So, while I get that these will likely be abused given Smith’s general approach, I think gilmore’s take is wonky/missing some data. It’s also failing to read the room for many locals…

Mark Miller was the immigration minister for a long time, and was the one largely responsible for the huge immigration spike post covid that sent prices/rents skyrocketing again, and triggered massive affordability issues. He was in the press constantly saying Canada needs as much immigration as it can get, and that narratives about immigrants causing strain / issues for locals were fake news. Then, he got put on to the housing file, and suddenly he did an about face: high levels of immigration were causing issues, so the federal government needed to cap it. Housing/Rent prices have been coming down ever since immigration got capped by the Federal government – Vancouver just reported that housing prices are down another 4% yoy since last sept.

Infrastructure such as housing and medical services are under provincial jurisdiction, but immigration is under federal, generally (Quebec gets special treatment, which allows many ‘backdoor’ entries where the immigrant goes through Quebec, then immediately resettles elsewhere). Canada’s population grows/shrinks almost entirely based on immigration. In order to plan for capacity on provincially regulated/controlled critical infrastructure, you need a predictable population growth pattern. Further, when growth is entirely via immigration, you need time for those new immigrants to acclimatize and ‘get settled’ into professional positions / fields of work, and for them to adopt Canadian cultural values.

The fed allowing a massive influx of immigrants DID fuck up govt services and their ability to function. Our own AG noted that our immigration fraud investigators couldn’t come close to keeping up with the reports of student visa fraud – 2000 cases investigated per year, for 75000 cases reported. Hell, I work with a bunch of immigrants, some fairly recent, and I’ve heard a bunch of them say things like “We thought we’d be able to afford a home, but things went crazy” and “We thought we’d be able to get medical care/a family doctor, but the wait times are years out. We may aswell go back home to get treated”.

Gilmore’s daft for pretending like provinces wanting more control over this area isn’t a valid concern.

Well, sure, it went to shit once they got gobbled by EA – both ME and DAO were released so close to the acquisition by EA, that they were clearly made primarily under the old, more indie, setup. But it’s still a studio that I remember fondly, generally, and would still check their new releases when they came out (even if I didn’t play them).

To me they’re in the same general boat as a studio like Relic. I played the early Dawn of War games quite a bit. After they got gobbled by… Sega? I think? I sorta lost touch with their games in terms of buying them/playing them, because they just didn’t seem to hit the same. I think they got sold off to a venture capital group now, but it’s still a company that I at least look at their games when they announce stuff. I’d put others like ID software, or even some publishers like Paradox, in this group too.

Yeah, so bear sex and any combo of boobs and dicks for characters is a go, and Larian gets awards, and suddenly the indie studio gets huge. I can’t imagine bear sex getting the green light in something like a microsoft game. It’d almost definitely get removed by the review, out of concern of getting sued for all kinds of reasons. Larian could take that gamble, and even after winning awards, it isn’t such a well known company as to draw the interests of people like predatory lawyers seeking class action settlements for turning kids on to furry futa sex. Even with their win fall, it’s not the sort of honeypot for lawsuits as a big corp like MS or EA.

I’ve heard stories from people that work on Microsoft games, about how they have whole departments/teams that do things like equity and representation reviews to try and ensure that products are not pushing any potentially offensive stereotype.

It’s a ton of added overhead for anything with a narrative, if your company is big enough to get sued by special interest groups.

One reason smaller companies can put out interesting indie games, is because they can focus on the gameplay instead of big social/political issues.

It’s almost hilarious to see the steam next gongshow, juxtaposed with all these studio closures.

Someone made a comment recently in another thread about the prevalence of shitty bootleg/noname games all over the place back in the 80s, and how nintendo started putting a gold seal of authenticity on their games as a kind of quality assurance for gamers. That’s what game studios are now, to some extent, for me, with the new flood of AI garbage. Killing off studios known for making quality products is a terrible strategy.

The issue people have with that sentiment, is that the system does not allow certain change – and/or is designed to specifically prevent change.

For example, to get a constitutional change, you need to have 7 provinces, representing 50% of the population on board. In some cases, you need to get every province to agree, such as changing how the provinces are represented in the house. That’s in addition to getting the house/senate to approve, of course.

