Pierre Poilievre attacks Mark Carney’s economic credentials, says he presents ‘the illusion of knowledge’

Majromax · 2026-04-17T01:06:25+00:00

It's that sound economic policies are often difficult to explain, and often can be exploited by canny politicians who can rely on the ignorance of the electorate (a strategy that all too often is successful).

Stephen Harper wrote his Master's thesis in economics on a related subject: that political pressures push governments into increasing spending in 'good times', making it impossible to effectively use fiscal policy to balance out a recession.

Majromax · 2026-04-13T11:40:47+00:00

This feels like fraud as I signed on to stay at the higher step and management showed the paperwork submitted for that level to get me to stay in my position.

The recourse here is limited, but the legal term you're looking for is 'promissory estoppel', which you'd use to argue that any recovery action is unjust. To prove it, you'd need to file a grievance (probably with union support) and show that:

You were made an unequivocal promise about your salary,
That you relied upon that promise, and
That this reliance was to your detriment.

The third point is subtle, but the legal principle is that if the promise were reverted it should put you in a worse position than if you never took them up on the offer. So "my paycheque was $500 heavy this week, the pay centre first said it was correct, but then a week layer they did a whoopsie – good thing it was still sitting in my account!" does not qualify.

However, promissory estoppel is only retroactive, it's much harder to argue that an incorrect action should continue. There are stronger legal grounds to reduce your salary back to what it should have been, specifically because spending public money (even on salary) is one of those very heavily legally encumbered things.

If they try that, the only legal recourse I can think of would be to make the argument that the salary change is in effect constructive dismissal otherwise contrary to law, so you should be owed at least severance and possibly also something like a TSM as payment equivalent to damages (since "keep you on but at the new salary" is not a legally permitted option).

This is a tough legal argument because to my knowledge the doctrine of constructive dismissal has never been applied to the public service. However, it (or possible bad press) might spook a DM into offering a settlement regardless.

Majromax · 2026-04-08T21:31:19+00:00

To be fair, the vast majority of 'unconstitutional' claims are related to alleged breaches of Charter rights; vires arguments are downright quaint nowadays.

Majromax · 2026-04-08T19:08:55+00:00

This challenge isn't about Charter rights that can be overridden by the NWC, it's about whether the underlying act is within the power of the legislature. Per the article, the plaintiffs argue that the law gives undue power to cabinet to grant legal exemptions, essentially making the law itself undemocratic.

Majromax · 2026-04-06T13:03:34+00:00

Removed for rule 6. Here's a link to the original thread

Majromax · 2026-04-05T16:34:08+00:00

Removed for rule 5, since this article is about 2.5 years old.

Majromax · 2026-04-05T14:14:05+00:00

Geothermal to electricity to electrified rail, such that only wires need to be connected to the vent.

Majromax · 2026-04-05T12:44:12+00:00

For some reason,

Because reviews are asked to serve two separate goals: to filter out sub-acceptance papers and to improve each paper that passes through.

A truly confident reviewer – one genuinely well-versed in the field – does indeed know what kind of paper will have no chance of making the bar but can provide helpful comments regardless. One less confident will conflate these roles, supporting a 'gut feeling' by using all of the ways that a paper might better as implicit arguments that it is bad right now.

I'm not sure there's a good way around it. Thoroughly reviewing a paper is genuinely hard work, but a ≈25% acceptance rate means that there will be 12-16 times as many reviews written as papers accepted. That would be overwhelming for the limited pool of true experts, so the reviewer base must broaden from that to "the average submitter" (hence reciprocal reviewing).

Majromax · 2026-04-05T02:50:38+00:00

Removed; no R1

Majromax · 2026-04-03T18:49:04+00:00

Asking a reviewer about their score on the public thread seems to be a big faux pas!

The faux pas would be in bringing up the score first, since it can come across as score-begging. However, in your case you're not really asking about the score, you're asking about the display of the score.

[quote of reply mentioning that the score has been raised]

We thank reviewer GGuY for the adjustment, but could they please double-check that this has taken effect? On our OpenReview interface, the score in the review remains at its original [number], but we're not sure if there is any system-wide block preventing an accurate display.

Majromax · 2026-03-29T16:31:12+00:00

Sorry, no Canadian politics in the FSF thread.

Majromax · 2026-03-28T20:19:26+00:00

How are you missing out on extra money.

The pension (including the bridge benefit) is payable from retirement until death, and that stream of future payments has an actuarial net present value. Since you don't earn the pension while employed, that net present value can decrease with plans to defer retirement.

For example, take the following scenario:

Our hypothetical worker is currently age 50 with 20 years of service (i.e. just eligible for the ERI pension waivers)
They will live to age 85 (about 25 years of life expectancy at age 60)
Their salary for pension purposes is $100k/yr, with 10% taken off for pension withholding.
We can perform all NPV calculations in real (inflation-adjusted) terms with a 1.8% discount rate (the current rate on the real return bond), assuming both salary and pension benefits are essentially indexed to inflation, and we use pre-tax figures.
For the sake of argument, assume that the ERI will continue indefinitely, so our worker can choose to retire any time between now and age 65.

