^I think you’re mixing him up with dared3vil0...

People living a life of privilege complaining about how bad Canada is. LOL. We still live in the best country in the world, and I have been to a few.

Typical Canadian attitude that other places are garbage so we can be a little garbage too

Instead of fulfilling our potential as a nation we are intentionally sabotaging our future.

One thing I've noticed after moving away from Canada is how privileged Canadians are without realizing it.. Most (not all) complaints come across as being spoiled brats.

All countries have positives and negatives about them. Canada's ratio is pretty damn good, and you should appreciate that. "The way this country is run" is probably more fair and democratic than anywhere else on the planet.

No one is perfect. What are your plans to make this country better?

Beat me to it.

It's much easier to bitch at something than trying to fix it.

Sort of like, "It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness."

Two major factors that make me feel this way.. #1 would be Justin Trudeau, he's an honest joke having him as a leader in Canada.. He has zero spine does what he wishes and care's more about giving money away to different countries then even helping our own country.

the second one is by far the indigenous nations residential school deaths.. I personally think this has been handled so poorly by our federal government and kinda seems like they are trying to wash is under the rug which is why we haven't heard anything about it for the last bit.

I have a number of other more local complaints but for me those are two major issues (I can go for days about this shit JT as done wrong) but I honestly feel we as a country have lost all respect from the other world leaders and it shows.

It’s not my job to do that. However I think getting away from these ultra liberal views which have ended us up in this current situation would be a start

Driving through the DTES and the downtown core I don’t know how anyone can be proud of that. We’ve let down the most vulnerable people in our society for decades now and we are all paying the price.

I dont want to overly politicize it but the problem has obviously gotten substantially worse under the liberals, albeit the ball has been dropped by all parties and all levels of govt.

Other places in the world might have problems, but they don't have anything like the DTES for the most part.

This response in my opinion is the classic anecdotal perception of things, simply based on the dislike of an individual.

I'm assuming you're more conservative in nature, would I be correct?

I find it interesting that you say the following:

"He has zero spine does what he wishes and care's more about giving money away to different countries then even helping our own country."

Did Trudeau not pass one of the most generous social assistance programs (CERB) of any G7 country? To the point where you hear conservatives crying about how he gave away too much to the general public? So which one is it, his government gave away too much to the public, or the complete opposite? You can't have it both ways. Do tell me what more should he be giving or doing for the public, be specific with examples.

Speaking to the residential school issue. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I never heard you once talk about indigenous issues, or speak about Canada's repugnant history with the indigenous community. I find it absolutely fascinating that my same "conservative" friends, who make native "jokes", and never gave a flying fuck about them, suddenly are bleeding hearts about the whole subject, simply because they hate the guy in charge.

It reminds me of republicans in the states crying about helping the Afghans simply because Biden is in charge, but never mentioned these people prior. Do you think to a degree your dislike for Trudeau might be clouding your overall judgement?

What do you think the government should be doing about the residential schools? Make another fake apology? Give some more money away? How would you handle this as a federal leader?

Let me prefix that I'm not a big Trudeau fan, but I also don't believe he's as terrible as people play him out to be.

https://steemitimages.com/DQmWkcWTqL.../ask%20not.jpg

You don't think other places have places like the DTES? Other countries have places that are a lot worse.

This is just as bad as the DTES and its in the US.


The DTES has gotten worse because of prescription drugs like fentanyl.

We live in the best country in the world, A country people are willing to die to get to. But I guess some people are never happy no matter how good they got it.

I don’t disagree that this is the best country in the world.

But we can do so much better.

You know quite well that this is a provincial issue, primarily. This is a problem that not only has affected Canada, but our neighbors down south, and it all comes down to affordability.

We had a conservative party in power for damn near 20 years in this province, creating this problem. Affordability is the primary reason why businesses can't find employees to work here, it's the other primary reason you're seeing so many people on the streets.

Who created this problem? The BC Liberals. Based on that, why do you spend so much time espousing your complaints about "liberal and progressive" politics, yet completely negate the overall policies that put us here in the first place?

A tinge of bias there, no? :lol

I understand your frustrations, but overall I believe these issues are far greater than any one politician here.

Funding and whatnot to cure this issue obviously has to come from the federal level though. The appetite to fund or reopen a place like river view which is obviously desperately needed has never been there.

I don’t think affordability is really the root of the addiction crisis but it obviously compounds with the other factors that put people on the streets in the first place.

I won’t go much further as this will just turn into another politics thread when that wasn’t the intention

Definitely agree with you on Riverview, among others.

That will take $$$ though, are you willing to see an increase in your taxes in order to accommodate such sweeping legislation?

