Canadian politics thread

[68style]

Oh I know, CSIS regularly approaches hackers to hire them... dead serious on that being a legit thing they do... but trolling a bit for the housing side of things

[bcrdukes]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Carney already getting shit on for the Robertson choice, nice optics.

You search the guys name and it’s nothing but housing scandals and that’s your minister of housing?

Next cabinet re-shuffle: Ken Sims

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Carney already getting shit on for the Robertson choice, nice optics.

You search the guys name and it’s nothing but housing scandals and that’s your minister of housing?

I didn't follow housing (and wasn't living in Vancouver at the time) when Robertson was running things so I don't have an opinion but I popped into the urban housing community to see how they are feeling about his appointment and they're pretty positive about it - he was seen as the 1st mayor who took on the NIMBYs and he changed the rental development policy in a way that finally led to actual rental development.

The NIMBY crowd is already railing against his appointment (CityHallWatch) so that's a positive sign too. On the developer side, the CEO of Wesgroup, is happy about it as well.

So you've got urban housing people and developers saying yes to him and NIMBY's hating the appointment so, even though I've heard the Mayor Moonbeam stories a lot, that this is a probably a good appointment.

[Jason00S2000]

Imagine how many billions of dollars a year in revenue a Canadian-made "smart ratchet" could bring into the economy.

The fact that you can't go to Canadian Tire and buy a smart ratchet yet is ridiculous. You should be able to buy a ratchet that can recognize what you're working on and tell you exactly what size socket you need without having to search through them.

[Hondaracer]

Originally Posted by supafamous

I didn't follow housing (and wasn't living in Vancouver at the time) when Robertson was running things so I don't have an opinion but I popped into the urban housing community to see how they are feeling about his appointment and they're pretty positive about it - he was seen as the 1st mayor who took on the NIMBYs and he changed the rental development policy in a way that finally led to actual rental development.

The NIMBY crowd is already railing against his appointment (CityHallWatch) so that's a positive sign too. On the developer side, the CEO of Wesgroup, is happy about it as well.

So you've got urban housing people and developers saying yes to him and NIMBY's hating the appointment so, even though I've heard the Mayor Moonbeam stories a lot, that this is a probably a good appointment.

Under Sim way more of those developments have been pushed through than moonbeam. The entire Chinatown development, all the BS with kits and the indigenous lands were non-starters under moonbeam. Not sure what developments he actually pushed through against the nimbyism?

People forget a lot of his controversies but I remember most of them because I had just moved to Vancouver right before that election, his new GF he dumped his wife for and their family embezzlement

https://macleans.ca/politics/gregor-...ruption-trial/

Illegal donations to his campaign:

https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3016334

Private emails used for real estate transactions

https://thebreaker.news/business/gmail-robertson/

This is a good article how the housing crises basically was over his head and he didn’t understand the most basic factors as mayor:

https://www.biv.com/news/real-estate...rising-8248029

My main memory of Gregor was that we as Vancouver were embarrassed by a paralyzed guy in a chair spinning around with an Olympic flag on the world stage so we elected this pretty boy who didn’t really have much substance, and his tenure mostly played out like that

[Tapioca]

Vision Vancouver was a pro-development party and they were the ones who introduced laneway housing. People here hated Gregor because he was anti-car and he led a group who wanted to make changes. Vancouver is markedly a different place today than it was 15 years ago from the perspective of housing.

Gregor also gets a lot of flack from the people who lost their chance at getting on the housing ladder in the couple of years post Olympics.

On the face of it, you want someone who has insight into municipal politics because they're the level of government that makes decisions on housing or puts up barriers to make it difficult.

But who are we kidding anyway? Millennials who own detached houses in Vancouver and Toronto are just as NIMBY as their parents.

[whitev70r]

Well, you put Robertson there in that post because he has experience in municipal and Provincial government, so *cross your fingers*, hopefully, he knows how to navigate through the different levels of government. He's not there to push through his own agenda, he has to be a good soldier and push through Liberal platform.

[supafamous]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Under Sim way more of those developments have been pushed through than moonbeam. The entire Chinatown development, all the BS with kits and the indigenous lands were non-starters under moonbeam. Not sure what developments he actually pushed through against the nimbyism?

