It never goes into detail about the jobs they can’t find… what is the barrier they are dealing with? Experience? Expectations too high?

Anecdotal i know but… my brother in law is on the job hunt and there’s loads of potential employers calling him back for construction work, entry level jobs in garages, hotels looking to staff up in the summer, etc. He’s working on getting his work permit sorted so he’s not able to take the job offers… certainly seeing a lot though.

LMIA? It’s one way to legally hire non-residents.

Higher interest rates are impacting Canadians in every corner of life. Food costs… mortgages… fuel… they all domino and collapse together. The lack of urgency is directly hurting the vulnerable portion of our society. There’s no easy fix. Drop interest rates too fast and you risk pushing inflation back up… don’t drop interest rates fast enough and you risk pushing a significant portion of the population into bankruptcy or homelessness (not just home owners… also renters who are forced to absorb that same interest rate hike in the form of higher rents). Within my circle of friends. several have been forced to close businesses because of the impact of the rapid increase in interest rates. It’s not the base rate itself, so much as the speed with which it was increased which was faster than their businesses could absorb.

As for mortgage renewals themselves… the insanity of the Canadian system of the typical 5-year renewable mortgages is just plain vanilla stupid. It makes everyone incredibly susceptible to microeconomics instead of averaging out the risk on a macro scale like most other countries do.

No urgency

Meanwhile people are facing financial struggles with stupid high food prices and out of budget mortgage renewals.

Let them eat cake…

The whole “run a business” thing is bonkers. No wonder so many family doctors give up and go do something else.

With that change in the CBC article that you linked… there’s hope. My family doctor told us that she’s going to retire this year… hopefully there’s a replacement or 10 at the clinic so people can start getting that initial care they need and relieve the pressure on the ER :-(

I’m in BC, and technically have a family doctor… and it sucks. My doctor is only seeing patients a couple of days per week, so appointments are currently booking out around 4 months. There’s ONE walk-in clinic where I live (Nanaimo), and they take a limited number of patients per day - they put out signs on a Saturday morning like “Only accepting 10 patients today” (I have a photo of this one to prove it). TThe ER is backup up so bad, you could die before they even triage you (18h or longer wait is normal). The staff at the Critical Care unit in the neighboring Parksville yells at you and tells you to go back to Nanaimo (it’s happened to both my wife and I at different times… and we both actually needed medical care). We’ve ended up driving to Port Alberni or Courtenay for medical care… or in my case, I’m travelling for business and have booked a doctor visit in another damn country to get some checkup work done because I can’t get it done locally… OK, I can get it, but the local wait times are so fucking long that I can book a flight, fly overseas and see a doctor, get my results and be back home a month before I’d even start the process with my family doctor.

Talkign with the parents at the local school… many are afraid that their kids will catch something… and thehy won’t be able to see a doctor to get the help they need

So yeah… there’s widespread frustration :-P

You could spend all day without seeing a comment by a real human.

Have you been playing on Reddit again?

It’s amazing how quickly they get it.

My kids use Linux. They are 5 and 7. They do just fine. They are “normal”… as in just beginner users.

The 5 year old only cares where Steam is, and where the games are in the menu.

The 7 year old is a master at it all already. He’s installing Minecraft mods all the time… downloading, unzipping the mods… running java -jar XYZ from the terminal… yeah I had to show him the first time, but TBH, I didn’t show it all to him. He read up on how it works and watched YouTube videos on it.

It’s all about what you’re used to and if you’re actually interested in learning the bits. Normal is what? Someone who treats the computer as an appliance? Yeah… with those users as long as the machine actually works… they don’t care what the underlying OS is… OSX? Windows 11? some Linux distro? It’s all the same to them. The computer is a magic machine that does things and they have no clue how or why.

dye a hero

Yes… but what colour?

Every Value Village I’ve been to is either over priced or just picked over junk. There’s never anything worth buying. The overpriced stuff is all originally from Walmart or one of the Dollar stores and always priced well over the new retail price.

The same thing happens at Once Upon a Child. Kids clothes are all George (Walmart brand) and price at least 2x new.

I’ve got this with my Canada Life coverage. I can get prescriptions at any pharmacy at 80%, but if I go to Costco pharmacy it’s 90% covered.

The US Regular Army (RA) was founded in 1775. State militias supported the RA through the various wars fought on what is now US soil (including the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812). In the Civil War, the RA was supported by volunteers and fought on the side that ultimately won. The Confederate Army was similar to the RA at the time. Currently, the RA has been absorbed into the US Army (including Army Reserve and National Guard).

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regular_Army_(United_States) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_States_Army

So… yes there was a federal military, but it was a different thing than the US Army is now. How that would play out if things went bonkers in 2025… who knows. There are a LOT of people around the world watching VERY closely though… and really hoping (not that confidently though) that sanity will prevail.

Yeah I see it (as a not American looking in from outside the country). Every time I visit the USA, the changes in things are more and more visible.

There’s probably not going to be a civil war.

So… there’s still a chance then…

It’s not any better in Alberta. :-(

In BC you can “play games” with the medical and go to smaller communities and find a Emergency Care Clinic that serves a smaller community.

Family doctors are impossible to get. There are more than a million people on the waiting lists.

To be fair, the government is making some progress on improving things. They’ve made changes to allow more doctors to be certified. They’ve pumped money into training programs (they pay a full salary and all tuition at university for some certifications). It’s not perfect but it is something.

Edit: fixed some words that got mangled on mobile

Nah you’re 100% welcome in Canada. We are glad you’re here.

Try Nanaimo. A city of over 100,000 people… there is ONE walk-in clinic in the city, and they are rarely open. You go there and it’s either closed or there is a sign on the door “Accepting 10 patients today”. So you go to the Nanaimo General ER and IF you’re lucky, you will be seen in about 8 to 10 hours.

Drink bottle water and consume plastic particles… drink tap water and get all the other contaminants (places I travel for work outside of Canada have highly contaminated and unsafe water… so water with bits of plastic are the lesser evil).

Yup. I really regret letting my EU number go when I moved (back) to Canada. My EU number was about 25 Eur per month (a few years ago) including international roaming calls and data in Canada.

I though naaah, I’ll get a local number because it makes sense right? No not really… 98% of the calls I get on my local Canadian number are scam calls (someone threatening me in Chinese with deportation over unpaid taxes etc.) so it’s not like I would have been inconveniencing anyone local calling me… most of the remaining 2% call me on WhatsApp or Signal…