sbv

The federal and provincial governments have been underfunding universities for decades. Recently, universities were able to start recruiting foreign students to make up for the shortfall, but it looks like that money tap will be turned down. It doesn't look like there's a plan to make up for it.

At the same time, the feds want to

recruit more than 1,000 top international researchers to Canada, with the budget injecting up to $1.7-billion into a suite of recruitment measures.

That'll be tough if universities see their income crater.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said after talking with Prime Minister Mark Carney he’s decided to pause the advertising campaign effective Monday so that trade talks can resume.

That was faster than I expected.

I've seen lots of posts about the ad, but not the ad itself. Here it is.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/47121164

Ontario’s Auditor-General says the province’s selection process for $1.3-billion in grants to subsidize the hiring and retraining of workers was “not fair, transparent or accountable,” with the Labour Minister’s office approving hundreds of millions of dollars for unions, employers and other organizations that had earned low scores on their applications.

...

The funding is allocated to eligible employers, unions and other organizations to train or retrain workers with new skills.

...

The report found that more than half the applications selected by the Labour Minister’s office, resulting in $742-million in grants, were ranked by ministry bureaucrats as “poor,” “low” or “medium” when measured against the program’s objectives and selection criteria, which include an applicant’s “organizational capacity” and “delivery plan.”

The Auditor-General also said 670 applications that ranked “high” were not selected for funding.

...

The report also said similar programs in other provinces, such as Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador, do not involve a minister’s office in choosing which applicants to fund, leaving the decisions to non-political bureaucrats.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-ontario-skills-development-fund-auditor-general-report/

Two of the most senior purchasing officials at Alberta Health Services in 2022 were also briefly directors of a numbered company with ties to a supplier that has been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in business by the health agency, The Globe and Mail has found.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-alberta-health-services-supplier-procurement-mhcare/

CRA is running a public consultation on automatic tax filing. You can fill it out here.

Here's the verbiage about the project

It's unbelievable that Canada makes people with trivial tax needs jump through so many hoops. If someone is elderly and poor, they need to file taxes to receive their full benefits. That's a huge barrier to many people.

Measles is scary. Breakthrough measles is even scarier.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article-measles-breakthrough-vaccine-joy-spearchief-morris/

It sounds like there are more doctors moving from the US to Canada, but not a huge number. The numbers are up from last year, but not by a lot.

It would be interesting to know if Canadian healthcare workers are still moving to the US in a big way, but the article doesn't explore that.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-interest-from-us-doctors-looking-to-work-in-canada-has-spiked-but-few/

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/45991302

Ford calls speed cameras “nothing but a tax grab.” As do many reckless drivers. But surely he knows that speeding fines are not taxes. Even if they were, they’re voluntary: If you don’t want a speeding ticket, don’t speed.

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In Ottawa, compliance with speed limits rose from from 16 per cent before speed cameras to 57 per cent after only three months, and to more than 80 per cent after three years. Instances of speeding at more than 15 km/h above the posted limit dropped from 14 per cent, pre-speed cameras, to less than one per cent after three years of the city using them.

A survey of more than 1,000 Ottawa residents, meanwhile, determined that of the 35 per cent of respondents who had been dinged with an speed camera fine, 69 per cent said it changed their driving behaviour. That’s what we want from these cameras.

And of course:

A study conducted by SickKids hospital in Toronto and published in July in the British Medical Journal’s Injury Prevention journal found that the use of speed cameras in school zones led to a 45 per cent reduction in speeding motorists, while the 85th percentile speed — the speed at or below which 85 per cent of the drivers travelled — dropped by almost 11 km/h. “The observed reduction in speed is likely important in reducing collisions and injuries,” the study noted

It seems like c/Canada is usually politics and sadness, so here's some interesting and possibly happy news.

[Ontario based] Reaction Dynamics Labs Inc. (RDX) ... has signed an agreement with Maritime Launch Services (MLS) for a stake in the company and announced it will launch its Aurora-8 small satellite orbital rocket from Spaceport Nova Scotia which is owned and operated by MLS.

These up-eds usually complain that photo radar would be fine if the radar worked properly. This one doesn't even do that. It just complains that speed limits aren't fair and now drivers have to change their behavior. jfc

It is true that drivers can avoid such tickets by sticking to the posted speed limits, but it is also true that drivers are hardly ever expected to strictly observe those limits.

...

It’s like the generally accepted contract between drivers and police – just drive at a reasonable speed and you’ll be fine – has been broken.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-photo-radar-is-becoming-increasingly-common-that-doesnt-make-it-any/

As registrar, Mr. Richer was charged with enforcing Ontario’s laws governing the conduct of 110,000 licensed realtors and brokers, including financial audits, disciplinary investigations and hearings for the multibillion-dollar industry.

The move follows Mr. Richer and RECO’s confirmation the regulator had known for months key details about millions of missing dollars removed from the legally protected trust accounts of iPro, a brokerage that at the time was one of Ontario’s largest, with more than 2,400 agents.

...

RECO announced on Aug. 14 that it had entered into an undertaking with Mr. Alves and Mr. Colucci to wind up iPro, but in recent days Mr. Richer has confirmed to the Toronto Star part of that deal included his willingness not to lay provincial offences charges against either of the iPro founders – though they would lose their licences to trade in real estate.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-ontario-reco-registrar-leaves-joseph-richer-ipro-realty-real-estate/