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Understanding the politics.
After the last 2021 election, Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party didn’t have enough seats in Parliament.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Canadian_federal_election#Results
Jagmeet Singh (NDP) asked Justin Trudeau for 3 laws:
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A law creating Dental Care
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A law creating Pharma Care
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A law protecting striking workers against scabs.
In exchange for these 3 laws, the NDP signed an agreement where they promised to not bring-down the minority Liberal Government.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60837941
The 3 laws were voted by Parliament.
Liberals agree to launch dental care program in exchange for NDP support
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeu-jagmeet-singh-deal-government-1.6393021
Liberal, NDP bill to cover diabetes and birth control medication receives royal assent
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/pharmacare-bill-passes-senate-1.7349433
Liberals table bill to ban replacement workers, fulfilling a key NDP demand
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/anti-scab-labour-federally-regulated-workplaces-1.7023020
The agreement between Justin Trudeau and the NDP ended prematurely in 2024. Singh noticed that Trudeau was becoming politically toxic. But Dental Care was adopted. Pharmacare was adopted. That’s what’s important.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/jagmeet-singh-ndp-ending-agreement-1.7312910
This is why I love multiparty politics. It forces governments to be more responsive.
Countries with proportional representation often end up with better governments than country with 2-party politics. My dream is for Canada to change the first-past-the-post voting system. The First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) voting system is the reason why some countries only have 2 powerful political parties.
I have my fair share of criticism with Jagmeet Singh. But I’m very happy about what the NDP parliament members achieved. Politics can be very ungrateful and brutal.
In this election, the NDP was crushed.
To quote this recent article:
A bitterness is emerging from the results of that agreement which the NDP undertook to get solid benefits for Canadians The NDP were propping up Trudeau’s minority government as the tradeoff for getting those results for Canadians. But for the most part that commitment and effort is falling short of recognition and did not produce electoral results for the NDP in the April 28, 2025 election.
https://islandsocialtrends.ca/ndp-made-canadas-dental-plan-possible-now-carney-promotes-it/
https://islandsocialtrends.ca/ndp-made-canadas-dental-plan-possible-now-carney-promotes-it/(Alistair MacGregor is an NDP MP who just lost his seat)
Most Canadian voters may not be aware of it - sadly - but you guys made Canada a better nation.
Thank you so much.
Why are you saying all this?
Results are important. But it’s also very important people understand how we got there.
So. What now ?
Children under the age of 18 are now covered by the recently created Canadian Dental Care plan.
This month, the Dental Care Plan is expanding again.
Citizens earning less than $70,000 are eligible for coverage:
The Canadian Labor Unions have called Mark Carney to expand Pharmacare immediately:
https://canadianlabour.ca/canadas-unions-call-for-immediate-expansion-of-universal-pharmacare/
I urge people to resist any propaganda from insurance companies like Sun Life. For these corporations, this is a direct threat to their business :
https://www.sunlife.ca/sl/cdcp/en/
The Canadian Insurance Companies publically called Canadian lawmakers to NOT vote Pharmacare :
They did it anyway.
The campaign finance system isn’t as corrupt as the US (thank god), but they still have allies and friends. They can pay youtube influencers to lie. They can buy ads in newspapers. They can pay shady “think-tanks” that don’t disclose their source of funding. So be on your guard. If you can afford it, please support quality journalism. We need it more than ever.
The hard thing is going to be managing DentalCare and Pharmacare properly. It will require honest and determined leadership. It will also require funding. Hopefully, the Carney government will keep rolling them out.
Mark Carney tried to politically capitalize on them during the election. This means they will hopefully be safe.
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How are Boeing planes?
After multiple plane crashes and 700 deaths, the CEO was rewarded with $33 million dollars:
If you crash several planes in China, you face death penalty.
Recently, a factory exploded in Tianjin. At least 20 people were hanged. The owner of the factory, the director of the factory, the managers of the factory, the city safety inspectors. That’s the Chinese quality insurance system. This is how they keep businessmen in check.
Fair enough.
I think hardware companies should make money selling devices. They should be banned from jailing their users in a locked proprietary ecosystem.
The Xbox doesn’t have the majority of the gaming market.
The smartphone market is basically a duopoly.
Imagine if Microsoft banned Windows users from downloading software outside the Microsoft store.
