News roundup, 23 Oct 2024

- Toronto's University Health Network, which includes Toronto General Hospital, Toronto Western Hospital, Toronto Rehab, and Princess Margaret Cancer Centre among others, is reintroducing mask mandates at their facilities. Given the potential for stirring up populist rage, I have to assume that this decision was not made lightly.

- 24 Liberal MPs have signed a document calling on Justin Trudeau to step down as party leader. The document gives a deadline of October 28, but does not specify any specific consequences if he doesn't quit. Nor could it; the party has no mechanism to force him out.

- The Manitoba government is holding off on issuing new licenses for urban convenience stores and gas stations to sell cannabis. The Domo chain of gas stations is disappointed, as they were hoping to start selling the stuff; the vice-president of the Retail Cannabis Council of Manitoba is applauding the move, however. Certainly there's no shortage of places to buy dope right now. There are, however, security issues with some of the stores; while the product is generally stored in a secure location like a safe, that doesn't stop would-be thieves from doing a lot of damage to the stores before they give up. I'd have expected that actual armed robbery would be a bigger risk, especially as those stores likely do a lot more business in cash than most retailers.

- Ontario premier Doug Ford insists on pushing ahead with his plan to force cities to remove bike lanes on major streets. In actual fact bike lanes are more of a solution to congestion than a problem, but Ford doesn't know that or, more likely, doesn't care - populists like him aren't interested in actual solutions so much as being seen by their base to be doing something. And the suburban sheeple who flock to Ford don't want to be confused by the facts.

- I've often been critical of Winnipeg city councillor Brian Mayes here due to his efforts to please NIMBYs in regards to density issues, but I do have to give him credit for at least raising the issue of natural gas heating. He's introducing a motion at council's Climate Action and Resilience Committee calling for city staff to produce a report on methods of phasing out natural gas in new and existing city buildings.

- After all regular ballots were counted, the NDP had a lead of only 20 votes in Juan de Fuca-Malahat. Mail-ins have yet to be counted; if the difference is less than 100 votes after that, a recount is automatic.

- Victoria's city council is asking the provincial government to take action to support the city's small businesses. One of the things they are requesting is for the province to "consider impacts to downtown Victoria when making decisions about remote and hybrid work arrangements". Interestingly, someone in this Reddit thread alleges that the city council did not make similar directives to their own staff; presumably that's because negotiations with city workers are their problem, while negotiations with provincial workers aren't.

- A 14 year old from Orlando, Florida whose best friend was an AI chatbot shot himself with his stepfather's handgun. His mother blames the chatbot for his death (rather than, say, blaming her husband for leaving a .45 where a troubled teen could find it).

News roundup, 4 Oct 2024

- The BC Conservatives have been quietly editing their platform on their website, removing nearly half of the content in an attempt to make themselves look a bit more moderate. The party's leader is also refusing to answer questions about one of their candidates' claims that vaccines cause AIDS. In a sane world this kind of evasive behaviour would hurt their chances, but the latest polls suggest that they're gaining popularity and are now slightly favoured to win. It's as if the perceived momentum the Cons have gotten since the collapse of BC United is triggering the herding instinct of the electorate to rally around the party that's making gains.

- Following a recent mandate, many federal civil servants in Canada have been ordered back into the office for a minimum of three days a week. The government is not ruling out further moves in this direction; it seems a strange choice, given that a lot of those workers are likely to be Liberal-NDP swing voters and may throw their lot in with the NDP out of frustration. There's a lot of discussion over on Reddit about this; some think the NDP could make big gains by campaigning on this, though I fear that this could alienate some of their traditional labour base who can't work from home due to the nature of their jobs. The commercial real estate angle is also prominent in those discussions; some in that same thread point out Mark Carney's role at Brookfield Corporation, which has rather a lot of those holdings. A more charitable take could be that a collapse in commercial real estate could be bad for the tax base of many municipalities, not to mention that things like pension plans are probably heavily invested in the same thing.

- California governor Gavin Newsom has followed through on his vow to veto the new AI safety bill passed by the legislature, saying that the bill could "stifle innovation" (presumably we're supposed to believe that innovation is a good in and of itself, as opposed to something that could be good or bad depending on the nature of the innovation) and "prompt AI developers to move out of the state". This is despite the urging of numerous people in the entertainment industry who signed an open letter calling for him to allow it to be passed; I guess tech trumps entertainment even in California though. It also comes despite disturbing revelations about the internal workings of OpenAI.

- To many observers, Donald Trump doesn't seem to be seriously trying to win the election. This does not make much sense in terms of his ego, much less in terms of the legal troubles he could face in the near future. It might, however, make sense if he is sufficiently confident that his pre-stacked Supreme Court will hand the presidency to him anyway.

