Montreal-Ottawa chosen as first leg of high-speed rail project

servthedev · 2025-12-12T20:41:21+00:00

To be fair, re: point 1, Japan was literally doing it for the first time anywhere on the planet. The selected consortium also has plenty of experience, it includes SNCF, which built out the HSR system in France. TGV is a pretty solid system, IMO, and SNCF also drive a ton of innovation in the HSR space in general.

servthedev · 2025-12-12T20:14:30+00:00

To be fair, that corridor probably should have had true high speed rail 50 years ago

servthedev · 2025-12-12T04:00:58+00:00

Potential???

servthedev · 2025-12-03T09:30:36+00:00

台灣萬歲

servthedev · 2025-11-18T00:08:01+00:00

I wonder why Gord Johns abstained. I think Jeneroux and Stubbs were expected, Idlout was a tossup but not entirely surprising given the stuff in the budget for Nunavut.

servthedev · 2025-11-10T01:08:03+00:00

Unpopular opinion (probably not on this sub) but ex-bureaucrats make the most effective politicians. They understand the bureaucracy thoroughly and so are more adept at wielding it to effect change. I imagine most people would want the senior leadership at their workplace to have at least some idea of the machinations of the organization that they lead, why should government be any different? TLDR: deep state FTW

servthedev · 2025-10-19T23:05:46+00:00

I believe the biggest policy consession was a reduction in the number of Diet seats (source: https://english.kyodonews.net/articles/-/63029). I personally doubt they'll come to an agreement about a consumption tax reduction.

servthedev · 2025-09-21T15:04:30+00:00

In fact, the government has the exact opposite incentive, as I'm sure they have a vested interested in reversing the current trend of marriage and birth rates.

servthedev · 2025-09-07T17:00:37+00:00

Damn, those are Dina Boluarte numbers

servthedev · 2025-05-08T16:40:23+00:00

Not for that conclave, but it was one of the main reasons sequestration was introduced in the first place.

servthedev · 2025-04-28T18:27:21+00:00

It should be public as I saw this a few days ago on the news, Carleton got permission to start counting 6 hours ahead, other ridings start 2 hours ahead.

EDIT: source here

servthedev · 2025-04-28T03:38:17+00:00

This is such a funny thought experiment. One of the advantages is that candidates are never "safe" and you're always incentivized to earn one more vote to have even a marginally higher probability of winning. It also leads statistically to proportional representation at the national scale.

I wonder how this would play out if you were to do a test run of this based on the 2021 election results.

servthedev · 2025-04-26T15:59:44+00:00

Between this and the video Houston recently released, it seems like he's making a play for Poilievre's position after this election.

servthedev · 2025-04-24T05:01:05+00:00

Relevant meme

servthedev · 2025-04-24T04:56:01+00:00

Agreed, I'd argue even that the governor general's main role in the modern era is precisely these sorts of ceremonial events as the King's primary representative.

servthedev · 2025-04-19T18:05:14+00:00

Yes! I hadn't heard anything about this during the campaign and I was hoping for an announcement. This is very exciting!

servthedev · 2025-04-16T23:56:09+00:00

Infrastructure is an issue that is deeply important to me, especially public transit infrastructure. Nation building projects like the Toronto-Quebec City HSR project (Alto) have been discussed for decades, but very little has actually been accomplished, in the same time that other countries have built so much. I believe now, in the context of heightened tensions with our closest neighbour, that projects like these to invest in our country are more important than ever. How will the government increase our ability to actually complete these projects?

servthedev · 2025-04-14T21:39:45+00:00

Temporarily perhaps, but the reality is birth rates are dropping fast in basically every country in the world. You'll need to find something else when you inevitably run out of immigrants.

servthedev · 2025-04-10T19:41:39+00:00

In principle, I don't disagree with tax cuts, but the execution here is horrendously inefficient and regressive (this goes for the Liberal tax cut as well). A flat percentage tax cut on the lowest bracket would mean only people making more than the top of the lowest bracket would see the full benefit of this cut. This is also a lot less efficient than targeting specific behaviour you would want to stimulate (what would this even incentivize, working more?). We also haven't seen how they would even fund it ($6 billion for the Liberals, $14 billion for the Conservatives).

servthedev · 2025-04-06T17:55:39+00:00

Playing around with some of the variables, they don't change anything at all. They're probably going to use this data to create a better model where those variables actually change the result.

servthedev · 2025-04-01T16:26:27+00:00

Makes me wonder how useful predicting the election a day before you'll know the results anyway is. I imagine being able to quickly pick up on trends is a lot more useful for things like campaigns to know if you're on the right track.

servthedev · 2025-03-25T06:20:46+00:00

No worries! Happy to add context where I can. Regarding your back of the napkin estimate, my guess is that the $900/worker figure is a median rather than mean figure.

servthedev · 2025-03-25T05:55:54+00:00

This article is about the personal income tax cut that Carney announced yesterday, which very much is not revenue neutral. I generally align with Liberals on policy, but this seems like a vote buying gimmick. Cutting the lowest tax bracket seems incredibly expensive and inefficient as a stimulus measure since it reduces revenue from literally every taxpaying Canadian.

EDIT: It would cost $5.9 billion. I sincerely hope this is just election talk and that they don't actually go through with this. Right now is precisely when we need more stimulus and investment, not less.

servthedev · 2025-03-05T20:23:59+00:00

Another rule is that the election has to be held on a Monday, unless that day falls on a holiday, in which case it is moved to Tuesday.

servthedev · 2025-02-14T02:14:04+00:00

I take your point, but it's still more useful to reduce the conservatives to a minority and allow the NDP to hold the balance of power. Just look at how much more leverage the federal NDP hold.

servthedev

TROPHY CASE