I want to be clear I'm not saying it does not cost taxpayer money. I'm saying I'm developed nations its not as costly as the initial sticker shock when you account for the facilities and investment that come with it.
And before someone says it, no cities do not build this shit without major events because the same taxpayers say "we don't need an X! Or," no one will use the Y".
I say bring on the world cups, Olympics, indigenous games, commonwealth games, rugby 7s, etc...
I'd rather live that place than in boringville with lower property taxes.
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DaimarA Million Feet Tall of AwesomeRegistered Userregular
Ride the Skytrain lately?
I regularly use a pool built 24 years ago for just such an event. It's still a world class facility that regularly has events including I believe Olympic qualifiers.
Calgary still uses its winter games stuff too?
Its an easy thing to rail against when you ignore all the trailing benefits.
Finally, Qatar and Brazil aren't Canada.
I think Calgary is used as the shining example of the best possible scenario, every other winter Olympics since that one, or at least until Vancouver, I'm not sure, has been regarded as a drain on the city/country that has hosted it. I think the Montreal Olympics are still regarded as a financial disaster due to cost overruns and facilities that either didn't ever work or started to crumble long before you would expect them to.
Pot legalization is going back to the senate, govt. isn't budging on provinces being able to cultivate your own and some other stuff.
Will find link...
Ride the Skytrain lately?
I regularly use a pool built 24 years ago for just such an event. It's still a world class facility that regularly has events including I believe Olympic qualifiers.
Calgary still uses its winter games stuff too?
Its an easy thing to rail against when you ignore all the trailing benefits.
Finally, Qatar and Brazil aren't Canada.
I think Calgary is used as the shining example of the best possible scenario, every other winter Olympics since that one, or at least until Vancouver, I'm not sure, has been regarded as a drain on the city/country that has hosted it. I think the Montreal Olympics are still regarded as a financial disaster due to cost overruns and facilities that either didn't ever work or started to crumble long before you would expect them to.
Montreal construction was pretty much entirely run by the mob and they had a field day. It's only partially mob run now!
Pot legalization is going back to the senate, govt. isn't budging on provinces being able to cultivate your own and some other stuff.
Will find link...
The swag rule is so dumb... I can go to the beach with my Molson Ex towels, sandals, umbrella and shirt but god forbid I have a hat that says Green society or some shit on it.
PSN: Canadian_llama
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DaimarA Million Feet Tall of AwesomeRegistered Userregular
No one tell the Senate that medical companies are selling swag with their logos on it as we speak.
The swag thing is stupid but if we have to give it to the senate for saving face I don't really care. We can change it later.
Home cultivation though is a hill to die on.
I can make beer and wine at home with almost zero fucking rules. Marijuana, especially shit some dude grows at home, isn't some ludicrously dangerous substance.
The swag thing is stupid but if we have to give it to the senate for saving face I don't really care. We can change it later.
Home cultivation though is a hill to die on.
I can make beer and wine at home with almost zero fucking rules. Marijuana, especially shit some dude grows at home, isn't some ludicrously dangerous substance.
It's a plant.
And a pretty easy one to grow as well..... They call it "weed" for a reason
I guess we hope the trade war doesn't get too bad and lead to too many other bad things before Trump is gone, one way or another
And hope his replacement isn't worse
Personally, I hope that this trade war, combined with our newly-signed free trade deals with Europe and Pacific nations, leads to a very quick diversification of our trade partners.
Relying on the USA for over 80% of our trade was always going to lead to economic and sovereignty issues. Trump has accelerated them, but he didn't create them. Nor is it a problem with the USA or our relationship with them - depending on any one country is always a problem. Our media's dependence on China to access 1.3B customers means we only get subtly or overtly pro-China movies now. Europe's dependence on Russian gas means they can't act against Russian aggression.
It used to be that the USA was the largest market on Earth and right next door, so it made sense that all our trade aimed at that direction, and NAFTA was ground-breaking, a free-trade treaty before the WTO even existed. None of that is true now. The combined markets we can access through our other (and more beneficial, at this point) free-trade treaties are larger than the USA alone, and transport costs are next to nothing. The only thing that was missing was incentive to trade elsewhere instead of taking the easy route southward, and Trump is giving it to us.