- Clarence Woodhouse, who served 12 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, has finally been exonerated, more than a year after two equally innocent co-accused. His brother, who was also convicted of the crime, died in prison before he could be exonerated.

- Hockey has sometimes been described as "soccer on ice"; some parents at a kids' game in Hamilton last weekend seem to have taken that to its logical conclusion and brawled like soccer fans.

News roundup, 26 Sept 2024

- A recent poll gives Kamala Harris a 5 point lead over Donald Trump, which is promising news. Trump has a 52-40 lead over Harris among male voters, while Harris has a 58-37 lead among female voters. Lawrence Martin thinks this will tip the balance in favour of Harris; we'll have to see.

- A vertical farm that just opened in Richmond, Virginia is expected to produce almost 2 million kilograms of strawberries in a year, while using less than an acre of land. Meanwhile a startup in Singapore hopes to produce milk and derivatives from altered yeast cells. Hopefully this is the way of the future, though rural folks will probably not take their increasing irrelevance gently.

- Documents from the Treasury Board Secretariat (TBS) provided to the CBC under an access to information request indicate that "public scrutiny" was a major factor in the federal government's decision to force civil servants who were working from home back to the office. The documents indicate that there was little or no indication that productivity was a factor; it seems it's just an attempt to placate voters who can't work from home, and perhaps also to placate business interests such as the owners of private parking lots.

- CTV has apologized after editing a clip of Pierre Poilievre from a policy scrum with reporters. Apparently they spliced together audio in such a way as to make it appear that the dental plan was Poilievre's motivation for a non-confidence motion; definitely not a good look, and moreover it adds fuel to Poilievre's rage that is so uncannily popular with the masses.

- Despite misgivings, the federal NDP has reactivated its TikTok account, saying that they have consulted security experts and accordingly have installed the app only on a dedicated phone that isn't taken anywhere. The fact that they went to such efforts suggests that they've concluded that there's a sizeable chunk of the electorate that can't be reached without it. Which I find quite believable, unfortunately.

- A proposed homeless shelter at the former Saskatchewan Transportation Company facility in Saskatoon is drawing fire from the chief of the Saskatoon Tribal Council, due to the plan to surround it with a chain-link fence that the chief says will make it "look like a jail". He is also not happy that the new shelter, which will be run by a faith-based organization, is getting more resources than the tribal council's own facility. It's certainly not clear how the fence will actually enhance safety, though granted it will probably enhance the perception of safety. Meanwhile in Victoria, the perception of safety is a huge driver of opposition to a facility to help the homeless access treatment and long-term housing; perhaps someone should ask those people whether they'd prefer the homeless to just camp out in their neighbourhood parks instead.

- You might recall from a few months ago how the Mountain View School Division in western Manitoba fired its superintendent a few months ago, triggering the resignations of three of its nine trustees. Well, an advisory panel appointed by the province has now walked away from talks with the division, saying that they are unable to do their jobs under the terms the division has set. Following this, four of the trustees held a meeting in which some policy decisions were made despite not having quorum. The votes included a ban on all flags other than the Canadian or Manitoban flag and the flags of the individual schools; I'm pretty sure we can all guess some of the flags they're primarily concerned with.

The war on WFH is coming to Winnipeg

A new report for the City of Winnipeg has concluded that giving city employees whose jobs can be done from home the ability to do so has been beneficial for the city, with better staff satisfaction and retention as well as saving $119,000 a year on printing costs, with apparently no significant loss in productivity. Despite this, though, Transcona Coun. Russ Wyatt has introduced a motion to council's Executive Policy Committee, seconded by Charleswood-Tuxedo-Westwood Coun. Evan Duncan, calling for the city to end all such arrangements, and Mayor Scott Gillingham seems to sympathize (albeit a bit more cautiously). Wyatt's claims that "other studies" (unspecified) indicate that productivity is worse with WFH, and Duncan expressed concern that a study done by city staff is inherently biased in favour of WFH because he assumes that the staff doing the study are working from home themselves and want to keep it that way.

One wonders about the real motivation; in Gillingham's case (and probably Duncan's as well) this may be the result of pressure from downtown businesses and commercial real estate interests. As far as Wyatt goes, it's more likely the politics of envy - he represents a part of the city with a lot of blue-collar workers whose jobs can't be done from home and probably resent those who can, in a "crabs in a bucket" sort of way. Those same people have also doubtless been primed with all kinds of lore about how lazy public sector workers supposedly are. The thing is, ending WFH will not improve their lot at all. In fact if anything it will mean they have to compete with more people for space on the road or on the bus, but they're not going to let that get in the way of their "righteous" populist rage.