Agree 100%

I was having a discussion the other day with someone and it was pointed out that pp grew the number of seats for the CPC and strengthened their position in winning the next election. Thus, unlike Jagmeet Singh of the NDP or Peter Dutton of the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia (who oversaw massive losses in their party) Dutton deserves to win a seat back and remain the leader of the CPC as well as the opposition leader.

Actually, I’m looking for a good, well reasoned counterargument to this (for when I bring it up again tomorrow).

Love this idea. Yes, everyone should have a say and have representation of their choice!

This is another reason why proportional representation is a better system. One vote wouldn’t matter because one vote wouldn’t flip a riding or change the number and type of representatives who become MPs. After all, the percentage of MPs elected in the riding wouldn’t change significantly enough with one vote.

Agree 100%, we definitely need to move to PR ASAP.

With proportional representation, we would have the same or fewer elections than we have now.

Elsewhere on the piefediverse I’ve seen the argument made that PR also generally leads to other benefits like better cooperation between candidates and less mudslinging.

The money and resources used for this one vote, along with court time and a potential byelection, make a mockery of our democratic process.

I mean it does have it’s uses. The byelection for the two Georgia Senate seats back in 2020 (technically a pair of runoff elections) is what ensured the Dems senate majority back then.

Just going off the article alone, I’m not 100% sure if that’s the rule. But it sounds reasonable enough…

And it’s not clear that tariffs will be lifted on the UK as part of the agreement?

Will wait for the details to be finalized, but we shouldn’t sign a similar agreement unless it makes sense. And it’s hard to see a world where a trade agreement with tariffs would ever make sense, so…

If everyone who voted Liberal in your riding thought that, and decided not to vote for that reason, then I think the results would have been very different.

I sometimes wonder if something similar happened further south last November - too many voters were lukewarm on Harris and sat out instead of voting, figuring that Harris would win anyways. And we all know how that turned out.

No need. Interest and penalties on the unpaid taxes amount to significantly more than the float.

Hmm. Perhaps your right. I just dislike the idea of a rich dude essentially getting a loan from the gov’t by refusing to pay his share upfront. But if the math works out and it doesn’t hurt fundability then I’m sold.

UBI should be treated more like a dividend paid to a shareholder. The shareholder’s financial situation is irrelevant to what the shareholder is owed.

This is tied to the “entitlement vs charity” concept. So agreed on that point.

However, I also wrote earlier that,

Basically the rich are required to pay as part of their tax their own BI in advance, before the govt doles it back out to them.

Solely for that purpose the financial situation is kinda relevant. The rich, and perhaps the really high middle class, effectively have to self-fund their own UBI. Everyone else has it funded through a pool of money that the gov’t provides (which in turn comes from the usual taxation authority, including taxes on the rich).

As a concept, this shouldn’t be important to the ideal that is UBI. However, it’s an important wonky implementation detail - everyone still gets UBI and it’s still an entitlement not a charity, but this detail makes it affordable for governments to provide (the rich technically get it too, but it’s basically just an accounting gimmick).

No, thank you.

Dang, by just one vote. Never let it ever be said again that a single vote doesn’t make a difference.

Shout-out from a proud and satisfied Freedom Mobile user here!

I guess by that you were trying to explain the same idea as https://programming.dev/post/30075435/16842138 above. If that’s right then I agree - that resolves the float issue.

The “float” cost is minimal

But how many “rich” people are in Canada? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? It might be minimal for any individual rich person, but it can add up to a significant cost to Canada (or the relevant provincial government). That’s why we need it to get to zero.

Self-employed people are required to make quarterly installments, not annual.

So we can minimize this while still paying these their NIT quarterly.

The government constantly owes you 12 months worth of payments, and isnt paying you interest on your money.

But being paid these 12 monthly payments on a monthly basis has the potential to maximize the float issue.

AFAIK, taxes are withheld from wages and paid from every paycheck, not once a year.

This may not be accurate though. I’m thinking of BaristaFIRE types here - the part time coffee store worker earns such a low income from it, that they’d obviously qualify for the non-U BI or the NIT. But take into account their earnings from interest on their massive investment holdings, and that paints quite a different picture. Hence no BI or NIT until taxes are done. Which brings us to…

Indeed, I can eliminate it (and reverse it) merely by claiming the payments came out of the previous tax cycle, rather than the current one.

That is … brilliant!!! Yes, this solves the problem quite nicely. Basically the rich are required to pay as part of their tax their own BI in advance, before the govt doles it back out to them. Only thing I’d add is to make sure that, for those who make above a certain income (the “rich”), any tax owing must be paid in full before the UBI is paid out. This prevents the float issue from coming back for those who pay late.

When you die, your estate receives the remaining 12 payments owed to you.

