I have quite a few creative ideas, but am too tired to write them down rn. I’ll go the easy, lazy way (and write about more legislation ideas tomorrow):
Proportional representation like Germany. In every election, the voter votes for an individual and a party. The individual is chosen to represent the riding through STAR voting (my version). After all MPs are elected, to ensure proportional representation according to the party votes (the second vote that voters cast), individuals from party lists are put into parliament.
This way, we get riding representation and party representation.
The “tithe” law. Profit capped at 10% to keep costs and chicanery down. People and corps taxed at 10% across the board. GST/PST 10% total. Capitalism, but non-aggressive, loaded with social programs. I guess I might as well throw in flying pigs. Yes, pigs should fly, and it oughta be a law.
Hmm. Most of the basic industries would probably pass that margin no problem. I think production vehicles even fall under 10%.
Anything bespoke, from machine tools to Etsy stores, is going to implode overnight, though.
A flat tax+consumption tax is very regressive. Poor people would be taxed almost 20% and rich people would be taxed almost 0%. Most of their income is capital gains, against which they occasionally take out loans for consumption. Their consumption is much less than their wealth increase. Their wealth increase is much higher than their income.
- The banning of all future fossil fuel expansion.
- Criminal charges for any Canadian fighting in the IDF or involved in sending arms to Israel.
- Require that all vehicles in excess of 2 tonnes require a commercial license to operate. The idea would be that this limit would gradually be reduced to a sensible number over time.
- Vehicle speed limiters, ideally tied to the region you’re in (city/highway).
I know, you asked for one, but there’s a lot of stuff to be done.
Ive been thinking of these laws myself for the longest time as well. Glad im not the only one
Ban age verification laws.
Immediately end all subsidies and preferential tax treatment of the fossil fuel sector.
Basic Income.
I was about to write this. Universal basic income.
But how are we going to fund this exclusively from taxpayer money? I think it’s important we secure a solid revenue to fund this first. Through nationalized resources, or a tax on the wealthy, etc.
A UBI is intended to be inexpensive to administer, this is why everyone gets it unconditionally, but income taxes need to be increased so that the wealthy end up paying back what they got and more, such that it balances the cost of giving it to everyone.
About the funding:
Many years ago there was a Conservative politician named Hugh Segal who lead a study about UBI. The calculations showed that if the 60 over-lapping government handouts were elimated, Canada would save millions (or billions idk it’s been a while since I read it) of dollars every year.
Sounds too good to be true until you realize that just for UI each city across Canada has a least one office with multiple employees. These office all pay rent, insurance, power, etc. Most cities likely have 10 or more UI offices.
Multiple that by all the other programs and it adds up to quite a bit on money.
Edit: I found this from CBC https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sunday/the-sunday-edition-for-march-29-2020-1.5509908/amidst-a-global-pandemic-hugh-segal-s-call-for-a-guaranteed-annual-income-is-even-more-timely-1.5509938
From the article:
“The Parliamentary Budget Officer said it would probably cost about $60 billion without counting those federal and provincial programs. It would replace those and produce substantial savings for the taxpayer. That would bring the number down to about $25 billion nationally. That’s less than 10 per cent of Canada’s total economic cost in terms of running the store. That would be a very efficient investment, not only in reducing poverty, but also in reducing all the negative pathologies of poverty, like bad healthcare, health status, education outcomes and family difficulties, difficulty with the law — all of which cost taxpayers a tremendous amount of money.”
Ban algorithmic timelines for all social media, news, and entertainment.
Ban real-time algorithmic pricing.
Enforce a higher standard of driving, tailgating, extreme speed, distracted driving is insane.
All timelines are algorithmic except for AI generated timelines, which are heuristic. You’re gonna force them to put AI in the timeline
Obviously I’m referring to ranked predictive timelines vs chronological. A basic heuristic chronological feed (eg. most recent) has little in common with modern machine learning powered social media timelines designed to be “most relevant”.
You’re right, we should ban heuristic timelines and force them all to be algorithmic.
- The progressive gov defunding of all Canadian media. There is nothing as destructive to a functional democracy as a media that is beholding to the government.
You think a state funded media outlet, that has organizational control separations from direct government influence, is worse than corporate media? History and every level of academic inquiry very much disagrees .
Those aren’t the only two options. Local media. Independent media. Crowd funded media. At least I know their bias is their own and not part of a larger agenda created in a board room.
And state funded media may have organizational control separations from overtly obvious DIRECT gov influence but if you dont believe that the gov has strong influence you must be naive - there are clear cases of the gov communications offices creating and sending out press statements even BEFORE an event has taken place so they can control the narrative. And as someone who has dealt with media directly with my own press releases, I know that the majority of reporters are happy to get a press release, change a few words to make it seem like they earned their paycheque and release it as given. The idea that there’s ‘independence’ from gov control is an utter fallacy.
