Ontario – Partisan Issues

How Canada’s Right Wing Provincial Parties Turned Left

How many times can politician cry wolf before the electorate stand up and say, that is not “our way”: Conservatives believe in small government and limited regulation Liberals believe in larger government and substantial regulation or at least they used to: Alberta: United Conservative Party (UCP) Leader Jason Kenny is calling for the Provincial Government to actually step into the private sector and demand oil production cuts. The “right” would say the solution is to increase the royalty rates temporarily…

Sales Numbers Of The 6 Cars General Motors Is Cancelling In 2019 Tells You Why They Are Cancelled

Below is a list of the of the six cars GM is dropping from production in 2019. All of these products make up just 8% of General Motors’ US sales and if you exclude the Cruze, that number falls to just 3.5%. If you exclude the Cruze and the Impala, the remaining 4 cancelled cars only provide GM with 1.7% of sales. There is a reason the stock market bounced GM up on this news. Do the math, GM is…

What Can Be Done About the Oshawa General Motors Plant Closing

At first emotional pass it appears that there is little to be done about GM’s announcement they are closing the Oshawa Ontario factory, but there are options and there is work to yet to be done. Here is the list of thing that should be considered and quickly: 1 – Keep Some GM Product in Oshawa: The best case scenario is that GM can be persuaded to continue producing some product in Oshawa. While this is unlikely, it is possible.…

Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence Continue To Dominate in the Toronto Montreal Corridor

Nearly two years ago we wrote an article in our sister site URTech.ca explaining that Machine Learning and AI companies are increasingly putting their resources in the area along Canada’s 401 highway through heavily populated area’s of Quebec and Ontario. The so called Toronto – Montreal Corridor actually extends from Waterloo Ontario to Montreal, but no-one outside of the region knows where Waterloo is so we just say Toronto, Montreal. Today we are astounded by the variety and quality of education,…

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Which Canadian Province Produces The Most Electricity From Renewables. You Might Be Surprised

Without any question Quebec generates the most electricity from renewables because of their massive and expanding hydro infrastructure. You might also be surprised to find some cities have completely given up coal. Calgary which gets 84% of its electricity from Natural Gas and 16% from Wind power. Below are the sources of electricity for each Canadian Province.

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Is Toronto City Council Too Large: Toronto vs New York vs Vancouver vs LA vs Chicago

There has been much debate in recent weeks about the size of Toronto City Council. Currently there are 47 elected councilors in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and newly elected Ontario Premier (and former Toronto City Councillor) Doug Ford announced he is reducing that number to 25. You can make solid arguments on both sides of this issue: Reasons To Keep Toronto City Council at 47 Better representation The cost of each councilor only about 0.00008% of Toronto’s $14.2B annual budget…

Why Canadian Hand Gun Control Works & Why US Gun Control Does Not

Ontario Premier Doug Ford recently opposed additional hand gun controls by the City of Toronto. Patchwork legislation on hand gun control would be very difficult to enforce and would likely have very little positive effect. Handgun control needs to handled at a much larger level. Canadian Provinces are very large compared to US States (as large as Texas + ALL of the New England States combined) and only well connected to any other Province on its eastern side to Quebec. …

Solar & Wind Just Keep Crushing Production Predictions

Over the years many knowledgeable people have downplayed the contributions that Solar and Wind can play in the future. On the other side we keep hearing about massive increases in Solar and Wind electricity production due to costs dropping precipitously. So we wanted to know how often the so called experts are correct and how often their predictions are wrong. For the purposes of this article we will focus on predictions from the IEA (International Energy Association) because it is…

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Has The Price of University Tuition Really Gone Up? A Comparison From 1990 to 2018

We are trying answer two simple questions: How much does a student need to work to pay their Canadian University tuition? Is it harder today to pay for tuition than is was in the past? How Are Canadian Universities Funded? Over the years various Canadian Governments and donations (Corporate and personal) pay between 75% to 90% (round numbers) of the University costs leaving students to pay between 10% to 25% of the costs in tuition. What is the Average Price…

What Major Pipelines Were Built In Canada in the Last Decade of Conservative Rule

There are many who claim that in the last decade of Conservative rule in under Federal Prime Minister Harper and Alberta Premiers Stelmach, Redford and Prentice precious little was done for Alberta’s pipelines. On the other hand, earlier this year UCP Leader Jason Kenney said that it was completely wrong to say that pipelines had not been built under that Conservative leadership. (Note that we cannot locate the exact quote so if you can find it, please send it to us so we can correctly detail the verbiage used). The…

How Much Oil Does Canada Import & Other Oil Statistics

Canada imports about 1 BILLION barrels of oil per year, nearly all into Quebec and Ontario in-spite of the fact that it exports 3.1 Billion barrels of oil per year. These are the specific numbers taken directly from the Canadian Federal Government from 2016: Canadian production: 3.9 MMb/d Imports: 0.9 MMb/d Exports: 3.1 MMb/d Below are some other statistics you might also find interesting: Canada Has the Third Largest Proven Reserves on the Globe: World proved reserves – 1,646 billion barrels…

How Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau May Use Kinder Morgan To Bring Back Energy East Pipeline

Much has been said about the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline and while the Trudeau Government has made it clear they do not want to own it for very long, there are rumblings that they will use this as a management tool to develop or support the much needed Energy East Pipeline. In the last few months the debate over such an advanced economy as Canada exporting raw materials and importing finished goods based on those raw materials has become…

How Killing The Canadian Oil Industry Is a Formula For Environmental Disaster

Today Bloomberg’s Michael Bellusci wrote an article explaining that Canadian oil and gas companies are in deep trouble. Here is an excerpt: Canada’s Energy Industry Faces ‘Extinction’ Without M&A, BMO Says Investors have bailed on the Canadian energy sector, although mergers & acquisitions north of the border could provide a much needed catalyst, barring pipeline and political developments… Source: bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-05/forget-permian-canada-s-energy-needs-m-a-to-avoid-extinction On the same day, Global News reported: Feds to spend $280k to study why Canada’s oil and gas sector is falling behind The federal…

You Owe $60,000 – Welcome To Alberta’s Avoidable $100B Debt Crisis

Last week the NDP Alberta Government introduced yet another budget without any cuts in it. Instead they are relying on growth to balance the budget by 2023 leaving us with colossal debt of about $96B. Citizens, including me, do not seem to grasp numbers larger than about $10M so some context is key to understanding. To put that debt in perspective, there are just over 4 million people in Alberta, which makes YOUR personal portion of the Provincial debt $24,000. …

There has been much talk in the recent decade about banning disposable plastic bags. The basic argument is that consumer grade disposable single use plastic bags are the root cause widespread environmental damage but have ready alternatives, so why are will still using them? As is often the case with political issues, there is no simple answer to the question “Should single use plastic bags be banned?”. Below are some of the facts and you can decide for yourself if…

There is a global crisis with municipal recycling programs that is affecting YOUR community as of January 1st 2018. China is now rejecting all used plastic, except “high grades”. High Grades are used materials that are fully sorted. This means mixed plastics, aka Low Grade, will no longer be taken. The problem for us is that we rely on China’s cheap and efficient labour force to sort low grade plastics for us. This video explains the Chinese “National Sword” policies…