Reminder that “engagement” is likely a major factor regardless of whether it’s agreement or not. Commenting that you disagree with something is the same as commenting agreement as far as the algorithm is concerned. Ignoring things that you don’t want to spread seems like a good way to combat this, but that leaves you with the “echo chamber” issue. If we only engage with things we agree with then our ideals are never challenged and we don’t have an opportunity to improve. Seems kind of damned if you do damned if you don’t.

I’m not sure how effective it is, but it seems like CRA has been tightening up on some kinds of business expenses, or at least my previous employer interpreted it that way. When people have things like company vehicles or phones, or get comparable benefits from work the value of those things being used for non-work related purposes is taxable. That’s also why there’s standards for things like mileage or per-diems so people can be compensated for realistic expenses, but not use it as a way to avoid income taxes.

We should also be careful about how we close some “loopholes”. Like it makes sense that a person can mortgage their personal property and use that to fund their business. It also makes sense that they can claim the interest on that mortgage as a tax deduction since it’s kind of a business related expense. It feels different when someone with a net worth less than a million does that compared to someone worth more than a billion, so I don’t think it’s closing the loophole altogether but putting limits like only claiming interest on something like $300k of debt (or something close to the average amount owed on a home of an average valuation).

I’ll also add that the idea behind reduced taxation on capital gains is it encourages people to invest in businesses and grow the economy. That makes sense economically. Canada also does better than some places(USA) in this way because capital gains are considered realized and paid on death so there’s not really a way to avoid them altogether, at best you’re putting it off for 60ish years. We also have things like the TFSA, which allows us to invest without being subject to capital gains tax. A person able to max out their RRSP/TFSA/CPP contributions would have a very comfortable retirement, while people earning significantly more have more limited options in deferring/eliminating their tax burden.

Exploitation is the key term here. Things like Co-ops and Crown corporations work to put capital back in the hands of the workers/customers/tax payers, but they can have a hard time competing with private industry. People like the idea of supporting local/sustainable/family owned/etc. but budgets are tight and Walmart or Loblaws fill your grocery cart for 10% less than the local Co-op. This all snowballs, the chains can pay less because they’ve got more positions to fill, they keep things cheap through economy of scale or negotiating power and keep that scale because they’re a bit cheaper then the socially responsible options. People work for the chains because there’s not enough jobs available at the local stores and they can only afford to shop at the chain because they’re being paid chain wages. If we could get enough people together we could enact a change, but that’s hard to do when so much of the population is one missed paycheque away from not being able to pay rent or groceries.

That kind of leaves regulatory or Crown-corps as the better solutions.

It gives more options to customize layout. Removing the second staircase also removes the need for a hallway all the way through the middle between staircases. Since bedrooms need windows, removing the staircase also opens up space to add 1-2 more bedrooms per floor. Part of the issue with the hallway and 2 stairs is you get a corner unit on each one and everything in between gets just one outside wall. Making a bigger building footprint doesn’t help a lot because the floor area increases more than the wall space(which you need to put windows so your apartment doesn’t feel like a dungeon. Which is why apartments tend to be long and narrow, or sometimes wrapped around a central courtyard.

I read somewhere about North American vs European apartments, particularly the smaller 2-4 floor/3-4 units per floor ones, and the European ones tended to have a smaller footprint, but more wall space and more practically usable space than the North American designs.

Sounds about right. We took advantage of the Greener Homes Grant a few years ago to get all our windows replaced in our late 70’s build. It’s a very long process where you have to pay up front for an inspection/evaluation from one of their approved providers, which are often booked months in advance, then you have to pay up front for all the work done. In our case we paid 50% up front then had to wait a few months for the work to be done, then had to book another inspection/evaluation. If one wants get multiple qualifying items done they all have to happen between both evaluations. After that second evaluation you can ask to close it out and receive the grant. Most, but not all of the cost of those evaluations is covered when the grant is approved. IIRC the grant ended up covering about 20% of the cost, but it was over a year to go through the whole process. The Greener Homes Loan came out after we had already received our grant, and if we wanted to do more work to take advantage of it now we’d be on the hook for another post-work evaluation. It is a step in the right direction since you it helps cover some of the up front costs of eligible retrofits. Sask also had a home renovation tax credit available at the time(conveniently implemented just after I built my shed which would have qualified) so it was nice to double dip and get another 10% of the cost rebated, but it’s also something where a person has to pay up front and wait for tax time to see the benefits.

Its great for people that can afford to have the work done and in our case it was probably the difference between us being able to do all our windows at once vs just doing the high priority ones and leaving others for later. It’s pretty much worthless for so many that are already struggling day to day and would probably see more energy savings than those who can otherwise afford to keep up with modernizing their home.

