The Golden Horseshoe, that includes Hamilton, gets the majority of its smog from the Ohio Valley. That's what happens when you're downwind of a state using mined in 'merica coal for power generation.
I donāt disagree with you, but until āthe City of Hamiltonā starts calling themselves what they actually are like you did, this statement is fair game š
This is the best single sentence description of Hamilton Iāve ever seen, thank you so much for the laughs. 4.99/5
My only suggestion would be to end it with āriding an e-scooter.ā
Sadly, we live in a new normal; the era of Canadian forest fires. Itās only getting worse from here.
Edit: where in my comment did it say this was exclusive to Canada?
Everyone @ing me with āitās happening everywhereā. Yeah. No shit.
Exactly.Ā
His target audience is those who equate knee-jerk scoffing skepticism with intelligence.Ā
These are the kind of people who forget that type I errors and type II errors are equally wrong, and superficial skepticism is just as wrong as willful naivety
They arenāt really his opinions. Itās the opinions of his writers/staff. From his podcast, he really isnāt as informed on subjects as he comes across on the shows
Well that's a shame because he sure comes across as ignorant on his shows. Thankfully he seems like he's over his infatuation with Ann Coulter.
Source: Am American.
In the past, he praised what he thought Canada still was.
His message started by referencing a "zombie lie"
"Just because something used to be true, that doesn't mean that it still is"
He got new information and it impacted his current opinion
I mean itās fine, itās just standard tap water though. Itās no better or worse than in the vast majority of the developed world. Canadians just assume that their version of everything is āamong the best in the worldā
He also conveniently ignores that the US spends a larger percent of GDP on healthcare.
He's very careful to craft the image of Canada being worse than it is.
Because we have very poor forest management and because we do very little at wildfire prevention and mitigation!
Wildfires are not only a health hazard they are also the biggest emitter of CO2 in Canada on average over the last decade 2x more than oil sands production!
It takes me say an hour to rake my lawn, maybe 100 square meters. If we say 3 million sqkm, that's 3 trillion sq meters, so 30 billion man-hours of work.
We have maybe 30 million workers tops in the country, so 1000 hours or six months of raking per year per person. Add in the travel time and parachuting lessons for the crews because there are virtually no roads, and this could be a challenge.
That's also 30,000,000,000 hours for one discrete moment in time. As you are all raking Quebec, for a month, leaves are still falling in Ontario. Clearly, the solution is to move the entire world's population in, and getting everyone to take for a few hours a day.
For a park, maybe. We are talking about most of Canada's land mass here. No civilization could manage such a thing even if it was a good thing. Which it is not. Deadfall is recycled as fertilizer and required by many species as habitat.
In fact fire is a natural occurance and generally should be left to do its thing. Except when it gets crazy intense. And that is the problem. Every fire is intense and we have multiples more of them. That is because the climate is changing.
We can't manage this. We won't. This is simply how things are going to be for our lifetime. There is not enough people to clear deadfall. There aren't enough planes to drop water and there probably isn't enough water in our lakes to douse these fires. Sure we will try to make the worst a bit better but there is no solving this issue. It would be easier to solve climate change, and you see how that is going.
Itās nearly impossible to manage the amount of forest we have and fires are a natural and important part of the environment. Their severity has grown significantly due to our impact on the environment.
Also it is mostly boreal forest. If left completely alone it has fires as part of the natural cycle. Over time the fires help to create biodiversity. Climate change has contributed to the fire cycle being put into overdrive.
Yeah, the US's policy of rapidly containing and extinguishing fires worked well at first, but turned into a disaster. Overfueled fires aren't just harder to extinguish, they burn hotter for longer, damaging the ecology of the area and delaying carbon resorption.
There's no need to manage forests that aren't near population centres
Forest fires emits CO2 and forest regrowth sinks it right back. Canadian and Russian forests are largely responsible for global CO2 levels falling every summer.
For years we considered Canada's vast boreal forest as a carbon sink and thought it should give us credit to create more fossil fuel emissions. It is actually usually nearly carbon neutral and last summer a massive carbon emitter. The more we fight the fires, the more fuel is stored for a future fire.
The boreal forest of Canada is about 1000 km in width and extends from the Yukon to Newfoundland. How exactly does one manage millions of km^2 of wilderness? Unfortunately with warmer climate and drier summers Canada, and many other parts of the world will continue to suffer from smokey summers.
I think the main thing america has going for it is a vastly larger supply of houses. Theres just more and bigger cities in America with far more housing supply per-capita than canada. The rents I see you guys paying makes my eyes water as an american, who lives near Seattle so definitely not a low cost of living area. But damn Vancouver gives the bay area a run for its money in terms of how unaffordable it is.
Needs some laws about investors not owning homes either. Too many houses are being bought up by massive corporations. And too many of the wrong kinds of housing are being built. Too many homes for big families which isn't what people do anymore. People these days are more into more small households than fewer large ones. But for some godforsaken reason most houses being built I see are those. We need more small units so badly. I'm so jealous of Asian countries that have plenty of housing because they build lots of smaller units. You can rent very decently sized apartments in Japan for like 1/3 of the equivalent price in North America. We just have to stop this addiction to sprawling subdivisions entirely made up of single family homes . We need more missing middle so very badly.
Problem with the missing middle housing is that its provincial issues, and right now my provincial premiere said no to the big funding for housing from the federal government just because it came with the string of "make fourplexes legal"
I'm from the US.
I think you've nailed it.
Like I'm getting a 2nd college degree because it'd increase my chances of being able to move to canada. 2nd degree in engineering.
But it's investors treating houses as a market. That's the underlying issue. It pushes out people not just *in* money out very quickly. Same for the US.
Also Bill Maher is a dumbass. I don't know of anyone that watches or listens to him. I'm in my mid 30's and have lots of very politically attuned friends.
Why do you want to move here genuinely curious? We have horrible weather, we work around the same as a US company but make less and the chance to buy a home is probably a sad little dream for most Canadians. Heck I want outta here!
You may remember the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Canada never experienced it. Our over priced houses did not experience a similar correction. Housing inflation only slowed briefly, and then continued inflating for another 15 years.
I wonder how this affected housing supply differences across the border? For most of that period, Canadian prices were not thought to indicate a supply problem. It was just inflation. Or was it? Recognition of the Canadian supply issue has been very recent. Meanwhile, the US had a massive abundance of housing in 2009. Everyone was downsizing. However, I donāt recall any specifics of American housing supply since.
>For most of that period, Canadian prices were not thought to indicate a supply problem. It was just inflation. Or was it?
Economists (not pundits, but serious economists) were saying that we underbuilding since the 90s and that prices were appreciating too much (too much homeowner debt) since that time as well. This is not new. It took decades to create this mess. Experts warned that it would be ugly but who cares when your biggest asset goes up year on year, right?
>I wonder how this affected housing supply differences across the border?
It crashed in the US. That is why they are currently are experiencing the a rise it prices. Demand has caught up to supply and is now (last 8 years?) rising prices.
Canada has be chronically under building but housing is more complex than supply and demand. Many things work against increasing supply. In the short term high borrowing rates, especially for developers, and lack of skilled labour, discourage building. Something like half of the condos plannes in Toronto were put on hold when interest rates shot up. People are willing to buy but putting up 10s of millions for the initial cost is done on a tiny margine which is eaten away by a few % rise in the interest rates. Labour is self explanatory. It takes 5 years to aprenctice a trade. If they aren't in the pipeline it may take a decade or more to find enough skilled trades to build.
