As much as some people get annoyed by this, I think it’s actually a good form of peaceful protest. It brings awareness to the issue without disrupting the election process. Anybody who ends up having difficulty voting because of this simply hadn’t been thinking much about the election before picking up their ballot or hasn’t really thought voting was important.

First-past-the-post has definitely being a net detriment to Canadian democracy and perpetuates the two party system that are far-right and right-of-center. The fact that most governments manage to come into power without the even getting half the votes, much less the majority of Canadian support, is proof that the governments we elect haven’t been representing the will of the people.

I’m personally a fan of proportional representation as that means you can simply vote for your favourite candidate and ensure a greater mix of parties reach the table. This makes small parties and independents matter more, as they basically don’t matter at all right now. They’re just a formality since even if they can get a seat, they won’t be heard with such little representation. It does increase the number of seats by a large amount, but it almost guarantees smaller voices will reach the table unless if the support for a single party in a region is overwhelming, which in itself is democracy doing its job.

Ranked ballots aren’t bad either, just that I feel they’re weaker since they tend to strengthen whatever party that forms the government and makes it easier to ignore other voices. But this does mean that smaller parties are more likely to get seats if they align with district interests more. To not have to vote strategically and just let people vote for their favourite candidate makes it far easier on the voter and helps get their voice out.

I understand spending $100million of it’s to fix Ontario’s infrastructure and get more people connected, but this isn’t it. It’s simply paying off someone else to put in a band-aid solution that only looks good on the surface.

I understand the idea of building up the infrastructure for isolated communities to become connected, but I strongly feel that this isn’t the way. It’s forcing a group of people onto a monopoly that can be taken away at any point. If the government really wanted to do this, then they’d fund cell towers to these isolated communities instead. That’ll give them reliable internet access that isn’t beholden to a single company on top of helping local companies. Nobody would be forced to use hardware from a specific company or suffer complete loss of service.

This is likely more expensive, but it’s far more beneficial and forward looking and may even bring people together more. And it doesn’t exclude Starlink for those who want it as well. They just have to pay for that on their own, but Starlink is already priced to be affordable to individual families.

Early polls have started as well! Never too early to vote against a wannabe dictator that tosses your rights away like a used candy wrapper!

I think this is the key. While I do think that a government can juggle multiple issues at the same time successfully, the population can only pay attention to a single issue at a time. Splitting attention dilutes a party and news outlets will have trouble disseminating so many issues at once. Concentrating on just a small number means that people can get a good and slightly nuanced idea of the party’s policies making disinformation harder, accidental or purposeful.

Hence the reason why only Conservatives rely on fearmongering.

I don’t think talk of separation itself is bad, even if I think it’s exceedingly stupid.

But people should stop talking about other provinces separating when such sentiment obviously isn’t there at all. If the prairies want to separate, stop acting like BC is in on it as well. From what I can tell, it feels more like BC wants to have nothing to do with Alberta if it can help it, and it’s the federal government that’s forcing them to play nice together.

All this separation talk is entirely Alberta, with a bit of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, and even then the numbers suggest that it’s at most 30% of Alberta that is actually talking about it.

I agree here. The issue is that lobbyists can give donations and kickbacks. The act of lobbying isn’t a problem, it’s that lobbying as it stands right now is basically the same as legal bribery, which is the real issue.

Politicians shouldn’t be able to receive anything from lobbyists (or anybody for that matter), and be barred from working for companies connected with decisions made during their term for at least ten years.

It’s obvious looking at the US, that corruption had flourished for decades to the extreme, making politicians being entirely pocketed by large industries rather than working for the people who actually voted them in. It’s not as bad up here, but you can see how so many of our leaders chose the interests of specific businesses over the public interest.

Isn’t the the sort of thing you’re supposed to complain to the CRTC if the providers refuse to deliver their services within the city? You said you’re in the GTA, right? So it’s well within their official coverage range.

And even if not, cell coverage according to their maps, extend to almost the whole of Southern Ontario. Together with a decent plan, you could piggyback on that (though I suppose speed would vary on location).

I see. Didn’t realize that Xplore wasn’t Canadian anymore, nor that actual performance was that bad. I just saw some speed tests and those didn’t look that bad.

That said, I still don’t think we should be spending $100 million on Starlink. For the purpose its suppose to serve, I would think that we could meet all the proposed needs with single digit million at most, even if we have to rely on Starlink to do so. We taxpayers are being shafted hard by such a contract.

If private individuals want to get Starlink for their normal internet, I don’t oppose such a decision since it’s not like we have good alternatives for high speed satellite internet until the EU’s version gets fully deployed. But that’s a decision on an individual level. A provincial decision should minimize excess expenditure on something that’s a pure luxury and instead concentrate on meeting the needs of its people first, since Ford is already pulling so much funding from public resources to pay for his vanity projects that keep getting rejected by the courts.

Do you have electricity? That probably means you have poles erected for your area. Fibre can be installed onto those same poles, and it’s the ISPs’ job to ensure as complete coverage as possible.

Like I said before, this is specific to Bell Fibe, not 56k modems. In the first place, DSL is still more than good enough for such a purpose, or do you not remember the early days of streaming where pretty much nobody had fiber optics and had to run dedicated cable or DSL that piggybacked on regular phone lines?