Breaking out of the current trade dependence on the USA and gaining a diverse set of partners where no single one has the power to hold our economy hostage will be a net positive for our future as a country.
I agree with everything you are saying but let's not pretend that it won't have massive growing pains even with the best outcome and could easily ruin our economy. We trade with the U.S.A because of proximity and the ability to ship by land. The logistical differences between that and shipping by ship is massive and would require a total shift in infrastructure. All our ports are running pretty much 24/7 already and could not handle the shift.
The list of "unsustainable/unhealthy status quos that need to be shifted and which will probably suck a lot in the process" is about as long as my arm as is these days; what's one more?
Yeah..... This makes stuff like Kinder Morgan look like a blip. We are talking about a fundamental shift in how we operate as a country and could create massive problems in getting basic goods.
But that's kinda the point of my own objection to Kinder Morgan, it dreams too small: Its not safe enough in spill/loss prevention, its tied to a single narrow (but rich) industry, it doesn't move far enough past the problem zones for large ships, its not agile enough for markets that are constantly being "disrupted" by inovation, and so on.
I actually want us to not be afraid to dream bigger, darling. Let's move to handle the shift, its the future and we can engineer unique Canadian solutions to these problems just like we are proud of pointing out with things like CANDU or robotic space arms and so much more. And with our Canadian view point, I bet you we could find a way to do it that is kind to the enviroment too, with things like animal corridor protection becoming a part of it, run off consideration, extreme weather solutions and much much more that are technologies that could even take us to other planets. How Canada tackles trade infrastructure has the potential to save the world, we have a very unique outlook on it that unfortunately the Conservatives set us back on when they went after our climate science research and development, but we can come back from that better, stronger, faster if we want to.
Let's build something Canadian Cool and the Americans can get in on the action when they also cool off.
ok but even if we start constructing new ports and ramping up rail capacity now it's going to take a long while to get there
this is not a thing you could do in a year
If something that should be done will take a long term, the solution is to start as soon as possible.
The problem is politicians now have problems looking past their 4-year term.
“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.”
That is not us and has not been for a while. We are a right now kinda society and it's moving more and more that way.
Yeah, right now we're the "old men cut down trees because they know they won't sit in their shade again" kind of society, with a heavy dash of "old men call young people lazy and entitled for wanting some trees left behind so they can have some shade to sit in too."
Part of it is that democracy does not encourage long-term thinking because the voting public only rewards short-term gains.
And the other part is the post-WWII prosperity in the West produced the most entitled and self-centred generation in the modern era.
Generally speaking, hosting the World Cup or Olympics is most definitely a bad decision, but this is the one case where it’s at least going to be the least worse situation. The US is going to shoulder most of the weight anyways and even they have a majority of the infrastructure currently in place. Toronto and Montreal will probably be able to handle their games with minimal disturbances. They are built up enough now to manage I would think. Edmonton might be more challenging, but there won’t be too many outsiders pouring in all at once for those games, and they would only be in for a few days at a time.
This is likely going to spur some investment into infrastructure in those places that probably was, at the very least, on a drawing board somewhere. Depending on what exactly is planned, it could provide some minor quality of life improvements. The stadiums are already there, so it’s not like a Brazil or China thing where they build all these fancy new venues that almost immediately fall into disrepair right after it ends.
Plus, it appears it’s the only way Canada will qualify for the World Cup, despite playing in a joke of a conference.
Plus, it appears it’s the only way Canada will qualify for the World Cup, despite playing in a joke of a conference.
That Iceland has a better team than Canada despite having a population equivalent to that of Halifax is kind of funny.
Iceland has kind of broken a lot of things when it comes to soccer.
But by our very nature of being a first world nation, Canada should easily be able to make its way through CONCACAF qualifying at least 2 out of every 3 tries I think. I wouldn’t expect Canada to go on deep (or any kind of) runs in the final tournament, but we shouldnt be struggling to beat teams like El Salvador.
