We may be facing an era in which Donald Trump is president of the U.S. and Pierre Poilievre is PM of Canada – with the environmental and human damage that will follow.
We can hope not, but we may have to deal with it.
Given this, what would be the best place to put personal and, if we have them, financial efforts?
CBC puts a hint of editorial disapproval in the headline Quebec slashes assistance for part-time French courses, launches ad campaign to promote French. Yes, it’s another attempt to quash “Bonjour‑Hi”.
Perhaps we should go back to the recommended “Bonjour ho”
The OSM took delivery of the first four of a carillon soon to number ten bells. They will be featured in a symphony performance this week.
In tangential news, attendance at cultural venues in Quebec has never bounced back from the pandemic.
Didn’t read the article but a few ideas spring to mind: lots of older cultural consumers are now dead or sick, lots of group activities were stopped and never restarted, increasingly easy to be entertained at home, inflation made everyone poor.
I used to go to more cultural events than I do now.
I guess there are a lot of reasons. I don’t currently live near the city centre. My health isn’t as good as it used to be. And of course, even if many people want to ignore it, Covid is still around.
I feel bad about it, as I’m a musician myself, and I’d like to support the arts more.
Though I recently tried to see if there were any tickets to the OSM’s performance of Gurrelieder, but it was all sold out. So I guess that’s one good thing.
I echo Marc and Emily’s thoughts on this. I used to go to more events before Covid but my social and financial bandwidth just isn’t the same anymore.
My colleagues are going to see Hans Zimmer tonight and those tickets were quite pricey….
The Bloc’s Louis-Philippe Sauvé has won the LaSalle‑Émard‑Verdun byelection.
Genuinely shocked but it was a really tight race. 8884 votes BQ. 8636 Liberal. 8262 NDP.
Yes, I didn’t expect the Bloc to have such traction in that part of town. Till now, their only Montreal riding has been Pointe de l’Île at the far eastern tip of the island.
I am honestly starting to feel like the CBC is in the bag for the Conservatives. Locally, they had an interview with Katy O’Malley who was nuanced in her analysis, recognizing that fatigue with the Liberals was only part of the many factors that led to the outcome of this race. Then the national news comes on calling it a sickening gut punch for Trudeau or something like that. And then check the language in the CBC article “stunning blow”, “devastating”. They just make up a narrative and then reinforce it themselves. For these elections, people vote very locally and David Lametti stepping down opened up the race right from the beginning. There is nothing surprising let alone stunning that this was a close race, nor is it some damning indictment of the Liberals. It was a local byelection with mutliple factors at play.
Liikewise for the NDP victoria, CBC reporter said something like “The NDP are happy with the result but worried for the seat in a general election against the surging national tide of the conservatives.”
There are poll numbers, that’s it. There is no surging conservative tide. People are tired of the Liberals, Trudeau has been effectively and erroneously maligned by Conservative (and external propaganda) but this is not some conservative victory wave.
Sage words, walkerp.
Just saw the winner doing a one-man victory parade down Wellington street in his blue suit. I wonder if he’s just walking back and forth hoping somebody congratulates him?
This result isn’t that surprising. The Bloq won the old Verdun riding after the sponsorship scandal tanked the LIberals, splitting the federalist vote. They were then replaced by the NDP when the progressive vote coalesced around Layton. The progressive soft sovereigntist vote could have put the NDP over the top but with Singh as the leader, those people seem to stick with the Bloq as their identity issues trump their progressivism. Which is bad for the NDP in Quebec in the next general election but not exactly new news.
Whatever other nuance one wishes to put on it, the new riding with the Lasalle portion should be a stronger Liberal riding than the old Verdun one, so this result mostly has to be attributed to the Liberal vote not being willing to show up in a byelection. It’s hard to explain them being this unmotivated unless they’re themselves somewhat tired of Trudeau, probably not helped by his team parachuting in a candidate. In a general election, I think enough Liberal voters would probably show up for them to take this riding back, but if they’re that weak here where the Conservatives aren’t a factor, the results elsewhere could be ugly.