As noted, he was the first mayor to actually push development and as you well know developments don't magically hit the ground running - these things takes years and years to get going.

Sim, OTOH, has done basically nothing on the housing front - he signed off on Kennedy Stewart's changes to the multiplex zoning and, beyond that, has promised to "look" at things. For larger developments he's riding the coattails of the work of prior councils and housing advocates. None of his promises on housing (speeding up permitting for example) have actually paid off.

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

People forget a lot of his controversies but I remember most of them because I had just moved to Vancouver right before that election, his new GF he dumped his wife for and their family embezzlement

https://macleans.ca/politics/gregor-...ruption-trial/

What's his g/f family got to do with his being controversial?

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Illegal donations to his campaign:
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.3016334

Dismissed by judge for having no merit: https://globalnews.ca/news/1945541/c...against-mayor/

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

Private emails used for real estate transactions
https://thebreaker.news/business/gmail-robertson/

Ok, that's not good - I'd like to know what came of it. If this is the only bad thing you can find on him and the rest is ragebait I'd go with him over any other Mayor of the last 30 years.

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

This is a good article how the housing crises basically was over his head and he didn’t understand the most basic factors as mayor:

https://www.biv.com/news/real-estate...rising-8248029

This is a total horseshit column if you actually read the source material or talk to anyone with memories of how it actually went down. Ian Young usually produces decent work but this is absolute garbage work by him.

The source article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...housing-crisis

Robertson is wrong not to say he could have and should have focused more on the housing portfolio but that's hindsight and a failure to recognise how the difficult the problem was going to be to solve. He was also wrong/late to the party on the impacts of foreign capital - he saw only the good part (funding developers to build housing) but not the bad part (which was fuelled more by Christy Clark) which was to also have foreign capital buy other forms of housing.

I've continued to read up in the housing community about Robertson and the consensus remains that he's generally a good pick for the job. People don't love that he defended development charges on day 1 but otherwise they liked how he tried to tackle the housing problem in Vancouver.

[68style]

I have some personal experience with a bit of Gregor conspiracy... my good friend owned a condo in Olympic Village and he had this stupid panel on his entranceway that told him how many litres of water and how much electricity he was using relative to the other units in the building. Nothing nefarious there on the surface, maybe a good eco gamification thing right?

Where it went shady as fuck was that you had to pay a monthly fee for it and it was REQUIRED so every unit had this thing in it and whether you used it or not you paid for it every month as part of your strata fees and it was in multiple buildings... and the fee was paid to some company that installed these things. They didn't monitor them externally, just installed them and had the contract for them and the owner of that company was making tens of thousands a month basically doing NOTHING colleting monthly fees off every unit of every building they're in because Gregor Robertson made it a requirement for all the new buildings going up to have these things in them... and I don't have to tell you who the owner of that company was best friends with.

[Hondaracer]

I’m pretty confident Gregor or someone involved has tried to scrub the internet of related articles in regards to the developer stuff because there was way more regarding his relationships with developers and being in the back pockets of companies as mentioned above.

When I worked at Trump tower there was quite a bit I remember regarding him and Holborn, and not just about the naming of the tower and now you can’t find anything on it

Regardless, it tracks to hire someone with a failed municipal housing portfolio to now be the minister of housing. His record mirrors the liberals for housing costs increases hehe

[westopher]

Originally Posted by 68style

I have some personal experience with a bit of Gregor conspiracy... my good friend owned a condo in Olympic Village and he had this stupid panel on his entranceway that told him how many litres of water and how much electricity he was using relative to the other units in the building. Nothing nefarious there on the surface, maybe a good eco gamification thing right?

Where it went shady as fuck was that you had to pay a monthly fee for it and it was REQUIRED so every unit had this thing in it and whether you used it or not you paid for it every month as part of your strata fees and it was in multiple buildings... and the fee was paid to some company that installed these things. They didn't monitor them externally, just installed them and had the contract for them and the owner of that company was making tens of thousands a month basically doing NOTHING colleting monthly fees off every unit of every building they're in because Gregor Robertson made it a requirement for all the new buildings going up to have these things in them... and I don't have to tell you who the owner of that company was best friends with.

