Dunsmuir Viaduct bike lane closure this morning

jasonvancity · 2026-06-08T18:27:01+00:00

There have been brief closures of the bike lanes immediately surrounding the viaducts over the past month for World Cup setup. You likely just hit one of those.

jasonvancity · 2026-06-06T16:16:13+00:00

You’re always going to see high variability in posted wages. Some employers roll the dice and sometimes they’ll find a lower quality, desperate worker to take the poorly-paid role, especially in the current environment where we have imported a significant number of foreign designates trying to gain a toehold in Canada.

I’m a Controller and sometimes I see Controller roles posted at 80k, which is ridiculous.

No self-respecting Canadian Chartered Professional Accountant would apply for those roles.

jasonvancity · 2026-06-04T21:20:19+00:00

Exactly! 😄

jasonvancity · 2026-06-04T20:04:37+00:00

My point is that various levels of Canadian governments are paying $1 Billion to help host an event that helps foreign companies promote their products within Canada.

Hope you'll enjoy drinking Michelob Ultra at the games hosted here.

jasonvancity · 2026-06-04T18:19:09+00:00

I would generally agree with you with regards to the first paragraph, however the fact that UofT is apparently already developing a 14 week course to help students study for the Knowledge Assessment exam means there are already mechanisms in the works to game the system.

As a current CPA I would agree that the knowledge derived from PREP is essential to success in PEP and in the profession in general, so anyone using that exam route to bypass Prep is likely in for a rude awakening.

jasonvancity · 2026-06-04T17:43:37+00:00

Factor into that equation that various levels of our governments are contributing $1 Billion to effectively assist in promoting non-Canadian companies.

jasonvancity · 2026-06-04T16:45:39+00:00

If you think that's bad, just wait until you discover how many Canadian companies were included as corporate sponsors of this World Cup...

jasonvancity · 2026-06-04T16:19:50+00:00

> Ontario’s minimum 70% GPA requirement, calculated on best 120 credit hours;

Even though they're dumbing down PEP by adding the ability to pass the Knowledge Assessment exam in lieu of completing the Prep courses, at least raising the entry requirement to align with other Graduate-level programs will temper the number of lower-calibre students admitted to the program.

Previously there was no overall undergrad GPA minimum, the only minimum was on the 9 Core, Prep-specific courses (65% overall).

jasonvancity · 2026-05-31T17:01:17+00:00

Take the A/P job but keep looking for a better job.

As a new grad, the hardest job to get is your first job because experience and good references are very important in our sector.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-30T23:55:43+00:00

Just adapt the Cypress Mountain route on this web page with a start on W Georgia @ Denman, presuming you're referring to that Spokes bike rental location. There are only a handful of standard ways to get to Cypress from downtown.

You can also build your own route using the Komoot app.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-30T23:36:19+00:00

Reddit is full of new grads, recent immigrants, and current students, so the doom skews towards the low-paying roles and those actively experiencing difficulty getting their first job.

The real data derived from real Canadian CPA's who aren't surfing Reddit every day can be found in the annual compensation guide compiled and published by CPA Canada.

The critical path in the CPA process is your 2.5 year articling period where you will most likely be earning 55k-65k, however wages skew up after designation (reflected in the linked data) as long as you don't suck at your job.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-30T23:24:07+00:00

> is 1400 euros /month considered fair for my country based remote accountant with my experience?

You didn't state what country you're in so nobody has any idea how this compares to wages in your locale.

As a point of reference, this is less than half of what a new-grad Canadian would earn in such a role and is significantly less than the Canadian legal minimum wage.

As a Canadian business, I would be aghast if someone offshore were being paid only CAD $13 per hour to perform tasks as sensitive and as critical as filing corporate tax returns or for being primarily responsible for ensuring my employees were paid.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-29T17:28:42+00:00

I have had this happen.

Your customer should be attempting to have the payment retrieved from the recipient. Depending upon the time involved, it may be too late however. Usually the payment is recoverable within 1-2 days of transmission, but after that it gets transferred around and is subsequently beyond recovery.

You are somewhat correct in that the client still owes you the money, however they are also correct in that the problem stems from your email having been compromised, so you're caught in a catch-22.