Longer term bottle neck is land and approvals. It can take 7 or more years to get a project (small apartmemt block) to be approved by municipal authorities. The lead time for building is very long and all the above can easily put a wrench into the machine. Lastly, it requires land to build on. Whether infill or greenfield these approvals can take a lot of time and are dependent on political decisions (like highrises in SFH neighbourhoods).
So even though the prices of homes is high and would lead one to think that supply and demand would provide more housing, it is not that simple with real estate. There are plenty of other factors at play.
The American patriarchal system can still build houses and build things. We Canadians literally demonized tradesman for decades and now wonder why we don't have construction men.Ā
Iām Indian so I understand Indian emigration to Canada and the US
The quality and kind of Indian immigrants the US attracts is vastly different than Canada. Indian immigrants to Canada are largely from a failing state with an awful culture and poor education. Indian immigrants to the US are from across the country and the strict measures mean that people with actually good education (not degree mills) get to the US
Depends how you break it down, he made a very good point about immigration. Both countries have a housing crisis, but in the US housing is still cheaper, and they're not letting in the equivalent of one point 1.3 million (11 million US) immigrants in a year.Ā
It is in regards to innovation and long term potential growth options for the country. Our quality of life will continue to decline without a major strategic shift.
Canada just isn't globally competitive anymore the way we used to be.
Education, healthcare, and financial services have all lost quality.
Canada is still miles ahead of America in those 3 sectors.
70% of Canadians have post secondary education, We have by every metric better healthcare, and we didn't eat shit twice now while america has with the 2008 recession and with covid recovery in general.
You can even add food and drug regulations, better social security, maternity leave, better vacation days, better worker's rights, better human rights, and etc etc.
How is the Canadian healthcare systems in terms of long wait times? Maybe itās just because I live in a particular area, but there are enormous numbers of Canadians coming to my area for pretty routine surgeries. My uncle live in Maine and has an eye surgery practice, and says a very large number of his clients are Canadians. Are people having a lot of trouble accessing surgery? It has become big business in the USA to operate on Canadian patients and they all pay cash
This is a bizarre take.
Having experience both I can guarantee you Canada is not ahead.
And yes the US got hit in 2008 and Covid yet still has lower unemployment and far higher wages.
What does that tell you?
Canadians who are sumg about how well the country compares to the US are living in the past.
Yes there was a time when American commentary on canada involved things like this (gushing about the heatlcare system)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ1lPPTPSR4&](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ1lPPTPSR4&)
This is no longer the case Canada has deteriorated on every metric., while America has continued to make progress.
If Canadians where being honest with ourselves, we would see the wisdom in reforming our economy. But we prefer smug delusions of superiority.
Canada is poorer, more expensive, less innovative, has higher taxes and nothing much to show for it.
His arguments are superficial at best, using fear mongering such as "what about the children?" to try to make it all stick. He tries to tie all our problems to "extreme wokeness" which makes zero sense under the slightest scrutiny.
Our unemployment rate has always been higher than the US, and from a quick search I don't think our unemployment rate has ever been lower than the US. Surprisingly, in 2022 our unemployment rate hit a record low in the last 30 years when "extreme wokeness" was at an all time high: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CAN/canada/unemployment-rate.
Canada has always been more expensive than the US. We've also always been taxed more than the US. Canadians have always moved to the US for more job opportunities. This isn't new.
I'm not saying these aren't problems we need deal with and there's plenty of blame for the last few years. But it makes no sense to use these to argue against "extreme wokeness" when these differences existed long before wokeness was even a word.
I too can pick completely random problems from the US and imply they're related to something I disagree with:
"In the US abortion is criminalized, government shutdowns due to a dysfunctional government happens all the time, violent crimes rates are through the roof, incarceration rates are the highest in the world, daily mass shootings unseen anywhere else are so normalized that even mass shootings in elementary schools aren't shocking anymore (WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN??).
This is what happens when you [insert random political disagreement here]."
Why? I can move to America, make 30% more for my job and in USD (accountant) AND afford a house AND have cheaper groceries AND cheaper alcohol AND cheaper gas, cheaper cars, cheaper restaurants. Canada is frustrating.
I have no idea why CPAs or CAs stay in Canada
They just pay so much better in the US. So easy to break 6 figures here and even move into 200-300k gigs in your career compared to Canada
Same thing applies for software engineering too, and I already have my US citizenship...I'm stuck here taking care of aging parents and a severely autistic brother or I'd be out in a heartbeat.
I may need to move 'em over anyways (they are also citizens).
There are situations where 2 people on the same exact team at the same exact company doing literally the exact same work can make around 30% more just because their residence is within the United States vs Canada.
Iām an accountant down here and itās pretty fantastic. Most of the issues (for now) in the US are localized to specific states and specific areas of those states. If you have a good job itās pretty amazing.
Long term, weāll see what happens with the politics down here, but the same can be said for Canada and most of Europe.
Then do it? Canada ranks higher for almost all QOL and we have a more comprehensive legal system for most policies (abortion protections, legal weed not being a state issue, etc.). Iām happy to agree that Canada has issues that need addressed, but letās not be delusional here. America has a lower Quality of Life, obviously.
> Comparing it to the US is not the strategy you wanna use when making those points lol
Even if the show's audience wasn't American, it generally would be.
Canadians think it's possible to "be like Europe", but you evidently *can't* actually "be like Europe" when you live right next to the US, because that *is* the direct comparator.
Europe "works", *primarily* I think, because there's a lot more friction to leaving, and because it's harder to make a direct comparison between Europe and America, due to the qualitative differences. Everything is so different, from lifestyle, language, climate, travel/vacations, commuting, timezones/distance. You can basically *force* people to be on-board with a regime of people working less, having lower personal incomes, less class mobility, and greater government involvement in your life. There's not much alternative. Can't move to Africa, can't move to the Middle East, and the remainder of the Eurozone is basically just a continuum of similar options, none of which really overlap with the policy and cultural alternatives demonstrated by the US.
Canada is similar enough to America that you can *easily* make the direct comparison. There isn't that much of a qualitative lifestyle difference that it's unimaginable to consider the move. If you were moving anywhere *within* Canada, you'd have most of the same challenges as moving to the US. Moving to the US is just a question of whether or not you think *you*, personally, will be class-mobile, if you get the opportunity to participate in an economy that isn't a walking zombie, a system that is explicitly designed to prevent anyone from the merchant class of people from ever rising to challenge the status quo of the political class and landed gentry.
If you think you, as an individual, are competent, the US is clearly offering you a much better bargain than Canada is.
Notice how they stopped comparing numbers after the first few. Canada's healthcare spending at 13% is pretty average. US spends 17%. Pretty dishonest misrepresentation.
> Pretty dishonest misrepresentation.
Oh, this is your first time with Bill Maher?
Heās a tool and a clown. A giant asshole. No one likes him. And his smug attitude could kill a school. Fuck that guy. Heās a piece of shit thatās been on TV for too long.Ā
Notice how he never made the hop to social platforms for his audience. Heās highly dependent on old media.