Sure, there’s no surging conservative tide, but the polling is showing that the people who swing between voting Liberal and Conservative are in a voting Conservative mood and if that holds until election day, the Conservatives will top the Liberals.
It’s not complicated. Everyone is sick of Trudeau.
We were sick of Harper after a decade and now we’re sick of the current guy after a decade. Barely matters who he is.
I would also wager that the Palestinian flag could have easily cost Sauve a few hundred votes. The pro-Palestinian side would likely vote NDG anyway, but those not passionate about the cause could be put off by him visibly taking sides like that. Hamas runs Palestine, and, rightly or wrongly, some see that flag as representing that crowd.
There’s probably not too many national conclusions that can be drawn from a by-election where it seemed like everyone had their door knocked on multiple times and three parties ran full-scale get-out-the-vote efforts, and there were still only 600 votes separating the three top candidates. Hold the same vote next week and you might get a completely reversed set of results. A few points though:
I wouldn’t underestimate the Conservatives in the western part of that riding. It won’t be enough to win, but they could pull significant votes from the Liberals.
It’s a shame for the NDP that Craig Sauvé didn’t get in, because he would have been very hard to dislodge once he’d been able to work with the population on a daily basis as the incumbent.
The Bloc had a high-floor, low-ceiling opportunity that they made the most of. Like nau said, they aren’t able to win when one of the other parties gets some momentum, but in this case they knew exactly who their voters were and found just enough of them.
Finally, both in the media and in people I spoke to, there was a real sense among Francophones that it’s harder to live life in French. It’s not just a media/nationalist politician thing.
Tim S., that final paragraph is very interesting! Could you elaborate on it a bit? Are they feeling like services/commerce/other stuff are becoming more anglicized and they are feeling excluded? Are they seeing it locally or is this across Quebec?
PS: from what I understand, there were no all-candidate events in this by-election. I think that’s a big problem, because voters should have the chance to see candidates interact with each other and answer possibly unfriendly questions. It’s also worrying that we’re seeing a complete erosion of the kinds of community groups who would usually organize these events. Who knows, maybe it’s up to the Weblog to become the new Lions Club or something!
Walkerp: I can’t give you large sample sizes, and probably there are actual readers here who could comment better than I. But something that came up was French at work – it only takes one English-speaker for a whole meeting to take switch to English. Which, yep, I’ve observed that many times.
I strongly second Tim’s comment about debates. There should be an easy way to see the candidates interact outside their party bubble.
It’s obviously unknowable, but I wonder if combination of a ballot with dozens of candidate options + two of three contenders having the same last name cause any kind of meaningful confusion. I know the ballot identifies the party but it’s conceivable that some people got mixed up.
The NDG Community Council organized a debate for the by-election here last year after Garneau stepped down. It was a lively discussion…but the Liberals and Conservatives didn’t even bother showing. :/
I’m hoping the Liberals are leaving Trudeau in place as a punching bag and as the federal elections near (and as the conservatives lose steam in their attacks), they`ll swap Trudeay out for a new, more appealing leader. It`s not only the conservativs that can copy the playbook from south of the border.
@Chris
“Hamas runs Palestine” uh, no. Hamas runs Gaza. The West Bank has an entirely different government. Hamas has only controlled Gaza since 2007. It’s kind of a big deal.
Even Israel justifies its illegal settlements and recent incursions in the West Bank on Hezbollah (who are not the government anywhere, and based in Lebanon & Iran, but I digress).
Then again you only have to look as far as the Golan Heights to know Israel’s position on colonial occupation.
@nau sadly, as long as Singh is in charge of the NDP there’s very little chance of them making any real incursions in Quebec. Let’s not forget that under current QC law a man with a turban wouldn’t be allowed to be a teacher let alone sit at the “National” Assembly.
Maja Vodanovic, water czar on the city’s executive committee, says people will have to give up living in basements or treating the basement as part of their living space, as the climate changes.