We had that in our building in North van as well, so I don't know if that can be put on him. We got fucked for years by that company and once we got out of it, there was never any water fees after that beyond the sewer tax we already paid to the city so yeah, total fucking scam. Maybe he was involved in the Vancouver part of it but maybe not considering it was also other municipalities.

[EvoFire]

Originally Posted by Hondaracer

I’m pretty confident Gregor or someone involved has tried to scrub the internet of related articles in regards to the developer stuff because there was way more regarding his relationships with developers and being in the back pockets of companies as mentioned above.

When I worked at Trump tower there was quite a bit I remember regarding him and Holborn, and not just about the naming of the tower and now you can’t find anything on it

Regardless, it tracks to hire someone with a failed municipal housing portfolio to now be the minister of housing. His record mirrors the liberals for housing costs increases hehe

You should be able to find things in the way back machine.

I'm on the fence with your point.

On one hand it highlights that potentially there is something that's being hidden, not that I think Gregor Robertson is really that powerful to be able to scrub the internet of things.

On the other hand, just like your previous post about a house you "remembered" to be 1.8m, but in reality was 2.15m. You remember, great, but your memory was incorrect and it significantly skews your view. You didn't acknowledge that at all. And if that view is continually perpetuated, that's how rumours, then conspiracy theories start.

[Hondaracer]

That house in question was listed at 1.8, I’m 99% sure of that. So it sold over asking, not sure what you’re getting at?

I’m sure PR firms can easily bury decade old news articles, that wouldn’t be a big deal.

The Reddit crowd which is overwhelmingly liberal is shitting all over the Robertson appointment if that’s any indication. As a home owner again, don’t really care my home isn’t a bank but his appointment as housing minister will ultimately play out as I’ve explained before in missing their housing targets imo. Which is a pretty easy softball on my part, but a missed goal is a missed goal.

[underscore]

It seems more likely that you can't find it because most search engines are a lot shittier than they used to be, rather than someone intentionally trying to bury it.

[Hondaracer]

Yea like searching housing and his name it barely yields 1 page of actual results before just providing BS

[nabs]

They called him out on housing on his CBC interview, however even that information that they critisized him about is not on google. Must have been a scrub.

[68style]

Good to see the CBC doing work that's closer to honda's heart

[Hondaracer]

Chinese brainwashing corp needs dat bait

[westopher]

It's not scrubbed it's just that the internet has overflowed now. The amount of useless bullshit getting in the way of finding real information has flooded everything. That's why people are so fucking stupid.

[Hondaracer]

I had never really considered scrubbing the internet before because I always figured what’s there stays there.

Then when I was in Portugal we went on a tour and the guide explained how that Ibrohamavich (sp) the Russian oligarch had essentially bought a Portuguese citizenship and then there was a big uproar with many Portuguese media outlets covering it but it was scrubbed and burried. And to his credit at the time there was almost nothing to be found on it

[westopher]

I think some cases yeah but there's no way some dipshit mayor is gonna be able to get stuff scrubbed. I know he's rich but not like oligarch rich. Like Taylor swift could get her nude ai pics basically scrubbed but that took her billions of fans fucking with everything too.
Gregor is a nobody. It just disappeared into the internet toilet known as google, just swirling around near the bottom now.

[Hondaracer]

Well.. people within the govt. obviously have that power

His GF family also worth hundreds of millions of dollars :shrug:

Not saying it happened for sure but I’m sure even someone like him is reasonably capable of it

[whitev70r]

Just googled how much it cost to scrub your online presence ... $10-25 per month or $250 per year. Let's say it cost 10x that for a 'well-known' person ... Robertson can easily afford that.

[Badhobz]

Did Robertson make jello or pudding for Chinese people ?! It’s a famous brand in Guangdong province.



Even his mango mascot looks guilty of embezzlement

[westopher]

Originally Posted by whitev70r

Just googled how much it cost to scrub your online presence ... $10-25 per month or $250 per year. Let's say it cost 10x that for a 'well-known' person ... Robertson can easily afford that.

lol I don't believe that for a fucking second.