K tell us what part exactly of the liberal agenda is the cause of these issues and what part of the conservative agenda would resolve the issues you continue to complain about?

Getting rid of mask and vaccine mandates? Trucker convoy? Tax cuts and trickle down economics?

Pp himself advocates for treatment and recovery for addicts, the source of your needles and human shit.

All you do is complain against these things citing bleeding heart liberals with no clear explanation of how conservatives would do any better, all from a sunny beach in the Mediterranean.

So it’s 100% not my job to figure these things out. That’s why we have govt. that’s why we pay taxes etc. I can be critical because I’m a citizen of this country and this city and I’m seeing it turn to shit.

And PP just made a video about how broken this current system is highlighting the DTES.

It’s pretty clear this safe supply system is not working. Infact it’s seemingly just creating more addicts with easier access etc. I don’t know how the advocates can argue it’s working or saving lives when month after month, year after year we are seeing record OD deaths. If the argument is that exponentially more people are drug addicts therefore the numbers prove the effectiveness of the program, that is a disgustingly sad state of affairs we find ourself in. If you’ve ever known an opiate addict, preventing them from ever starting is a far more effective long term strategy than trying to fix them afterwards. And I guarantee you we have old DTES veterans simply leading young, vulnerable, people on the DTES into a life of addiction with the ease of access.

As I’ve always said, my biggest issue is crime, crime is a multi-level govt. issue however the liberal attitude that both Vancouver and the federal govt. have been taking on serious crime is woefully ineffective.

Or are you saying the approach to violent, repeat crime is in-fact effective?

All these things Westopher outlined before, opportunity, recovery, etc. those are -not- there under this current system. So.. like.. this system is turning into total shit, it’s going into its 9th year.. like the healthcare system do we just wait another 20 years so we can say it’s still shit? Lol ffs..

Underscores point “heheh do you think the cons will help people?”

Lol and the liberals are? Lol record homelessness, record food bank usage, record poverty, record unaffordability.

You guys make the govt. sound like the shitty corporation that can’t do anything for their employees but here’s your pizza party! A $200 tax credit! That will get ya half a tank of gas.

Every country is having record levels of those things right now, it doesnt matter what type of government is in power, the global economy is in a severe downturn.

It was a genuine question, but it's pretty telling that you and JD can never actually answer a question about what the Cons will actually do. Just "hurr durr libruls bad" every time.

^ in a sense, I can see how it is valid to critique the present gov't and not have real solutions for the problem as it is quite complex and need multi-level approach to something eg. repeat offender in the criminal system (legal, police, courts, mental health support, corrections, rehab, etc.)

I say that because that's how I voted for municipal election. I didn't really know whether Ken Sims policies or ideas would work, I was at a point in which it was obvious that the government under Kennedy was NOT working and willing to give anyone else a try. I mean, it can't be any worst. ... I guess we'll see.

I mean our system is modeled exactly off of the British parliamentary system is it not? Literally every level of government from regional to national as well as policies for care of people and welfare is based exactly on the UK's form of governance.

The Conservative party has been in power in the UK since 2015 and look at the bloody state they're in. It's very clear just based on the general values of Conservative government by the very definition of what they stand for does not care for the populace more than a Liberal value government. They ostensibly care about the economy and business and infrastructure and crime and are a reactionary party in that last regard, but caring about an enacting effectual policy are not the same thing and they've never focused on prevention, just punishment.

This isn't really a good counter argument. Yes, many parts of the world are seeing these trends but there are also examples of places where they are dealing with these particular issues better. Eg. in terms of the specific issue of dealing with the drug OD crisis. In Belgium, they also use clean injection sites etc. but they require those who receive clean drugs to participate in a mandatory rehab. And that is much more effective than Canada's approach of just give clean drugs so no one dies. Here we debate whether a forced mandatory participation in a rehab program violates a person's civil liberties ... :concentrate:

So I mean in terms of specifics and discussion - would you support mandatory participation in rehab if you use clean injection sites? I, for one, would.

If that was the approach, then gov't has to throw money at creating spaces for rehab. Right now, the wait is weeks to get into something.

