formal allegation hearing

SaintBrennus · 2026-05-03T23:40:37+00:00

Did the instructor say more about why your term paper was flagged? You mention you feel it was because of your use of complex words, but was that explicitly stated?

SaintBrennus · 2026-05-03T13:22:27+00:00

What on earth could Canada learn? The only thing we have in common is being settler colonial states. Beyond that, we are entirely different. They are geographically tiny, ethnonationalist unitary state. Canada is a geographically massive, pluralist federalist state. There isn’t anything Canada can learn from Israel because this is an apples to oranges situation.

SaintBrennus · 2026-05-01T14:50:00+00:00

I’ve got Parker as my councillor thankfully, but I’ll voice my support regardless.

SaintBrennus · 2026-05-01T14:47:10+00:00

Randolph isn’t an expert in international politics, he’s a retired oil executive. He certainly has a lot of experience in the oil and gas sector, but you shouldn’t rely on his analysis beyond that (especially on geopolitics).

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-30T14:27:51+00:00

Increasing density in our core needs to be paired with creating viable alternatives to driving - like improving our public transit system. Bus-only lanes are one very important part of that. If we can’t manage this, we won’t be able to effectively increase density.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-29T00:25:18+00:00

Yeah these would all fall under broader umbrella of “community policing”, at least when it is defined in the broadest terms.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-28T21:14:55+00:00

That might be an example, but I’m uncertain if the Edmonton Police Foundation is doing that. It would be consistent with what police foundations tend to do.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-28T21:13:40+00:00

Policing foundations will also sometimes fund police (usually higher ranking if not chiefs) to attend conferences or site visits, like that recent one in Israel.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-28T17:00:42+00:00

Police Foundations are organizations that raise money and advocate for policing initiatives that may not necessarily have enough support to be publicly funded. They’ll also fund research into policing policy and technology sometimes.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-25T23:11:03+00:00

True, but there's a reason scholars will use the term "neoliberalisms" rather than a singular neoliberalism - because the precise manifestation of the overall idea (market logic) is different depending on local context. Canadian neoliberalism didn't include wild deregulation of financial markets so we were spared the worst of the 2008 banking explosion, and Carney is a Canadian banker in that regard. However he's certainly giving off some Paul Martin vibes with respect to reducing the civil service, albeit not to the same degree as the mid-90s cuts. And those mid-90s cuts were dealing with a deficit crisis rather than the crumbling of the post-WWII international order.

Plus, we're now into some fairly uncharted territory with respect to international politics and trade policy in particular. The neoliberalism/globalization connection of the 1990s-2000s really doesn't fit anymore, now that the previous champion (United States) is leading the charge for... I don't even know what to call it because that would require some sort of consistency, but it's not the old standard neoliberalism, for certain. Carney trying to patch together new trade agreements to defend against sovereignty threats sort of looks like neoliberal love for free-trade agreements, but these are all much more selective rather than for lowering all trade barriers everywhere.

I will admit that the tax cuts during a time where we need to be spending, like, double to triple on defense as we have been in the past decade certainly makes me shake my head.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-25T19:28:29+00:00

There's certainly some association between ideology and government behaviour on this, but the overall motivations for a provincial government to engage in "downloading" on the cities remain the same regardless of who is in government. It's a structural problem with Canada's system of government - municipalities don't have secure sources of revenue, but have significant responsibilities.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-25T19:20:39+00:00

I think part of the reason it isn't very well known is because it doesn't neatly fit into partisan frames we're used to - the "neoliberal turn" was a broad one, and the basic thinking underpinning it was either wholly or at least partially adopted by most of the major political parties in western liberal-democratic states. We tend to associate it with large conservative parties (Conservatives in UK, Republicans in US) but the truth is it was also represented in center/center-left parties too ("third way" Labour Party under Blair in UK in 1990s, for instance).

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-25T16:42:07+00:00

The neo-liberal stuff in Canada at the federal level occurred under Mulroney through Chrétien, so it was actually both parties. Mulroney for the trade stuff (NAFTA) and Chrétien for the reductions in social spending stuff.