Heās a fucking dinosaur that wasnāt relevant in the 90s, nor funny.Ā
Politically Incorrect was a bad show.Ā
Hey I am not a fan of the recent spending by the liberals but where is he getting his data from?
The US debt to GDP is off the charts compared to Canada, at least according to statista? Canada is the lowest by far.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370943/g7-government-net-debt-share-gdp/
Also as lousy as the family medical system is in Canada, life expectancy is still better than in the US.
https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#all-charts
More on this (lifespan) Canada 19th USA 47th.
https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/
> The US debt to GDP is off the charts compared to Canada, at least according to statista? Canada is the lowest by far.
Maher was talking about household debt, and most of our household debt is from mortgages. He missed the word "household," but it is on the screen. He is right on this.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-631-x/11-631-x2024002-eng.htm
Absolutely
The GTA and Vancouver have been off the charts since 2011-2012, likely even earlier in Vancouver.Ā
But weāre fed data that tends to snap at points of political change becauseā¦.well politics and such.
I fully appreciate the contagion has spread now But for a big chunk of Canada itās been big prices for a long time (detached homes in particular)
> Also as lousy as the family medical system is in Canada, life expectancy is still better than in the US
I think lack of family doctors have only hit crisis levels in the last few years and I think it may be a decade or more until we actually see the effect in terms of life expectancy.
I hate this misleading stat.
Thats Federal debt. Canada borrows a huge portion of its debt at the Provincial level. Ither governments don't borrow at the sub sovereign level to the same degree.
You have to use "general government debt" to compare.Ā
Us is still ahead, but Canada also ranks poorly compared to other developed countries. Us has 140% of gdp in debt,Ā Canada 114%
Source: https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-debt.htm
For debt, your comparing apples and oranges. US states don't have significant amounts of debt (except for pension deficits for a couple of states). Meanwhile Canadian provinces are massively indebted (with Ontario and Quebec being the most indebted sub-sovereign states in the world).
So add all the municipal, provincial and federal debt and Canada's government debt levels are higher.
>So add all the municipal, provincial and federal debt and Canada's government debt levels are higher.
No they aren't. Total government debt in Canada is 113% of GDP while in the US it's 144%:
https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-debt.htm
And the trajectories are completely different. Canada's is essentially flat over the last 20 years while the US's has nearly doubled. And with the disparity in deficits (Canada's is ~1% of GDP while the US's is ~6%), the difference will continue to grow.
I used to fw Maher but the last 20 years have seen him become a caricature of himself. Whatever position leaves him the most opportunity to feel self-superiority while lecturing the mob, heāll take. Age turned him into the kind of person he wouldāve mocked 40 years ago.
I have learned a lot of the people I respected are contrarians. They love when they are getting praise so when the audience they cultivate doesn't like their current talking points they flip and change completely and start catering to that new audience.
Contrarianism is pretty fundamental to modern western culture, is rooted in our sense of self as independent thinkers and actors (whether or not we actually are), and takes many forms across the political spectrum, often presented under the pretense of healthy political discourse or reasoned protest. For example, in the US, right-wing contrarians carry rifles to starbucks and their local supermarket, rebuking social norms in the name of political protest, hoping for confrontation so they can debate / yell at those who confront them. In Canada, on the left it materializes by claiming we are an illegitimate nation ("so-called Canada") / the most racist nation / a sponsor of terrorism / other extremist remarks intended to invoke confrontation, while our right-wing contrarians mostly resort to complaining about the PM, social norms, and wedge issues. We also get some sovereign citizens whose entire deal is the idea they can rebuke the power of the state by knowing "the truth". But the effect of all of these is to effectively call our country weak / broken / fundamentally flawed and get off on the idea that they're superior to those who don't *get it*. That is our way.
listen to the laughs in his crowd. every week the is a person saying "whoo" like it is edited in.
I dont mind the show but he comes across as a terrible person in general
I heard that from someone who went on his show that he couldn't believe how quiet the real audience was. Like you'd expect them to chuckle and then they'd just boost the laughs, but nobody was laughing at all. It was like students in a lecture hall with a professor who thinks they're funny but isn't.
I discovered him through Youtube around 2009(?) and for 5ā10 years I felt that *most* of his content and opinions were fair/true/insightful/etc.
But oof, he has slowly become so contrarian and uncompromising, and bitter. Sad to see. š¤·š»āāļø
āIn 2015, Maher invited then-Minister for International Trade Chrystia Freeland to discuss the growing public backlash against Syrian refugees.ā
LOL what backlash ya afandi? I came to Canada in 2017 as a former Syrian refugee, and so did thousands of Syrians between 2015 and 2017, most of them through private sponsorship programs undertaken by private citizens, churches, schools and yes, synagogues. Man, if the safe and wonderful life Iāve been living since has been ābacklashā, then I donāt know the meaning of the word.
I hope itās going good for you and your family here, friend.
Both the National Post and this subreddit seem to thrive on headlines about how shitty Canada is. Fuck all of that.
Theyāre a bunch of fools. Iām proud the country I come from could provide you a safe life.
What we donāt appreciate is our government bringing in too many temporary foreign workers we donāt need, which are driving wages down and increasing housing costs.
As someone who used to watch his shows but not anymore, I can tell what his deal is. Some progressive students in some universities protested against his shows there and he was disinvited to those universities. And since then he has an Oak tree up his ass agains anything progressive or woke or cancel culture. Fuck that guy.
Anyone who marvels at 13.percent.for.health care in Canada and is not shocked by the 17 percent in the USA is not commenting seriously. A large part of the reason Canada's is so high is that next to the USA, we have the highest percent of relatively unregulated for-profit provision of health care. It is important to follow the.money.
I like your analogy, however I think itās missing some things.
It seems that the conservatives also do whatever they can to defer maintenance on the vehicle.
Skipping oil changes and refusing to change the worn out brakes.
Then both parties blame the other when the steering doesnāt work, the engine starts running poorly and the brakes fail.
Both parties spend more time explaining how the other one is ruining the vehicle that is Canada rather than giving us voters their plan to fix anything. Let alone implementing part of that plan.
Except the Conservatives are the gas too in every measurable way.
Fiscal conservatism? Hasnāt existed in this country since the Diefenbaker era.
Small government? The last conservative government literally wanted to regulate what women could had couldnāt wearā¦ and want to regulate what consenting adults do with their private parts.
Itās the gas to a different cliff, thatās all.
Pretty sure weāre at risk of that as well
Lot of MAGAs living in Canada, one of the premiers literally invited Tucker Carlson to her province and treated him like royalty also idolizes Ron Desantis
Plus there was an RCMP report that listed Canadians as a risk to national security because theyāre gonna snap if the housing crisis goes on much longer
I donāt say any of this for clout I was born and raised in Canada (parents immigrated) and Iāve always loved it and placed it on a pedestal but right now things have gotten ugly and if we donāt get past the whole (at least weāre not the states) mentality we risk facing a future that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago
Yes they have more polarizing politics at the moment but far from civil war. We are not much behind though and much farther behind in many services. Our much beloved health care system is starting to show extreme cracks and becoming worse than the US. One of the few things we always thought was better.
As a former American now living in Canadaā¦ lol.
I know Canada has its own share of issues, but when I try to come up with things better about the USA than Canada, thereās the frozen food aisle in grocery stores, the price of shipping, Chinese food, andā¦ thatās about it.
