Log in
Look around a physicians’ car park in Dallas, Texas, and the rewards from years slogging away in training are evident. “It looks like a German-car dealership,” says Scott Yates, a doctor, from behind the wheel of his BMW. He reels off all the luxury-car brands he can see. Yet he worries that his peers are still unhappy. “We all went to medical school to practice medicine,” he says, “not to deal with insurance companies, not to fill out paperwork.” This burden lies at the heart of a confounding statistic: American family doctors are among the best paid in the world and also some of the most miserable.
|
plant lover, cookie monster, shoe fiend
|
Epiphyte City
Behind shiny pipes and piles of money lurks a fairy tale that Canada can produce, refine, ship and burn oil, with substantial carbon dioxide (CO2) being captured and harmlessly pumped into the ground, never to be seen again. This is inaccurate.
Epiphyte City
Finland said Monday it will raise the reservist age from 60 to 65 next year to strengthen the country’s military preparedness towards any threat posed by neighbouring Russia.
Defence Minister Antti Hakkanen said the reform, which enters into force on Jan. 1 after being signed into law by the president, will result in an increase of 125,000 conscripts over five years.
“The number of Finnish reservists will be around one million in 2031,” Hakkanen said in a statement.
Finland’s reserve currently comprises around 900,000 citizens, and the eastern NATO country has a wartime strength of 280,000 soldiers.
“This and our other measures to bolster our defence signal that Finland ensures its security now and in the future,” Hakkanen said.
Military service is mandatory for all Finnish men when they turn 18 and voluntary for women in the Nordic country of 5.6 million.
Conscripts may serve between six, nine or 12 months depending on their training.
The new age limit will apply to those liable for military service when the law comes into force.
Under the new rules, the availability of conscripts will be extended by 15 years for enlisted personnel and by 5 years for non-commissioned officers and officers.
Finland shares a 1,340-kilometre (830-mile) border with Russia and ended decades of military non-alignment by joining NATO in April 2023, just over a year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Helsinki closed its eastern border with Russia in December 2023, suspecting Moscow of orchestrating the arrival of migrants to destabilize the country.
The post Finland says to raise reservist age to 65 appeared first on Canadian Affairs.
> Helsinki closed its eastern border with Russia in December 2023, suspecting Moscow of orchestrating the arrival of migrants to destabilize the country.
If you have to raise the age to 65, you need migrants
If you have to raise the age to 65, you need migrants
Epiphyte City
It’s now official—prime minster Mark Carney has announced his plan to name his friend Mark Wiseman to the role of Ambassador to the US as of February 15th. Wiseman has no prior diplomatic experience, but was a mergers & acquisitions lawyer before becoming an asset manager at Blackrock, and yes, he was a donor to Carney’s leadership campaign as well as his election campaign, donating the maximum for each.
There were immediate howls about this appointment from the Bloc and the Conservatives because of Wiseman’s involvement in the “Century Initiative,” which was a proposal to triple Canada’s population to 100 million by 2100, which we were on track to do regardless (before the current decision to halt immigration to the point where our population was in decline last quarter). The Bloc are treating this kind of thing like their own version of “Great Replacement Theory” because a) they are an ethnic nationalist party, and b) they see an expansion of the rest of the Canadian population as diminishing Quebec’s influence, because they heavily limit their own immigration (because again, ethnic nationalism) and their birth rate is very low. The Conservatives are treating it like Great Replacement Theory writ-large, and use it to scaremonger about Muslims and such, while also pretending to care about Quebec. There was also that stupid brouhaha about when Wiseman retweeted an Andrew Coyne column headline about said Initiative and people took it to be Wiseman insulting Quebec, so that’s great. Oh, and he apparently said he’s opposed to Supply Management, so of course Quebec and the majority of Conservatives are also opposed to his appointment.
This being said, I find myself increasingly uncomfortable by the fact that Carney keeps naming friends and former colleagues to top jobs, some elected (Tim Hodgson), some appointed (the head of the Defence Investment Agency), is a worrying trend because it’s starting to reek of cronyism. I also am reminded of the fate of Bill Morneau, who also did not grasp the ethical considerations in government of just calling up your friends and network to do things (in Morneau’s case, those friends were WE Charity), because that’s how you do them in the corporate world. Government is not the corporate world, and I know we’re all tired of hearing it, but no, you should not run government like a business or a corporation. Nothing good can come of this.
Programming Note: And that’s it for 2025. I’m taking a break from the blog until the first week of January, so enjoy your holidays everyone.
Ukraine Dispatch
There was yet another strike on Odesa, the second within twenty-four hours. President Zelenskyy says those kidnapped villagers from Sumy region had long had dealings across the border without incident. Here is a look at Ukraine’s new low-cost interceptor drones, taking out attacking Russian drones for much cheaper. (Gallery here).