Canada can clearly produce high level athletes (I mean, we dominate hockey which I think is similar enough to soccer in some regards), but for some reason we really can’t make good soccer players. We could probably afford to give some hockey players a pair of cleats and still be fine on the ice.
Plus, it appears it’s the only way Canada will qualify for the World Cup, despite playing in a joke of a conference.
That Iceland has a better team than Canada despite having a population equivalent to that of Halifax is kind of funny.
AFAIK Iceland made the decision about twenty or so years ago that they were gonna fuckin' start taking football seriously, and thusly invested in the kind of infrastructure you need to produce world class players. Pitches, training facilities, having coaches at all levels be properly trained, that sort of thing. Any country that wants to could do it (I'm looking at you, Ireland), but it needs long term planning, commitment and money.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was awarded Foreign Policy Magazine's Diplomat of the Year award in Washington last night. The address she gave while accepting the award was considerably less subtle than I expected, given the venue. Not much doubt on where she stands re: the current geopolitical situation overall.
(Also can I just note how weird it is to see a Canadian cabinet minister turn into something of an international celebrity among policy wonks?)
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was awarded Foreign Policy Magazine's Diplomat of the Year award in Washington last night. The address she gave while accepting the award was considerably less subtle than I expected, given the venue. Not much doubt on where she stands re: the current geopolitical situation overall.
(Also can I just note how weird it is to see a Canadian cabinet minister turn into something of an international celebrity among policy wonks?)
I will admit she has proven surprisingly more competent than I had expected.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was awarded Foreign Policy Magazine's Diplomat of the Year award in Washington last night. The address she gave while accepting the award was considerably less subtle than I expected, given the venue. Not much doubt on where she stands re: the current geopolitical situation overall.
(Also can I just note how weird it is to see a Canadian cabinet minister turn into something of an international celebrity among policy wonks?)
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was awarded Foreign Policy Magazine's Diplomat of the Year award in Washington last night. The address she gave while accepting the award was considerably less subtle than I expected, given the venue. Not much doubt on where she stands re: the current geopolitical situation overall.
(Also can I just note how weird it is to see a Canadian cabinet minister turn into something of an international celebrity among policy wonks?)
Oh wow, she rocked that speech.
I would almost not care what Party she was under on a ballot, I would vote for her in a heart beat as a champion of the Canadian people. I am not sure what higher honor I could give her but I am open to suggestions.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was awarded Foreign Policy Magazine's Diplomat of the Year award in Washington last night. The address she gave while accepting the award was considerably less subtle than I expected, given the venue. Not much doubt on where she stands re: the current geopolitical situation overall.
(Also can I just note how weird it is to see a Canadian cabinet minister turn into something of an international celebrity among policy wonks?)
Oh wow, she rocked that speech.
I would almost not care what Party she was under on a ballot, I would vote for her in a heart beat as a champion of the Canadian people. I am not sure what higher honor I could give her but I am open to suggestions.
Wonder where she stands on getting rid of FPTP...
It's still amusing to see that the main defender of workers' rights in the US is the Canadian government.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was awarded Foreign Policy Magazine's Diplomat of the Year award in Washington last night. The address she gave while accepting the award was considerably less subtle than I expected, given the venue. Not much doubt on where she stands re: the current geopolitical situation overall.
(Also can I just note how weird it is to see a Canadian cabinet minister turn into something of an international celebrity among policy wonks?)
Oh wow, she rocked that speech.
I would almost not care what Party she was under on a ballot, I would vote for her in a heart beat as a champion of the Canadian people. I am not sure what higher honor I could give her but I am open to suggestions.
Wonder where she stands on getting rid of FPTP...
It's still amusing to see that the main defender of workers' rights in the US is the Canadian government.
A few of the states aren't doing too bad but others bring their average WAY down.
Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland was awarded Foreign Policy Magazine's Diplomat of the Year award in Washington last night. The address she gave while accepting the award was considerably less subtle than I expected, given the venue. Not much doubt on where she stands re: the current geopolitical situation overall.