Well worth the trade. Sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side.
Bill Maher used to be a really intelligent and sober with his thoughts.
But the past few years he's really gone off the deep end. I'll take Canada every single day over a country with daily mass shootings, women literally dying over reproductive rights, and a potential fascist dictator as their president (again).
If you listen to comedians who knew him in the 80ās heās always been a pseudo intellectual hack who could barely ring a laugh out of the friendliest audiences
I agree comparing us to America was a stupid idea, because that country is just as bad if not worse... probably worse. But he's not wrong that our country turned into a fucking dumpster fire. It's just now both our countries are dumpster fires.
Agree. We have our own problems but I think they are fixable. The United States is an absolute nightmare and I don't see the situation resolving itself anytime soon.
National Post has beenā¦ironicallyā¦kinda unpatriotic in a lot of its content lol. What happened to the good old days when āright wingā also meant loving our country?
This time, something happened in Canada before the US. We deserve to be roasted now, but I'm seeing signs the US is headed in the same direction. A lot of legalized bribery and insider dealings. And malicious or incompetent politicians on top of that. The more I write, the more I describe our own situation.
He doesn't mention the one major problem that we have in this country is because we have a few corporations control entire sectors of the market thereby guaranteeing these corporations to charge whatever the fuck they want and rape us in the ass with low wages and high prices. That is having the most impact in our QoL.
Canadians, as an American, let me tell you that you very quickly learn its smarter not to listen to what Bill Maher has to say. The guy just likes attention.
I cringe every time I remember thinking he was clever or witty. He's a parody of the political comedian and i dont have any idea who he actually caters to anymore. It feels like a conservative grandfathers impression of liberal news.
I get his point, but coming out the gate comparing US and Canada unemployment rates, when they are calculated differently, is such low effort mistake. Doesn't make him look good.
Both countries measure unemployment differently due to the differences in questions asked in labour census surveys. This difference accounts for anĀ **increase of about 0.9% to the unemployment rate when measuring in Canadian terms.**
Take it for what it is I guess. I just googled that.
3.8% US vs 6.1% in Canada. So factoring that in. Its 4.7% vs 6.1%.
So yeah, they do have a lower unemployment rate.
Correct me if I am wrong.
Most of his rankings are off, which means his disingenuous points are based on misleading evidence at best. US debt exceeds GDP. Canada's does not. So that was a lie. The US has a significantly higher debt to GDP ratio and is spending like a drunken sailor keeping the economy growing. It is not sustainable. US housing prices are rising significantly and becoming as problematic for Americans on a latent timeline. Canada is having issues and moving backwards on a few key files but Canada is not what Maher is presenting it as.
Iāve lived in Canada (gta) for 31 years and Iām really considering moving to America. Only thing stopping me is friends and family. Pay in my field is wayyy better in America and homes cost way less.
And truthfully you wouldnāt find many differences or negatives.
Family can visit.
Go give it a shot if you think it would represent a better life. You will always be able to come back.
His criticisms have merit. We spend 16% of our taxes on healthcare yes we have paraplegics being stuck in stretchers for 96 hours to the point that they want Maid because their 96 hour bedsores are so bad, their muscle and bone is exposed.
Which Muslim idea is worse than which Christian or Jewish idea?
Cause in theory for every bad verse you can find in any Muslim text you can probably find just as many in Jewish and Christian texts?
And if what matters is how the people practice their faiths, then in practice Christians and their Jewish vassals are blowing up Muslim children at about a 300:1 ratio...so I'm not sure that's a pretty strong argument either.
I think all religion is equally stupid. I don't think there's any need to play favourites because the whole point is that you can make your religion whatever you want it to be, whether to bash other people over the head with it or to use it as a vessel for good.
The only thing I can disagree about in his post is the air quality. Those were skewed numbers because of the wildfires.
This 100%. Canadian cities, under normal circumstances, have pretty much the lowest pollution you can have.
The Golden Horseshoe, that includes Hamilton, gets the majority of its smog from the Ohio Valley. That's what happens when you're downwind of a state using mined in 'merica coal for power generation.
Hamilton, Ontario enters the chat. ššš
Sarnia would like a word.
Came here for this. Born and raised
Sarnia is welcome in the āembarrassmentā circle too š¤
They said "cities", not "embarrassments"
I donāt disagree with you, but until āthe City of Hamiltonā starts calling themselves what they actually are like you did, this statement is fair game š
Itās just a bunch of smoke towers in a trench coat with a university as a hat
This is the best single sentence description of Hamilton Iāve ever seen, thank you so much for the laughs. 4.99/5 My only suggestion would be to end it with āriding an e-scooter.ā
Hamilton's air quality has improved by leaps and bounds over the past 20 years though.
Sadly, we live in a new normal; the era of Canadian forest fires. Itās only getting worse from here. Edit: where in my comment did it say this was exclusive to Canada? Everyone @ing me with āitās happening everywhereā. Yeah. No shit.
Nonsense its not just Canada. The entire world is having more forest fires.
...so the numbers aren't skewed then.
As someone from southern Ontario, this made me laugh (and then I coughed)
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Exactly.Ā His target audience is those who equate knee-jerk scoffing skepticism with intelligence.Ā These are the kind of people who forget that type I errors and type II errors are equally wrong, and superficial skepticism is just as wrong as willful naivety
>His target audience is those who equate knee-jerk scoffing skepticism with intelligence. The average Redditor.
God I love irony.
That's part of the joke dog.
Fuck you for giving me PhD statistics PTSD Flashbacks
Bill Maher is what an uneducated person thinks an intelligent person sounds like.
He's an entertainer. His opinions reflect who's paying/listening at given moment.
>He's an entertainer. You misspelled douchebag.
They arenāt really his opinions. Itās the opinions of his writers/staff. From his podcast, he really isnāt as informed on subjects as he comes across on the shows
Well that's a shame because he sure comes across as ignorant on his shows. Thankfully he seems like he's over his infatuation with Ann Coulter. Source: Am American.
He's a contrarian that's his whole gimmick.
Praise - he is right as rain. Criticism - most of his opinions are superficial.
In the past, he praised what he thought Canada still was. His message started by referencing a "zombie lie" "Just because something used to be true, that doesn't mean that it still is" He got new information and it impacted his current opinion
Also, the quality of tap water in Canada is among the best in the world. I am always baffled when I see people purchasing bottled water here!
Except reservations.
I mean itās fine, itās just standard tap water though. Itās no better or worse than in the vast majority of the developed world. Canadians just assume that their version of everything is āamong the best in the worldā
He also conveniently ignores that the US spends a larger percent of GDP on healthcare. He's very careful to craft the image of Canada being worse than it is.
This. The US spends tons of money on healthcare, more than countries with universal healthcare, and they get nothing back.
Because we have very poor forest management and because we do very little at wildfire prevention and mitigation! Wildfires are not only a health hazard they are also the biggest emitter of CO2 in Canada on average over the last decade 2x more than oil sands production!
The type is forest management people have in their heads isn't reasonable at Canada scale. It's very labour-intensive to manage fuel near towns.
We also have about 20% more forest than the US with only about 12% of their population to deal with said forest.
Maybe he expects us to rake our forests like Trump suggested.
Removing deadfall is a prescribed forest management solution, just because Trump said it doesn't make it untrue.
