wampus

Still a ton of wiggle room here for the province, which is a bit annoying. Over reliance on products from companies like Microsoft is rampant in the gov -- tons of gov stuff is in US cloud products. While alternatives exist, it's very likely they'll exempt 90% of their entwined supply chains due to 'cost' or other out-clauses in this announcement.

It's vaporware until its commercially available.

Lots of people seem to think it's either or, and it really shouldn't be, in my view. (I'll note I'm canadian, since it seems to matter to some these days).

The argument that foreigners shouldn't be allowed to protest is to me somewhat valid, but with a bunch of reservations. Peaceful protests, publishing op eds, (obviously) University papers, online posts, and other 'regular' forms of expression I'm totally in agreement that they should be allowed to express themselves/participate.

But we've also seen cases in Canada where our immigration levels got so high, that we literally had CCP organized protests in favour of a detained Chinese CCP Billionaire, as well as the tearing down of "peaceful protests"/awareness things in regards to HongKong and the crack down the CCP did there. We've seen large, organized groups of Indian students -- their messages of "go get free food" being amplified by foreign controlled social media -- draining our food banks dry, the loss of that social support helping to fuel class conflicts and increased animosity towards Indian people as a demographic. We've seen 'protests' leveraged by foreign powers to sow discontent and animosity intentionally, and/or to control the narrative around news stories.

And that's really no surprise: one of the stated methodologies of authoritarian regimes, for attacking democracies, is to basically sow civil unrest through the amplification of contested issues/topics. They'll amplify/fund controversial right-wing and left-wing viewpoints in order to cause internal conflict. They'll hype up race conflicts. Like how the majority of people are totally fine saying both "Hamas is bad" and "Israel's genocidal actions in gaza are bad", but somehow it's always framed as just a 2 sided thing where you're on one side or the other, is great for authoritarians: why fight a democracy, when you can make it fight itself. If we're accepting Students/people from authoritarian regimes, we have to be realistic in acknowledging many of these people will share the regimes beliefs, and will be actively working against our governments / peoples. They aren't the stereotypical refugee seeking a better/freer life, but rather people with malicious intentions and a desire to disrupt.

So I'm fine with such people having visas and non-permanent citizenship revoked if the person's involved in criminal activity (violent protests), and/or if they're a primary organizer/instigator/funder of such things, or (as was the case with some 'student' groups in Canada) they're actively coordinating their protests with foreign embassies/agents. I'd also be in favour of increased scrutiny of people from such regions when it comes to long term stays / partial immigration (where they don't renounce their former non-democratic country). Lots of countries also expect singular citizenship, I see no particular issue with western democracies at least requiring that their citizens not support/be registered citizens of authoritarian dictatorships. If you want to live in an egalitarian/democratic country, you shouldn't be supportive of authoritarian autocracies/dictatorships.

And again, similar to the note about 'one side or the other', in terms of free speech, most folks generally recognise that there are some reasonable restrictions / repercussions involved with it. Hate speech, explicitly calling for the killing of some group of people or what have you, clearly not a 'right' for most sane people -- at least, not one that wouldn't come with consequences. In the same way that the left is fine boycotting Musk for his Nazi salutes (he's free to express himself as a Nazi, and other people are free to take issue with that / not support him because of it), foreigners explicitly challenging the existing norms of society should be prepared for potential consequences if they do so in a manner deemed inappropriate.

Appliances.

Yes.

I haven't really spoken to any of my green reps before, in terms of them running for the seat. I have had interactions with my NDP MLA and MP, and have been left thoroughly disappointed with the results.

I don't think a whip position is really that big a deal for a party, until they have enough people elected to make it matter.

So the argument is what, that the white people who had a 'role model' for their kids shouldn't be annoyed that the industry is removing that role model, because race shouldn't matter. But also that race representation matters, and that it's important for other races to have representation by taking over the roles of those figures.

It doesn't upset me, it just doesn't make sense to me. Like I accept that parents want to have positive role models that 'look like' their kids, as it helps kids development. So it makes sense that minority groups want to see themselves represented as such in media, and that they'd celebrate established characters being swapped over to be their race/gender. However, that same line of thinking explains why white people are annoyed that their kids are 'losing' role models that 'look like them'. If you assert that 'race matters' (and I accept that it does for kids), then it seems reasonable to be annoyed that those characters are being 'taken away' for practically the same reason that it seems reasonable for minority groups to be happy to see themselves represented. If race representation matters for the character and kids having positive role models, than its arguably worse to disenfranchise the larger group of kids.