The other obvious control is on what the gov funded media does NOT report. There are quite a few members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery - all the big names are there: CBC, CTV, Global, CPAC, Canadian Press, Reuters - but there is only one Blacklock’s Reporter outlet. And if you subscribe to Blacklock’s you would be shocked to see the DAILY release of information that never hits the big name papers. Because they cover the events going on behind committee doors, the incredible tax wastage, the in-house decisions that show just how messed up some parts of our gov really are, but not the things that the gov wants the general public to see. Blacklock’s is subscription only so they are beholding to no one - they can speak the truth without concern about losing funding.
Blacklock sues government and other publications for sharing their content as they want to maintain their content behind a paywall. It’s deliberately not an open media outlet for broader public consumption, making it a terrible comparison to pubic media outlets (corporate or government owned). They may have found a model that works within a very narrow context, but it’s also a model that would not work at scale within the capitalist media landscape.
Many news outlets do simply use government or corporate provided press releases as the competition for clicks is extreme and taking time to be more journalistic can undercut their ability to meet algorithms. Press releases are, however, only a portion of news content. CBC has their press room that largely reports on daily occurrences, but they also have teams of investigative journalists that produce articles critical of all levels of government and the parties therein. It’s not either/or.
I am all for media regulation reform that will place more emphasis on distributed, independent, and local media journalism. I very much supported the digital services act, as it sought to overcome the challenges that local media faces, where it’s content is used for the profits of Google, Facebook, etc. without compensation. How are local outlets expected to function when they largely being stripped of any revenue function? Other than subscription based models that are highly susceptible to corporate control and/or buyout, how do you propose we fund a this independent and local media while ensuring reporting can be held to acceptable levels of accuracy and fairness?
It’s deliberately not an open media outlet for broader public consumption, making it a terrible comparison to pubic media outlets
Except that even with ONLY reading their free multiple morning emails, which are a short paragraph each, I learn FAR more about whats going on behind the scenes on the Hill than I do from all other media. And I don’t have to pay for that, its their teaser.
How do you get people to pay for media? Provide valuable content. I paid for Blacklock’s for a couple of years til honestly, it got too depressing to see how MUCH news was not being reported by mainstream media. Infuriating to realize that most of the time we’re getting talking points and sound bites, but a great deal of the backroom and under table news was going unreported.
Also, provide BALANCED news reporting. My prime example would be last year when Transgender Awareness Day happen to fall on Easter Sunday. I emailed the CBC to ask WHY there were THIRTEEN articles about transgender issues on their site that day and ONE about Easter - one is relevant to over 50% of the Canadian population and the other is 0.3% but you couldn’t tell from CBC’s incredibly unbalanced coverage. They wrote back to point out that I had missed another CBC Easter article and sent a link - it was one story about what stores were closed on Easter Sunday. Yeesh.
What a about Easter is every news worthy? Beyond a losing of water egg hunts or religious services, why would any journalist cover Easter? Meanwhile trans issues are front and center in civic discourse as they are being debated at the frontier of personal freedom of expression. The stakes involved with trans rights extreme to how we structure society and set expectations for one another. Easter, meanwhile, is a non-contentious religious celebration that’s become focused on candy and maybe having a ham with family. No one cares because nothing is at risk with Easter. No one is telling any Christian that they shouldn’t, or worse can’t, celebrate Easter, unlike being trans.
Its the ratio I objected to. THIRTEEN articles? Who needs 13 articles about ANY topic on the same day? And as much as being trans is the trendy controversial of the day, the fact is that it affects a tiny minority of the population. But that’s the CBC’s forte: As ex CBC producer Tara Henley once stated (after she left) “People want to know why, for example, non-binary Filipinos concerned about a lack of LGBT terms in Tagalog is an editorial priority for the CBC, when local issues of broad concern go unreported.”
And there’s nothing controversial about Easter but there are still interesting things to report: Ever heard of the Scoppio del Carro (Explosion of the Cart) in Florence, Italy? A small rocket in the shape of a dove, is lit inside a Cathedral during the Easter Mass, it flies along a wire stretched through the cathedral, exiting the church doors and hits a large, ornate cart packed with fireworks, causing it to erupt in a massive, noisy display of fireworks and smoke and then flies back into the church.
Of course I found that on youtube after a link on facebook. Not likely to see that on CBC.
Do you think a 1000+ year old tradition is “news”? If so, why don’t we have a dozen “news” articles about the opening of every single farmers market in every city across the country, or just as many news articles about the every 10k fun run across the country? Because they’re not interesting or impactful to anyone in society. There’s nothing at stake. They have thousands of firework events every year in cities across the globe. It’s normal and generally accepted as normal. If the powers that be decided to stop allowing fireworks displays, then maybe it would actually be news worthy, as it would be a change and something of interest where the reasons for and against keeping the tradition would be part of broader social discourse. Trans rights important because they are neither granted broadly around the world, nor in Canada. They are interesting because the discourse occuring alongside them is involved in discussions of how we contemplate our identity as individuals. They are reported on because governments are making decisions regarding them. If they are as important as other government deliberations is subjective. Our main mechanism for deciding what is news worthy is capitalism - if it gets clicks, it gets pushed. If anything, government funded media is a bastion of resistance against treating media as a winner takes all sport. It affords a small group of journalists funding and an apparatus to do investigative journalism with a modicum more freedom than most media outlets afford. Sure blacklock might be a small example of other models that can work for niche markets, but their reach and impact (as you note) are non-existent in comparison to the big media corps. We could impose very strict rules about content percentages focusing on local, hyper local, national or international topics, but I suspect you would also be opposed to quota requirements of the like. So otherwise, what’s your solution?