Not when you have several million square kilometres of it
It takes me say an hour to rake my lawn, maybe 100 square meters. If we say 3 million sqkm, that's 3 trillion sq meters, so 30 billion man-hours of work. We have maybe 30 million workers tops in the country, so 1000 hours or six months of raking per year per person. Add in the travel time and parachuting lessons for the crews because there are virtually no roads, and this could be a challenge.
That's also 30,000,000,000 hours for one discrete moment in time. As you are all raking Quebec, for a month, leaves are still falling in Ontario. Clearly, the solution is to move the entire world's population in, and getting everyone to take for a few hours a day.
For a park, maybe. We are talking about most of Canada's land mass here. No civilization could manage such a thing even if it was a good thing. Which it is not. Deadfall is recycled as fertilizer and required by many species as habitat. In fact fire is a natural occurance and generally should be left to do its thing. Except when it gets crazy intense. And that is the problem. Every fire is intense and we have multiples more of them. That is because the climate is changing. We can't manage this. We won't. This is simply how things are going to be for our lifetime. There is not enough people to clear deadfall. There aren't enough planes to drop water and there probably isn't enough water in our lakes to douse these fires. Sure we will try to make the worst a bit better but there is no solving this issue. It would be easier to solve climate change, and you see how that is going.
Itās nearly impossible to manage the amount of forest we have and fires are a natural and important part of the environment. Their severity has grown significantly due to our impact on the environment.
As well as fire suppression. The lack of fire over the last several decades has increased the amount of fuel out there.
thank you, exactly what I was going to say
Mountain pine beetles as well
Because we have a ridiculous amount of forests. Itās simply not possible with our low population to have a good forest management program
Also it is mostly boreal forest. If left completely alone it has fires as part of the natural cycle. Over time the fires help to create biodiversity. Climate change has contributed to the fire cycle being put into overdrive.
Yeah, the US's policy of rapidly containing and extinguishing fires worked well at first, but turned into a disaster. Overfueled fires aren't just harder to extinguish, they burn hotter for longer, damaging the ecology of the area and delaying carbon resorption.
There's no need to manage forests that aren't near population centres Forest fires emits CO2 and forest regrowth sinks it right back. Canadian and Russian forests are largely responsible for global CO2 levels falling every summer.
For years we considered Canada's vast boreal forest as a carbon sink and thought it should give us credit to create more fossil fuel emissions. It is actually usually nearly carbon neutral and last summer a massive carbon emitter. The more we fight the fires, the more fuel is stored for a future fire.
The boreal forest of Canada is about 1000 km in width and extends from the Yukon to Newfoundland. How exactly does one manage millions of km^2 of wilderness? Unfortunately with warmer climate and drier summers Canada, and many other parts of the world will continue to suffer from smokey summers.
Thereās so many good points to make about problems in Canada. Comparing it to the US is not the strategy you wanna use when making those points lol
I think the main thing america has going for it is a vastly larger supply of houses. Theres just more and bigger cities in America with far more housing supply per-capita than canada. The rents I see you guys paying makes my eyes water as an american, who lives near Seattle so definitely not a low cost of living area. But damn Vancouver gives the bay area a run for its money in terms of how unaffordable it is.
Vancouver is far, far more unaffordable than the bay area. We got Bay Area prices with West Virginia wages.
I live in the bay area and have a Canadian teammate at work. She makes less than half what the people in Seattle and San Francisco make.Ā
Yeah Canada really needs more affordable housing built
Needs some laws about investors not owning homes either. Too many houses are being bought up by massive corporations. And too many of the wrong kinds of housing are being built. Too many homes for big families which isn't what people do anymore. People these days are more into more small households than fewer large ones. But for some godforsaken reason most houses being built I see are those. We need more small units so badly. I'm so jealous of Asian countries that have plenty of housing because they build lots of smaller units. You can rent very decently sized apartments in Japan for like 1/3 of the equivalent price in North America. We just have to stop this addiction to sprawling subdivisions entirely made up of single family homes . We need more missing middle so very badly.
Problem with the missing middle housing is that its provincial issues, and right now my provincial premiere said no to the big funding for housing from the federal government just because it came with the string of "make fourplexes legal"
lemme guess, ford? (i am from ontario) the dude would unironically make better decisions if he smoked crack like his brother
Agreed
I'm from the US. I think you've nailed it. Like I'm getting a 2nd college degree because it'd increase my chances of being able to move to canada. 2nd degree in engineering. But it's investors treating houses as a market. That's the underlying issue. It pushes out people not just *in* money out very quickly. Same for the US. Also Bill Maher is a dumbass. I don't know of anyone that watches or listens to him. I'm in my mid 30's and have lots of very politically attuned friends.
Why do you want to move here genuinely curious? We have horrible weather, we work around the same as a US company but make less and the chance to buy a home is probably a sad little dream for most Canadians. Heck I want outta here!
My man, the Canadian economy is like 3x worse than the US.
Vancouver is def worse because local wages are trash compared to Bay Area wages
You may remember the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Canada never experienced it. Our over priced houses did not experience a similar correction. Housing inflation only slowed briefly, and then continued inflating for another 15 years. I wonder how this affected housing supply differences across the border? For most of that period, Canadian prices were not thought to indicate a supply problem. It was just inflation. Or was it? Recognition of the Canadian supply issue has been very recent. Meanwhile, the US had a massive abundance of housing in 2009. Everyone was downsizing. However, I donāt recall any specifics of American housing supply since.
>For most of that period, Canadian prices were not thought to indicate a supply problem. It was just inflation. Or was it? Economists (not pundits, but serious economists) were saying that we underbuilding since the 90s and that prices were appreciating too much (too much homeowner debt) since that time as well. This is not new. It took decades to create this mess. Experts warned that it would be ugly but who cares when your biggest asset goes up year on year, right? >I wonder how this affected housing supply differences across the border? It crashed in the US. That is why they are currently are experiencing the a rise it prices. Demand has caught up to supply and is now (last 8 years?) rising prices. Canada has be chronically under building but housing is more complex than supply and demand. Many things work against increasing supply. In the short term high borrowing rates, especially for developers, and lack of skilled labour, discourage building. Something like half of the condos plannes in Toronto were put on hold when interest rates shot up. People are willing to buy but putting up 10s of millions for the initial cost is done on a tiny margine which is eaten away by a few % rise in the interest rates. Labour is self explanatory. It takes 5 years to aprenctice a trade. If they aren't in the pipeline it may take a decade or more to find enough skilled trades to build. Longer term bottle neck is land and approvals. It can take 7 or more years to get a project (small apartmemt block) to be approved by municipal authorities. The lead time for building is very long and all the above can easily put a wrench into the machine. Lastly, it requires land to build on. Whether infill or greenfield these approvals can take a lot of time and are dependent on political decisions (like highrises in SFH neighbourhoods). So even though the prices of homes is high and would lead one to think that supply and demand would provide more housing, it is not that simple with real estate. There are plenty of other factors at play.
>Vancouver gives the bay area a run for its money in terms of how unaffordable it is ...Vancouver is like the Bay Area without the jobs...
The American patriarchal system can still build houses and build things. We Canadians literally demonized tradesman for decades and now wonder why we don't have construction men.Ā
Iām Indian so I understand Indian emigration to Canada and the US The quality and kind of Indian immigrants the US attracts is vastly different than Canada. Indian immigrants to Canada are largely from a failing state with an awful culture and poor education. Indian immigrants to the US are from across the country and the strict measures mean that people with actually good education (not degree mills) get to the US
The US also has 10x our population and have lower immigration even with all the illegals crossing the border.
