As a Canadian I’m proud of my fellow countrymen for helping and accepting refugees. Although most arrive here with nothing, studies have shown they benefit our society in the long run. They contribute massively to our economy and enrich our culture. They overcome daunting obstacles and become productive members of society, and they make Canada a better, fairer and more inclusive place

I hope they can use part of those tax revenues to fix our healthcare.

Canada is no longer a shining first world example of success (if it ever was). We used to boast about how great our healthcare system was, but it’s had serious problems for years and those problems just keep getting worse. If I were a tech immigrant looking to move to a rich country I don’t think I would choose Canada at the moment.

I don’t know about Canadian news but Google has blocked bard (their AI chatbot competitor to ChatGPT). Not sure if it’s related to this but Canada is one of the few countries worldwide (along with the likes of Iran and China) where bard is not available.

You can drink beer and wine (not sure about spirits) in parks in Quebec as long as you have food. Some people just bring a few packets of chips or cookies to comply. But the police are relaxed about it (at least in Montreal)

High inflation is worse for workers than high interest rates since wage hikes always lag price rises. This round of inflation was brought to us by poor economic decisions … pumping billions of dollars into the economy without raising taxes, as well as the Ukraine war. It wasn’t caused by corporate greed, as some claim. The BoC is doing absolutely the right thing. If they don’t raise rates now they only kick the can down the road when the pain would be far worse.

I think we should let the Ukrainian military decide what weapons they need.

You can’t solve a shortage of houses by discouraging people from building them. Canada is simply not building enough housing and has not been doing so for a long time. Your proposal would have a marginal effect at best and would in any case be only a temporary solution. People who buy second homes do so in places where there are generally few jobs. And people who buy houses as an investment need to rent them … which is not necessarily a bad thing. The problem we have is that home prices have risen to such stratospheric heights primarily because of policies that discourage new development. The only way to fix that is to promote legislation that penalizes NIMBYism and encourages building in urban areas.

Your Democratic vote is the only thing preventing this country becoming a theocracy. We had one term of Trump and look at the damage he caused. Imagine what a second term would look like.

The damage done to indigenous people by the residential schools was enormous and the effects will take generations, and lots of effort and resources to repair. There are no quick fixes. This law allows the liberals to appear to be doing something without them actually having to do something. Burnishing their progressive credentials, whether it be on environmental policy, voting reform or indigenous rights, and then not following through with concrete action is par for the course.

And who killed them? Not the countries they are trying to flee to. The people who killed them are the ones who packed them into leaky boats or crammed them into airtight containers, to profit from their misery.

It’s a result of compassion fatigue. When the first dead migrant children washed up on the Greek coast on people were appalled and transfixed. But the next month there were more dead bodies, and then more. Eventually people stop caring.

I’m old enough to remember “Live Aid”. When Bob Geldof got up on stage and said we were going to end world hunger people really believed it was possible. Since then there have been dozens more famines in Ethiopia, and the deaths run to the tens of millions. And now no-one mentions them.

Mali was the first African country to give away a tld for free. That’s probably why it was used.

“Genocide” is a word that should be used sparingly. Just like homicide is used to describe killing a person, genocide means killing a people. Persecution of minorities, though horrific does not always rise to the level of genocide.

In the struggle between democracy and dictatorship, it is crucial that democracies tell the truth in plain language. Dictatorships will always lie and obfuscate to conceal their true nature. Democracies can tell it like it is. Bear this in mind when deciding whether to call something a genocide.

It’s only a problem if you allow your personal worldview to affect your moderation… a tendency that sadly most moderators have. I’ve found lemmy.ml to be one of the more permissive instances where viewpoints of all sides are permitted. Unfortunately many others (you know who you are) are in danger of becoming walled gardens and echo chambers.

If you are so fragile that you need to be protected from a troll then maybe the internet is not the right place for you.

I don’t know how “Liberal” came to be synonymous with fragile snowflake. People have been misusing the word for ages … especially in the US. The original Liberal (and I’m proud to claim to be one) puts free speech front and center of their world view. It’s the cornerstone of democracy. And free speech also means the freedom to offend … it’s a price well worth paying.

Lemmy is more than worth it just for the lack of “he gets us” ads alone.

Ramen

Shadow banning is Orwellian . something you might expect from the CCP instead of a supposedly progressive online forum. If you’re going to ban someone at least have the decency to let them know they are banned.

I just tried to post a comment in the Colombia community and I got the error "language not allowed . Does anyone know what could cause that? I tried Spanish and English and same thing.