(Also can I just note how weird it is to see a Canadian cabinet minister turn into something of an international celebrity among policy wonks?)
Oh wow, she rocked that speech.
I would almost not care what Party she was under on a ballot, I would vote for her in a heart beat as a champion of the Canadian people. I am not sure what higher honor I could give her but I am open to suggestions.
Wonder where she stands on getting rid of FPTP...
It's still amusing to see that the main defender of workers' rights in the US is the Canadian government.
A few of the states aren't doing too bad but others bring their average WAY down.
Given that no states have mandatory vacation time...
So Freeland was asked by another MP about the possibility of dusting off the Magnitsky Act to go beyond tariffs to actual sanctions against Trump and his holdings directly should the ongoing slapfight get any slapfightier. It's an actual option here compared to previous administrations who may have misbehaved, because Trump's actively refused to step away from his personal interests throughout all of this. Freeland essentially pulled an "all options are on the table" in response.
That Iceland has a better team than Canada despite having a population equivalent to that of Halifax is kind of funny.
This is probably because Canada only has (arguably) five professional teams across the country. (Arguably because one of those is TFCII, the USL feeder team for TFC. The others being Vancouver Whitecaps, Impact Montréal, and Ottawa Fury.)
Despite that, we're actually nearing a high water mark not seen since the original NASL collapsed in 1984. (Coincidentally, the one time Canada did qualify for the World Cup was in '86, with a team mostly comprised of players who developed and played in that league.) After that, the CSL formed in '87 and lasted only five seasons. So any kids like me growing up in the 90s only had a couple A-League teams around, and boy, did they not get any press. It legitimately never occurred to me that professionally playing soccer was a thing to do. I think there were a couple lost generations of potential soccer players. And then that led into a negative feedback loop, where the scant few good players that Canada did produce would look at the sorry state of the national team and decide to play for the countries of their grandparents instead. This lead to a nadir that we're only starting to come out of.
Next year the Canadian Premier League launches, with Cavalry FC (Calgary), FC Edmonton, Hamilton, HFX Wanderers (Halifax), Victoria, Valour FC (Winnipeg), and York 9 FC (North York). While I don't expect this league to do great business, hopefully it can survive and become a place for Canadians to actually have jobs playing soccer. Combined with the effect of the MLS clubs (TFC, VWFC, IMFC) getting on SportsCentre and giving kids something to dream about, I think Canadian soccer can start rounding into form.
Hopefully by 2026 we won't be a total embarrassment. (In '86, we lost 1-0 to France and 2-0 to both Hungary and the Soviet Union in group play.)
It feels to me that the government is of the opinion that yes trade wars are very harmful but we have some allies outside of the USA to mitigate harm and that is making the statements more bold.
I think standing our ground a bit here is better than going grovelling to the Trump administration.
I'll pay extra for my California strawberries if I can tell Trump to get fucked.
I would love to see us eat more of the food we grow here instead of shipping crops in trucks down to the USA and then shipping the *same* crops back up from the US or Mexico. If this is a good excuse to un-fuck our food system a bit, that'd be awfully nice. Sure, we're always going to have to import certain things at certain times of year, but importing blueberries into lower mainland BC in the summer or tomatoes into Southern Ontario at any time is just silly.
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
I would love to see us eat more of the food we grow here instead of shipping crops in trucks down to the USA and then shipping the *same* crops back up from the US or Mexico. If this is a good excuse to un-fuck our food system a bit, that'd be awfully nice. Sure, we're always going to have to import certain things at certain times of year, but importing blueberries into lower mainland BC in the summer or tomatoes into Southern Ontario at any time is just silly.
Its even possible for us to have some really sweet crop yields in the dead of winter if we gave it a proper organized effort, you should check out how good hot houses and covered crops and vertical gardens have gotten, IIRC.
Hell, maybe we gotta make a concerted effort to bring back Victory Gardens as well, especially for those of us on the lower end of the income spectrum.
