+- Waterloo Region Connected (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com)
+-- Forum: Waterloo Region Works (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=14)
+--- Forum: Politics (https://www.waterlooregionconnected.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=18)
+--- Thread: General Politics Discussion (/showthread.php?tid=66)
RE: General Politics Discussion - Momo26 - 09-24-2025
State of the Region
Check it out
https://www.reddit.com/r/waterloo/s/Rr4mZTSVoQ
RE: General Politics Discussion - danbrotherston - 10-06-2025
Oh the Urbanity has a video talking about Montreal politics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpFpcEdrj3s
It is rather interesting, their political system is very different from the rest of Canada (no surprise there, everything about Montreal is very different).
It is relevant to us however, as I've heard many people argue for amalgamation. Yet Montreal has boroughs, and he argues here that can be a strength.
I don't know if it's really a good thing, but I think two things are clear to me. First, it is not clear it is a benefit to amalgamate. And the main benefit of amalgamation is "efficiency" and I think there can be efficiency from amalgamation, but often there is not (when local context is lost, you also gain inefficiencies) and worse, efficiency should not be the only (or even primary) goal. Since more efficiency might lead to worse outcomes. (e.g., it is very "efficient" how the cities clear snow from sidewalks from a municipal perspective)
RE: General Politics Discussion - plam - 10-06-2025
(10-06-2025, 01:28 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Oh the Urbanity has a video talking about Montreal politics:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpFpcEdrj3s
It is rather interesting, their political system is very different from the rest of Canada (no surprise there, everything about Montreal is very different).
It is relevant to us however, as I've heard many people argue for amalgamation. Yet Montreal has boroughs, and he argues here that can be a strength.
I don't know if it's really a good thing, but I think two things are clear to me. First, it is not clear it is a benefit to amalgamate. And the main benefit of amalgamation is "efficiency" and I think there can be efficiency from amalgamation, but often there is not (when local context is lost, you also gain inefficiencies) and worse, efficiency should not be the only (or even primary) goal. Since more efficiency might lead to worse outcomes. (e.g., it is very "efficient" how the cities clear snow from sidewalks from a municipal perspective)
I was there/following closely when the forced mergers happened in Quebec. I really don't believe the efficiency argument. Bigger systems can be more expensive to operate. To be fair, I am not sure that people are making the efficiency argument in Waterloo, and the Region already runs some of the services that would be allegedly up for more "efficiency".
RE: General Politics Discussion - KevinL - 10-07-2025
I know that amalgamation was quite negative in Toronto's case - too many suburban councillors are around the table and tend to shoot down concepts that would be good for the core. Had they remained separate councils, the core city could have run its own affairs with more urban policies.
RE: General Politics Discussion - ac3r - 10-07-2025
(03-02-2025, 02:45 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: Interesting, it seems clear that things are worse now than when the Liberals were in power. I don't like the Liberals, but healthcare is worse, housing is worse, corruption is worse, transport policy is worse.
Like, these things are pretty uncontroversial here.
But that is BECAUSE of the Liberals. They're the ones that thought it would be a great idea to dump over a million foreigners into the country in an incredibly short period of time, when society was barely over a pandemic and was already seeing its health care, housing, education and everything else get worse before people started to get sick. When one day they decided hey sorry guys it wasn't as deadly as we thought and reopened everything, we not only had to recover from a depressed economy but also one that now has the pressure of a million plus new people in the country.
All the big tent parties are to blame, but the Liberals have been running the country for years and it has decayed to the point we're laughed at internationally. Ford shares a lot of the blame - all the provinces do - but he's hardly the main issue here.
RE: General Politics Discussion - bravado - 10-07-2025
When did healthcare, housing, and transportation become federal responsibilities in the constitution? Did I miss an amendment recently?
RE: General Politics Discussion - ac3r - 10-07-2025
It has little to do with the constitution. The federal government contributes significant amounts of money to help pay for provincial expenses. They provide billions of dollars to Ontario to prop up the health care. Similarly, they provide funds to transportation infrastructure in the province. Locally, they gave the Region of Waterloo hundreds of millions of dollars to build the light rail system. With housing, they have always provided money to Ontario to contribute to both private and public housing projects. Most recently the NHS has an agreement to provide billions in federal funding to improve the housing situation in Ontario.