The mayor is appealing to Quebec to review its disaster compensation program so people whose property was damaged by Debby can get some help. But I fear that Quebec will be as unmoved by Montreal’s plea in this area as it has been in others.
Also, in a bad housing shortage, considering disqualifying all basement apartments is a serious matter. I wonder how many people live in that kind of space, all over town.
Vodanovic is on to something. Either we try to pre-emptively adapt to the reality that we are going to get more frequent ‘once-in-a-whatever’ storms that overwhelm the weak points in our infrastructure, or we do nothing and we will continue to be even less ready the next time a storm hits. What good is a basement apartment if it floods twice a year (like the example in the story)?
There should be a way of differentiating between situations likely to reoccur and not. Or is there no difference in risk between a house in a bit of a bowl and something on an incline in Rosemont?
Ramsay, this came out right around the time of your post: https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/grand-montreal/2024-09-17/zones-a-risque-d-inondation/pas-de-logements-au-sous-sol-des-nouvelles-constructions-dans-certains-secteurs-de-ville-marie.php
In short, yes – it’s not a blanket situation. I can’t explain the mayor’s last sentence:
« Par exemple dans le Centre-Sud, dans le coin de la rue Parthenais, il y a beaucoup d’inondations, alors on a décidé comme arrondissement de peaufiner les règlements pour les nouvelles constructions en zones susceptibles d’être inondées, où on ne permettra pas de nouveaux logements dans les sous-sols. J’appelle ça faire de l’acupuncture », a expliqué la mairesse de Montréal, Valérie Plante, mardi matin en point de presse. Mme Plante est aussi la mairesse de l’arrondissement de Ville-Marie.
We reached a record temperature Monday. That’s from CBC radio news and Reddit. Link(s) to come.
We’re also eyeing 29° for Tuesday.
I wondered why I was feeling sick today. Air Quality Index supposed to be crap until Friday dawn, too.
I woke up this morning with a sore throat and feeling a bit off. I was outside most of the day yesterday. I wonder if the air quality explains it.
Sunday I was also feeling sore throaty, hoped I wasn’t catching something, but I was OK. Didn’t think to check the air quality.
Have been tracking the air quality closely during this droughtish, still-air, summer-like spell, partly because I go on a 30-50 km bike ride a couple of times a week and partly because I suspected we might be under one of those heat domes that always see smog levels rising. But it’s not a typical heat dome and air pollution levels have been relatively low.
Right now, IQAir has air pollution as moderate across the GMA with a couple of spots of green (good). EnviroCan’s Info-smog forecast has us at 2 (low risk) today and tomorrow. And it’s been like this every time I’ve checked in the last couple of weeks.
Despite what the reporting websites say pollen is pretty rough right now, punching right through my Cetirizine force-field.
Quebec has announced an ante of $4.2 million for Montreal’s homeless, focused particularly on those with psychiatric problems.
Feels like we’ve been talking about this byelection for a long time. The LaSalle‑Emard‑Verdun vote finally happens Monday, although the 91‑name ballot may slow down the final count.
Updating to add: Steve Faguy reports “Elections Canada had to make special rules so that additional ballot boxes could be used when the regular ones fill up with these monstrosities.” He also has a photo of the real, massive ballot in the same X thread.
Just got back from voting. The ballot is indeed quite something. To fit all those names, it’s about 2.5 feet long!
Were the boxes bigger, or were there more per table?
The Gazette headline on the story says “Elections Canada hopes 91‑name Montreal byelection ballots will be counted by midnight.”
I saw a photo of the ballot which showed two columns (and it was still very long).
Steve Faguy posted a sample of how it would look.
I don’t know why some activists think that the best way to make a point is to inconvenience people. Why not block a bridge at rush hour? So entirely counter-productive.
Good link, MarcG.
@jeather, the boxes are the same. But the lady there told me they had way more boxes than usual to fit all ballots.