If I actually knew that’s what they were going towards absolutely

is anyone getting 9/30 off or just federal/bank employees?

one gripe i have is that we dont have the identity of canada out here

in school we learned about the french the british the structure of parliment...like cool what about BC, the salish people?? i only very briefly recall haida from the curriculum

what commonalties do we have with ON? with NWT or NS? the culture here is way closer to that of Oregon or asia pacific

we're too isolated from the rest of the country..it's like russia

We learned quite a bit although our schools were always near reservations... We had a socials teacher who was very brutally honest about Canada's history, although I don't think he touched on the schools much. Not sure if he didn't know at the time in the 90's or just didn't want to subject us to that.

I hate when people say this, no BC is not closer to Oregon than Ontario. Have you been to either? Ontario (The GTA mostly, but thats where about half of them live) is full of itself sure but it still has the same institutions, demographics, urban form and dialect spoken as here. Outside of Portland and the coast, Oregon is basically Western Idaho and is full of Rednecks and White Nationalist survivalist types.

Closer to Asia-Pacific? Give me a break, Vancouver is nothing like the big Asian metropolises (I've been to them all) that's like saying New York is closer to Italy than the rest of the US because there's a lot of Guidos in Brooklyn.

You assumed wrong about me being conservative in nature because I was brought up from my parents to always be more liberal but Trudeau being such a bleeding heart is changing my vision on things so I'm more in the middle now I guess you can say.

You bring up CERB (which I didn't collect a penny on) it honestly fucked our country by screwing the businesses over and the people collecting it. The issue is everyone received it no matter what, I know people on the streets collecting the $2000 a month when they haven't worked a day on their life. You also hear people not trying or wanting to go back to work since they are getting all this free money so what the point of working which is really messing up our economy. Not only that think of all the people who needed it to survive and didn't put anything aside for their taxes and are royally going to get fucked over in the future and they don't even realize it yet.

As for the residential schools, I'm straight up tired of the apologies which mean nothing, our federal government needs to have a meeting with all the bands and ask them what they need. There needs to be action and both parties need to work together to give these young children the respect and correct burials they need. What does the government do? Here is a holiday on September 30th where Trudeau will shed a tear and apologize again with no real actions. It's one of those things you could never correct or make better but all you can do is learn from it and show the respect to the first nations which they have never truly received.

With all the scandals that have happened, the non-stop spending putting Canada a Trillion dollars into debt and the smug look and comments at press conferences I can no longer stand him. I originally voted for him which I'm ashamed to admit, I thought it was going to be a great change but this isn't the change I wanted with the start of it for me was the changing of our national anthem and it just got worse and worse after that.

So yes I'm ashamed to be Canadian right now, instead of working together he has caused such a big divide between all sides which is the results you see today.

416 checking in :troll:

huh and portland area is not half of Oregon's population? the more eastern sides of BC isn't more alberta? you're proving my point geography and isolation plays a big part

we have the same set of laws, currency and language but i dont relate anymore with Ontario folks more than say those from western washington

are people here more interested in trader joes or sobeys?

there's no less restaurants and cafes in from asia/influenced by asia than chains from QC/ON in vancouver..why else do we have Alipay option at checkout counters?

I work with a lot of Americans, many just across the border in WA as well as Canadians from the East it's clear there is a definite cultural difference when dealing with Americans. Other than our commonality with superficial environmental factors there's a difference between the way they talk, cultural markers, history. This is reflected in the way they approach life and their expectations and entitlements. When talking to someone from Toronto we come from a common base which is the Canadian experience - superficial stuff like Hockey and Politics but also we understand the Multicultural Mosaic, the Canadian immigrant experience, the need for consensus, Peace, Order, and Good Government.

Dude, everything that is "Canadian" here is basically Torontoized. BMO, Shoppers, Tim Hortons etc. You just think we like Trader Joes more of course because it's a freaking specialty store and you want to compare it to a run of the mill grocery like Sobeys? LOL. Guaranteed that corporate offices in Toronto have a way more effect on your life than you realize.

Seriously Alipay and Uncle Tetsu makes us Asia? They have that shit in Toronto too maybe even more so. Just because we have a ton of Chinese here doesn't make us "Asia". We are Canadian to the core with Asian flavour that is it.

None of this is unique to Canada

I think the Canadian identity is also hard to pinpoint because relative to the rest of the world Canada is a very young country.

I think there is a bit to the size of the country as well as it’s much easier for somewhere like Portugal etc. To have a firm identity of their country because besides their extremely long history, the country is tiny comparatively.

The size of the country I think has a lot do to with it when you see a country like Spain having essentially independent nations in Catalonia etc within their own borders. Again though, a country with a vast history.

Want to establish a true Canadian identity? Cut ties with the crown.