So if we’re talking about the referendum questions alberta listed that weren’t explicitly about separation, and instead about constitutional change to get more autonomy options for the provinces, it’s nearly impossible to achieve within the current system. Ontario represents ~40% of the country’s population, so they’d need either Ontario to agree, or practically every other province to get on board. BC’s got 14% of the population, so even with every province, if BC and Ontario say ‘nah’, it’s blocked. Quebec has 22% of the population, and has parties that explicitly demand hand outs for Quebec in addition to any law other provinces want to pass, because they generally hate Canada/federalism, so again, blocked most likely. If you’re trying to get more equitable representation for western provinces, the maritimes/quebec would block it, as they benefit from the west being under-represented (note: the only three provinces with fewer seats in the house than their % of the population, are Ontario, BC and Alberta).

If you’re trying to amend the distribution to get more equity for people out west, they need the people out east to agree to giving up their privilege. It’s not realistic that they’d do so, or that anyone would do so (if the west had leverage like that, I would not be at all surprised if the western leaders refused to be equitable to the east).

So the other more realistic option is to nope out of that system, and separate. Even just that threat, has gotten Quebec preferential treatment/perks from the fed – and it’s been implied that it’s why the fed was so gung ho for pipelines lately, in terms of Alberta making those sorts of threats. It’s sorta like the Women’s Suffrage movements to get women the vote from decades ago – men weren’t just going to suddenly ‘choose’ to be equitable, people had to start breaking shit/rebelling to get attention, and progress.

Yeah, reading’s hard. I agree. You should prolly try something like X or Bluesky, with short posts and less nuance.

Maybe. I’m not so sure socialism would really change anything though, on the aggregate in terms of climate collapses.

Socialism isn’t by default Eco-friendly / Eco-conscientious. Capitalism tends to have all the benefits from climate destroying stuff go to a capitalist class – socialism could easily take the form of still pushing climate destroying stuff, but distributing the benefits to the masses. Depending on the scale of the change (which is likely to be massive), diversifying the benefits could result in no human surviving, rather than just a subset of the wealthy.

For a random example to explain the thought, really ‘loose’ example admittedly. Under socialism, theoretically you’d have a fairer distribution of wealth so that housing would be more equitable – most people would get a simple starter-type home to live in. Rich person doomsday bunker type homes would be almost unheard of, as no individual would amass so much wealth that they could build em. In the socialist approach, each individual home has a smaller climate footprint, but the volume of homes built could have a similar net impact on the environment in the aggregate. So if it gets so bad that you need a bunker, humanity all dies together, equitably?

… ah, I see, nuance and the finer art of subtle jabs are lost on you. You completely missed the point, twice. I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess, since you admitted you don’t retain things you read, and/or you don’t bother to read posts before replying.

eh, we’re looking at a grim future either way at this point.

Only way I can picture the world cutting by that amount, is if there’s a massive collapse of western civilization / the wealthy get purged, and technology goes backwards. We won’t do that willingly, so the world will instead continue its trajectory, with the worst of climate change impact hitting poor people – and rich people / wealthy people using their assets to eek out a mediocre lifestyle in the future. I doubt we’d totally die off, barring something truly cataclysmic.

All these people talking about treason and accountability for Elon… he’s helping Russia. Russia is America’s ally, not Ukraine. Ukraine is a smaller country, one that America wants to loot for minerals/resources once the war ends. Don Trump Jr married a Russian oligarch’s asset, had a wedding party paid for by that oligarch. They are more than friends, they are family, in the same way that old ‘royal’ families settled disputes by marrying their children off.

Why would Elon’s actions be considered treasonous/wrong, when he’s helping America’s friends? If Ukraine wanted to be friends with America, they should’ve sent busloads of young girls to the white house as tribute, not some war-weary Zelenski guy.

Just to be clear to any American thinking this is satirical – it’s not. America is friendly/helping dictators and fascists all over the place. Your country quite literally declared “Anti-fascists” the enemy. I don’t think anyone would be at all surprised, for example, if Trump took a vacation to North Korea’s weird ‘resort’ town, to hang out with Kim Jong.

