So - any tears tonight watching Lloyd’s last broadcast?
My completely unscientific study, based on my time in Toronto, in Calgary, and in Lethbridge; tells me that in taxes and fees and other charges, Albertans are out of pocket about as much as Torontonians or Montrealers. But, say Albertans, we’re not paying taxes, we’re paying fees.
Yeah, says this ex-Torontonian. Big difference!
The difference is that you can see fees, but taxes comprise a bunch of stuff that politicians pad at their pleasure. Fees can be fought and objected to easier. Taxes not so much.
To be honest I suspect this stuff tends to balance out anywhere you go.
We often hear about how American pay lower taxes, but I have friends who’ve moved to the USA and report that this is utter nonsense and they pay out the nose. Sure, they don’t have a federal sales tax, and can deduct mortgage interest, but they get jacked up in other ways.
Wow, #1 in BC, Quebec and Atlantic Canada; whoever is going to be opposition leader should do everything possible to keep this wave going. My question to you is: How to do this? What should the new leader do?
Also, taxes make the baby Jesus cry. 
As we observed a bit at the end of the broadcast, it looked like Lloyd was getting a little misty-eyed as he said his goodbyes, but no tears appeared to be shed. I think I heard his voice crack just once part way in and it seemed like he was taking longer than usual pauses between sentences at the end to hang on to his composure, so this seemed to me to be pretty emotional for him. Part of me would have been a llittle disappointed if he had lost it on camera, but part of me also was a little disappointed that he didn’t. At any rate, a class act top to bottom, and a member of the old school when journalistic integrity meant something. Sad to see him go.
Jesus, yes, a thousand times this. As much as people in this city love to trumpet themselves as ninjas of fiscal responsibility, they don’t seem to understand that if you want to live somewhere nice, you have to actually pay for things. It comes down to “Don’t tax me, implement fees for the people that use them. But don’t charge me a fee, either.”
In this sentence, “this city” could mean pretty much any city. Calgary is in no way whatsoever unusual in this regard.
There’s a part of me that thinks that the people running the city should just say, “This is what you’re paying for snow removal now. This is what we’ll do; we’ll have this many plows, and the streets will be cleared in a couple of day. Suck it, bitches.” People seem to respond better to a fait accompli than politicians swinging in the breeze of whatever public opinion is today. I mean, the people will still bitch and complain, but at least we’d get our streets cleared.
Yeah, I call it ‘Urinetown Syndrome’, after the musical. It is characterized by an insatiable desire for more/better public services coupled with a belligerent demand for lower taxes. And as RickJay pointed out in the election thread a few months back, it isn’t restricted to just one party - everyone was claiming that taxes could be lowered and services would be intact. Not in the real world…
I’m (so far) enjoying our new mayor - he doesn’t even seem to be playing that game. His message seems to be, “Well, you can’t have everything for nothing. You have to pay for it, and we’ll figure out the best way to do that.” Of course, he is a business man, not a politician. 
I’ve said this before and I’m sure I’ll say it many times in the next few years - if you get tired of your mayor, can we have him? Our guy makes Mel Lastman look like a statesman.
[del]Fraud[/del]Ford? I don’t even live in Toronto and I hate the guy.
Mayor-for-life Tremblay is a corrupt imbecile and the current borough system in Montreal doesn’t quite work, but sadly, it seems he’s still better than the other candidates that show up once in a while. Louise Harel is completely crazy and everyone else is so fringe or pet-issue-only you know this city would be worse off. I take very little interest in what’s going on at the municipal level because I spend so much time utterly disgusted that I can’t be made to give a fuck about anything.
I’m pretty sure mayors suck no matter where you are. They are the lowest level of politician, and therefore the worst.
Waiting for my husband to come home so he can help me finish packing. We are going all of 30 minutes away to go camping for the weekend! My friends have a wedding to go to tomorrow, so we are staying close to home. Still, it will force us to do some touristy stuff in our own region, which we would never do otherwise! It’s supposed to be hot and thunder-stormy all weekend, which just adds a layer of fun to the campfire and beer-chugging!
I wish my city would stop trying to improve things.
We had a truly lovely marina, but the city, in its wisdom, decided to evict the yacht club and other organizations and businesses, greatly cut back on the number of berths, pave and concrete over much of the greenspace, eliminate parking on the piers, greatly cut back on general parking (to the point that my crew has to park downtown rather than at the marina), and dug a very large hole in the ground that may or may not someday be where a hotel will be built so that tourists can watch us not use our marina any more.
We had a new, world class nordic ski area (World Nordic Games in 1995), with cross-country trails, ski jumping, and lift area skiing, on top of a lovely escarpment. The city, in its wisdom, has decided to chop down the trees and replace the ski area with wind turbines, given that there are so few other places suitable for wind turbines in the hundreds of thousands of hectares of unpopulated land we have up here.
Wow, Muffin, I thought Calgary was engaged in some idiocy with the Peace (of Shit) Bridge.
My favourite quote from that link -
A bridge that we don’t need, don’t want, and didn’t put through a proper bid process, is pushed back indefinitely. It was discovered during the last election season is that this unnecessary bridge is ending at a location that is conveniently owned by the former mayor’s brother-in-law. No corruption here - no way, no how!
Could you send any bridges you don’t want over here? We’re 2-3 short of what we need.
We’ve got a nice one you can have for about $25 million.
Hey! At least your bridge is better looking than our bridge!
(Granted, I kind of like the pale yellow, and the long ramps at either end are because GO wanted clear space for their electric train wires* and sightlines for the railway signals, so the bridge got pushed up a couple of metres, requiring the ramps, but… what the heck are those cable-and-bracket decorations at the end?)
[sub]*that they haven’t put in yet, but they have a plan![/sub]
I don’t see how you’ll be able to find a cite for that, but a very large segment of my childhood friends went to public high school, and I can attest that it is true. Though having gone to Catholic School myself, I can tell you that the last time we did a pageant or play was the third grade. But we did do morning prayers over the P.A. after O Canada, so sure. I guess someone probably wished us a Merry Christmas.
Public High Schools did, however, get Christmas holidays off (statutory holidays, obviously), and friends that went to a public high school proudly boasted how they skipped class on Eid al-fatir, because there wasn’t a chance that the teacher would assign any homework or tests on a day when a third of the class was not there.
Sounds like a bargain. The new South Bridge is a couple hundred mill. Granted it comes with a few miles of freeways and something like 7 new interchanges.