I would love to see us eat more of the food we grow here instead of shipping crops in trucks down to the USA and then shipping the *same* crops back up from the US or Mexico. If this is a good excuse to un-fuck our food system a bit, that'd be awfully nice. Sure, we're always going to have to import certain things at certain times of year, but importing blueberries into lower mainland BC in the summer or tomatoes into Southern Ontario at any time is just silly.
Its even possible for us to have some really sweet crop yields in the dead of winter if we gave it a proper organized effort, you should check out how good hot houses and covered crops and vertical gardens have gotten, IIRC.
Hell, maybe we gotta make a concerted effort to bring back Victory Gardens as well, especially for those of us on the lower end of the income spectrum.
I've seen in-door hydroponic crops in Japan. Growing with UV lamps, controlled environment year-round, and since the environment is sterilized and bugs can't get in there's no need for pesticides. You could pick something up in there and eat it without washing it at all.
You could have farms like that in downtown Toronto and in the middle of Nunavut.
Might be expensive though, but weather is not an obstacle to agriculture.
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El SkidThe frozen white northRegistered Userregular
I would love to see us eat more of the food we grow here instead of shipping crops in trucks down to the USA and then shipping the *same* crops back up from the US or Mexico. If this is a good excuse to un-fuck our food system a bit, that'd be awfully nice. Sure, we're always going to have to import certain things at certain times of year, but importing blueberries into lower mainland BC in the summer or tomatoes into Southern Ontario at any time is just silly.
Its even possible for us to have some really sweet crop yields in the dead of winter if we gave it a proper organized effort, you should check out how good hot houses and covered crops and vertical gardens have gotten, IIRC.
Hell, maybe we gotta make a concerted effort to bring back Victory Gardens as well, especially for those of us on the lower end of the income spectrum.
I've seen in-door hydroponic crops in Japan. Growing with UV lamps, controlled environment year-round, and since the environment is sterilized and bugs can't get in there's no need for pesticides. You could pick something up in there and eat it without washing it at all.
You could have farms like that in downtown Toronto and in the middle of Nunavut.
Might be expensive though, but weather is not an obstacle to agriculture.
It's the expensive bit that gets you though.
You can get fruit and veg in the dead of winter that is grown outside, with only a small overhead for paying people appallingly small wages from Mexico and South America... the only real expense is transportation.
Building and maintaining a hothouse by comparison is expensive, and trying to get enough of that infrastructure together to feed a significant portion of the Canadian population would drive up food prices quite a lot, I imagine, especially factoring in hydro consumption and labor costs (paying living wages to maintain the hothouses rather than whatever they pay in less regulated countries)
Costs would come down if we made a group effort out of it and I think we can all agree that fair wages is something we want to aim for. And cheap transportation isn't sticking around forever, we've seen the rise in oil and gas that contributes a lot to inflation in our groceries, in comparison to say the multitude of green energy sector options that could be transmitted from a lot closer in comparison. Drawing from Hydro (or other power sources) is the whole point of say, an electric car!
Saying something is "too expensive" often just comes down to political will and a lack of agility in realizing de-centralized local solutions with a central backing are really just engineering problems we pretty much already know how to solve and only get better the more we try it, making our tech something that would be valued around the world.
And with a trade war going on and no guarantee there won't be another when Republicans cycle in again to the south, our food (and other imported goods) are going to go up anyways, so we might as well invest in locally sourcing our food better.
This is not just a question of price and availability. Yes, this might be significantly less efficient, and would certainly increase cost. It could still be the lesser evil.
The current setup makes us very vulnerable to an hostile
and unstable power. If we wait until things are truly unacceptable to prepare, it will hurt even more.
As it is, if we don't reduce our entanglement with the US, we can expect to lose all control over our economy, our environment and our lives. It's only a matter of time.
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Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Like most things, energy is the key. With cheap, sustainable energy, a lot of these problems could be solved.
But that's an old story, and the post-energy-scarcity society is something that is fodder for sci-fi visions of a future utopia.
Costs would come down if we made a group effort out of it and I think we can all agree that fair wages is something we want to aim for. And cheap transportation isn't sticking around forever, we've seen the rise in oil and gas that contributes a lot to inflation in our groceries, in comparison to say the multitude of green energy sector options that could be transmitted from a lot closer in comparison. Drawing from Hydro (or other power sources) is the whole point of say, an electric car!