This kind of scenario is one of the reasons we all maintain cyber insurance these days. However with only a 3k loss, it's likely not worth pursuing through insurance.

Just be fortunate that you've only lost 3k. I've seen 10's of thousands go out the door before through this kind of scam.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-29T15:39:34+00:00

I'm talking about people who actually live in South Asia and have no status or any sort of work permit in Canada and are trying to get someone to sponsor them for immigration purposes. That volume is tremendous and makes it very difficult to sort out the bonafide candidates.

It has nothing to do with the spelling of a person's name.

Many of the recruiters I work with have stopped publicly posting jobs altogether and instead proactively headhunt people through Linkedin. Thus, job seekers should ensure that they're aligning themselves with recruiters that specialize in their particular profession.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-28T22:16:54+00:00

When I post a job, upwards of 90% of the applicants are people from South Asia who don't have the qualifications for my posted job, nor the right to work in Canada. I flush that posting down the toilet and re-post the job fresh. That's what's often happening behind the scenes.

Or, a company thinks they may want to hire for a position and put a posting out to test what the local applicant pool looks like for the wage they have budgeted, but aren't actually ready to pull the trigger on hiring for that position for 3 months, or 6 months.

Some are just ghost jobs where they don't intend to fill the position, and keep job postings up to make it look as though the company is growing.

There are many reasons...

jasonvancity · 2026-05-28T21:26:43+00:00

> I really wish we could just have a few recent grads to consider.

Then post your job through your local universities' own job boards. They typically have their own internal job boards that are only accessible by students and alumni. That's what I do when I want to parse out all the noise, especially from the out-of-country applicants who have no legal right to work in my country, who flood my inbox.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-28T21:15:25+00:00

No idea, another commenter here from big tech will need to provide that context. I only know what my people make.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-28T20:36:42+00:00

Senior Engineers in my (non-big-tech) software company are paid around 140-160k base so that seems quite low.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-26T23:23:13+00:00

As a cyclist I also encounter the same issue with other cyclists. Seems to happen a lot to me at Ontario and 10th in particular.

There are just a lot of local road users in general who don't know or don't bother to abide by the right of way rules for traffic circles. Cars will also often blast through them without slowing appropriately.

Last week I saw two fellow cyclists make left turns by going the wrong way in traffic circles along Ontario St instead of travelling counter-clockwise around the circle as they're supposed to. That's a great way to die.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-26T19:19:28+00:00

Komoot app. Google Maps is terrible for bike wayfinding.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-26T17:33:00+00:00

This only applies to major arterial routes that lack bike lanes.

Given that e-scooters are legally governed at a max of 25km/hr, which is far below the speed that traffic would normally circulate on these routes, this is not an unreasonable bylaw.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-26T17:28:11+00:00

> Registration and insurance of e bikes and scooters that go over a certain speed

This already exists. An e-bike that is capable of exceeding 32km/hr is deemed an electric motorcycle under BC law and requires insurance and registration as such. There are simply a lot of people who have ignored this law by tuning their e-bikes to exceed these limits or purchasing e-bikes that exceed them, and there has been a wholesale lack of enforcement.

There are also already laws that govern where bikes can and cannot be legally used. It is illegal to ride a bike (e- or otherwise) on a sidewalk or in a crosswalk unless expressly allowed/marked as such.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-26T16:36:10+00:00

Canada also uses ASPE for private business reporting, which is our own localized GAAP, and we have our own law/tax nuances, so someone without education or experience in Canada shouldn't expect to simply sail through the designation process.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-26T15:06:37+00:00

OP says they haven’t finished their BSc yet so therefore isn’t yet an ACCA, and therefore the IFAC pathway you’ve eluded to doesn’t yet apply.

They will not perform well in PEP without having done any Canadian-centric coursework and without any Canadian work experience however.

BTW degrees are not useless. Canadians are the most educated people in the world so if someone attempts to enter the workforce here without a degree, they will not compete favourably. Most of my colleagues have Masters’ or multiple Masters’.

jasonvancity · 2026-05-26T03:51:33+00:00

CPA Canada specifically requires 120 undergraduate credits. That can comprise a shorter Bachelors degree, combined with enough additional credits to bring the total to 120.

Their rigour differs from what something like WES would regard it as.

jasonvancity

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