I mean, we're busy watching young guys flock to alpha dumbass influencer bros, in part because there are fewer and fewer positive role models for them to look up to.

In Canada its termed EDI https://www.canada.ca/en/research-coordinating-committee/priorities/equity-diversity-inclusion-research.html

We do see requirements for people to state whether they're an Employment Equity group -- or rather, options to positively identify as an employment equity group so that you can get passed that 'check' on the hiring process. The government of Canada will literally send you a note saying you've been kicked out of the application pool for 'not' identifying as such on their forms, for example. And the only group that isn't an employment equity group, are cis white men. The checkboxes to identify as FN are also "optional", but generally translate into more benefits/privileges in hiring and so on.

The Employment equity act is a derived document that changes the Charter's general assertions in 15(1)(2) into specific groups which, the verbiage of which excludes only cis white men. The Charter says "no discrimination based on race/gender", the EEA says "you can positively discriminate in favour of any group except cis white guys".

No, I'm not surprised in the slightest by either of these, seeing as I've known about these things for decades, and seeing as I've received "You didn't identify as an Equity Employment Group" rejection letters from the federal government in the past.

Scarlet Johansen as the Major in Ghost in the Shell Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One in Dr Strange Controversy around characters like Iron Fist etc

Asian fictional characters often get white washed. Results in protests from minority groups who feel they're being denied representation in their own culture's created artwork, and roles in movies/shows -- just like how replacing caucasian fictional characters results in protests from groups who feel they're having their cultural representation in media suppressed by minority interests. But whatever man. Guess those dont count.

The people who cheer for the replacement of historically caucasian/male gender roles with minority actors/women, are the same people who protest the replacement of historically minority/women roles with caucasian/male actors. And they wonder why there's push back.

Eh, good luck to them. I find it hard to take them seriously at this point, though I've historically voted green in most elections. Their leadership fiasco recently was an absolute embarrassment, and honestly a huge blow against the DEI policies they encourage. Having May there again is also a bit of a flag, as going back to the previous leader who wanted out makes it seem like there's a real lack of leadership options / sustainability in the party's gov structure.

Their candidates are pretty clearly still heavily fringe oriented, with very hard left leaning stances when you read through bios. This time around it seems like my local candidate has very questionable qualifications, basically just being a FN grandmother with five kids of her own at ~45. I don't see how that'd represent me/my interests locally or nationally in the house, especially as a non FN. They're still beating that demographic politics marching drum, but it cuts both ways. You can't realistically put a candidate forward saying they're all about their own demographic interests, and supporting their own demographic slice, without alienating people who aren't part of that slice. Especially if there's no other substance to the candidate.

The party's 'platform'/position on topics isn't really costed out from what I could see on their site. Tons of spending, main thing they seem to note for generating revenue is the ever nebulous 'closing business tax loop holes' type thing. They seem to imply they're going to create redundancies in some areas of gov, whole new agencies, make good on every costly suggestion of the MMIWG, and on and on. Feels hollow to me, especially seeing where the markets are currently.

Top that off with some of their positions being a bit vague, and potentially really authoritarian. Like saying they're going to make online sites subject to the same regulation as publishers in regards to hate speech etc. Suddenly community forums like Lemmy would potentially be liable for anything anyone writes, if that's implemented the way it's described. And as a far left party, they'd uphold the most restrictive/authoritarian definitions of what constitutes hate speech I'm sure.

Saying we should have a Canadian made EV isn't saying we should priortize cars. It's a relatively marginal item, with low relative cost, that the guy is saying we shouldn't do. Saying we shouldn't do a low cost marginal thing, and should instead focus on spending huge amounts to re-orient city infrastructure so that bikes become the primary mode of transit, is a far bigger / more complex / more costly shift -- and one that he argues should be made at the cost of relatively small changes in the existing industry. If you aren't bothering to weed your garden (a low cost task to maintain your theoretical personal green space), because someone convinced you to build a trebuchet in your backyard because its a far more interesting thing to do than weed your garden, you've abandoned your garden. If in order to build that trebuchet, it needs to have large building materials strewn all over your yard, crushing your existing bushes, you've definitely given up on having that garden.

And if you get frustrated and abandon that trebuchet project part way, your garden is just toast. Prolly would've been better off just weeding it.