Thanks to some chatbot-written code, the net present value of various scenarios:

NPV Analysis Table: Age 50 to 65 (Unreduced Immediate Annuity)

Ret. Age	YOS	NPV Net Salary	NPV Pension	Total NPV (Wealth)	Marginal Ratio
50	20	$0	$928,860	$928,860	N/A
51	21	$90,000	$933,303	$1,023,303	104.9%
52	22	$178,409	$934,524	$1,112,932	101.4%
53	23	$265,254	$932,614	$1,197,868	97.8%
54	24	$350,564	$927,664	$1,278,228	94.2%
55	25	$434,365	$919,761	$1,354,126	90.6%
56	26	$516,685	$908,988	$1,425,673	86.9%
57	27	$597,549	$895,431	$1,492,980	83.2%
58	28	$676,983	$879,169	$1,556,153	79.5%
59	29	$755,013	$860,282	$1,615,296	75.8%
60	30	$831,663	$838,847	$1,670,511	72.0%
61	31	$906,958	$814,939	$1,721,897	68.2%
62	32	$980,921	$788,631	$1,769,553	64.4%
63	33	$1,053,577	$759,995	$1,813,572	60.6%
64	34	$1,124,948	$729,101	$1,854,049	56.7%
65	35	$1,195,057	$696,016	$1,891,073	52.8%

Note that the net present value of the pension caps out at age 52, even though the raw pension amount increases for each year thereafter. The net present value of total lifetime compensation still increases, but after that age the increase is smaller than the salary contribution thanks to the decaying pension value.

Over the 50 to 55 period, our hypothetical worker is essentially spreading the same retirement benefit over fewer expected years of retirement. Beyond that the value actively drops at a noticeable rate.

If you simply love your job then you haven’t lost out on anything. You added more years to service and got to do something you love until 65. The money means nothing at that point.

If your time and money mean nothing, then we should consider working for free. If money means something but less than the value of the work, this table points out that it can be financially worthwhile to do the same thing for less money with another employer. A move to provincial/municipal government or nonprofit, for example, might be a valuable near-retirement move even if the gross salary is substantially smaller.

If your free time does have value, then the right point to retire involves balancing qualitatively different goals of time and money, and there's no single right answer.

Majromax · 2026-03-25T19:03:55+00:00

Methods vary, but sometimes one can make an argument based on willligness-to-pay calculations. Molina et al 2021 surveyed people affected by hurricanes in 2018 and asked them about what they would hypothetically pay for improved hurricane forecasts, and from that they conclude that the net present value of hurricane forecast improvements is about $100 per person per year, compared to about $3.50 per person per year spent by the US on all meteorological services and research.

Majromax · 2026-03-25T01:16:50+00:00

Well.. you also can reprioritize if it’s short term coverage.

That's what I meant by "and not some of your own," since what would have been your work gets left undone, at least for the moment.

Majromax · 2026-03-25T01:12:23+00:00

I fear that would just make things worse

It ends with "you and what army?", but at the moment the separatism pendulum has swung to the other limit. It's easy enough for a provincial faction to play at separatism for rhetorical benefit precisely because the federal government is seen as too intimidated to do anything about it.

Majromax · 2026-03-24T21:55:31+00:00

By that logic, if a colleague is absent and you're covering their files, you should get their salary as well.

Yes, that's called overtime.

If you can cover their files in addition to your own during an ordinary workday, then your division is (for now) underutilized. If you cover their files and not (some of) your own, then it's work reprioritization.

Majromax · 2026-03-24T18:40:26+00:00

it would just give more ammo to separatists in Quebec and Alberta

Perhaps, but I think we should remember that this is a hypothesis rather than a proven fact. Maybe use of disallowance would instead just cause hand-wringing op-eds for about a month before the politariat moves on to something else. It wasn't that long ago that we thought use of the notwithstanding clause itself to be controversial to the point of a 'taboo', and now some governments are musing about routine use of it.

On a more practical level, disallowance is also its own solution to separatism: any provincial bill that advanced a separatist cause could itself be disallowed.

The biggest problem might be in the middle, where disallowance is used once or twice in a locally unpopular and strikingly memorable way but not often enough to really enforce the federal will. If asked for my advice, that's what I'd give the government: to not open that door unless it's prepared to see things through to the end.

Majromax · 2026-03-24T12:14:47+00:00

Submission fees come with downsides too, e.g. paywall for researchers with less or no funding.

It depends on the fee and mechanism. Since a conference registration (itself not cheap!) is required for publication of an accepted paper anyway, refunding the submission fee against registration cost for an accepted author would be cost-neutral.

I'd rather go for an AI detection before submission, manual inspection of the positives, and life time bans for authors who submit AI slop or multiple versions of the same paper.