History tends to repeat, so why not.

aaaahahahahahha, there’s no way alberta doesn’t continue voting in conservative shits.

Like the PQ got fucked in their separatist attempt decades ago. They still in power, still talking separation, and still telling Canada to get fucked every chance they get. And the people keep electing them.

It’ll be the same in Alberta. Maybe we’ll see a federal party that’s a provincial voting block, similar to the PQ, spring up in the west in the semi near future.

Yeah, well here, we don’t have landladies. I’m not sure what other point you’d been trying to make, because I couldn’t bother reading/retaining it. But yeah. Your point is invalid because no landlady.

Yes, there’s a sentiment that a province like PEI having a relative shitload of seats, and a shit load of representation in the house, and getting a bunch of money from the Central government sorts because they prop up the central government against western province interests… while having far fewer people, far lower contributions to the country… is an affront to western provinces and is unfair within the context of equal representation that’s meant to permeate democratic institutions. You’re still harping on riding size and location, as though its rural vs urban – but I already stated, that is tertiary to the point that was raised previously.

And dude, you literally just saw a vote/national issue spurred on by alienation / discontent over this sorta shit. You really gotta still ask these sorts of questions? Yes, a large group of people in western provinces view it as unfair that the maritimes, and eastern provinces in general, get what appears to be preferential treatment / more representation in federal politics. That’s why they have separatist movements out west. The lack of seats, is tied directly to things like them saying Ottawa and eastern provinces are dictating things like climate policies without proper representation from western provinces at the table – and the impact of those policies are often more ‘negative’ / damaging to western provinces. The basic principle is “If the West had proper representation in federal politics, reflecting the population size and GDP/Economic contributions, they’d be able to challenge / get better legislation for western province interests at a federal level”. Even last night, the CBC commenters after the voting was done, were saying things like “Just watch, now that it’s over, the Feds will likely disappear again and go back to punishing us with terrible anti-west legislation in the near future”. That’s the sentiment – the west isn’t represented, and by extension their interests aren’t properly addressed.

And yes, the ‘extension’ of that is the obvious note that “Other areas of the country are over-represented compared to the West”. One person gets given a fork and a plate with crumbs, the other gets a big ol slice of cake, and you’re asking “Is that distribution unfair?? Why would the guy with the empty plate be annoyed at the guy with the cake??” Yes. Yes it is unfair. Even if it’s the fault of the person serving the cake for the imbalance, the person getting fucked over will be pissed off, and will highlight the gaps in portions to stress how they’re getting fucked over. The person getting that giant slice “SHOULD” be trying to make things fair, to get their fellow diner a proper serving – instead they just eat their slice and tell the west to eat a dick, because any changes to how the person serving food divides things, needs to get approved by the people getting big slices of cake. And they don’t want to give up their big slice of cake, even if they see other people leaving the restaurant, after waiting 50 years for a slice. The separatist argument is, in some ways, simply saying “Why should we keep waiting for these cake fuckers to treat us fairly? Let’s just go somewhere else”.

As an aside, I personally see no issue with saying something like “The maritimes should be amalgamated into a single province, and given the same general representation as other provinces of similar geographic size/economic clout/population - so basically, closer to 14 seats, like manitoba/sask”.

She leaned on the scales to give this movement momentum – she wasn’t on the fence. Even her comments about how there won’t be another referendum/vote “as long as I’m premier” is basically her providing the path forward for more bullshit. “Replace me as the leader of the party, and continue on people!”.

If you think BC having 13-14% of the population, with 43 seats – vs the Maritimes having 5% of the population, and 32 seats, is not an east/west problem, idk what you’d consider an east/west problem. If you’re referring to me comparing a vancouver riding to “any riding in PEI”? Silly criticism in my view. The point remains that they have far greater representation per voter at a provincial level. That is, quite explicitly and historically, an east/west problem, one cited by separatists.

The structural issues to do with representation for the West have been issues for decades. The Reform party in BC, circa 1980s-1990s, was largely based on systemic/structural issues that western provinces have with how things are divided up – with a focus on things like seat counts in parl, in senate, and equalization payments. Issues that have persisted since the 1980s, should likely help most people understand why separatists exist out west. Issues get raised, but until separatists step in, the Central/Eastern part of the country doesn’t give a fuck, especially since the status quo benefits them.