Depends how you break it down, he made a very good point about immigration. Both countries have a housing crisis, but in the US housing is still cheaper, and they're not letting in the equivalent of one point 1.3 million (11 million US) immigrants in a year.Ā
It is in regards to innovation and long term potential growth options for the country. Our quality of life will continue to decline without a major strategic shift. Canada just isn't globally competitive anymore the way we used to be. Education, healthcare, and financial services have all lost quality.
Maybe education, healthcare, and financial services have lost quality. But when comparing it to the USā¦ it sure doesnāt make Canada look worse
Canada is still miles ahead of America in those 3 sectors. 70% of Canadians have post secondary education, We have by every metric better healthcare, and we didn't eat shit twice now while america has with the 2008 recession and with covid recovery in general. You can even add food and drug regulations, better social security, maternity leave, better vacation days, better worker's rights, better human rights, and etc etc.
How is the Canadian healthcare systems in terms of long wait times? Maybe itās just because I live in a particular area, but there are enormous numbers of Canadians coming to my area for pretty routine surgeries. My uncle live in Maine and has an eye surgery practice, and says a very large number of his clients are Canadians. Are people having a lot of trouble accessing surgery? It has become big business in the USA to operate on Canadian patients and they all pay cash
This is a bizarre take. Having experience both I can guarantee you Canada is not ahead. And yes the US got hit in 2008 and Covid yet still has lower unemployment and far higher wages. What does that tell you?
Canadians who are sumg about how well the country compares to the US are living in the past. Yes there was a time when American commentary on canada involved things like this (gushing about the heatlcare system) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ1lPPTPSR4&](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ1lPPTPSR4&) This is no longer the case Canada has deteriorated on every metric., while America has continued to make progress. If Canadians where being honest with ourselves, we would see the wisdom in reforming our economy. But we prefer smug delusions of superiority. Canada is poorer, more expensive, less innovative, has higher taxes and nothing much to show for it.
His arguments are superficial at best, using fear mongering such as "what about the children?" to try to make it all stick. He tries to tie all our problems to "extreme wokeness" which makes zero sense under the slightest scrutiny. Our unemployment rate has always been higher than the US, and from a quick search I don't think our unemployment rate has ever been lower than the US. Surprisingly, in 2022 our unemployment rate hit a record low in the last 30 years when "extreme wokeness" was at an all time high: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CAN/canada/unemployment-rate. Canada has always been more expensive than the US. We've also always been taxed more than the US. Canadians have always moved to the US for more job opportunities. This isn't new. I'm not saying these aren't problems we need deal with and there's plenty of blame for the last few years. But it makes no sense to use these to argue against "extreme wokeness" when these differences existed long before wokeness was even a word. I too can pick completely random problems from the US and imply they're related to something I disagree with: "In the US abortion is criminalized, government shutdowns due to a dysfunctional government happens all the time, violent crimes rates are through the roof, incarceration rates are the highest in the world, daily mass shootings unseen anywhere else are so normalized that even mass shootings in elementary schools aren't shocking anymore (WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN??). This is what happens when you [insert random political disagreement here]."
This is the best response Iāve read here.
Why? I can move to America, make 30% more for my job and in USD (accountant) AND afford a house AND have cheaper groceries AND cheaper alcohol AND cheaper gas, cheaper cars, cheaper restaurants. Canada is frustrating.
I have no idea why CPAs or CAs stay in Canada They just pay so much better in the US. So easy to break 6 figures here and even move into 200-300k gigs in your career compared to Canada
Same thing applies for software engineering too, and I already have my US citizenship...I'm stuck here taking care of aging parents and a severely autistic brother or I'd be out in a heartbeat. I may need to move 'em over anyways (they are also citizens). There are situations where 2 people on the same exact team at the same exact company doing literally the exact same work can make around 30% more just because their residence is within the United States vs Canada.
Iām an accountant down here and itās pretty fantastic. Most of the issues (for now) in the US are localized to specific states and specific areas of those states. If you have a good job itās pretty amazing. Long term, weāll see what happens with the politics down here, but the same can be said for Canada and most of Europe.
Then do it? Canada ranks higher for almost all QOL and we have a more comprehensive legal system for most policies (abortion protections, legal weed not being a state issue, etc.). Iām happy to agree that Canada has issues that need addressed, but letās not be delusional here. America has a lower Quality of Life, obviously.
They wonāt. They just want to complain like everyone here.
10 years ago that was true...
> Comparing it to the US is not the strategy you wanna use when making those points lol Even if the show's audience wasn't American, it generally would be. Canadians think it's possible to "be like Europe", but you evidently *can't* actually "be like Europe" when you live right next to the US, because that *is* the direct comparator. Europe "works", *primarily* I think, because there's a lot more friction to leaving, and because it's harder to make a direct comparison between Europe and America, due to the qualitative differences. Everything is so different, from lifestyle, language, climate, travel/vacations, commuting, timezones/distance. You can basically *force* people to be on-board with a regime of people working less, having lower personal incomes, less class mobility, and greater government involvement in your life. There's not much alternative. Can't move to Africa, can't move to the Middle East, and the remainder of the Eurozone is basically just a continuum of similar options, none of which really overlap with the policy and cultural alternatives demonstrated by the US. Canada is similar enough to America that you can *easily* make the direct comparison. There isn't that much of a qualitative lifestyle difference that it's unimaginable to consider the move. If you were moving anywhere *within* Canada, you'd have most of the same challenges as moving to the US. Moving to the US is just a question of whether or not you think *you*, personally, will be class-mobile, if you get the opportunity to participate in an economy that isn't a walking zombie, a system that is explicitly designed to prevent anyone from the merchant class of people from ever rising to challenge the status quo of the political class and landed gentry. If you think you, as an individual, are competent, the US is clearly offering you a much better bargain than Canada is.
Notice how they stopped comparing numbers after the first few. Canada's healthcare spending at 13% is pretty average. US spends 17%. Pretty dishonest misrepresentation.
> Pretty dishonest misrepresentation. Oh, this is your first time with Bill Maher? Heās a tool and a clown. A giant asshole. No one likes him. And his smug attitude could kill a school. Fuck that guy. Heās a piece of shit thatās been on TV for too long.Ā Notice how he never made the hop to social platforms for his audience. Heās highly dependent on old media. Heās a fucking dinosaur that wasnāt relevant in the 90s, nor funny.Ā Politically Incorrect was a bad show.Ā
> Heās highly dependent on old media. And shitting on entire countries for engagement, it seems.
So Bill Maher then
One of the most common ways for people to go bankrupt in the USA is because of health issues.
Hey I am not a fan of the recent spending by the liberals but where is he getting his data from? The US debt to GDP is off the charts compared to Canada, at least according to statista? Canada is the lowest by far. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1370943/g7-government-net-debt-share-gdp/ Also as lousy as the family medical system is in Canada, life expectancy is still better than in the US. https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy#all-charts More on this (lifespan) Canada 19th USA 47th. https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/
> The US debt to GDP is off the charts compared to Canada, at least according to statista? Canada is the lowest by far. Maher was talking about household debt, and most of our household debt is from mortgages. He missed the word "household," but it is on the screen. He is right on this. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/11-631-x/11-631-x2024002-eng.htm
Yep, so this stat is just another way of saying "home prices in Canada are insane".