Being funded by government doesn’t equate to being beholden to government.
I’d argue that the ownership of media by foreign billionaires, many of whom actually do dictate their direction, is far more harmful to our democracy.
Just remember it’s proportional representation that is allowing Netanyahu to keep power. A far right small religious group is giving him the balance of power. So it’s not always so simple.
Fuck! You got me. Nice job.
I was about to explain electorate system, how he would need fewer votes here to be elected, and how bad is picking a mechanism just because your candidate has better chances to win rather than give more voice to the people. But then I read the nickname.
You might be one of the best troll accounts we had in .ca in a while. Thank you for the chuckle.
Why troll account? It’s the truth about Israeli voting.
Eliminate limited liability for holders of voting shares in corporations. Charges and lawsuits can go after any and all assets of every holder of voting shares in a corporation.
In most corporations, the only thing that shareholders really do is vote in relation to who the directors are. The directors and officers are generally the ones who actually do things.
The directors are often also in charge of share sales and transfers. In corporations not in the stock market, you often can’t sell, redeem, gift, or otherwise get rid of you shares whenever you feel like it.
Officers are also appointed by directors, not by shareholders, so that could be another step removed from having agency over what’s happening.
Many CEOs have shares as part of their compensation package, as do many other members of the C-suite. Regardless, by making voting shareholders liable for all cause penalties, their selection of leadership roles would necessarily change. That would include lawsuits, fines, environmental penalties, HR violations, civic wear and tear, back taxes, etc.
To allow booking MAID in the future based on developing conditions such as dementia. I definitely want to do this.
peanut gallery here but man would I love this. its like if I have demetia and can’t chew and swallow whol foods and can’t use the bathroom myself. Yeah. Im done.
There’s too many that would benefit Canada immensely.
Since most of my first thoughts were already said, maybe criminalising corporate involvement in politics? Or price fixing. Hell, even nationalising necessities would be good (food, housing, utilities - including phone/internet).
Another thought would be requiring a total compensation disparity of no more than 7x - as in, if any employee is being paid $17.85 (current BC minimum), the total compensation for the highest can be, at most $124.95, including stocks and other benefits that can be considered compensation. Its still a fucking insane difference, but much more sane than not having a cap at all.
Canada is one of, if not thee richest resource filled countries on Earth
Oil and gas. Forestry, mining, fisheries. Agriculture, tourism… Canada literally has all of this in abundance
Each and every Canadian should own these resources and we should literally be the wealthiest population on the planet.
The fact we are not should anger you and legislation should be created to ensure that we become that
How does that answer the thread question? You’re passing a law saying what?
I’d rather have Canada nationalize most of these but without doubling down on oil pipelines and more mining projects… – Nationalizing agriculture and fisheries and tourism doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.
We’re not, basically because none (?) of our resources are Persian Gulf-style money printers. Like, we have oil, but it needs a whole lot of work to get from tar sand to gas tank. Down there it gets close to just sticking a straw in the ground.
The end result is that we’re still one of the richest countries per capita, we just spend a lot of man hours on farming. mining and drilling, instead of on manufacturing like they do in Germany or Japan.
I wonder how many other natural resources Saudi Arabia has compared to Canada
Like do they have forestry, mining, other materials, agriculture, potash, freshwater lakes, fisheries, other wildlife, tourism
Proportional representation without question
End first past the post.
Every other goal becomes significantly achievable if we do that.
Next immediate goal after that is UBI.
My next immediate goal would be tax reform to target the 1%; then UBI
(not because I think we lack the funds for UBI, but just because I think that if the 1% paid their share properly, other things should start falling into place as well)
My argument for UBI as one of the most important policy choices we can possibly make is that it not only achieves a huge amount of harm reduction, but it also opens up a huge amount of political power. With UBI, losing your job becomes much less scary. If that threat diminishes, people become far more willing to engage in activities like protests, unionizing, and general strikes.
My overall priorities would be;
- Voting reform
- UBI
- Wealth tax
- Free post-secondary education
- Head to toe healthcare
- End private home renting
- Crown corp telecoms
But of those I consider voting reform and UBI to be the ones that unlock the most political power among regular working people, which makes it easier to make everything else happen.
Ban online gambling.
Nationalize all natural resources in Canada. Oil, minerals, water, electricity, you name it.
