up their offer. I think if they add some tourism features like more busses and tour guides, along with some nature-related activities, we could get some serious traffic to these parks. Though admittedly I'd then worry about the negative impacts so many people would have towards these parks.

Unfortunately this isn't illegal on any counts. It's slimy and corrupt behaviour, but it's not illegal, so there's no point in even trying to investigate.

That said, this is an election, so making people more aware of behaviour like this is far better than making the authorities spend their time on a red herring.

PP is already scared of the media and people talking about the Conservatives. That's why he's the only candidate that doesn't allow the media onto his plane, know his plans beforehand, nor even answer their questions (As of a few days ago, Carney answered over 100 media questions after his speeches, while PP barely answered 20).

Make PP's power base know that this is the sort of stuff that their candidate is doing, and make them ask themselves, is this really in their best interest? Only through self reflection will the hardcore Conservative voters actually think about voting to their interests rather than instinctively voting Cons because that's the way things go.

To be honest, quite a few people've been saying this for the last half century or so, even including a few prime ministers. But saying that they were right all along ignores all the benefits we've been getting this entire time by integrating our economy with the US's. We don't know what sort of position we would've been in if we avoided NAFTA and other trade agreements with the US.

Maybe the same thing would've happened anyways, just that we'd be in an even weaker position due to a lack of economic growth. Or maybe we would've had tighter relations with the EU instead, making Trump a minor bump rather than a national crisis.

But we can't know, because we don't know that timeline. It might've been better, but it also might've been worse, and dwelling on it is useless pandering. We need to reorient our current economy to minimize damages and diversify as fast as possible. And only once we're through this crisis, we can look back and figure out what lessons can be learned from this whole ordeal, not wish that things went a different way.

This is what I don't get about Alberta. They've always been talking about the oil sands and exploiting their resources, yet why are they always satisfied with simply pumping and piping? Why has there never been a voice for making local refineries so that they can jack up the prices of their tar sands? Why have they been satisfied being used like a third world country when they're always being compared to Texas, that has most of the US's refineries. Why are they happy feeding Texan refineries instead of selling refined products to the entire world at several times the current prices?

Hell, not only raising export prices, but adding a massive number of local jobs as well, instead of giving away such easy jobs to a foreign country? It's not like you need an army of university graduates to operate a a refinery. Most of the jobs there only require a slightly higher level of education as for the tar sands.

Just New York, Hawaii, and Alaska. They can keep the rest.

Foreign Aid is the single cheapest and easiest way to make overseas allies, and it's by a massive margin. People might say "who cares about having a country like Congo back you up" but the forget that for the cost of a single overseas military deployment every few decades, we can step up onto any issue and say "we've got this list of fifty country that say they've got our backs on this world issue".

It's some of the best money we spend, and it amounts to almost nothing compared to the national budget. Basically a rounding error.

But it seems like some people are so determined to cut every single form of government spending that he doesn't realize that doing so will turn Canada from a top tier and well respected country into a poorly regarded third world country.

No wonder since he's playing off of Trump's playbook.

I haven't heard specifics, but it entirely depends on where it is. A lot of US national parks are literally in the middle of nowhere, so if there isn't any accessible roads to them, the entire idea is pointless. No logging company will make the trip offroad since doing so will be most costly than the logging areas they already use.

Exactly. Canada isn't some third world country who's ability is capped at only selling the most basic of commodities at low prices.

We're not only in the top 10% most educated, skilled, and industrialized nations of the world, but also our financial power means that it's impossible to compete solely on resource if third world competitors get their shit together.

Hell, we're at the point that industrial production is only barely profitable due to the education level and power of our currency. Canada needs to keep pushing the upper side of profitable markets, which is the service industry, as we become less and less competitive in the raw commodities market year by year.

Not to mention that there's a high chance that we've already hit peak oil, so that entire sector is going to dwindle over the next few decades. And even if it hasn't, all the pushes towards non-carbon based energy means that fewer and fewer sectors are reliant on oil every year, making peak an inevitability.

It's best to presume that anything done won't satisfy him, but instead to give him just enough that he can claim some sort of victory and walk away from the entire issue. Just flatter him and tell him that the increased NATO spending is all because of him, despite the fact that in reality is has nothing to do with him or even the US.

Then do what's best for the rest of NATO, presuming that the US won't be helping, and may even hinder at inopportune times.

In other words, he's gonna follow the DOGE playbook. No surprise when he spent so much of last year ranting about cutting everything he can in the government. All public spending gone, and in its place will be the exploitation of raw resources.

PP is oil and minerals first, everything else a distant second.