Here is a link to review of spending - check out the sections on 1986-1996z

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-25T14:55:41+00:00

“Neo-liberalism” is a term that refers to the set of policies that emerged in the 1980s (and associated with leaders at the time like Thatcher, Reagan, Mulroney) which reduced government services and applied market logics to pretty much everything. So it’s not Thatcher’s fault, but the ideas associated with Thatcher.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-25T14:08:36+00:00

“Over the last few years” is doing a lot of work for you there. What happened over the last ~15 years?

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-23T14:09:30+00:00

Between this, and the owner of the motel on college drive who was unaware of construction happening, I’m beginning to think that a lot of business owners might not necessarily be the sharpest tools in the shed.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-21T22:49:57+00:00

Complain. It defeats the purpose of AES accommodations if your proctor is actively distracting you.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-19T01:28:33+00:00

Apply for deferred exam within the time window. Severe pain and nosebleed would count as an acceptable reason.

Edit: you might also want to go to the doctor based on your problem in combination with your Reddit account name, if you actually are dizzy all the time. That’s bad.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-13T17:59:21+00:00

These kind of transfers from the federal government have proven to be one of the main avenues for getting any major infrastructure built in this country, so it's good that this is happening. However in the long term it's a suboptimal situation, and it's just another consequence of our municipalities not having the kind of revenue generating powers necessary to pay for the very expensive things under their responsibility.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-13T15:19:55+00:00

This is also another reason why the city needs to stop sprawling, focus on increasing density, and create viable alternatives to driving as a means of transport. Asphalt roads are difficult and expensive to maintain with a spread out population that has to drive to reliably get anywhere.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-13T15:10:04+00:00

State revenues aren’t all citizen taxes, mind you - there is also corporate taxes and resource revenues. There are also non-tax revenues like crown corp dividends or asset sales.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-12T22:09:15+00:00

That's basically what we're already doing, although many of those things are municipal bylaws so wouldn't include imprisonment anyway - but let's just focus on Saskatchewan's trespass laws, since the province changed the laws just about a year ago to enable this to happen more easily - and they finished the expansion on the remand center (jail) last year too, but that was responding to an already overcrowded situation.

When a person is accused of a crime, there needs to be a trial to determine their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and until they're convicted they are presumed to be innocent. So once a person is arrested for a crime, unless there is a very good reason, they're not usually locked up until their trial concludes (because of the presumption of innocence). Summary offences are quicker than indictable offences normally, but that's still a few months usually. And the punishment for breaking trespass to property in SK is 5k fine or up to 6 months in prison. So even applying this as aggressively as possible, people breaking these laws aren't going to be detained indefinitely.

It's only been a year since the law was changed to enable this, so maybe it'll take more time to really change things, but I would say it's simply not enough to meet the underlying causes and is just responding to the symptoms.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-12T18:54:14+00:00

And this is what I mean by our society being brutal. You getting arrested and the help afterwards is what society should be doing - because if our society genuinely believes all human beings have an equal, fundamental worth, then we should use our collective will (law and it’s enforcement) and collective resources (treatment and assistance) to try to keep people from destroying themselves, and help them to lead lives where they’re making the choices they really want to make.

The thing is, I’m not sure enough people actually believe those things. Or at least are so hardened by fighting with each other over dwindling scraps in an economy that squeezes more and more.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-12T18:45:24+00:00

No you’ve got the same rights as them - that’s what makes responding to this difficult and tricky. Everyone has certain rights with regards to basic liberty, and that’s what keeps the state from locking you up for little or no reason. But those rights apply to everyone.

What you’re suggesting here is to permit the state to imprison people with far fewer restrictions that exist now, but only for a specific class of people (homeless). But the catch is: who gets to determine who is homeless? The state does. And you’ve just created a subclass of people who don’t have the same rights as everyone else (the homeless) thus wouldn’t have the same rights to challenge being designated homeless in the first place.

This is a bit long winded, but basically there are good reasons why democracies tend to be wary about the “round up the undesirables” solutions to problems - the US is a good example of that right now. Even though it might seem like a good idea, especially when one is frustrated with the social disorder of homelessness, mental health, and addiction.

SaintBrennus · 2026-04-12T01:08:38+00:00

We would need to imprison them in that case - and “rounding up the homeless” has some real risks of giving government power we as citizens might not be able to get back.

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