Removed from Political Memes community.

I did not see that coming.

I’d love for someone to coin a snappy name for this paradox. Can’t be a viable candidate unless you have establishment support. Progressive candidates can’t get establishment support because they are too progressive. But we’re supposed to believe establishment candidates can be swayed…to oppose the establishment?

Make it make sense.

Literally.

It’s insanely ironic because amalgamation being forced on the city by the province is why his father’s political career got cut short. Amalgamation of Toronto. Which is where he lives, and where he has been elected to represent an MPP of Etobicoke North.

Sure it was Etobicoke pre amalgamation, so maybe he’s still treating it as not Toronto? But those bike lanes in the OP are in Etobicoke.

Here is an article from when he was in the running for party leadership:

Ford made this anti-elite announcement, ironically, in the basement of his mother’s sprawling house in Etobicoke, source of the Ford political dynasty which includes his late father (Doug Ford Senior, an MPP from 1995-1999), late brother (Rob Ford, city councilor and then Toronto mayor from 2010-2014), and nephew (Michael Ford, former trustee and currently a councilor in Rob Ford’s former ward of Etobicoke North). Doug himself served and ran unsuccessfully for Mayor in 2014 against John Tory.

In terms of political dynasties, read, elites, the Fords really don’t have much competition in the GTA, or even in Ontario. But that’s not how Ford will depict it. Despite their wealth and influence, the Fords have a family tradition of communing with the common man, and connecting with voters far less fortunate than they.

(Warning, my autism is at 11 today so I took it super literally. Save yourself the annoyance if it was rhetorical.)

To clarify, are you asking why Doug Ford is still in power?

He is Premier because his party won the 2025 election with a majority of seats in the provincial parliament, meaning (realistically) there will not be another election until he calls one or 4 years pass. The other path to him leaving is him stepping down/being forced out of the party leadership. That’s entirely within the control of the party.

He called the election in 2025, already having a majority from the 2022 election to take advantage of Trump’s influence. He said he was asking for a mandate to fight the trade war, and he got it.

Residents of Toronto hating him doesn’t impact him being Premier. His party got 80 seats. This infograph I stole from Wikipedia explains where those seats are.

The province has absolute control over cities (as defined in the provinces laws) so what the cities think have no bearing on his actions.

Don’t you understand? If there isn’t uniform, unwavering support then there will be collective punishment.

(/s, just in case 🙃)

The biochar part is a detail, all the other pieces need to be in place to optimize the benefit.

Carbon capture comes from planting more trees and not just leaving them there, but cutting them down when their growth rate slows and planting new ones.

Creating the bio char is a byproduct of using the plant mass to heat water for the district heating system, which is an extremely efficient method of heating homes and businesses.

Biochar as a byproduct, in contrast to landfill or burning in an oxygen rich environment comes from a method where carbon release is minimized. In landfills, it’s methane. In fire, it’s carbon dioxide.

You can advocate for local solutions! The magic here is that they found a mix that works well for local conditions. Your city or town may already be looking at things like this. If they publish a master plan or other planning documents they may include things on energy, waste, climate change, etc. They usually aren’t too detailed, but can point you to other things to look at.

Woah there, bud. You can cool it on the misogyny. America’s garbage fire impacts us too, so I think it’s pretty reasonable to voice our displeasure. If you want to be included in the discussions about decolonizing kkklanada, you can follow the canada specific coms.

It all started in 2010 when Don Cherry showed up to Rob Ford’s mayoral induction in a pink suit:

“Well, actually, I’m wearing pinko for all the pinkos out there that ride bicycles and everything, I thought I’d get it in.

(This is a joke).

Seriously tho, the war in bike lanes is quite old, and has happened incrementally. Rob Ford (then mayor) spent $300,000 to remove the Jarvis bike lanes in 2012.

[Rob] Ford defended the expenditure, saying he didn’t approve of the bike lanes in the first place, and the time saved to drivers — which he claimed to be at least seven minutes, even though John Mende, the city’s acting general manager of transportation services, has said it is only two minutes — will benefit the economy by reducing congestion.

But specific to this round by his older brother: lol no.