Imagine if Microsoft required all Software developers to give them 30% of their income or be banned from Windows
This is nothing but pure extortion. Thank god for the EU, which forced Apple to back down:
Fortnite, one of the world’s biggest video games, is available as an iPhone app for the first time in four years. However, it will only be available to players in the European Union. This is because EU law requires Apple to allow third-party app stores on its devices - other parts of the world do not have comparable legislation. The game was removed from the App Store in 2020 following a payments row between Apple and Epic.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c70j5rx72yvo
As for canadians/americans, they are in jail.
Imagine your friend in Europe sends you a phone invite to play .
-“Oh. I’m sorry but I am not allowed to do that 😢”
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Installing Linux was a good decision.
I have not gone back to Microsoft Windows.
Don’t listen to people telling you it’s hard. I don’t have any IT degree or engineering degree
Installing it was easy. Linux is elegant, secure and powerful. I love it.
China is a dictatorship country with many flaws.
But for too long, Canadians have ignored the vicious American Gorilla standing up at their door.
The Canadian Housing crisis has two sources.
1. Extreme population growth
In 2024, the Canadian population increased by 3%.
This population growth rate means the population of Canada is growing 2 to 3 times faster than the United States, Britain, France, Spain, Colombia, Turkey, Vietnam, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, Mexico or Brazil. In fact, Canada is now growing faster than many countries in Africa.
2. Terrible city zoning rules.
Several Canadian cities have rules banning multi-storey housing from being built. Multi-storey housing is significantly more affordable than individual homes. But cities ban it. They simply don’t want it. When they do accept multi-storey housing, most Canadian cities often require developers to build parking spots. “You want to build a condo tower without parking spots ? Sorry, we can not accept that”. By forcing developers to build parking spots for each condo unit, they artificially drive up the cost of each unit. They basically force condo buyers to subsidize car ownership. It’s insane.
The Federal Government needs to reduce the immigration rate. Look, Justin Trudeau did a lot of good things, but his immigration policy was one of his biggest failures. The current immigration rate is simply unsustainable. Canada needs to aim for 1.5% population growth instead of 3%.
But cities shouldn’t be left of the hook. They are responsible for half the problem.
I mean, just look at the zoning fight happening at the Ottawa City Council :
181·11 days agoYes, we all need to collectively eat less red meat to reduce emissions enough so Felon musk can eat lunch in Paris 3 times a week
Actually, eating less red meat would also be great for our health:
We need to tax criminal oligarchs AND eat a bit less red meat.
It’s not one or the other.
To be clear. This is a government agency endorsing the software as safe and effective. So bureaucrats and employees can’t be reprimanded they use them.
This isn’t the French Prime Minister announcing the country will cancel Microsoft Office subscriptions and build a fund to support FOSS projects. Gimp has nowhere near the ressources they actually need.
American influence is the worst thing that ever happened to Canada.
Take for instance Opioids.
Canadians are now the second highest per capita users of opioids on the planet, only behind the USA.
Opioid sales in Canada have increased by +3000% since the 1980s.
https://www.mironline.ca/the-opioid-crisis-a-canadian-perspective/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31845436/
According to a recent study, Canadian and American doctors are 7 times more likely than European doctors to prescribe Opioids after a surgery:
How did it happen? English-Canada doctors go to conferences with their american colleagues. They liked them. They socialized. They trusted them.
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“Wow, we are so similar haha”!
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“It was nice attending this conference with you. See you next year !!”
Health Canada is also responsible for this disaster.
A number of studies have pointed out Health Canada’s failures to control the promotion of opioids in Canada, allowing Purdue to spread misinformation about OxyContin in particular and opioids in general
Based on little evidence, in 1996 Health Canada approved the drug for the management of moderate pain, ignored the risk of addiction, and allowed the statement in the product monograph that the risk of misuse is low. In addition, the product monograph provided no recommended maximum dose, allowing the drug to be marketed and prescribed with no upper dose limit.
It also took Health Canada more than ten years to revise misleading claims that appeared in the OxyContin product monograph
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10310031/
Again. Health Canada largely trusts the US FDA. They attend the same conferences every single year. They socialize. If the americans say something is safe, the Health Canada officials largely trust them.
The Opioid Mess is exactly what happens when you trust the most institutionally corrupt nation in the West because they sound friendly and speak English. Thank god Quebec doctors kept reading french newspapers and listening to french regulators. They largely avoided this Opioid plague.
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A vial of insulin costs far more in the U.S. than it does in Canada.