I don't believe in going on about the actual details of an initiative... every single 1 of us that are not involved in the actual job are speaking with almost no knowledge of what's occurring on the inside or why certain decisions were made/not made.

I know first hand working in the government seeing how people interpret a policy, but knowing myself what went into said policy in the background and all the people complaining have NO idea what they're talking about but they think they do.

It's too bad that fellow on here who works in the DTES isn't posting anymore.

its really easy to criticise, it's really hard to fix.
you can criticise the current gov and that's totally fair, but if you're going to say that your party of choice is somehow better then you better come with some good points of how they plan on fixing the problems, not just point out that they have been critical on those problems. that's just lazy.

The reality is no party has a real solution.

The problem is complex, will cost money and pain to fix (whether economically or socially). No one wants to pay additional taxes, no one wants their property value to go down, and thus we continue this "business as usual" approach.

Voting in the Cons won't fix the problem, they are beholden to the same powers that be as the Liberals are.

We just voted in a "conservative" mayor -- the guy didn't even know that the province wouldn't flip the bill for his primary campaign promise :lol

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/we-misundersto...-all-1.6163110

Now he's in Qatar partying it up at the world cup, while the police have their first budgetary board meeting.

These Cons don't give a fuck about you or these issues, they've demonstrated that time after time. You think PP the crypto conman will be your savior? FOH :lol

There is no easy way out of this problem, and the reality is no one wants to brunt the cost to fix it, and to be honest, I don't even think funding at this point can resolve this.

The problem with criticizing and critiquing is that it implies a level of critical thinking (it's in the word itself), which as pointed out by underscore is not happening.

Critical thinking involves seeing the perspective of the side you are criticizing, understanding the thought process tradeoffs being made in their decisions, and then criticizing the actions of decisions.

You complain about a situation. You criticize the actions and decisions that led to the situation.

Children aren't criticizing their parents when they won't let them have candy before dinner. They are are complaining.

Criticizing the parents would mean the child is engaging in critical thought to understand the tradeoff the parents, that giving the child candy would spoil their dinner, and then stating a case why that is the wrong decision.

What Honda and JD are doing are complaining, not criticizing.

So, we should keep voting libs even though they also do nothing other than some pretentious measures for the sake of saying "oh, we are making a difference".

Any measure would make "a" difference. But the problem is about progressing. By always electing the same party, they will only do whatever the fuck they want because they know that no matter what happens, they will get elected either way.

I had never considered myself affiliated in any particular party. In fact, when conservative were in power, I wanted the libs to get elected... simply because I didn't think con's were doing a good job and deserve a change.

Democracy is not about being conservative or liberal or libertarian or green. It's about the people has the ultimate say about how the country needs to be run. And the worst thing to do is keep voting for the same party when the way they are dealing with problems you care about aren't working.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

You vote the same people, they aren't going to change.

Every time I enter this thread...

The problem is that with the issues like crime, the solutions around recovery programs and opportunities, the conservatives have absolutely no track record for, and in fact, socially funded programs like those are traditionally against conservative "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" political values.

Based on the solutions even Honda even agrees with, and PP advocated for, there is no evidence at all how or why conservatives would even want to fund these tax funded social programs, if only to try to attract fed up voters who just want to see change at election with no intent on actually doing anything besides their other conservative agenda items.

^This exactly.

I'm not saying you should keep voting for the "libs", not once did I ever say that. To Trudeau's credit, though, he has increased funding for non-market housing which is a huge step to tackling this problem.

What I'm saying here is people who criticize the Libs and proclaim PP will be the savoir to this problem are completely wrong. No one wants to admit that this problem is essentially unsolvable in the short-term, and conservative austerity is not the solution.

The other reality? We can't build fast enough, we can't hire or educate fast enough.

Reopen Riverview? Sure, how long will it take to rebuild the facilities? Where are the contractors to do so? Open more hospitals, where will you find the nurses and facility folks to work there?

I was talking to a friend who works at city hall recently and he said something so true, I wish more politicians would come out and just admit.

We can do essentially nothing to fix this current generation of people who are actively on the streets, there is no way to really fix this for those people.

