Dearche
Probably more like 4x that, but on the other hand, this is finally a project that is starting to get a little close to the level of added housing that is needed in a single city (presuming this is concentrated around central Vancouver, not being placed around smaller towns or something stupid like that.
Most proposals only amount to 10% those numbers, and 10 years is a realistic time scale as building homes takes time in the first place.
I remember reading about a particular speeding camera that is actually turned off the majority of the time due to the sheer number of speeding tickets that are produced from it alone. It’s so much that it clogs up the entire system so they just gave up and turned it off for like 2/3rd of the time so the people processing those tickets have time to work on other cameras.
Raising the fines is good and all (rather it really should be done), but I think the entire ticketing system needs to be overhauled as well so that it’s far more streamlined to handle massive loads without hiring thousands of more people to brute force the problem.
The number of people who brag about their fines is staggering, treating them like badges of honor. If you check out automotive forums, you’ll see it all the time, with people trading tips on how to push the limits of the demerit system to avoid having their license revoked without actually fixing their habits. There’s even tips on how to legally obscure your license plate so you can’t get caught on speed cameras.
Also regarding those highway speeding cameras, normal speeding cameras just take two pictures and measure how far the vehicle has moved during that time. Though if you just equip the camera with a doppler radar, you can just directly measure the speed that way.
Rather than the most engagement, it’s starting to become the emotion that creates any engagement at all.
Political apathy has gotten pretty ingrained in the democratic world, let alone here in Canada. And frankly, I can’t blame anybody when it feels like even going out to the polls is a lose-lose situation. Not a single viable candidate you really want to back means that why should you even bother to show up to vote? No matter who gets in the seat, they’ll screw over the majority of the population and hold back any of the real change that’s needed to actually fix any of the prevalent problems that hurt not only the regular folk, but the economy, health, safety, and any number of other things that make a good and prosperous country.
This isn’t China, yet why does it sometimes feel like the upper echelons are growing to more and more resemble the CCP? Or the oligarchy of Russia?
What we need isn’t thousands of detached single family homes, but hundreds of low and mid-rise buildings that each house dozens. There is no system in the world that’ll make single detached homes viable for the entire population. Not to mention that suburbs cost the government more in taxes than they take in, whereas high density neighbourhoods with mixed use buildings are second in economic revenue to downtown cores while providing massive amounts of housing.
I work at a place that spends over a million a year in rent because it uses space from the mixed use first floor of a 30 floor condo. There’s dozens of stores like mine that do the same in the area. Imagine how much property tax the city gets from this? How much money must pass through each and every store to be able to afford such rent? And how pretty much every store in the area is doing pretty well despite stores just a few blocks away are crumbling and dying off because there’s almost no housing in the area unlike this neighbourhood.
People wanting detached homes is fine. But what about us that don’t care about such things? Why don’t we get an option for a small but low cost home?
That’s right. Most likely this is only going to be a sale of public land wholesale on the premise that the buyer will build homes on it. No way anybody short of one of the huge corporations can afford to buy a thousand pieces of land at a time. The land’ll be resold at an exorbitant price once they’re done in the end.
It’s especially bad when those same newspapers also write articles about how most millennials are living paycheck to paycheck, and a single unexpected $1000 expense is enough to bankrupt them.
I can’t count on how many people I’ve seen who’s become borderline alcoholics as they can’t handle life between work and bills without a steady supply. I live and work in relatively better off parts of Toronto, yet I see dozens of people who are homeless or dealing with serious psychiatrics problems. Seeing someone begging on the streets or trains has become almost a daily occurrence despite it having been quite rare a decade ago. Not to mention all those who sleep on the trains and buses rather than trying to get anywhere.
We as a country have been steered the wrong way for a good decade now, and every measurement I’ve seen regarding the human life index, happiness, international reputation, etc, have all pointed that out. Canada isn’t the bastion of freedom and equality that it used to be. Virtually all our leaders on every level have failed the population, including the opposition.
The problem is that there is no existing truly green technology as it stands. Wind and solar causes so much pollution in its construction that it’s not much better than natural gas as it stands. Especially once you consider that they need to be replaced every 10 years.
On the other hand, I do agree that we should push on energy development for export. The Ontario, Saskatchewan, and Albertan governments have teamed up to develop SMRs, and hopefully we’ll have a working model in the near future, ripe for mass production and export. It’s not 100% green, but far cleaner than any other technology we can expect to have within the next decade.
The sad thing is that Canada is actually in one of the best places to make it’s individual targets compared to most other countries. We’re a rich nation with plentiful resources and all our needs are met domestically. Our major sources of greenhouse emissions are well known and clearly defined. They are also things that all have existing solutions to.
Even if complete elimination isn’t possible, at least doing enough to reach our climate goals should’ve been easy. Heating and fossil fuel production account for more than 30% of our CO2 emissions, both things that could be replaced with electricity from clean sources like nuclear.
Unfortunately politics works counter to economics. You can bankrupt an entire country, yet if you can convince people that it was someone else’s fault, you’ll still get reelected and get a nice fat 7 figures while everything around you burns to the ground.
There is no incentive to make things better beyond pure patriotism, which we all know is pretty damn short in supply in the first place (and always has been at the top). The only incentive for the leaders is how to gain and keep all the benefits of the rich and powerful as they enjoy 5 star accommodations everywhere they go while receiving kickbacks from all the political favours they do to the corporations that helped them get to where they are.
We only get band-aid solutions because they know they can get away with just that. Because all they have to do is yell loud enough that they’re trying really hard to solve the problem, and together with billions spent on propaganda campaigns, enough people are convinced that the system is somewhat working that serious change never happens.
All the while, we’re dealing with a mental health and homeless crisis that you’d more expect from somewhere like Somalia or Myanmar.