“Nearly seven in 10 of academics surveyed”. But let’s look closer. Total survey size was 120. The survey was paid for by Social Change Lab, and they made up the list of “experts” (https://www.socialchangelab.org/_files/ugd/503ba4_8c5aafc9708a405988c8d9e6801345f2.pdf). The survey’s design is not scientific – e.g., the choices to label tactics were “not important” and then five levels of important. Any academic should be able to see the problems here.
Anyways, when it comes to effectiveness for the climate movement, 29% said targeting the public is counterproductive, and 48% said targeting things like galleries and sporting events were. 65% agreed that “Disruptive animal advocacy protests cause a backfire effect”. For animal rights, only 12% agreed that “Protests with no clear logic are likely to have overall positive outcomes.” (No clear logic meaning no direct tie to the issue – clear logic e.g., animal rights activists disrupting a meat packing plant versus animal rights activists disrupting a sporting event). 71% said that “Targeting less related venues” is counterproductive, and 53% said the same of “Targeting the public”.
So they are not so unequivocal as the rather dishonest headline would suggest. Actually, looking at it again, the headline is patently false, and misrepresents what the article is reporting on. Not a surprise for the Guardian. The reporter counts on the fact that no one reads the actual polls or studies. maybe the reporter didn’t read this one.
Other materials from the Social Change Lab tend to show that disruptive and/or violent tactics do not work. They get you attention, not results. Although, for a lot of activists merely being the center of attention is the result they are looking for. It is narcissism couched in terms of “public awareness”. The public is aware of you, and now that they are aware of you, they do not like you.
But a poll by YouGov (also mentioned in that article) of 1708 people found that “A large majority of Britons – including six in ten protesters – say disruptive protesting hinders rather than helps a cause”. The actual numbers were 78% (61% say hinders “a lot”) and 60% respectively. 73% said that plain old protesting doesn’t make a difference – 61% of people who had taken part in protests said the same.
I have been an organizer and an “activist” of sorts a few times, and in my experience disruptive tactics have tended to evaporate the good will and sympathies that other less histrionic tactics built.
I guess we coulod go back to bombing stuff like the Suffragetes in the UK or the Vietnam war protests in the US or the FLQ chez nous, bob. Careful what you wish for, I think symbolic protests are just tickety-boo, thanks.
My voting station was in a seniors’ residence and there was no masking or visible air ventilation or filtration. I’d like a follow up in a week to know if inviting the whole community over for a visit led to any “it’s mild now” tragedies.
The ballot was comically huge and not difficult for me to fold.
Ian, that’s quite the strawman. Bob wished for no such thing. And what strange dichotomous thinking that if disruptive protest doesn’t work, one must jump to bombing. Just maybe there are other options?
What are those options? It is becoming harder and harder to engage people in political change with the internet taking over our brains and gigantic corporations with more power than ever to “engage” us with their bullshit.
For activists these days, it feels like you are stuck between “be safe and anodyne and don’t get any results” or “be aggressive and piss people off and get some results along with the backlash.”
>What are those options?
Really, you can’t think of anything at all before having to resort to bombing?!
I was referring back to the original post in question.
I can tell you specifically, though, that after working with activists in a wide range of approaches that your narcissism argument is absolute bullshit. That is just one more comms strategy by conservatives to belittle and undermine the arguments activists are trying to make.
You could possibly argue that some of them are so passionate about their cause that there is an excess of emotion for them when they do actions that it appears performative and self-centered, but it is not a narcissism of the individual but a true belief in the importance of the cause. Even that position disintegrates if you ever meet any of these activists. They all tend to subsume their egos for the cause.
The city has appointed its new commissioner for relations with Indigenous people, Randy Legault-Rankin, from the Abitibiwinni nation.
An aspiring mayoral candidate is already out there telling fibs. Gilbert Thibodeau, chief of an unrepresented party called Action Montréal, has claimed that he has the support of Geoff Molson, with an additional claim that Molson can’t stand Valérie Plante. But he doesn’t have Molson’s support and it isn’t made clear why this would be important anyway.
It’s a strange first salvo in the November 2025 campaign.