And if you have no heirs, it goes back to the gov’t - where it can be redistributed to others. Again, brilliant!

But the biggest reason to apply it uniformly is, IMO, the social costs. Giving it to everyone, it is an entitlement. It is the dividend the citizen receives for their ownership share of their country.

Giving it only to the poor, it is a charity intended to help people who are unable to support themselves.

Agreed for the most part. I was writing earlier that a NIT should cover some middle class folks too. The idea is that we can be more efficient by excluding the rich from this scheme, but if everybody except the rich qualify, it’s still an entitlement rather than a charity, since only the rich lack the entitlement.

Think of SALT in the US - https://archive.nytimes.com/economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/the-deduction-for-state-and-local-taxes/ - my recollection is that President Obama tried to push for a reduction of SALT but had to back away due to the outcry. SALT benefitted mostly folks living in blue states, which is why it was only capped in Drumpf’s first term.

That said, if UBI is workable as per your idea above, then it’s academic, since giving it to the rich actually doesn’t cost anything anymore. I’m fine either way - the important part is to get it out there.

Universal: Everyone gets it, no means testing, no bureaucracy and the cost associated with that.

Basic: You are not buying caviar and exotic holidays, just enough to live and pay rent.
Agreed.
Income: Therefore taxed.
Minor quibble - technically a concept of non-taxable income does exist, see https://www.taxtips.ca/glossary/non-taxable-income.htm for some examples. But agreed on the main point (that UBI is and should be taxable).

E.g. If UBI is 1000 a month it will likely push people into a higher tax bracket therefore their after tax income will not be 1000 more

In fact it might all be taxed away for those who are actually rich.

and for the richest they should be taxed more than they … [receive] … from the UBI.

I’d go a couple of steps further. Those rich enough (so not just the richest but perhaps everyone who’s even slightly rich) should have the UBI fully taxed away. Another way to put this is that their taxes after UBI should = taxes before UBI + cash value of UBI

Basically we need to sort out a proper taxation system before this can be implemented.

So if this was just some kind of accounting gimmick then this would be perfect.

The issue from what I understand is that real money - the 1000 in your example - has to be sent into the richest person’s bank account (or equivalent money-receiving receptacle) before getting retrieved by being taxed back. Perhaps we could do something like saying UBI is paid out annually and only given the day before taxes are due to be paid in order to minimize the amount of time this money is floating out there - but the issue is that it still costs real money to pay everyone, even the richest of the rich, this UBI, only to claw it back again in full later. (At most, some higher middle class folks might gradually get less and less than the full amount of the negative income tax/basic income, until we get to zero.)

So it’s not the most efficient way to handle money. By contrast, with a NIT we avoid needing to have that extra cash to move around - we’d only have to give the basic income to those who wouldn’t qualify for this claw back. That frees up funds, real money. The catch is that we’d need some bureaucracy to deal with it - but by making it part of the income tax, the existing taxation bureaucracy can deal with it, hopefully minimizing this aspect of the cost. We’d likely have some costs here anyways as part of the “sorting out a proper taxation system” prereq for a true UBI, and the hope is that a NIT wouldn’t cost more than that.

I had previously moved more towards a negative income tax approach rather than a universal basic income. The latter seems to be consistently found to be too expensive to implement universally, and how does it make sense to give the basic income to someone who’s currently a billionaire or even a millionaire? (Ok, if a former millionaire loses it all and ends up deep in debt, that’s a bit different, but that’s why I’m limiting to current millionaires.)

That’s why I found this,

which found it is possible to halve previously projected costs while maintaining or even increasing its poverty-reduction impact.

To be so intriguing. Alas,

The PBO, therefore, confirms the P.E.I. report’s conclusion that it is possible to roughly halve the cost of a basic income program for Canada and each province by using the economic family definition instead of the nuclear family.

Basically, the use of the artificial “economic family” standard is what justifies giving lower payments to these folks. So the proposal saves money by … refusing to spend extra money.

Since housing is so expensive right now, many more are living together than we’d normally see otherwise, so I think today’s “economic families” are a bit artificially inflated. If a UBI based on this did go through, I’d expect folks to start moving out of their parents homes to qualify for additional basic income - which would legitimately help them afford their new places, but also cause the programme’s costs to skyrocket.

I don’t think the above was accounted for properly. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see a UBI or an NIT come to fruition, and Canada does have a working example of this from the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

But having a badly designed proposal tried and failed would hurt the movement, so we have to look at these ideas closely. Ultimately, I don’t see that the “economic family” concept makes sense, and without it the cost of the programme doubles. Perhaps it still works, but be prepared to fund it at double the stated level, don’t let that rise catch us by surprise.

I counted them as refugees because of their stated intent. They are privileged enough that they can use non-humanitarian avenues to do it. First class vs economy…

Fair.