My point is the federals are the ones that run this country. In recent years, it has been the Liberal Party of Canada who has been in charge. They should have known that allowing in a massive amount of people into the country in a short period of time when it was already stretched thin - not including the cost of the pandemic - would have catastrophic results to the provinces and territories. There are also issues like crime and border controls which have greatly contributed to one big issue which is heavy narcotics. These drugs are getting into the country and they're the ones mostly in charge of preventing that. They have greater control over the economics of the nation and how each province participates in that.
The federals make the decisions, the provinces largely react to them as best they can. The provinces can only improve health care, housing, transportation etc insofar as they are financially capable of doing so with what they have. They also don't have the power to make heavy decisions regarding things like the security of our ports or immigration rules. I don't think the CPC or any other parties have any ability to fix any of these problems, though. Like I said all sides are to blame, but the root cause of the problems stem from the feds. Health care, housing and transportation have become increasingly taxed because in a 3 year period, over half a million people poured into a small urban corridor of the province. The others are all seeing the same problems, too. I mean you could put the Greens or the Communists in charge and I am confident they wouldn't have any greater success in solving these problems at the provincial level either. There's a greater philosophical problem that seems to be rotting much of the western world and nobody knows what to do...but at the national level, it doesn't seem like anyone we vote in is capable of softening any of the blows.
RE: General Politics Discussion - tomh009 - 10-08-2025
(10-07-2025, 08:11 PM)ac3r Wrote: Health care, housing and transportation have become increasingly taxed because in a 3 year period, over half a million people poured into a small urban corridor of the province.
The influx of temporary residents exacerbated the issues, but the problems existed long before. Health care and particularly mental health have been underfunded for decades. Higher education funding has been cut and tuitions frozen, with the (presumably unintended) consequence that the universities and colleges made a huge effort to increase foreign student enrolment in order to patch up those funding gaps.
Mike Harris was elected 30 years ago; that's really when we started to seriously underfund health care and education. Subsequent provincial governments failed to undo that damage, and the education funding got worse yet when Doug Ford was elected.
And for housing ... that is definitely not a federal responsibility. But housing prices took off shortly after Y2K and just kept rising. Low interest rates were a factor that drove that, and the restriving zoning in cities did its part as well. This chart ends in 2021, before the temporary resident influx, but you can see that the prices were already going crazy at that point.
![[Image: ON_home_prices_relative_to_earnings.png]](https://assets.nationbuilder.com/gensqueeze/pages/6457/attachments/original/1652704182/ON_home_prices_relative_to_earnings.png)
RE: General Politics Discussion - ac3r - 10-08-2025
That really shows how much of a global issue it is. If you compare similar statistics for other nations like the UK and US, we see a similar rise in costs starting in about the mid 1990s but a slow wage growth elsewhere, too. The problems are obviously within the system itself. But again, immigration and other movements of human beings at the rates we see now haven't helped either. How the government looked at its statistics relative to the problems we're facing in regards to the cost of living, then just shrugged their shoulders with the conclusion "another million or two won't be THAT noticeable" is beyond belief.
I'm just waiting to witness the collapse of it all. The people that bought homes in the last 5-10 years are going to be in for one hell of a rude awakening when they one day realize their 975'000+ dollar shoe box sized condo isn't worth the drywall they're made from. I can only hope that we see some sort of catastrophic, global economic collapse because at least there may be potential for some degree of "reset", even if it brings in more suffering for a period of time. What we have now isn't sustainable - or sane. You look at the value of property, gold, silver, financial stock markets etc and those charts can look impressive, but then you question whether it makes any sense.
RE: General Politics Discussion - bravado - 10-08-2025
On the housing file, we have found that municipalities and provinces (the tiers of government that actually approve and build housing) seem to think the ideal new number of houses is as close to 0 as possible.
Does that mean the Feds can never increase immigration? Do NIMBY provinces have this permanent veto? I think we see that veto show up in all sorts of places in this country, from natural resources to housing - as the tiers of government keep fighting each other to protect their little fiefdoms.
Provinces have the most power to change our daily lives - the Premiers have just learned that it's easier to avoid big, expensive decisions and trust people's lack of civics education when they blame Ottawa for every pothole, crumbling hospital, and jammed highway instead.