Instead what we should concentrate on is the future upcoming generation of families and young ones to ensure they don't end up like the folks currently out there -- This means funding for affordable family housing (not SROs), co-ops, bolster public education, help mid-to-low income families with said housing and career/educational support.

If we can better stem the problem in the future, we can tackle this in the long-term.

That's the reality no one wants to talk about.

By the way I think I see why you're on a tear here recently Honda, I'm assuming you had recently watched PP's little propaganda piece here, "Everything is broken":

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=854182778943089

Not only is he totally full of shit (the streets are not rampant with legal drug supply provided by taxpayers, completely false), he also neglects to even speak upon how his government would address the primary Occam's Razor to this whole problem -- the precipitous increase in the cost of housing, and the lack of access to said housing.

Why? Because he doesn't have a plan.

You know it's bad when even the Globe and Mail are calling him out on his bullshit :lol

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opin...-broken-video/ (Paywalled)

PP is just one of 59 MP's who own 1 or more rental properties/investment homes... and 90 MP's didn't submit their information for review, you can bet a whole swath of those 90 also do.

He doesn't want housing prices to actually drop any more than any of the home owners in this thread do.

Total and utter nonsense.

This is literally the stepping stone to Make Canada Great Again. Convince a base large enough that everything is broken, and you can then do whatever the fuck you want because you're the one and only saviour.

What do you mean? Canada is great right now

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2022/1...d-drug-arrest/

Not only do we not punish societies worst criminals, we actually have support groups defend them..

https://vancouver.citynews.ca/2022/1...stside-arrest/


https://i.imgur.com/YcFDRKe.png

You’re completely correct with all of this

However, when it comes to both healthcare and housing, we’ve been saying the same things for 20+ years.

Healthcare is honestly probably the easier fix than housing and we can’t even scratch the surface of the issue.

I 100000% guarantee you if the positions of the federal govt. we’re reversed and the cons were in power for this period of time, not one of you saying “well it’s bad everywhere!” Would have that tone.

If things were good, I wouldn’t mind if the liberals were in power either. Much like the provincial NDP, when you’re doing an OK job.. I don’t go out of my way to criticize them…

But at the federal level we are basically at the worst we’ve been in what, 30+ years? Lol sweet, its all peachy!

That’s why I firmly believe the next election, people who are not normally engaged in politics will come out to vote simply for change because they realize the status quo isn’t working, rightfully or wrongfully. That’s how these 2 party systems work unfortunately and likely for the next few years in the run up to the election we won’t see any actual change that benefits the general populous but rather more and more catering to special interest groups that will be the ultimate downfall for the liberal party.

We’re coming up to year 9 of this federal leadership. At what point do you finally admit things aren’t working? At year 14 when ER waits are 5 days and you die of cancer before you ever see a doctor? What’s the tipping point

I'm surprised no one is talking about bill C-21. They just added 400 guns to the ban list.

Because the opposition is dire.

If a Conservative government was in power over the last 2 years, when I try to think of how bad things could be, I realize it would actually be even worse.

The entire world is FUCKED right now. Every single country. Some more than others. To be as fucked as Canada is actually a damn utopia compared to some places.

Well well well .. how did this happen? Where did BC get the winfall? Seems like the BC Gov't was surprised by this ...

And they still want to collect PST for used vehicles ??!! ... at black book value! How about we throw some $$ into the health care system?

It does look like they are attempting to rectify the issues here in healthcare. They started with the GP pay model, teachers have been given a large raise as well. Nurses are set to renegotiate their contract in a month or so as well. Paramedics have had the $1/hour on call wage bullshit renegotiated. At least they are fairly openly looking at spending where it matters. It will take time to sort some shit out, but it’s good to see them putting in effort to these areas at least. Meanwhile Alberta is handing out “stimulus” cheques.
It’s funny when left leaning governments do it cons scream communism but when cons do it it’s “stimulating the economic growth.”

Increasing GP pay is huge. But not immediate. The cons will take credit for that when they are elected in and it’s starts showing it’s face. They have also increase medschool seats here in BC fairly substantially. It all takes time.