Drug prices are set by Canada’s Patented Medicine Prices Review Board which sets price caps by comparing drug prices across a group of 11 countries. The U.S. used to be included in the formula, but was removed from the group in 2022 — because U.S. drug prices are an insane global outlier.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patented_Medicine_Prices_Review_Board
A group of Pharma companies including Pfizer and Merck have asked the Trump administration to put pressure on Canada. They are accusing the country of unfair trade practices.
In december 2023, Reuters found Tesla systematically lied to customers about the range of their cars
👉 https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/
In 2023, the New York Times exposed how Tesla lied about the safety of his self-driving mode. Engineers told Musk the system wasn’t safe. He told them to shut up. As a result of his lies, several people were killed:
👉 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/17/magazine/tesla-autopilot-self-driving-elon-musk.html
Guess how Elon Musk reacted ? Did he resign? Nope. He went on the offensive.
He tells people to avoid “legacy media” (news organizations doing real journalism) and trust shady podcasters. He also ensured links to Reuters and the New York Times articles can’t go viral on X
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/11/27/musk-x-throttle-links-threads-bluesky/
Elon Musk’s greatest skill is his ability to lie without absolutely any shame.
Tesla was created by Marc Tarpenning and Martin Eberhard. Elon Musk joined the company, took over. Then he sued them both. He bought the title “cofounder” with a secret legal settlement. Now, he calls himself the cofounder.
https://www.tesla.com/elon-musk
He’s also “Chief Engineer” at Space X. That’s another title he bought too, as he owns the company. He’s actually not a real engineer. He has a degree in finance.
Just like he is the co-founder of PayPal by most publications. When in reality his company merged with the company that created PayPal. He only worked for the company for a few months after they merged before being fired.
He has a habit of smearing innocent people. He once called an innocent man a pedophile and hired investigators to dig dirt on him.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elon-musk-ignores-tesla-board-and-keeps-tweeting
He did the same thing when taking over Twitter. He called twitter executives “scum”, “dishonest” and “thieves”.
He described USAID as a criminal organization. Yet, not a single USAID worker will be prosecuted. Because there is absolutely no evidence that USAID workers misappropriated any money. This is just how Elon Musk operates. Lying. Smearing innocent people. Because, unfortunately, some gullible fools believe him.
This dude just lies shamelessly. Even his video game performance is based on cheating.
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Justin Trudeau is a decent man. In a world where many leaders are thugs. He has done a lot of good things such as assisted dying, legal marijuana, strengthening competition law or that bill against greenwashing.
However, the single biggest failure of Trudeau was immigration.
Justin Trudeau’s immigration policies were absolutely extreme. Under his leadership, the Canadian population increased by 3% a year. This is far more than France, Britain, the United States, Mexico, Turkey, Brazil or Saudi Arabia. In fact, the only region of the world where you see a 3% annual population growth is Africa.
This extreme population growth triggered an unprecedented housing crisis. Visible homelessness is rising in every single canadian city, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. People are scared to end up homeless. New migrants are viciously exploited by unethical landlords.
You can’t tell people from around the world “Come to Canada” and think it will have no consequences on housing.
Thank you so much. This means a lot to me.
I come from a third world country with tremendous inequality. I was born in the most privileged classes.
In my country, poor people who don’t pay a lot of money die like DOGS in hospitals. Private hospitals don’t hesitate to overcharge sick people as much as they can. If you are not happy, if you protest, they just let you die. We have mostly free elections. But they are useless. Because most of the time, useless and ignorant politicians get elected. Very few people read investigative journalism. In fact, our newspapers are mostly dead. I’m one of the very few people trying to financially support quality journalism in my country.
I used to think our problems were specific. We are dumb. We are fools.
Our problems are actually surprisingly common. I lived in many nations around the world. I noticed that in some countries, some cities, politicians can achieve absolutely amazing things in public health, labor rights, housing. They can really take great decisions. And I noticed that in some rich countries, like the United States, incredibly dumb and corrupt politicians can get massive popular support. And ordinary people always pay the price:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/02/10/inhaler-cost-death-optum-rx-walgreens/
My conclusion was simple. At the end of the day, everything stems from the people. In corrupt places, like my country, people don’t pay attention to politics. They don’t educate themselves about policies. They don’t read quality newspapers. Few people get involved in the local community. As a result, they can be easily lied to by oligarchs.
In democracies that work great, like Denmark, you have ordinary people that educate themselves and actively get involved in their local community. They support strong independent newspapers. They join community organizations pushing for change. They pay close attention to their MPs and their votes.
If my comment helps people pay closer attention to politics, then I would have achieved my goal.