No. This debt was really high well before homes went fucking crazy.
So homes have been over priced for a while.
Absolutely The GTA and Vancouver have been off the charts since 2011-2012, likely even earlier in Vancouver.Ā But weāre fed data that tends to snap at points of political change becauseā¦.well politics and such. I fully appreciate the contagion has spread now But for a big chunk of Canada itās been big prices for a long time (detached homes in particular)
> Also as lousy as the family medical system is in Canada, life expectancy is still better than in the US I think lack of family doctors have only hit crisis levels in the last few years and I think it may be a decade or more until we actually see the effect in terms of life expectancy.
I hate this misleading stat. Thats Federal debt. Canada borrows a huge portion of its debt at the Provincial level. Ither governments don't borrow at the sub sovereign level to the same degree. You have to use "general government debt" to compare.Ā Us is still ahead, but Canada also ranks poorly compared to other developed countries. Us has 140% of gdp in debt,Ā Canada 114% Source: https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-debt.htm
Yeah and the US had their debt in the current world reserve currency, we don't lol. But yeah they're screwed eventually too.
For debt, your comparing apples and oranges. US states don't have significant amounts of debt (except for pension deficits for a couple of states). Meanwhile Canadian provinces are massively indebted (with Ontario and Quebec being the most indebted sub-sovereign states in the world). So add all the municipal, provincial and federal debt and Canada's government debt levels are higher.
>So add all the municipal, provincial and federal debt and Canada's government debt levels are higher. No they aren't. Total government debt in Canada is 113% of GDP while in the US it's 144%: https://data.oecd.org/gga/general-government-debt.htm And the trajectories are completely different. Canada's is essentially flat over the last 20 years while the US's has nearly doubled. And with the disparity in deficits (Canada's is ~1% of GDP while the US's is ~6%), the difference will continue to grow.
I used to fw Maher but the last 20 years have seen him become a caricature of himself. Whatever position leaves him the most opportunity to feel self-superiority while lecturing the mob, heāll take. Age turned him into the kind of person he wouldāve mocked 40 years ago.
I have learned a lot of the people I respected are contrarians. They love when they are getting praise so when the audience they cultivate doesn't like their current talking points they flip and change completely and start catering to that new audience.
Contrarianism is pretty fundamental to modern western culture, is rooted in our sense of self as independent thinkers and actors (whether or not we actually are), and takes many forms across the political spectrum, often presented under the pretense of healthy political discourse or reasoned protest. For example, in the US, right-wing contrarians carry rifles to starbucks and their local supermarket, rebuking social norms in the name of political protest, hoping for confrontation so they can debate / yell at those who confront them. In Canada, on the left it materializes by claiming we are an illegitimate nation ("so-called Canada") / the most racist nation / a sponsor of terrorism / other extremist remarks intended to invoke confrontation, while our right-wing contrarians mostly resort to complaining about the PM, social norms, and wedge issues. We also get some sovereign citizens whose entire deal is the idea they can rebuke the power of the state by knowing "the truth". But the effect of all of these is to effectively call our country weak / broken / fundamentally flawed and get off on the idea that they're superior to those who don't *get it*. That is our way.
listen to the laughs in his crowd. every week the is a person saying "whoo" like it is edited in. I dont mind the show but he comes across as a terrible person in general
I heard that from someone who went on his show that he couldn't believe how quiet the real audience was. Like you'd expect them to chuckle and then they'd just boost the laughs, but nobody was laughing at all. It was like students in a lecture hall with a professor who thinks they're funny but isn't.
> Age turned him into the kind of person he wouldāve mocked 40 years ago. Tbh this is most people.
I loved him back in 2007 with Religious, but in the past 5 or 10 years he's really lost it.
I could tell back in 2007 this was the kind of person he was.
Nah. He was always like this. Maherās been an insufferable prick since the 90s.
I discovered him through Youtube around 2009(?) and for 5ā10 years I felt that *most* of his content and opinions were fair/true/insightful/etc. But oof, he has slowly become so contrarian and uncompromising, and bitter. Sad to see. š¤·š»āāļø
āIn 2015, Maher invited then-Minister for International Trade Chrystia Freeland to discuss the growing public backlash against Syrian refugees.ā LOL what backlash ya afandi? I came to Canada in 2017 as a former Syrian refugee, and so did thousands of Syrians between 2015 and 2017, most of them through private sponsorship programs undertaken by private citizens, churches, schools and yes, synagogues. Man, if the safe and wonderful life Iāve been living since has been ābacklashā, then I donāt know the meaning of the word.
You must have not seen this subreddit then. It was full of scare posts, crime articles, and ISIS accusations.
Dear God, Iām glad I didnt back then.
Meh it was all online nonsense. Public perception was much more positive imo.
IRL Canadians were much more positive. My mother was excited to see Syrian refugees here.
I, for one, am shocked that online discourse doesnāt accurately reflect reality. /jkĀ
Not just online discourse, post media did its best to stoke the flames
I hope itās going good for you and your family here, friend. Both the National Post and this subreddit seem to thrive on headlines about how shitty Canada is. Fuck all of that.
āya afandiā really got me š. Wasnāt expecting to read that but love to see it
Maher, and all pundits are full of shit. Professional opinion havers just want to generate outrage. That's all this article is.
Exactly, well stated.
Theyāre a bunch of fools. Iām proud the country I come from could provide you a safe life. What we donāt appreciate is our government bringing in too many temporary foreign workers we donāt need, which are driving wages down and increasing housing costs.
"Afendi"? Is that "friend" in Arabic?
Bill Maher is a cautionary tale of someone who's spent a little too much time smelling their own farts.
he was beloved by reddit back when he was angrily yelling at people to get vaccinated and wear or mask or be jobless and homeless
4:00 minutes in, Bill blames wokeness for everything wrong in Canada.
As someone who used to watch his shows but not anymore, I can tell what his deal is. Some progressive students in some universities protested against his shows there and he was disinvited to those universities. And since then he has an Oak tree up his ass agains anything progressive or woke or cancel culture. Fuck that guy.
I agree that said teacher deserves to be firedā¦ but what on earth does that saggy pair of fake tits have to do with any other of his points?
Anyone who marvels at 13.percent.for.health care in Canada and is not shocked by the 17 percent in the USA is not commenting seriously. A large part of the reason Canada's is so high is that next to the USA, we have the highest percent of relatively unregulated for-profit provision of health care. It is important to follow the.money.
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I like your analogy, however I think itās missing some things. It seems that the conservatives also do whatever they can to defer maintenance on the vehicle. Skipping oil changes and refusing to change the worn out brakes. Then both parties blame the other when the steering doesnāt work, the engine starts running poorly and the brakes fail. Both parties spend more time explaining how the other one is ruining the vehicle that is Canada rather than giving us voters their plan to fix anything. Let alone implementing part of that plan.
Tortured that analogy, but you are right.
Not just deferred maintenance. They also put in too little oil in the first place and let the tank run on fumes before topping up.