They were jammed on to this bill that requires municipalities to get provincial approval to add bike lanes when traffic lanes were impacted.

They are going to study it later.

The province has issued an RFP to study and provide design options for restoring vehicle lanes on sections of Bloor Street, Yonge Street, University Avenue, Queen’s Park, Queen’s Park Crescent and Avenue Road. The RFP will also identify options to retain or reconfigure bike lanes, where they make sense and do not make gridlock worse. To get drivers moving quickly, the vehicle lane restoration process will immediately begin on the west section of Bloor Street West starting at Clissold Road, where minimal design work is required.

Absolute wild guess that it’s Wales. Mostly based on how there is an expectation it’s not well known as a country and vibes on physical appearance.

My favorite whelsh pronunciation:

We do. But for day to day commuting, it’s not practical. So we take the lane when we need to and deal angry and dangerous drivers on the daily.

It’s technically not legal to ride two abreast if you impede traffic in Ontario, but for the most part group rides are begrudgingly tolerated.

Un-fun fact: the laws that allow cities to exist are at the provincal level, which is what allows them to do this. It’s also why they are able to reduce the number of councillors in Toronto a few years ago, and how they can force amalgamation.

I wonder if as many people would have voted for Doug if they knew this.

Adding to what others have said tarrifs still being applied: the de minimis exemption has ended. You may not be used to paying duty on items purchased internationally because of that long standing policy. You would also need to factor in custom clearing fees from the carrier.

The person I was replying to said public utilities shouldn’t turn a profit, so I was asking about public utilities that turn profits, not privatized utilities.

I’m only familiar with local utilities, but are there public utilities that turn profits? What happens to the profits?

I know of private utilities that are owned by municipalities and they pay dividends back to the municipality which is used in the city budget. There is also Hydro One which is about 50% owned by various orgs and is publicly traded. They pay dividends but like $0.35 per share, quarterly.

What on earth about this comment makes you think it’s russian disinformation?

Calling out someone’s behavior and posting a link to an article about it?

I can assure you those cops are doing nothing to prevent crimes.

I’m not sure I’m getting what you are saying? Are you implying it’s unusual for canadian police to abuse protesters?

I made a post a while back about the 2010 G-20 protest in Toronto with my own boring photos, but Reuters has a lot of bangers here.

Montreal cops are also notably shit, even among the entire class of bastards:

Further information has come to light concerning the Montreal Police Department’s use of agent-provocateurs disguised as “Black Bloc” protestors at a December 18 demonstration against police violence and the anti-austerity policies of the Quebec Liberal government.

More recently: Police brutality against anti-AI protesters in Montreal shows their true colours

And let’s not forget the Kanesatake Resistance (Oka Crisis):

The Kanesatake Resistance, also known as the Oka Crisis or the Mohawk Resistance at Kanesatake, was a 78-day standoff (11 July–26 September 1990) between Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk) protesters, Quebec police, the RCMP and the Canadian Army.

Oh my god that used to be part of my bike commute when I lived in Toronto.

I absolutely hated biking on that stretch of Bloor, but this was before the bike lanes. From what I saw in photos and videos, the lanes made a real difference at some of the common conflict points. The area is undergoing intensification, bike lakes are an important part of urban mobility.

Doug Ford is a timbit. I’ll bet he’s thinking about timbits right now.

I wanted to know if a reason was given and I found it in another article:

Musk said that Starlink is not licensed to clients who are using weapons, and that the Ukrainian military was linked to a separate network called Starshield, which is operated by the US government. “This is not under SpaceX control,” Musk wrote.

The article goes on to say that the ukrainian military is using Starlink and was not warned the use would be restricted.

Reuters has an explainer article here but I still don’t get it so I won’t try and pull a quote lol.

When looking for that I came across an article from a previous time service was cut:

During a pivotal push by Ukraine to retake territory from Russia in late September 2022, Elon Musk gave an order that disrupted the counteroffensive and dented Kyiv’s trust in Starlink, the satellite internet service the billionaire provided early in the war to help Ukraine’s military maintain battlefield connectivity.

I’m glad the program to bring broadband internet to remote areas of my province cancelled their contract. Of course, they could always sign a new one, but relying on Starlink would make me nervous.