He ran for Plateau borough mayor under Coderre in 2013, ran for city mayor as an independent in 2017, then founded Action Montréal and ran for mayor in 2021. La Presse found that he was spreading pandemic conspiracy theories online (https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/politique/2021-05-30/mairie-de-montreal/un-candidat-flirte-avec-des-theses-conspirationnistes.php) but it didn’t seem to hurt his share of the vote, which rose from 0.35% to 1.03%.
Good research, SMD, thank you. I knew I’d seen the name before.
There were various marches and demos around town Sunday. Some people marched for universal accessibility, some demonstrated against the effects of the new language law on healthcare, and some people walked to raise awareness of borderline personality disorder.
La Presse writer visits Royalmount so you don’t have to.
In addition, Marie-France Bazzo went and had a look: “On applaudit déjà la fashionista, juchée sur ses escarpins, les bras chargés de sacs Gucci et Saint Laurent, trottinant vers le métro. L’image du luxe incarnée…”
Slovene cyclist Tadej Pogačar won Montreal’s cycling Grand Prix on Sunday, crossing Mount Royal a gruelling 17 times.
Quebec has proposed a law to control point‑of‑sale tipping; both Radio‑Canada and CTV interviewed people in the resto‑bar industry to find out how they feel about that.
Quebec is also the only province that has a tipped wage. Maybe it’s just time to end all tipping and end this nonsense. Literally, outlaw it. Do we need to make employees into dancing bears for a few extra bucks?
If there’s a law, would that mean payment-card readers will have to make separate software for Quebec that does not interrupt the customer to ask for 20-25-30% tip?
@Mozai Based on the news coverage it would simply require the preset % options to be based on the price before tax, not after tax. And it would also require the lowest percentage to be displayed at the top of the list. No need for new software, just a change of settings.
Incidentally I’ve never seen a place in Montreal with a 20-25-30 option. I’ve only seen that in the US and Toronto. Most places here are 15-18-20, although there are a lot of counter service places like cafés that have 10-15-20.
I’m with Ephraim though. If the CAQ really cared about this, they’d abolish the tipped minimum wage and raise the overall minimum wage. Tipping isn’t illegal in Australia, but it’s purely discretionary as their minimum wage is equivalent to $22 CAD.
There’s a cultural issue in the rest of North America that makes it very hard to get rid of tipping. Even in parts of the US where the tipped minimum wage has been abolished, there’s an expectation that you’ll still tip 20% – even at places that already add a service charge to the bill.
But Quebec is removed enough from anglo North America that we could probably get away with a wholesale shift in culture, as long as workers are getting paid fairly. But the CAQ isn’t interested in workers, they’re interested in populist showmanship, which is this bill appears to benefit consumers (though the benefit is marginal) while doing absolutely nothing for workers.
When I visited Scotland, where tipping isn’t a thing, I found it very difficult to not tip because it’s so ingrained into my moral sense. An Aussie waited nearly slugged me for asking if I should leave a tip because he found it insulting – “we get paid a proper wage”. I think that it would take some time to remove the feeling that Not Tipping = Stealing from our hearts but it could be done.
I often see 18/20/25 as an option, but I have also seen 15/18/20 and 15/20/25. I’ve never seen 10/15/20 but I guess I go to the wrong cafes. I’ve always seen them in ascending order.
In then end, I will spend my money how I damn well please, and there is no law that will prevent me from giving servers as much money as I want to give them. If I want to make up for the government and restaurant industry’s selfish greed, that’s my business. If you disagree, you cans spend the money you save from keeping restaurant staff impoverished on Ayn Rand novels.
It is one thing to set the minimum wage for servers at $3/hr less than the actual minimum wage, but it takes a whole other kind of misanthrope to then deny them a means of making up for it. And the CAQ is not going to raise the minimum wage to anything near what would make up for the loss of tips. Restaurants are generally among the worst employers, and restaurant and bar work is about as precarious as it gets.
