Society completely shut down for almost 2 years and it didn’t work. Do you have any evidence an extra month of shut down would help?

Depends on your definition of it not working. We made a variety of influenza extinct and eliminated flu deaths in Canada for months, which never happened before or since.  Atlantic Canada, the territories, and New Zealand, and Australia all went extended periods with no new COVID cases too. Elsewhere, morgues needed freezer trucks to keep up with the dead.  If the government organized a period where travelers who are sick get quarantined, and locals all wore respirators in public spaces, while air was cleaned too, we have plenty of evidence suffering would go down, unless someone’s definition of suffering is wearing PPE sometimes, for a few weeks to try and make the world better.

Now, 6 years later, Emergency Departments have completely shut down, or are in daily crisis mode in both Alberta and Saskatchewan, which is not unrelated to health authorities failing to keep their guard up after 2020/2021. Aside from vaccination, healthcare workers were gaslit into thinking low quality surgical masks on everyone would keep them safe, when they needed high quality respirators to avoid infection. Today it’s rare to see someone in a doctor’s office wearing one, despite measles and COVID-19 circulating in our provinces. My doctor’s office has poor air quality, but the government only thinks metal detectors in ERs is how to improve safety there.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10927280/

“Annual seasonal influenza vaccination is a key public health intervention available to protect Canadians.”

Strange how the summary mentions vaccination, but doesn’t reconcile how no increase in vaccination during 2020 coincided with elimination of influenza deaths in that period.

Reading on, they correctly credit NPIs, but don’t explicitly say that includes sick people wearing masks, and that we’ve also learned N95 or better respirators are very effective.

“Globally, comprehensive nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) implemented in March 2020 aimed at reducing the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), suppressed seasonal influenza epidemic activity into the period of the usual 2021–2022 Northern Hemisphere season ((1–8)). Canada saw the return of community influenza circulation in the spring of 2022, coinciding with easing of NPIs, which was characterized by a late, low-intensity, and brief seasonal influenza epidemic ((9)). This 2022–2023 influenza season saw the first re-emergence of pre-pandemic-like influenza circulation patterns in Canada ((10)).”

The World Health Organization knows the world is running low on healthcare workers, but isn’t doing the bare minimum to keep the existing ones, and new ones safe. At the same time, they endanger patients too with Hospital Acquired Infections.

Eby correctly identified it as a time waste, nearly 2 months ago.

Thursday was an unusual day. It was plus 5 outside. I went for a bike ride. I was going to go around the lake, when I got a call from Jeri that I had to come home right away, the boys had been rear-ended, and one was a bit hurt. Of course it was in the new car, not the one with the already damaged bumper from another hit and run someone did to us. At least the one tonight will get caught and pay for the repairs.

While at the library, another cyclist asked me how I avoided thieves stealing my fancy looking ebike. A u-lock. He suggested low-jack, as he had friends ripped off for thousands of dollars.

“In Mamdani’s final note to Trump in his speech, he said, “To get to any of us, you will have to get through all of us.””

I’m afraid Trump is willing and able to try that.

Here are my answers to your points in your survey on Canadian leadership in Generative AI.

https://ised-isde.canada.ca/site/ised/en/public-consultations/help-define-next-chapter-canadas-ai-leadership

“accelerate safe adoption of AI across the economy and public services”

This isn’t happening. Canada doesn’t control these black box systems, so businesses who adopt them cannot repair or replace them if the system owner decides to shut down, or worse.

“scale Canadian AI champions and attract investment”

Invest into a money pit? The systems presently work through venture capitalists burning billions of dollars, and governments allowing extreme electricity use while the public does not want this stuff complicating everything.

“strengthen sovereign infrastructure (compute, data, cloud)”

What a joke! My local university just last year switched from a local Canadian cloud, to now being at the whims and flaws of the Microsoft monopoly. 

This erosion of digital sovereignty, increasing our reliance on an authoritarian United States, is outrageous, and is opposite of what the Prime Minister promised last election.

“build public trust, skills, and safety.”

We are less safe, and public trust will be completely DESTROYED by continuing to embrace Generative AI as a way to de-employ the public service. As renowned Canadian technology author Cory Doctorow explains, the only thing worse than replacing the public service with an inadequate AI, is to then turn that AI off (which easily could happen when the AI bubble bursts).

Sincerely, 

John Klein 

Regina, SK, Treaty 4

Glen Anaquod was an elder who taught people how to raise tipis, as his grandmothers had shown him. He was subjected to abuse by Canada, when he was a child.

https://childrenfromhomean.wixsite.com/residentialschools/blank-xzz04

After his passing in 2011, the City of Regina considered his name for a new street name.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/regina-to-rename-road-after-first-nations-elder-glen-anaquod-1.3961557

On last Friday, the annual competition to raise a tipi in 20 minutes was held again at the University of Regina.

https://www.isuma.tv/tipi-raising-with-elder-glen-anaquod

I made notes throughout watching the video explaining a bit why she’s wrong, but the format to reply to it, would probably be me as a floating head, pausing it or talking over it. That’s a lot of work, and it isn’t going to happen today. Sorry!

She’s out to lunch. It was at 18% not long ago, so 20% next year is not out of reality. She’s spreading debunked myths, and the only reason anyone would have trouble in winter is because Alberta is way behind Quebec in public charging points that make it easy to travel in winter because if you’re ever low you can fill up anywhere.

“June over June”, she’s parroting a MEI STINKtank Press release. It’s part of a coordinated attack on EVs. She’s cherry picking with MEI’s cooked figures.

It doesn’t put the grid at risk. Only think risking Canadians being stranded are backward provinces avoiding the future, when AB and SK can’t set what vehicles are being made, and automakers will not make new gas cars after 2035, they’ll only be old, or niche.

It doesn’t make any sense to her, because she prefers to remain ignorant with her head in the tarsands.

She hasn’t seen one EV in a couple hours, woo, maybe she doesn’t know what to look for then.

“Yeah, you probably won’t see them there.” -JP ignorantly guessing wrongly there are no EVs in Fort Mac.

Tasker: “Is that what is driving your opposition? This fear that if there is an EV in every driveway, gas prices might go down?” Minister: “You know, our major concern is around affordability, the strength of our economy, and having a government held accountable.”

Nice of her to fit three lies into her answer. The grid issues are very manageable, it’s not like everyone needs a 50amp charger, 12 amps is enough for nearly everyone’s daily driving. So right there you can have 4 times more people charging than the doom scenario she’s imagining.

It’s only $10s of millions (by her own admission) to build that, but cities are able to spend more than that on things like water pumping, or pool construction. It’s peanuts for a provincial or federal government.

“From a competitiveness perspective” OK, Minister, let’s talk about how Premier Moe just said Canada needs to back down on Chinese EV tariffs because we’re not competitive, and are losing our canola market.

She hasn’t seen the federal government walk back, or show any common sense. Well, especially not when Carney was parroting “decarbonized oil” like he was brain-dead Danielle Smith.

Got to the part where she doesn’t know why Norway can do it, but Alberta supposedly cannot.

“I mean look, Albertans, every Albertan could go out and purchase an electric vehicle,” Oh, finally she sounds like a proper Minister of Environment and Protected Areas. Oh wait, there’s more, maybe it will be good too…

“and it would not make a dent in overall emissions.” Damn, she just lied again. Taking every fuel burning car and truck off the road would immediately improve air quality in Alberta, save lives, and crash the price of gasoline/oil. There are over 2 million registered vehicles in Alberta. If half of them went EV by next year, the market couldn’t keep up, but the grid could.