Adderbox76
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responding to real worker shortages
I have to disagree. And I’m as left as they come by the way. I don’t blame immigrants for wanting to come her to make a better life. I blame the corporations for taking advantage of that and the government for rubber stamping LMIA applications.
We’ll take my little nothing town for example. Swift Current, Saskatchewan. According to the LMIA map available here, we have 84 approved temporary foreign workers, mostly in coffee chains, convenience stores and gas stations.
Meanwhile, as a retail manager, I get five or six resumes a week from people who are either a) naturalised immigrants b) Canadian by birth, or c) folks who have just recently finished up their own TFW “contract” for lack of a better word.
So the way that LMIA works is that the business owner “applies” to the federal government and makes the case that they need to get a cheap overseas labourer because there isn’t any local person available to do the job. So in a town of 15000 people, there aren’t 84 unemployed people looking for part time work? I know for a fact that that’s not true because I get them applying here all the time.
The fact is, these corporations apply for an LMIA because they don’t have to pay them more than the bare minimum for an “x” amount of time. Then when that time comes up, rather than giving our raises, they don’t give them raises, forcing them (who are now effectively naturalised) to go find another job, freeing the corporation up to apply for ANOTHER LMIA, which gets rubber stamped.
Like I said, I’m as left as they come. This country is made by it’s immigrants. It’s rich because of our multicultural history. Immigration is a great thing. Hell, I’m a first generation Canadian. But the temporary foreign worker program is just a way for companies to use indentured servitude to create a “service class” made up of immigrants.
It’s absolutely insane that our media is so linked to the United States that our Conservatives only start to fall when people see American Conservatives getting beat-down and shamed in the presidential race. (and rightly so)
Are we, as Canadians, unable to tell how shitty our own Right-Wing is unless the American Mirror tells us so?
- Adderbox76 to
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- jalopnik.com
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“We have fiscal guardrails and we’re not going to change those because of a summit,” the official said.
“We need to work within those constraints.”
But, Mr. Politician, if those constraints (the deficit plan) were created after the 2014 commitment, than it should have taken that commitment into account in the first place and planned for it. That’s the entire definition of…checks notes…“budgeting”.
I’m not a militaristic guy, and I’m certainly no right-winger. But 2% is an agreeable amount to help keep Russia and China in check to some degree. And it IS riding the coat-tails of the other powers.
That allows the people to get their hate out, and resets the playing field for the next election cycle when people realize the Conservatives haven’t done shit all to make life more affordable.
Traditionally this hasn’t been how Canadian politics has played out. We tend to have long running federal governments over single term governments except in cases of extremely disastrous political results (ie. forcing an early election by a vote of non-confidence, etc…)
Canadian voters seem to be very very patient. It won’t matter how shitty PP and the Cons are as a government, voters will keep on electing them in for a decade or more before finally having enough. Same as we did with the Liberals, and same as we did with Harper before that.
Do conservative voters just need a daily dose of misplaced resentment and rage to keep them going?
Yes. Conservative politics is (and always has been) the strategy of giving your followers someone to either fear, hate, look down on, or increasingly all three and then telling them repeatedly that they are the only party who can “fix” it. It’s not about governing, it’s about stoking anger and fear so that donors keep giving them money.
Pre-civil rights it was African Americans in the US and Indigenous people in Canada. Then it became homosexuals, then Mexicans, then migrants in general, then so-called “illegals” and refugees. Then 9-11 happened and it became Muslims. Then brown people in general. And now it’s circled back around to LGBTQ+ and trans folk.
Pick your marginalized society of choice and insert it into the very same playbook that’s always been used.
Little Pierre Poppinfresh isn’t doing or saying anything that hasn’t been Conservative policy from the very beginning. It’s just that thanks to the Trump effect, he no longer has to be subtle about it like his predecessors did.
I’ve said for years that the very last power we have as consumers is the ability to turn off our internet and still be able to use our devices. That is my minimum expectation of any company.
Fridge needs an internet connection, fuck you. TV won’t work unless it’s connected to the internet, fuck you.
But most especially (and this is why I moved to Linux originally), computer needs to always be connected to the internet even if all I’m doing is opening an office program that has nothing to do online? Go fuck yourself.
The ability to unplug my ethernet cable and still be able to use 99% of my computer with the exception of email and a web browser is the absolutely most basic human right left to us.
I agree…in theory. But the reality is those things already exist. It is generally the wealthy who take office for a number of reasons.
a) You have to be independently wealthy in order to take the time to campaign. Johnny punch-clock working 8 hours a day isn’t going to have the financial means to take the time to win and election.
b) Independently wealthy people are usually the ones with access to investors/contacts who can fund their campaign. and
c) Winning an election usually requires some sort of name recognition in your community/district, etc… So it’s likely a business owner, a local city council person, etc… someone with existing ties in the constituency they are seeking to represent.
It’s always going to be the wealthy (or at least moderately well off) that get into power regardless of how much they are paid. Because it takes wealth to even get there in the first place.
Basically, it boils down to the fact that in exchange for public funds, the CBC has a mandate to provide access to ALL Canadians.
So back in 2011, they decide they are going to shut down all of their analog broadcast towers for over-the-air signal since, they said it would cost “x” amount (I don’t remember the exact amount that long ago) to maintain them until 2035 or so.