I feel like I’ve also seen the same effects of overestimating energy savings that the article brings up. It’s like they’re standard is a home that’s 50+years old and has seen minimal upgrades done in that time. Air sealing and insulation is more impactful if you have an ancient, lower efficiency furnace, than a modern high efficiency one. That goes the other way too in that an old drafty house will see more benefit from a new furnace than a well sealed and insulated one. Really, without these kinds of grants available it’s rare for energy upgrades to actually provide a real return, aside from a handful of relatively cheap/simple ones like air sealing or adding attic insulation.

One program that does really benefit those in need is the one from Sask Energy. It’s free to participate, and rental properties are eligible(with landlord approval). It includes things like a clothes drying rack, sink aerators, LED bulbs and a smart (ecobee lite) thermostat. They also have a newer program that I haven’t really had a chance to look into yet that does things like doors. These are the kinds of programs we really need.

Yep, this is the tricky part. We can’t just roll over and take it because in the long run that just ends up hurting us and they get their way. We have to be careful about our response since they’re going to try spinning whatever we do as making us more responsible for the negative effects of the tariffs then the tariffs themselves. I think the key is targeting the response in a way that hinders the people responsible for this mess, mainly those billionaires that know that they can take advantage of the upcoming chaos to further concentrate their wealth.

Definitely helps if the EU and elsewhere gets in with us on some things. Coordinate on the things that the US really can’t or would be prohibitive to do locally. Raise prices on those resources that Trump keeps saying they don’t need. Charge Hollywood through the nose to film in popular locations, limit access to core technology patents, or ease up on local copyright/patent legislation that tends to benefit American interests.

It’s tough for Canada alone to win an economic fight against the US, but I think it’s in the best interests of most places to get involved because what’s to say the US won’t just keep expanding their reach as long as it works.

I think you still need a minimum wage, probably something in the range of 1/1800th of what the UBI is. Otherwise we end up with UBI essentially subsidizing businesses that would get away with paying arbitrarily low wages. Then you just scale up regular income taxes so people can still see a significant benefit from working those minimum wage jobs compared to the current system where benefits can get clawed back so hard that the difference between working full time min wage and being on benefits is negligible.

Tell that to the people that follow those restrictions. Kosher is one thing that we never really got into at my last job, but the people that don’t eat beef or only eat halal don’t really feel accommodated when you only have vegan options rather than a halal and/or non-beef meat available. The vegan options also aren’t necessarily halal, and the kosher people expect a pretty high standard of cleansing of equipment used on multiple products. Though in all cases there’s people that are more or less demanding when it comes to someone else doing their best to accommodate.

I’m also looking at it from the perspective of University food service where you have students on meal plans where you’ve committed to certain accommodations and providing for their complete nutritional needs. Most restaurants can get away with just not having halal proteins or just not having kosher options at all, but Universities that do dorm style housing with full meal packages have to put fort a little more effort.

Their 60% number is maybe misleading. What it probably means is all their meal items are served separately so if they’re doing a beef roast with roasted potatoes, and steamed veggies, that’s 66% of those offerings are vegan. It’s hard to get a good metric for what that means without also considering things like which vegan options are high in complete proteins, do all meals have good and varied options(if it’s the same vegan soup and salad bar for all three meals that gets old quickly) and if most of the vegan options are essentially side dishes for meat forward dishes or something that stands out as it’s own thing.

Admittedly it can be tough, because there’s so many groups to support. Some need vegan, gluten free, halal, dairy free, no pork, no beef, plus less common allergies. It’s hard to accommodate everything with dishes that are still going to appeal to people that don’t have those restrictions, or significantly increasing costs to accommodate 10% of your customer base.

What are the gas and electricity rates in your area? In Sask, we’re paying about $0.16/kWh for electricity and about $6.40/GJ. There’s about 278 kWh in a GJ, so the electricity cost works out to about $44/GJ, or about 7 times the cost of gas. A good coefficient of performance for a heat pump seems to be about 3, and modern gas furnaces are easily above 90% efficiency so the actual cost difference for gas to electric heat is about 1:3.

Now, newer houses are better insulated, so your heating load on a 2012 build is going to be a lot lower than a 1977 build. You also didn’t mention your heat source. Ground source pumps are pretty good efficiency year round, but cost a lot for the initial install, while air-source pumps have a large seasonal variation in their efficiency, which is particularly troublesome in central/northern Canadian climates.

Yep, in Sask right now natural gas is about 1/7 the cost of electricity, which means at best a heat pump only costs about 2x as much to run as a modern gas furnace. Maybe as our grid transitions to renewables and carbon prices rise those costs will become even or shift towards benefiting heat pumps, but I suspect at this point you’re not going to hit break even over the typical life of a heat pump. Much more affordable to stick with gas for now, and maybe start moving to heat pumps 10 years from now. Same argument for water heaters, gas is going to be cheaper than a heat pump for most cases. Maybe new builds lean towards a heat pump because it doesn’t need venting which minimizes HVAC needs, and/or if a person has a solar system that minimizes their electricity costs.