If a group of people have had issues with the government’s structure for like 50+ years now, and the governments done basically nothing to address it, it really shouldn’t surprise anyone that people started talking separation. Nor should it surprise anyone that, when the government goes back to doing nothing about the core issues, those separatists re-emerge.

So, my strata complex banned smoking earlier this year. It was a bylaw adjustment that had been proposed pretty much every year for the decade+ I’ve been in the building. It was voted down, year after year, until this year. This year, the group that wanted to ban it, just happened to get the right mix of people in the AGM to pass the amendment by 1 vote. A bunch of the pro-smoking sorts (pot heads generally) had grown tired of constantly voting it down, had assumed this years vote would go the same, and didn’t show up.

Attempting to rescind the change is nearly impossible, especially as the ‘indifferent’ people in the building generally just prefer to vote for the status quo, whatever that happens to be at the time – and as the younger generation that increasingly moves in, has been taught smoking is unequivocally bad and anyone that does it is bad.

The point is, that whether its right wing or left wing, a progressive or conservative movement, persistence can yield results, even if you don’t change your approach / message at all – you just need to wear down the undecideds, and wait for just the right mix of voters, to completely break existing norms to a point that they can’t be rebuilt.

Hell, just look at the USA as a case in point. Extremist elements did their thing. The separatists are now moving to likely take over the whole conservative party in Alberta, by controlling a majority of the ‘base’ supporters. So, no, the separatist “madness” won’t go away.

Especially because, at its core, there are justifiable reasons for western provinces to feel alienated/like an afterthought for the rest of the country. Even BC’s conservative party is moving towards separatist motifs. BC has 43 seats in parliament – with about 13-14% of the Canadian population. The Maritime provinces, all combined, have about 5% of the country’s population, and like 32-33 seats. A riding in BC’s lower mainland tends to have 120k people in it – ridings in PEI have less than 50k people. A BC voter is far less represented in the house than voters in the maritimes. The Maritimes are ok with this, because they like having outsized power for their actual size/contribution to the country – few people would willingly give up power, and they’re no exception. The Liberals are ok with this, because the maritimes are one of their core electoral power houses. The people in power, who often moan about equity and inclusion, would rather leave the imbalance in place and make out like western alienation is a fiction – which just feeds into the cycle of alienating the west.

International treaties that were made decades ago, have not adjusted to the new reality of what the USA has become. That’s why you see stories like the server being seized in amsterdam recently, which allowed the USA govt to go after an ISP in a foreign country for hosting left-leaning websites. The administration declared “anti-fascists” as terrorists, and DEI, or even just “people who say AI instead of Super Intelligence” as the enemy. Now all their treaties with western countries that allow them to extradite / try their enemies, can get leveraged to go after foreign progressives.

Getting data that helps them ‘claim’ there are enemies in other countries, makes it easier. Even just pulling something like the last 6 months of grocery data, as you noted, could let them see, for example, which Canadians are continuing to buy American goods, and which Canadians are “the problem”. It can also help them better gauge the ‘real’ tone of the Canadian population, compared to the rhetoric spouted by the government. Lots of reasons to snag that data if you could.

It can be the largest privately funded investment, and still get huge provincial incentives. Discounts on utilities / infrastructure improvements, regulatory short cuts / unilateral control of building code items, ignoring zoning concerns, tax free / tax write off options for decades to come.

But even more, Anthropic could throw a giant datacenter into a small community, and it may be the biggest investment in the area ever, but that still doesn’t mean it’s good for the locals. Especially since Anthropic is still an American company, and part of American imperial interests / the tech-fascist class. It’s like if a company out of nazi germany showed up and made a huge investment in building a nazi fortress holding nazi computers / tech, and providing nazi services to your country (mostly as a way to report it back to the motherland) – at a time when nazi germany is threatening to annex your country and funding disinformation campaigns to split your country apart with separatist bullshit. Cheering for that sort of thing is wrong on so many levels.