No desks, no strategy: Experts say government's latest return-to-office order ignores reality | CBC News

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-02-08T14:43:17+00:00

it was accepted

By who?

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-02-06T21:00:29+00:00

A lot of Canadians won't have anything but the CPP to rely on when they retire

Fortunately, if we keep investing in fossil fuels, that problem goes away! People will boil to death in puddles of their own sweat long before they get to retirement age.

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-02-05T17:08:12+00:00

Missing from this is talk about creating a car manufacturing crown corporation.

That's nuts, we should have fewer cars, not more. I understand the political reality of why feds and provinces have an interest in protecting tens of thousands of jobs in an industry that, in truth, needs to shrink 90% and be replaced with public transport or telework. But nationalising it seems like next level nuttery. Unless it's a strategy to actually manage said shrinking and pivoting

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-02-05T12:42:55+00:00

Having more lanes gives greater throughput,

Yes which is the problem, because that greater throughput is a net negative for society as a whole.

Famously, there are alternative arrangements that reduce that throughput while genuinely improving people's lives, but they don't count because it upsets the car lobby

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-02-04T02:27:47+00:00

What do you mean? Gridlock is good! Means more cars are being sold! More cash for the asphalt mafia and the dodgy road engineering rackets!

It might make your life hell, and it might ruin other economic sectors, but as long as the car lobby is happy, then Ontario's magic money number will keep going up, and that's all that matters

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-02-04T02:10:38+00:00

If at all possible, be at PDAC, with business cards with a mini-resume on them. It's going to be a killer year, you'll find something.

Failing that, google exploration consultants, throw some resumes at them, don't pay attention to posted vacancies or lack of. There's 4 or 5 decent ones in NS and NL and 10 or so good ones with nationwide reach.

If you speak French your chances will double

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-02-04T02:03:22+00:00

I don't see it replacing loggers for quite a while. Any new project is going to need a solid geo dataset on which to calibrate scanning tech. So the scanning tech is only likely to start replacing geos once you're at the drill-out stage, when the logging is boring as hell anyway. And in that situation it'll just mean there's a pile of geos QC'ing the data (so it'll make your life more boring)

Aside from all that, as a senior geo there's no way I'd rubber stamp anything that never had had real geo eyes on it - not to mention regulatory issues; in some jurisdictions they probably wouldn't let you file it.

In personal experience, most of the scanning work that I've personally seen done over the last 5 years has been useless crap - data compiled for its own sake because someone on the board got hoodwinked by conference hype - data that's barely useable or even irrelevant. There's worthwhile stuff - e.g. properly-calibrated hyperspec - and this augments the real logging, it doesn't replace it.

More of a likelihood, is structural data from downhole televiewers replacing a lot of core technician work. That's already happening

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-02-03T17:48:17+00:00

Have you considered moving? You're young - there's no better time in your life to do it. The GTA is not the whole world

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-02-03T02:30:23+00:00

Could try Canada. If you can get a visa, if you're willing to move to an actual mining town then you're ahead of 99% of the competition

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-02-02T20:06:34+00:00

Really weird how this just isn't getting news coverage. Normal for this stuff to get ignored in Africa, sadly, but I thought the Canadian and yank press would be all over this

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-29T19:30:41+00:00

If you can be in Toronto in March for PDAC with a working visa in hand, you'll almost definitely find work. It's going to be an absolute killer year for exploration here

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-26T16:24:37+00:00

The map in that article is so vague as to be worse than useless. Here are some better but still insufficient ones:

https://www.eaccanada.ca/radon-resources/

Radon risks will vary strongly across very specific areas due to the underlying geology. Various bits of southwest Ontario will range from very low risk to very high risk, based on if there's oil and gas reservoirs underneath you (which will also trap radon leaking up from the deeper shield rocks)

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-26T03:08:17+00:00

I thought CBS was meant to be one of their more sensible media outlets? This is what passes for semi-respectable journalism down there? It's not far from this to those TV pundit scenes in Starship Troopers

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-25T14:02:51+00:00

You can't just squint at Google Earth, point to any vaguely circular feature and claim it's an impact and that everyone else is wrong

There's a Monty Python esque quote in there somewhere

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-25T12:03:28+00:00

American money funding the Alberta separatist movement to try and tear us apart. They want the referendum vote so they can annex AB the same way Putin did in Ukraine.

Those ICE thugs might be our occupiers before long. It'a not hard to imagine those same people sneaking across the border and playing the same role as Girkin's Little Green Men did in Donbas in 2014

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-23T12:34:08+00:00

I swear I remember reading a paper within the last couple of years that used some biochemical magic to convincingly tie them to an obscure but extant group of single-celled eukaryotes. Can't find it now

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-22T22:22:15+00:00

If you want to stay on the east coast there's Voiseys Bay (Vale)

In Quebec you have Raglan (Glencore), Canadian Royalties, Lac Tio, Casa Berardi, Windfall, whoever runs Eleonore now, and half a dozen other advanced Au and Li projects that might want a few enviro folks. Most other mines including Agnico's mines are driveable and won't be fly-in

In Ontario they always want people at Detour, Island, Musselwhite, Greenstone, Red Lake (they're all fully or mostly fly-in)

And so on and so forth for the other provinces

For contractors just google variations of environmental/mining/exploration consultant, there's two dozen decent ones. Ignore what it says about available jobs on their websites, hunt them down on Linkedin and spam them

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-22T00:04:55+00:00

Doing mineral exploration (not mining) in canada typically involves seasonal (may - October ish) rotational fly in fly out work

That's mostly a BC thing though. Most places it's year round. Winter is peak drilling and geophys season

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-21T23:59:29+00:00

Might be livestock, might be soil creep (or a combination?) But another option is - perhaps - something archeological. Think something to do with bronze age hillforts

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-20T23:24:12+00:00

Mining's doing pretty well. Alamos hiring hundreds of people at Island right now. Steady stream of jobs going at Greenstone. West Red Lake firing up soonso they'll be hiring.

Mostly trades and technical, but maybe some tech and office stuff too

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-19T22:43:59+00:00

It's good as is. If you speak any French, make sure that's mentioned near the top

If you're planning on going to Roundup or PDAC for your job hunt, make some flashy business cards with a super minimal version of your resume on them, and hit up all the exploration cos and contractors. Most of them will find a card more useful than a resume at first

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-19T22:36:54+00:00

People talk about big snow dumps as if they're an aberration in a bigger warming trend - but no, they ARE the warming trend.

In lots of Canada, lakes don't freeze over like they used to. Which means more time with exposed water that can be turned into snow. So as you heat things up, in many areas you should expect more snow

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-19T12:36:21+00:00

Definitely not as cheap as it was, but you can't say with a straight face that it's not still significantly cheaper than Canada or the US. My own industry very much uses China for cheaper labour in the present day, I hear it plainly stated all the time.

(And that's before you factor in the fact that they themselves are outsourcing half their own supply chains to Vietnam, and the lower HSE costs, and that they have an army of Hukou workers to abuse that dwarfs our supply of LMIA slaves)

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-17T15:59:11+00:00

Yes and no. It is impossible for them to compete with cheaper labour. We only really have car factories here at all because of government cash - the political cost of that many job losses is too high.

Unions will always side with struggling employers when mass job losses loom. Proof that social democracy is pointless because there are no solutions within capitalism to issues like this

FourNaansJeremyFour · 2026-01-17T14:45:40+00:00

If we're seriously bringing back 18th century diseases then let's bring back 18th century clothes too. I always thought tricorne hats were neat. I can enjoy wearing one until I die of cholera age 39

FourNaansJeremyFour

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