There’s also methods to potentially shelter some of that too. If a person has RRSP room and doesn’t actually need the whole amount available you can use that to delay paying the tax and hopefully reduce the rate paid. You can also make some investments within a TFSA, which means no taxes owed on the growth. Both of those options have caps on contributions so they’re a great for low-moderate income earners to minimize their taxes, while higher income earners can only shelter a portion of their income.

That’s the argument, but it doesn’t really hold water to me. That would lead to an environment where those with little capital get taxed on their entire income, making it hard to save more capital. Those that already have lots of capital could then leverage that capital to generate a tax-free(or limited tax) income, which seems like exactly what we’re trying to avoid. We do have TFSAs which do allow us to grow our assets tax free, and they’re limited to prevent those with excessive capital from dodging their entire tax burden.

To some extent, you might want it the other way around, those providing labour and covering basic living expenses should pay limited taxes(which is kind of how things work now when you consider the basic exemptions, GST rebates, child tax benefits, etc.) while those who have essentially a passive income should pay a higher rate. The argument for the current capital gains taxation is that you want to encourage people to invest in things like a business that grows the economy, rather than purely financial vehicles like bonds and loans that mostly just concentrate wealth without contributing to a healthy economy.

I like the cut of your jib. Some of the most vocal complaints are things like someone holding a cabin or other piece of land for an extended time, and then having to claim the gains in a single year. Especially in cases like an inherited cabin that’s held for 30 years then passed to next of kin so a particular owner never actually paid or was paid for the property, but probably did spend as much on maintenance over that time as their assessed gains. Spreading those gains across multiple tax years that have already been assessed would seem fair(letting them claim the gains at a lower marginal rate by spreading it over multiple years) though administratively difficult. I would also like the idea of putting in a lifetime exemption around the $250 k range which would make a big difference for those who might only ever pay capital gains due to that one property, but not really affect those who make most of their income as capital gains.

Am I reading this right in that it’s a percentage of homes (dwellings) occupied by the owner compared to the percentage of people that own their home? Like if you have a family of 4 in a house and they rent out a (legal) basement suite to two individual renters, is that counted as one owner-occupied dwelling out of two dwellings on the property; (50% homeowner occupied or 100% homeowner occupied. Compared again to say having 6 people, of which one or two(is that family of 4 a couple or single parent) are homeowners.

On the other hand, providing capital increases the value of the labour applied. Giving a tradesperson and additional capital might mean they can afford better tools that allow them to work more quickly, accomplish more per hour of labour and therefore be able to charge more for that hour while the customer simultaneously pays less for the task being done. The tradesperson is then able to pay back that capital plus some gains for the person providing the capital. Everybody wins, the investor gets more money than they started with, the tradesperson earns more after paying back the investment than if they hadn’t taken it in the first place, and the customer gets a lower rate for the tasks that need to be performed.

The problem is when we let that scale up to the point of there being people with essentially endless funds to spend on things like mega-yachts and ridiculous mansions, while others aren’t even getting their basic needs met. The answer to me isn’t removing the benefits of capital income at all, but adding some progressive taxation to keep the net income more modest, and maybe some stronger/target employment regulation so the capital holders aren’t getting rich off labour that’s supported by government social programs.

This is my answer to pretty much everything. Create a consistent baseline both in terms of consumer services/pricing and for employee work environment/compensation. Then let private industry compete with that crown corp. perfect example, the state of telecommunication services in Sask. Sasktel offers cell, internet and cable TV services while private companies compete along side them. The private companies have to actually be competitive(or at least convince customers that they are) with Sasktel if they want to capture any significant market share. They’re also competing with Sasktel to hire employees into similar roles, so they have to provide competitive wages and work environments. Prices in Sask tend to be lower than elsewhere due to Sasktel’s presence.

I don’t see what we wouldn’t have similar results in other industries, as long as the government actually allows it to happen and doesn’t just sell off the crowns to create a short term budget surplus or reward their buddies in competing private industries.

Could also be skewed the other way if it’s only about wage and not total compensation. Higher paid positions tend to also have good benefits like healthcare, vacation time, pensions, etc. that are on top of the stated wage. Lower wage positions often don’t have those same benefits.

Most are in my experience. Permanent position really just means there’s no pre-arranged end date for the position as opposed to say covering a maternity leave where you’ve been specifically given that position for just until the permanent employee comes back. Unless otherwise negotiated any permanent employee can be let go with 2 weeks(depending on provincial regulations) notice.