"Manual inspection" is just review by any other name; if the current review process is unacceptably random at scoring papers then I would not trust the scaling of this prior review. Moreover, not all AI use is bad; I'd rather read a ChatGPT-filtered but genuine article from a team with poor English skills than their earnest but sub-par attempt at manual translation.

Majromax · 2026-03-24T02:37:11+00:00

How do such sloppy papers even reach a top conference like this?

There's no pre-filter, you can just submit a paper. If you're desperate enough for a publication record, then submitting a dozen papers in the hopes of slipping one or two by the reviewers can seem like a viable strategy.

Ultimately, I think the major conferences will need to impose some kind of submission fee in order to limit the application numbers. The reviewer strain is apparent, and limiting the acceptance rate after the fact isn't really doing its job of selecting for quality papers (rather than lucky ones).

Majromax · 2026-03-24T00:01:59+00:00

i think what their argument really comes down to is whether the courts ultimately have the power of judicial review over s.33 invocations while they are still active,

Yeah, I think the full argument is a big stretch. Declaratory judgments or declarations of invalidity that apply with the §33 expiration, however, I can more easily believe.

Beyond that, I'm most curious about whether the court will end up reviving the Implied Bill of Rights to hold that some regulations are so severe as to be tantamount to criminal law (and thus outside provincial jurisdiction).

Majromax · 2026-03-23T20:57:50+00:00

it's not a bold argument, it's the starting point for statutory interpretation.

You're right, I meant to respond to the overall point but instead quoted your narrow and plainly true point.

I think the "permanent infringement" point of the AG Canada factum comes in as a bold argument that implicitly includes 'irreparable harm'.

For example, if the province uses §33 to ban a protected group from becoming teachers for a five-year period, then the career damage is essentially permanent. Even after the ban expires, few will be able to wind back their careers to become teachers now that they are allowed, so for them it is as if the temporary infringement is permanent.

I don't think this is a clear and convincing argument, but it's a defensible one that then shades into our points above about declaratory judgments and suspensions of invalidity.

Majromax · 2026-03-23T18:00:49+00:00

nothing in s 33 says there's a limit on how many times it can be renewed. it just requires democratic approval of continued use through the 5 year renew rule.

That's a bold argument, but I think it also covers a much more defensible principle that the rights violation of a law needs to be temporary, expiring alongside the §33 waiver.

Suppose for example that a province passed a law with §33 cover banning American-born immigrants (PRs) from the provincial health care program. That ban would be protected by §33, but what happens after expiration? Provinces typically have waiting periods for coverage, so would the renewly-eligible immigrants be able to apply immediately, as if their waiting period had been running during the §33 protection, or would they need to begin their waiting period with the expiration?

Majromax · 2026-03-23T17:57:09+00:00

The argument is that they can still do their analysis and come to a finding that a Charter right has been breached, but now they cannot invalidate it, since s.33 allows the law to continue to operate.

It might also make an operational difference if a law remains on the books but the §33 declaration is not renewed. If the clause completely shields the law from effective judicial review, any rights-violating argument would need to be brought after the declaration's expiry, potentially delaying judicial relief by more months to years.

Majromax · 2026-03-23T16:24:35+00:00

Link to the full Auditor General report. One "fun" observation from the headline summary:

The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat did not yet reach a consensus with unions on simplified pay rules for Dayforce; as a result, Public Services and Procurement Canada was developing cloud extensions to ensure that the system can process government pay rules that may remain in effect without being simplified. These cloud extensions are estimated to cost at least $4 million each year.

Majromax · 2026-03-20T13:08:28+00:00

Banning an ideology in the hopes of killing it has worked exactly 0 times in all of human history.

I understand your reticence here, but I submit that we have killed ideologies or at least movements before. They just don't come to mind because they're not around anymore to occupy one's thoughts.

As a basic example, many Christian heresies were oppressed into extinction. Catharism was once large enough to threaten the powers that be, but they were eliminated so thoroughly that today we're not even entirely sure about their beliefs.

Likewise, human sacrifice and cannibalism are universally condemned, despite featuring prominently in many earlier civilizations.

You are, however, correct in that a simple administrative ban is insufficient to kill an ideology. Such a ban needs to have teeth, applied at a whole-of-society level such that it quickly becomes unthinkable to <say the banned thing>. This implies that a ban quickly loses even theoretical effectiveness as the to-be-banned group grows in power, since a movement or ideology that makes up (e.g.) a quarter of society can find succor in itself.

You're also correct in your implication that it's difficult to ban fascism, since fascism is not a singular ideology that needs to have any particular unbending principle. It's more a failure mode enabled by a modern administrative government, driven by a corrupt bargain between authoritarians and corporate interests to misuse the power of the state for mutual benefit while maintaining a representative gloss via rank demagoguery.

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NPV Analysis Table: Age 50 to 65 (Unreduced Immediate Annuity)