Saying something is "too expensive" often just comes down to political will and a lack of agility in realizing de-centralized local solutions with a central backing are really just engineering problems we pretty much already know how to solve and only get better the more we try it, making our tech something that would be valued around the world.
And with a trade war going on and no guarantee there won't be another when Republicans cycle in again to the south, our food (and other imported goods) are going to go up anyways, so we might as well invest in locally sourcing our food better.
No, it's kinda the opposite. Costs can only come down so much, if at all. When something is "too expensive", political will doesn't lower costs most of the time, it instead makes people willing to pay more.
Like, you can raise the wages of farm workers. The only thing holding that back is the political will to have everyone pay more for food. It won't magically make those costs go down.
Costs would come down if we made a group effort out of it and I think we can all agree that fair wages is something we want to aim for. And cheap transportation isn't sticking around forever, we've seen the rise in oil and gas that contributes a lot to inflation in our groceries, in comparison to say the multitude of green energy sector options that could be transmitted from a lot closer in comparison. Drawing from Hydro (or other power sources) is the whole point of say, an electric car!
Saying something is "too expensive" often just comes down to political will and a lack of agility in realizing de-centralized local solutions with a central backing are really just engineering problems we pretty much already know how to solve and only get better the more we try it, making our tech something that would be valued around the world.
And with a trade war going on and no guarantee there won't be another when Republicans cycle in again to the south, our food (and other imported goods) are going to go up anyways, so we might as well invest in locally sourcing our food better.
No, it's kinda the opposite. Costs can only come down so much, if at all. When something is "too expensive", political will doesn't lower costs most of the time, it instead makes people willing to pay more.
Like, you can raise the wages of farm workers. The only thing holding that back is the political will to have everyone pay more for food. It won't magically make those costs go down.
Sure.
Tell Canada that their grocery bill is going to go up 10-15% and you lose the next election. Everyone that post's here is generally pretty left leaning and informed about how the world works.... We are the minority.
Costs would come down if we made a group effort out of it and I think we can all agree that fair wages is something we want to aim for. And cheap transportation isn't sticking around forever, we've seen the rise in oil and gas that contributes a lot to inflation in our groceries, in comparison to say the multitude of green energy sector options that could be transmitted from a lot closer in comparison. Drawing from Hydro (or other power sources) is the whole point of say, an electric car!
Saying something is "too expensive" often just comes down to political will and a lack of agility in realizing de-centralized local solutions with a central backing are really just engineering problems we pretty much already know how to solve and only get better the more we try it, making our tech something that would be valued around the world.
And with a trade war going on and no guarantee there won't be another when Republicans cycle in again to the south, our food (and other imported goods) are going to go up anyways, so we might as well invest in locally sourcing our food better.
No, it's kinda the opposite. Costs can only come down so much, if at all. When something is "too expensive", political will doesn't lower costs most of the time, it instead makes people willing to pay more.
Like, you can raise the wages of farm workers. The only thing holding that back is the political will to have everyone pay more for food. It won't magically make those costs go down.
Sure.
Tell Canada that their grocery bill is going to go up 10-15% and you lose the next election. Everyone that post's here is generally pretty left leaning and informed about how the world works.... We are the minority.
Huh? I never said it was a good idea for winning an election. My whole point though is that you can't just handwave away the increase in costs with "technology" and "political will". Sometimes things are just plain more expensive.
You wanna stop importing as much food from the US, prices are gonna go up and selection is gonna go down.
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And before someone says it, no cities do not build this shit without major events because the same taxpayers say "we don't need an X! Or," no one will use the Y".
I say bring on the world cups, Olympics, indigenous games, commonwealth games, rugby 7s, etc...
I'd rather live that place than in boringville with lower property taxes.