MarcG – It’s odd that I have heard that same anecdote more than once when this anti-tip thing comes up. The average wage for a server in Australia ia $29.78/hour. (https://au.indeed.com/career/server/salaries). That’s $27.30 CAD, which is $10.00 more per hour than the Canadian average. (https://ca.indeed.com/career/server/salaries). For a full time server that is a difference between $57k CAD per year, which is more than a living wage, and $36k CAD, which is not. Australia’s minimums also respect pay grades, and so rise with experience. You can see some other minimum wages for the restaurant industry here: https://calculate.fairwork.gov.au/payguides/fairwork/ma000119/pdf
This whole tip debate is just gross.
My understanding — am I wrong? — is that jobs in cafes and counter service restaurants are not tipped positions, and get the regular minimum wage (or, theoretically, more). I swear I remembered one cafe where because of that, the “tip” line on the machine went to the owner or manager, which is legal.
You can both support switching from a lower tipped minimum wage to a regular salaried job AND acknowledge that, until that happens, you are generally ethically obliged to tip. (Without the caveat I know someone will bring up some example where the server spit in their soup in front of them and blah blah.)
You are correct, only those earning tip earner wages are supposed to get tipped. I’ve noticed a percentage for tips at some fast food places lately, like the Subway in Cavendish Mall where I bought my lunch today. Totally illegal.
Also worth noting, tip-earners (i.e. those that get the special low minimum wage) are also charged a percentage of their sales as a tax collected each shift by the establishment. They are in effect double taxed. This only exists in Quebec. The law was changed from the intial version so that if you make less than 8% in tips (the minimum payable per shift) your employer has to pay the difference so you don’t walk away owing tips to the establishment as an employee. Even if you get a cut as a busser or dishwasher you have to declare tips.
Worth noting, minimum mandatory gratuities (like on large parties for instance) are not considered as “tips” but as regular income so don’t need to be reported the same way.
Compare this to the US where both presidential candidates are campaigning on “no tax on tips” for tip-earning workers.
The situation Ian describes is exactly why tipping culture is toxic. Workers should be getting a fair and transparent wage adjusted to inflation – basically the Australian system. As bob notes, servers there make as much or more than servers here, without the inherent risk of relying on tips for most of your income.
Try to explain North American tipping culture to someone from Europe or Asia or Australia and you’ll see how they struggle to understand. Tips are officially and legally optional, but required by social convention – and everything is weird and ambiguous and shady and open to abuse. How can anyone justify that kind of situation?
I think — as I recall from the story — you’re allowed to be tipped as a different kind of employee, but unlike with a tipped employee, tips don’t HAVE to go to the people who got them.
I don’t see where they are charged a percentage of sales as a tax each shift, just that they are allocated a certain minimum tip amount which they get taxed on like normal income.
I don’t think “no tax on tip” is good policy, tbh.
I’m thinking cash is the way to go.
If the bill before tax is $100, the 15% should say $15. If they calculate the 15% on the total, it comes out to $17.25. Instead they would need to show 15% but actually calculate 13.046%. I still pull out my calculator before tipping at the machines, if I’m tipping by CC.
To be 100% honest, many hotels have to do this because of the 3.5% hotel tax and American software which “adds” taxes rather than multiplies taxes. So the GST comes out as 5.175% and QST as 10.342125% in the calculations, if the hotel tax is charged because taxes are added.
A word of caution… when a place is QSR and the employees aren’t paid a tipped wage, the owner can legally keep the tips. Which is one more reason why you shouldn’t tip if it’s self service. Unless you ask or there is a clear indication that all tips are going to employees… there is no guarantee. One employee on Reddit mentioned it… https://www.reddit.com/r/montreal/comments/164lf2m/fyi_caf%C3%A9fastfood_workers_are_not_entitled_to_tips/
I feel so detached from this discussion because I buy everything with cash. I do tipping math in my head (10% is just shifting the decimal, then half as much again to reach 15%). I was vaguely aware of stories about those payment terminals begging for higher tips but as I never use them, I’ve never felt this pressure.
Ephraim! That’s the reference I was thinking of!
I used to tip the total tax, rounded up.