RE: General Politics Discussion - creative - 10-09-2025
(10-08-2025, 11:12 PM)bravado Wrote: On the housing file, we have found that municipalities and provinces (the tiers of government that actually approve and build housing) seem to think the ideal new number of houses is as close to 0 as possible.Can you explain your point a little bit? There are so many already approved projects that are not going to be built as planned any time soon. Also the number of purpose built rentals currently under construction or recently completed is a fair amount. In addition I come across infill projects in so many parts of Kitchener where at a minimum 1 house is being replaced by 2 homes. Not to mention recently announced provincial housing grants for meeting new build numbers.
Does that mean the Feds can never increase immigration? Do NIMBY provinces have this permanent veto? I think we see that veto show up in all sorts of places in this country, from natural resources to housing - as the tiers of government keep fighting each other to protect their little fiefdoms.
Provinces have the most power to change our daily lives - the Premiers have just learned that it's easier to avoid big, expensive decisions and trust people's lack of civics education when they blame Ottawa for every pothole, crumbling hospital, and jammed highway instead.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1006395/ontario-rewards-kitchener-and-waterloo-with-nearly-167-million-through-the-building-faster-fund
RE: General Politics Discussion - danbrotherston - 10-09-2025
(10-09-2025, 08:58 AM)creative Wrote:(10-08-2025, 11:12 PM)bravado Wrote: On the housing file, we have found that municipalities and provinces (the tiers of government that actually approve and build housing) seem to think the ideal new number of houses is as close to 0 as possible.Can you explain your point a little bit? There are so many already approved projects that are not going to be built as planned any time soon. Also the number of purpose built rentals currently under construction or recently completed is a fair amount. In addition I come across infill projects in so many parts of Kitchener where at a minimum 1 house is being replaced by 2 homes. Not to mention recently announced provincial housing grants for meeting new build numbers.
Does that mean the Feds can never increase immigration? Do NIMBY provinces have this permanent veto? I think we see that veto show up in all sorts of places in this country, from natural resources to housing - as the tiers of government keep fighting each other to protect their little fiefdoms.
Provinces have the most power to change our daily lives - the Premiers have just learned that it's easier to avoid big, expensive decisions and trust people's lack of civics education when they blame Ottawa for every pothole, crumbling hospital, and jammed highway instead.
https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/1006395/ontario-rewards-kitchener-and-waterloo-with-nearly-167-million-through-the-building-faster-fund
I think the best argument/evidence for this is that municipalities almost always push to reduce the number of houses built in all developments proposed. They insist on changes that reduce the number of units.
I don't actually think it's so straight forward as to say that "municipalities" as a whole want 0, but it is clear that many in government see reducing the scale of new developments as a good thing.
RE: General Politics Discussion - Momo26 - 10-09-2025
(10-08-2025, 10:58 AM)tomh009 Wrote:(10-07-2025, 08:11 PM)ac3r Wrote: Health care, housing and transportation have become increasingly taxed because in a 3 year period, over half a million people poured into a small urban corridor of the province.
The influx of temporary residents exacerbated the issues, but the problems existed long before. Health care and particularly mental health have been underfunded for decades. Higher education funding has been cut and tuitions frozen, with the (presumably unintended) consequence that the universities and colleges made a huge effort to increase foreign student enrolment in order to patch up those funding gaps.
Mike Harris was elected 30 years ago; that's really when we started to seriously underfund health care and education. Subsequent provincial governments failed to undo that damage, and the education funding got worse yet when Doug Ford was elected.
And for housing ... that is definitely not a federal responsibility. But housing prices took off shortly after Y2K and just kept rising. Low interest rates were a factor that drove that, and the restriving zoning in cities did its part as well. This chart ends in 2021, before the temporary resident influx, but you can see that the prices were already going crazy at that point.
This is depressing AF
To the point of gold price....sheesh I wish I went all in even just 5 years ago
RE: General Politics Discussion - Kodra24 - 10-10-2025
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/new-pbo-report-underscores-need-serious-fiscal-reform-ottawa
The budget is having a difficult time balancing itself it seems
RE: General Politics Discussion - Acitta - 10-10-2025
(10-10-2025, 11:16 AM)Kodra24 Wrote: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/new-pbo-report-underscores-need-serious-fiscal-reform-ottawa
The budget is having a difficult time balancing itself it seems
I wouldn't trust anything the Fraser Institute says.