I think Calgary is used as the shining example of the best possible scenario, every other winter Olympics since that one, or at least until Vancouver, I'm not sure, has been regarded as a drain on the city/country that has hosted it. I think the Montreal Olympics are still regarded as a financial disaster due to cost overruns and facilities that either didn't ever work or started to crumble long before you would expect them to.
Will find link...
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pot-legalization-battle-brewing-as-government-rejects-key-senate-change-1.4703376
Montreal construction was pretty much entirely run by the mob and they had a field day. It's only partially mob run now!
The swag rule is so dumb... I can go to the beach with my Molson Ex towels, sandals, umbrella and shirt but god forbid I have a hat that says Green society or some shit on it.
Home cultivation though is a hill to die on.
I can make beer and wine at home with almost zero fucking rules. Marijuana, especially shit some dude grows at home, isn't some ludicrously dangerous substance.
It's a plant.
And a pretty easy one to grow as well..... They call it "weed" for a reason
Part of it is that democracy does not encourage long-term thinking because the voting public only rewards short-term gains.
And the other part is the post-WWII prosperity in the West produced the most entitled and self-centred generation in the modern era.
This is likely going to spur some investment into infrastructure in those places that probably was, at the very least, on a drawing board somewhere. Depending on what exactly is planned, it could provide some minor quality of life improvements. The stadiums are already there, so it’s not like a Brazil or China thing where they build all these fancy new venues that almost immediately fall into disrepair right after it ends.
Plus, it appears it’s the only way Canada will qualify for the World Cup, despite playing in a joke of a conference.
I have 549 Rock Band Drum and 305 Pro Drum FC's
REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS
That Iceland has a better team than Canada despite having a population equivalent to that of Halifax is kind of funny.
Iceland has kind of broken a lot of things when it comes to soccer.
But by our very nature of being a first world nation, Canada should easily be able to make its way through CONCACAF qualifying at least 2 out of every 3 tries I think. I wouldn’t expect Canada to go on deep (or any kind of) runs in the final tournament, but we shouldnt be struggling to beat teams like El Salvador.
Canada can clearly produce high level athletes (I mean, we dominate hockey which I think is similar enough to soccer in some regards), but for some reason we really can’t make good soccer players. We could probably afford to give some hockey players a pair of cleats and still be fine on the ice.
I have 549 Rock Band Drum and 305 Pro Drum FC's
REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS REFS
Sounds like a new Happy Gilmore movie!
AFAIK Iceland made the decision about twenty or so years ago that they were gonna fuckin' start taking football seriously, and thusly invested in the kind of infrastructure you need to produce world class players. Pitches, training facilities, having coaches at all levels be properly trained, that sort of thing. Any country that wants to could do it (I'm looking at you, Ireland), but it needs long term planning, commitment and money.
The economist has a piece about it:
https://www.economist.com/game-theory/2017/11/12/how-iceland-population-330000-qualified-for-the-world-cup
(Also can I just note how weird it is to see a Canadian cabinet minister turn into something of an international celebrity among policy wonks?)
I will admit she has proven surprisingly more competent than I had expected.
(Is that the most Canadian of compliments?)
Sorry.
It is a pretty awesome speech.
No offence to Dion, but I'm glad he's not there right now.
Oh wow, she rocked that speech.
I would almost not care what Party she was under on a ballot, I would vote for her in a heart beat as a champion of the Canadian people. I am not sure what higher honor I could give her but I am open to suggestions.
Wonder where she stands on getting rid of FPTP...
It's still amusing to see that the main defender of workers' rights in the US is the Canadian government.
A few of the states aren't doing too bad but others bring their average WAY down.
Given that no states have mandatory vacation time...
Yow.
Seeing it brought up as an option to aim at the president personally is still kind of a "..whoa!" though.
This is probably because Canada only has (arguably) five professional teams across the country. (Arguably because one of those is TFCII, the USL feeder team for TFC. The others being Vancouver Whitecaps, Impact Montréal, and Ottawa Fury.)