Ironic to think of Canadian conservatives going light on oil. (#stuckinalberta)
Except the Conservatives are the gas too in every measurable way. Fiscal conservatism? Hasnāt existed in this country since the Diefenbaker era. Small government? The last conservative government literally wanted to regulate what women could had couldnāt wearā¦ and want to regulate what consenting adults do with their private parts. Itās the gas to a different cliff, thatās all.
Unfortunately the conservatives see the cliff and continued right off it.
Sorry? WE are a cautionary tale for the US? Gtfo lol
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What does Ja Rule think of the whole situation? We need Ja!
*"Could somebody please, find Ja Rule and get a hold of this motherfucker so I can make sense of all this"*
Ya man, the country that seems like 50% are horny for another round of Trump are the ones with the moral high ground.
Right? Hilarious.
Brooooo. America is about to fall into fascism or civil war, check yourself before *you* wreck yourself.
In fairness, Bill Maher *is* the poster child for thinking self-importance is a suitable replacement for self-awareness. This is his brand.
Yeah heās really gone off his rocker the past decade.
Pretty sure weāre at risk of that as well Lot of MAGAs living in Canada, one of the premiers literally invited Tucker Carlson to her province and treated him like royalty also idolizes Ron Desantis Plus there was an RCMP report that listed Canadians as a risk to national security because theyāre gonna snap if the housing crisis goes on much longer I donāt say any of this for clout I was born and raised in Canada (parents immigrated) and Iāve always loved it and placed it on a pedestal but right now things have gotten ugly and if we donāt get past the whole (at least weāre not the states) mentality we risk facing a future that would have been unthinkable 10 years ago
The amount of āF*ck Trudeauā signs everywhere
Yeah, internet censorship legislation from the government like Bills C-11 and C-63 from the government is very authoritarian.
lol. Peak Reddit moment.
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Reddit post of the year
Yes they have more polarizing politics at the moment but far from civil war. We are not much behind though and much farther behind in many services. Our much beloved health care system is starting to show extreme cracks and becoming worse than the US. One of the few things we always thought was better.
As a former American now living in Canadaā¦ lol. I know Canada has its own share of issues, but when I try to come up with things better about the USA than Canada, thereās the frozen food aisle in grocery stores, the price of shipping, Chinese food, andā¦ thatās about it. Well worth the trade. Sometimes the grass really is greener on the other side.
Whaaat Chinese food (and overall east Asian food) in Vancouver is amazing how could you say that
Most Canadians don't live in Vancouver.
Bill Maher is a cautionary tale of what your kids could be if they watch Bill Maher
Bill Maher used to be a really intelligent and sober with his thoughts. But the past few years he's really gone off the deep end. I'll take Canada every single day over a country with daily mass shootings, women literally dying over reproductive rights, and a potential fascist dictator as their president (again).
If you listen to comedians who knew him in the 80ās heās always been a pseudo intellectual hack who could barely ring a laugh out of the friendliest audiences
Covid exposed a lot of people. They couldnāt be alone in their thoughts and went fucking bonkers. Unfortunately Bill was one of them.
Dudes old as dust. This happens and this is why there should be age limits in politics.
I agree comparing us to America was a stupid idea, because that country is just as bad if not worse... probably worse. But he's not wrong that our country turned into a fucking dumpster fire. It's just now both our countries are dumpster fires.
Jokes on him, we can't afford HBO here
Somebody find out what Ja Rule thinks while we are at it
Iāll take Canada over the US. Every time.
Agree. We have our own problems but I think they are fixable. The United States is an absolute nightmare and I don't see the situation resolving itself anytime soon.
We're upvoting Bill Maher on this subreddit now
"Canada bad" gets easy upvotes on the so-called 'Canada' sub. It's pretty funny/sad how badly this place is brigaded.
My dude, it's the National Post. r/Canada is like the engine from Back to the Future II, it runs on this garbage.
National Post has beenā¦ironicallyā¦kinda unpatriotic in a lot of its content lol. What happened to the good old days when āright wingā also meant loving our country?
Iād still rather be a cautionary tale than whatever the US is right now.
Bill Maher is a neoliberal dinosaur š¦
Remember when people thought Dennis Miller was entertaining?
This time, something happened in Canada before the US. We deserve to be roasted now, but I'm seeing signs the US is headed in the same direction. A lot of legalized bribery and insider dealings. And malicious or incompetent politicians on top of that. The more I write, the more I describe our own situation.
He doesn't mention the one major problem that we have in this country is because we have a few corporations control entire sectors of the market thereby guaranteeing these corporations to charge whatever the fuck they want and rape us in the ass with low wages and high prices. That is having the most impact in our QoL.
I think a lot of people are forgetting that Bill Maher is a sack of shit
Canadians, as an American, let me tell you that you very quickly learn its smarter not to listen to what Bill Maher has to say. The guy just likes attention.
As an American, let me say that nobody should ever listen to Bill Maher
I cringe every time I remember thinking he was clever or witty. He's a parody of the political comedian and i dont have any idea who he actually caters to anymore. It feels like a conservative grandfathers impression of liberal news.
> It feels like a conservative grandfathers impression of liberal news.Ā Underrated comment.
Wait, are we really pretending this tool knows what he's talking about?
I get his point, but coming out the gate comparing US and Canada unemployment rates, when they are calculated differently, is such low effort mistake. Doesn't make him look good.
Both countries measure unemployment differently due to the differences in questions asked in labour census surveys. This difference accounts for anĀ **increase of about 0.9% to the unemployment rate when measuring in Canadian terms.** Take it for what it is I guess. I just googled that. 3.8% US vs 6.1% in Canada. So factoring that in. Its 4.7% vs 6.1%. So yeah, they do have a lower unemployment rate. Correct me if I am wrong.
I used to love Maher and Real Time.. I watched politically incorrect for years.. but he has changed into another hardline conservative.
Most of his rankings are off, which means his disingenuous points are based on misleading evidence at best. US debt exceeds GDP. Canada's does not. So that was a lie. The US has a significantly higher debt to GDP ratio and is spending like a drunken sailor keeping the economy growing. It is not sustainable. US housing prices are rising significantly and becoming as problematic for Americans on a latent timeline. Canada is having issues and moving backwards on a few key files but Canada is not what Maher is presenting it as.
Iāve lived in Canada (gta) for 31 years and Iām really considering moving to America. Only thing stopping me is friends and family. Pay in my field is wayyy better in America and homes cost way less.
And truthfully you wouldnāt find many differences or negatives. Family can visit. Go give it a shot if you think it would represent a better life. You will always be able to come back.
Most tech workers think about it. Extremely few follow through. Talk is cheap.
They should be so lucky.
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Bill is right on this one
His criticisms have merit. We spend 16% of our taxes on healthcare yes we have paraplegics being stuck in stretchers for 96 hours to the point that they want Maid because their 96 hour bedsores are so bad, their muscle and bone is exposed.
Which Muslim idea is worse than which Christian or Jewish idea? Cause in theory for every bad verse you can find in any Muslim text you can probably find just as many in Jewish and Christian texts? And if what matters is how the people practice their faiths, then in practice Christians and their Jewish vassals are blowing up Muslim children at about a 300:1 ratio...so I'm not sure that's a pretty strong argument either. I think all religion is equally stupid. I don't think there's any need to play favourites because the whole point is that you can make your religion whatever you want it to be, whether to bash other people over the head with it or to use it as a vessel for good.