So this left only the digital towers, which only covered the bigger cities. If you were too far out of a major city you were shit out of luck for over the air service.
Their argument, when people like me piped up, was that we could still access it through a cable subscription, which (in my opinion) is a blatant breach of their contract.
Why are my taxes going to fund something that I THEN have to pay another service for in order to access?
To me, and others back then, a mandate to provide access to ALL Canadians is exactly that…full stop; no extra subscriptions needed. No cable package, no internet, nothing.
If you are taking public money to provide a service, you provide that service no…matter…what. Otherwise, let me choose to not have a cut of my taxes given to you.
Two months after that decision, CBC bid for, and paid, that exact same amount of money to get the broadcast rights to the next Olympics, which no broadcaster has EVER turned a profit on.
So me, and others, felt (I feel) rightfully fucked over.
As I said, I’m about as left as they come, and I WAS a supporter of the CBC up until that point. But yeah…after that, fuck 'em.
The difference being that CBC is funded in large part by our tax dollars, so we have a much more vested interest in how it’s spent than other private companies.
I get the feeling that most people criticizing NatPo are under the impression that they have no real stake in this news just because they “don’t watch CBC”. But believe me, we all do.
The CBC is shit and I don’t want my taxes going towards them (that’s a long bitter story). But I don’t have a choice and no one else does either. So we can at least pay attention when the money is going to the brass instead of the workers.
Edited to add: I’m as left as they come. Don’t mistake this for me thinking that the NatPo is anything less than a right-wing sack of shit publication. But even the worst person you know can make a decent point every now and again.
Such a shame.
Worked for them from 2004 to 2009, first as a member of the renovations team and later as a front store manager.
Was a great job and a great company (especially for managers pay back then) I truly enjoyed my time there for the most part, especially the reno team, which would see me and my crew traveling around Western Canada renovating and/or setting up new stores before moving on to the next.
But this was long before friggin’ Loblaw’s bought them up and turned it into just another mega-corp treating their people like line items on a spreadsheet.
It just feels like the older I get, the more everything I remember fondly ends up getting fucked by corporate greed.
Simply put, they can get away with it.
Public sector payrolls are available to the voters if they’re interested in seeing them.
Private companies will pay as little, and cut as much as, they can get away with since no one is looking except their accountants.
Plain old greed. It’s the companies themselves that have been known to reach out to poorer countries and make deals, bringing those immigrants in at lesser pay.
Because they can. Because no one stops them. They’ve done a great job convincing us to blame the immigrant for coming and taking our job, and not the corporation for treating labour like line items on a spreadsheet.
As someone who worked in the cellular space for many many years with both Sasktel and Telus, I can say confidently that we HAVE NO competition watchdog. The CRTC just rubber stamps everything put in front of them by the big telcos after a quick sham so-called “investigation”.
I’m struggling to think of a single time when the CRTC has NOT ruled int he Telcos favour. If there is, someone can enlighten me.
It’s not a terrible game. I still inexplicably have hundreds of hours put into it. (according to Xbox achievements I’m one of only 6% to bother reaching level 50)
Their comment about being a different experience each time is disingenuous, though. The only major questline that “feels” any different is The crimson Fleet storyline, which I loved and legitimately had a tough decision about which way to go.
But Vanguard, Rangers, etc… are all variations on the same missions with a different faction slapped on them. It’s all pretty generic stuff with the occasional cool mission tossed in. (Ryujin, for example was far to easy and uncreative until the very last mission, which was legitimately fun)
Settlements and outposts are entirely pointless. You can ignore them completely. And you never have to visit a random mining/civilian/science outpost if you don’t want to. Which to me seems like a negative. If a major feature of your game can safely be ignored, you haven’t integrated it properly into the larger narrative.
But yet somehow I still have just about 250 hours into it. I don’t know why. Probably the ship building, which is fun as hell.
I actually think conceptually “Pebble” is a great name for a social media site if you lean into the “drop a pebble in a pond and it ripples outward = even the smallest person can reach a large group of people with their message.”
At least it MEANS something, unlike whatever “X” is supposed to represent (a name so bad, it’s STILL usually followed by “formerly Twitter” whenever it’s mentioned by anyone)
Because alchol sellers aren’t widely considered as flat out evil as cigarette makers, meaning that they can still realistically grease the wheels of power with dump trucks full of money.
I’m sure cigarette makers would love to the do the same thing, but no politician is dumb enough to risk taking “campaign contributions” from people who are widely considered to be the scum of the earth. Alcohol makers still have a level of respectability that lets them get away with it.
As depressing as it sounds, I think it might be time to add a new entry to possible Drake Equation solutions:
“Stupid people stuck in a loop of hatred, bigotry and scientific denial kept society from moving forward fast enough to prevent destruction by climate change, conflict or lack of resources.” And that’s why we haven’t seen any evidence of alien life. But societal evolution always follows that path.
Thank you for that link. It allowed me to get some things off my chest. lol
Something that doesn’t get a lot of airtime with most of us “city-folk” is the fact that Farm Equipment manufactures enact the same policies for farmers whose combines and other equipment break down. This represents untold millions in lost productivity during harvest, and it’s something that I hear a lot about because of my small city’s proximity to a number of large farm operations.
I also talked a lot about releasing an appliances software kernel as FOSS once that appliance has reached the end of manufacturers support. But that would be an added bonus that I don’t see ever coming to fruition sadly.