Despite that, we're actually nearing a high water mark not seen since the original NASL collapsed in 1984. (Coincidentally, the one time Canada did qualify for the World Cup was in '86, with a team mostly comprised of players who developed and played in that league.) After that, the CSL formed in '87 and lasted only five seasons. So any kids like me growing up in the 90s only had a couple A-League teams around, and boy, did they not get any press. It legitimately never occurred to me that professionally playing soccer was a thing to do. I think there were a couple lost generations of potential soccer players. And then that led into a negative feedback loop, where the scant few good players that Canada did produce would look at the sorry state of the national team and decide to play for the countries of their grandparents instead. This lead to a nadir that we're only starting to come out of.
Next year the Canadian Premier League launches, with Cavalry FC (Calgary), FC Edmonton, Hamilton, HFX Wanderers (Halifax), Victoria, Valour FC (Winnipeg), and York 9 FC (North York). While I don't expect this league to do great business, hopefully it can survive and become a place for Canadians to actually have jobs playing soccer. Combined with the effect of the MLS clubs (TFC, VWFC, IMFC) getting on SportsCentre and giving kids something to dream about, I think Canadian soccer can start rounding into form.
Hopefully by 2026 we won't be a total embarrassment. (In '86, we lost 1-0 to France and 2-0 to both Hungary and the Soviet Union in group play.)
I think it's a good thing the best Trump can muster in this case is a bitch fest on his Twitter account.
Edit: This is in regards to the speech by Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland
I never finish anyth
I think standing our ground a bit here is better than going grovelling to the Trump administration.
I'll pay extra for my California strawberries if I can tell Trump to get fucked.
Its even possible for us to have some really sweet crop yields in the dead of winter if we gave it a proper organized effort, you should check out how good hot houses and covered crops and vertical gardens have gotten, IIRC.
Hell, maybe we gotta make a concerted effort to bring back Victory Gardens as well, especially for those of us on the lower end of the income spectrum.
I've seen in-door hydroponic crops in Japan. Growing with UV lamps, controlled environment year-round, and since the environment is sterilized and bugs can't get in there's no need for pesticides. You could pick something up in there and eat it without washing it at all.
You could have farms like that in downtown Toronto and in the middle of Nunavut.
Might be expensive though, but weather is not an obstacle to agriculture.
It's the expensive bit that gets you though.
You can get fruit and veg in the dead of winter that is grown outside, with only a small overhead for paying people appallingly small wages from Mexico and South America... the only real expense is transportation.
Building and maintaining a hothouse by comparison is expensive, and trying to get enough of that infrastructure together to feed a significant portion of the Canadian population would drive up food prices quite a lot, I imagine, especially factoring in hydro consumption and labor costs (paying living wages to maintain the hothouses rather than whatever they pay in less regulated countries)
Saying something is "too expensive" often just comes down to political will and a lack of agility in realizing de-centralized local solutions with a central backing are really just engineering problems we pretty much already know how to solve and only get better the more we try it, making our tech something that would be valued around the world.
And with a trade war going on and no guarantee there won't be another when Republicans cycle in again to the south, our food (and other imported goods) are going to go up anyways, so we might as well invest in locally sourcing our food better.
The current setup makes us very vulnerable to an hostile
and unstable power. If we wait until things are truly unacceptable to prepare, it will hurt even more.
As it is, if we don't reduce our entanglement with the US, we can expect to lose all control over our economy, our environment and our lives. It's only a matter of time.
But that's an old story, and the post-energy-scarcity society is something that is fodder for sci-fi visions of a future utopia.
No, it's kinda the opposite. Costs can only come down so much, if at all. When something is "too expensive", political will doesn't lower costs most of the time, it instead makes people willing to pay more.
Like, you can raise the wages of farm workers. The only thing holding that back is the political will to have everyone pay more for food. It won't magically make those costs go down.
Sure.
Tell Canada that their grocery bill is going to go up 10-15% and you lose the next election. Everyone that post's here is generally pretty left leaning and informed about how the world works.... We are the minority.
Huh? I never said it was a good idea for winning an election. My whole point though is that you can't just handwave away the increase in costs with "technology" and "political will". Sometimes things are just plain more expensive.
You wanna stop importing as much food from the US, prices are gonna go up and selection is gonna go down.