Personally, what I would like to see is a clear cut-off date. Let’s say as of 1 January 2026, tipping can no longer be solicited and businesses need to put up a sign that say “Dignity in Service – To ensure the dignity of employees, they are now fairly paid and are no longer tipped.”
Because really, it’s a matter of dignity. No one should grovel for a standard of living. And at the same time clearly outlaw asking for a tip. It will stop all those people who stiff them on tips anyway. All the abuse. All the entitled people who think they can abuse employees. All the nonsense. And people can work the days that they want and not have to fight to work Friday and Saturday nights.
And yes, restaurants will have higher prices. But they will be fair. And we won’t be nickeled and dimed all over the place for extra. The employees will get regular pay, full EI, full parental leave, etc. I mean, the habit of not declaring sounds nice, until you get closer to retirement and realize that it hurts you QPP payments. Especially those who haven’t saved in their TFSA and RRSP. And I’m starting to know more and more people who haven’t planned for retirement and are going to be forced to work those years.
I don’t see us ever abandoning tipping, unless the way we pay for things changes meaningfully (tap-to-pay has just made it easier to tip larger percentages on the total including tax). I could imagine a provincial law that establishes a service upcharge that restaurants must collect, with all the funds going into a giant provincial pot pays a dividend to workers (ok, this is hard to imagine working neatly) or more likely the amount being distributed within the restaurant and it all being declared on everyone’s tax return. This approach would allow for a an agreed-upon framework for tipping with a reasonable percentage. Will probably never happen.
It’s a tediously recurrent theme: road construction annoys drivers. CBC explains that, while the city is developing a new database called AGIR, in which all roadwork will be entered and be better orchestrated, many current contracts predated the database. It will take a couple of years before all contracts for road digs are in the system.
The city spokesperson also notes that sometimes there are unforeseen emergency repairs that can’t be helped.
Maxim Baru 11:30 on 2024-09-17 Permalink
My take is that roughly a version of this is true in Canada, despite a general perception that financial constraints on election spending exist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_theory_of_party_competition
In a nutshell, elections are expensive and individual ordinary people can’t afford to meaningfully engage the cost of time and money.
But “the Investment Theory of Party Competition does not deny the possibility that masses of voters can become major investors in an electoral system, and accepts that in cases where this does happen the effect may resemble classical voter competition models. For this to happen, however, generally requires channels that facilitate mass deliberation and expression, typically ‘secondary’ organizations capable of spreading the cost of acquiring information and concentrating contributions from many individuals to act politically.”
My two cents: create a union at your job or get involved in your existing union. Confront apolitical approaches to unions. Make them function again.
walkerp 11:31 on 2024-09-17 Permalink
Go hard on the stock market as these guys will be doing everything they can to move money from public to private and the Dow Jones/TSX are the biggest indicators of success with that strategy. At least until the real repression starts…
Jaye 13:15 on 2024-09-17 Permalink
Maybe if there’s a riding that has a candidate who you feel has a chance, and who you like, you can help go door-to-door?
That’s the trick. It has to be a seat in danger of flipping, where it’ll likely be a close race, and where you feel comfortable supporting a candidate.
walkerp 14:09 on 2024-09-17 Permalink
lol my bad, I thought you meant for your own personal finances, not how you could help fight against these fascists once they are in power.
Tim S. 14:16 on 2024-09-17 Permalink
Maintaining and participating in an online space that isn’t a toxic cesspit is already a good start.
DisgruntledGoat 14:46 on 2024-09-17 Permalink
The biggest impact any of us can make as an individual or household is:
1. Cast a vote in all elections
2. Volunteer at a homeless shelter and help prepare meals for the unhoused
There are giant political trends that we as individuals cannot nudge in the right direction a lot of the time, but making a direct impact on our communities and caring for the less fortunate is direct action and direct results
Kate 17:11 on 2024-09-17 Permalink
No, I didn’t mean by my post “where do I invest my money?”, I meant “where do we all invest our time and efforts – and where do we donate money if we have it – supposing we end up in a regressive regime for four to eight years?”