I agree its subpar. But my question is, is the solution worth 1.5% the entire province’s budget?

Pretty much all of Toronto voted against him, with only rural GTA voting for.

It sucks that it’s those that wanted this bastard out are the ones suffering because everybody else thought he was okay because he ignored them the entire previous term, while those who had been suffering his wrath the entire time have to suffer once again because of those completely unaffected by him.

At least Norther Ontario got the message. Too bad that was like five ridings.

What about wired, if you’re in the GTA? I remember a few years back Bell offered free hookup if you signed up for Fibe. Don’t know if they still do it, or what sort of restrictions there are, but it seemed to be a blanket offer at the time.

In the first place, this is an issue for legal cases, and I think that the province providing a temporary connection to those who need virtual court services makes more sense than giving Musk 100 million to give everybody permanent internet. This doesn’t stop anybody who has no viable alternatives for day-to-day use from using Starlink, just that I think it’s not the province’s business spending so much money for a small selection’s decisions. The cities already massively subsidize rural Canadians, so I can’t help but feel like this is a poor way to give a much needed service to those in need.

We don’t need to give all rural Canadians free internet at a cost of 1.5% of the entire provincial budget.

My bad. I guess I mixed this up with something else.

Even still, the bandwidth and latency of traditional satellite internet isn’t bad enough to be an issue for this. You can still stream with latency below 1s, more than enough for streaming, just not good enough for online games.

Besides, Xplore is a Canadian provider that does this already to service these areas specifically. Why go for a foreign provider when we have a perfectly serviceable local one for such a purpose? Yes, it’s not a great provider, but for this use case, it is good enough and doesn’t require giving a hundred million to a guy who’s helping to destroy this country.

It’s just insane that he can say these things out loud during a rally as his prime talking point, and people actually support his view.

Denying rights for the sake of what? Perceived safety? This is literally how so many of the greatest trageties happened in this world, including this country.

I’m a proud Canadian, but I am also hyper-aware of the fact that my own countrymen were rounded up, had their property confiscated, and put into detention centers less than a century ago for the sake of “safety”. That was the Japanese during WWII. Happened here and in the US, despite many of them volunteering to fight the Nazis the moment Canada entered the war. Some even managed to get deployed to Europe before their family members got locked up “just in case” some of them would side with Japan.

Every time someone mentions the infringement or revocation of rights, I’m reminded of that time thousands of completely innocent people got treated as cattle because of their appearances. This can happen to any group, for any reason the moment we allow the government to hold such power against us.

Would Conservative voters like it if PP got voted in and implemented such laws, then a few elections down the line, voting Conservative in the past is enough to get you locked up? Because this is exactly the sort of powers you are giving the government by agreeing with such policies. Hell, for voting for PP in general when he’s so openly pushing for such laws.

I’m not for single issue voting, but I do think when someone has this bad of an idea, that single issue should disqualify someone from getting people’s votes.

I’m not denying the need for them for women, or that it’s greater, or that there are also issues with the existing shelters or anything. It’s just that half the entire country’s population is denied a form of emergency service just because it’s less critical for them.

Look, I did a quick search, and found listings for womens’ shelters that maxed out the listings I found in several different cities. More shelters than the service I used could show. But there are zero such services for men? Across the entire country? When 20% of reported cases are for men?

Look, I’m just trying to say that why isn’t there at least one per province or something? Why isn’t there a single half-baked part-time shelter anywhere in the entire country? It’s a complete abandonment of an entire demographic compared simply being underfunded. It’s like if there was zero funding going towards prostate cancer because breast cancer research was a higher priority.

It’s the difference between trying your best with what little you got against not even trying at all because you have differing priorities. One is a sad story, the other is abandonment, and that’s what I think is so terrible about it.

More affordable for high use, sure, but this article is speaking about for emergency use, which means that you’ll almost never use it. Besides, the smallest version of Starlink still requires you to carry a laptop sized satellite antennae, compared to internet phone which is literally just a mobile phone the size of some of the early bar phones. One you can carry in your pocket at all times, the other useless unless if you’re with your car at minimum along with any other devices needed to make it work.

Besides that, latency matters for shit in this case anyways.

The only use for Starlink that isn’t serviced by more traditional means is high speed high bandwidth internet, but it doesn’t make any sense why the province should give Adolf Musk any money to do so, let alone a tenth of a billion. People who want that service can pay for it themselves while the province can provide something more suited for lower level or emergency use that costs only a fraction the price and doesn’t require signing with an overgrown child that manically laughs as he helps put his own country into the toilet.

But it’s hard to argue that the driver isn’t a participant considering that they’d be within touching distance and in no way blocked off from the conversation. Even without actually saying anything, the driver was a passive particapant, or at least it would be argued that way if it ever went to court.

Since only one side needs to give permission to record, and since that permission likely can be taken in the EULA, no matter how scummy it is, this most likely isn’t illegal. It’s like claiming that a a porch camera can’t record a crime because the camera’s owner wasn’t a direct participant of the crime.

As a streamer I’ve been enjoying has been saying a lot recently, “don’t give someone a power you don’t want your enemies to use on you”.

While the specifics are different, I think this was also tried by Harper, only to be shot down in the courts for being unconstitutional.

So PP’s trying to copy his senior’s old homework, forgetting that assignment got a failing grade.