But let’s keep in mind that the non-humanitarian avenues can be restricted. See this from last year, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68621013 when Canada had announced that they would limit the number of temporary work permits granted. It seems like this idea was revived again this year, https://theworldbridge.ca/canada-introduces-first-ever-cap-on-temporary-residents/

From the later link there are 2.5 million temporary residents in Canada, from all over the entire world. Meanwhile, from https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-voters-have-a-party-affiliation/ there are over 45 million folks registered to the Democratic party in the US. It’s easy to see how the spots to move to Canada (legally) fill up pretty quick in this situation if things get bad enough.

So I think we’re on the same page here. Those early birds with enough privilege can use alternate pathways to come to Canada, but even latecomers with the same level of privilege may find a more difficult situation to contend with.

The story of the Bergs is heartbreaking. I wonder what happened to them.

As far as I can tell they’re still in Canada, still in limbo. The process of claiming asylum is a slow one, and they’ve only been here a couple of months. So … they haven’t been approved yet, but neither have they been told to pack their bags and leave.

The “Safe Third Country” agreement will come under stress, I think, when the shit hits the fan.

Agreed. Likely it’s time has come and gone.

But if one really thinks about it, one can see that the STCA was meant to be for Canada’s benefit originally, as there was almost nothing going the other way pre-drumpf (and post-drumpf it’s probably zero). So even historically speaking, it was always about keeping refugees in the USA out of Canada…

This is deeply disturbing. The linked article itself links to a reuters one, https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/putin-greets-chinas-xi-kremlin-2025-05-08/

In a lengthy joint statement, they said they would deepen relations in all areas, including military ties,

Military ties?? Combine that with the “root causes” statement and the logical conclusion is …

China as a country was officially neutral, even as individuals sometimes made choices that we’d disagree with, https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/04/10/china-rejects-claims-it-is-aware-its-citizens-are-fighting-in-ukraine-as-irresponsible

But now the leaders of China are the ones being irresponsible. How could anyone support Russia’s position against Ukraine and be against a peaceful resolution?

Minor nitpick.

Are we going to have a surge of political asylum claimants and/or refugees from the States? The first ones have already started trickling in.

No, from the linked article, those three are not coming in as refugees. As professors hired by a university based in Canada, they’re at least coming in as skilled workers with the appropriate work permits.

These are the first who are trying to come under political asylum, https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/03/12/donald-trump-transphobia-us-family-seeking-asylum/

That said, back when folks were worried about the Insurrection Act and martial law being declared on April 20, aletheisthenes wrote ( here https://medium.com/@/part-4-a-shopping-list-for-the-unthinkable-b9c5d65c9a83 ) that folks should consider heading to Canada and Mexico, or even the Carribbean, as an option,

I’d say you have days to plan a sudden vacation in Mexico or Canada
You spend a few days or weeks in Canada, Mexico, or the Caribbean
If there is a major event that changes the world. Run. Go. Fast. Get to the border and across it fast, before it closes. If you can.

Moving on to the main point,

And what the hell are we doing to prepare for this?

Sadly, this.

Minister says Canada ‘won’t be cruel,’ but will enforce border agreements
“People that are coming here, if they come in an irregular fashion, that is not the right way to do so and they will be turned away subject to the Safe Third Country agreement we have with the U.S.”
In December, the federal government announced plans to spend $1.3 billion to improve security at the border

From https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trump-canada-u-s-border-1.7438813

they just aren’t useful enough to scale up.

Yep. Worth noting that the OP wrote this,

You can now pre-order an equivalent NS-1.

But there’s nothing in the linked article to actually place such an order, or any indication that any of the robots are for sale. Rather the article just describes a series of “games” designed to show how advanced the research in China is. Which is otherwise fine, but the author using the article in a very misleading way here.

Meanwhile, if you wanna buy a walking robot, you can do so here: https://www.canadasatellite.ca/fr/Unitree-G1-Edu-Plus.htm?srsltid=AfmBOooGdkEmgTt%5C_XKF25CA1sy4dZWb5OcfpCNXp1KJlQnaFGcXIF2-W4Lk&gQT=1

It will cost you roughly 65k CAD

Rather than developing a Mexican brand of far-right politics, Verástegui tried to transplant a distinctly American flavour

That was probably why. Though I suppose that it doesn’t explain why no one else tried to innovate a more native far-right brand.

2024 might otherwise have been a tough year, but 2025 was a lot better. Just look at the recent elections in Australia and Canada.

Key word being “was”

Anyways the article linked to another which explains that they qualified as an exception because they had a brother in Canada (a Canadian citizen already), but CBSA got all nitpicky about the docs (no specifics given but one gets the impression that there’s a misplaced comma or something) and sent them away twice. They had to get a lawyer involved and file before the Federal Court to get in.