Good reads:
- Tim Hodgson has been warned that while nuclear giant Westinghouse is Canadian-owned, the American government considers it their own for their purposes.
- Lina Diab has published new regulations that foreign students need provincial letters in order to get their study permits, while capping more immigration streams.
- Mandy Gull-Masty has presented her proposed reforms to First Nations child and family welfare systems to the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.
- The government won’t release their decision on the Zero-Emission Vehicle Mandate until sometime in the New Year, long beyond the promised 60-day review.
- Here is a look at the trade headwinds coming our way next year as the review of the New NAFTA are likely to result in permanent tariffs, if it’s not torn up entirely.
- Canada Post has reached a tentative agreement with its main union, and a ratification vote is expected in the New year.
- Oilsands companies have stockpiled carbon credits, meaning their value will increase as the industrial carbon price does (because the system is too lax).
- A study shows that digital asbestos chatbots can change Canadians’ political opinions more readily than the can Americans (because we are far less tribal).
- Nova Scotia has started exploration for on-short natural gas wells, and the government has expressed an interest in taking an ownership stake in projects.
- Alberta separatists have their referendum question approved (under nerfed rules), so now they can start collecting petition signatures.
- The split in BC’s far-right OneBC party has been mended (for now).
- Mike Moffatt’s Christmas wish list is a list of ten policy solutions to help solve the housing crisis.
- Justin Ling suggests that if Poilievre wants to get ahead, he needs to log off and start listening to real people and not the howls of online edgelords.
Odds and ends:
New episodes released early for C$7+ subscribers. It's my final video of 2025, so I'm reflecting on a big lesson from the past year. #cdnpoli
— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-12-23T00:17:27.168Z
Want more Routine Proceedings? Become a patron and get exclusive new content.
Epiphyte City
From my review of Dan Davies’s book on business fraud:
Fraud might be an unusual “tail risk” in business, but in science it’s usual. It happens all the time. Just in my own career, I had a colleague who plagiarized; another one who published a report deliberately leaving out data that contradicted the story he wanted to tell; another who lied, cheated, and stole (I can’t be sure about that one as I didn’t see it personally; the story was told to me by someone who I trust); another who smugly tried to break an agreement; and another who was conned by a coauthor who made up data. That’s a lot! It’s two cases that directly affected me and three that involved people I knew personally. There was also Columbia faking its U.S. News ranking data; I don’t know any of the people involved but, as a Columbia employee, I guess that I indirectly benefited from the fraud while it was happening. I’d guess that dishonesty is widespread in business as well.
This led me to an point that’s important enough that it deserves a post of its own (i.e., this one):
This also reminds me of the problems with popular internet heuristics such as “Hanlon’s razor,” “steelmanning,” and “Godwin’s law,” all of which kind of fall apart in the presence of actual malice, actual bad ideas, and actual Nazis. The challenge is to hold the following two ideas in your head at once:
1. In science, bad work does not require cheating; in science, honesty and transparency are not enough; just cos I say you did bad work it doesn’t mean I’m accusing you of fraud; just cos you followed the rules as you were taught and didn’t cheat it doesn’t mean you made the discovery you thought you did.
2. There are a lot of bad guys and cheaters out there. It’s typically a bad idea to assume that someone is cheating, but it’s also often a mistake to assume that they’re not.
A related point from that post:
Davies refers to “the vital element of time” in perpetuating a fraud. A key point here is that uncovering the fraud is never as high a priority to outsiders as perpetuating the fraud is for the fraudsters. Even when money is at stake, the amount of money lost by each individual investor will be less than what is at stake for the perpetuator of the fraud. What this means is that sometimes the fraudster can stay alive by just dragging things out until the people on the other side get tired. That’s a standard strategy of insurance companies, right? To delay, delay, delay until the policyholder just gives up, making the rational calculation that it’s better to just cut your losses.
I’ve seen this sort of thing before, that cheaters take advantage of other people’s rationality. They play a game of chicken, acting a bit (or a lot) crazier than anyone else. It’s the madman theory of diplomacy. We’ve seen some examples recently of researchers who’ve had to deal with the aftermath of cheating collaborators, and it can be tough! When you realize a collaborator is a cheater, you’re dancing with a tiger. Someone who’s willing to lie and cheat and make up data could be willing to do all sorts of things, for example they could be willing to lie about your collaboration. So all of a sudden you have to be very careful.
P.S. I talked about other problems with “steelmanning” here.
Epiphyte City
It seems so simple. So basic of an idea that you wonder why it has not been implemented yet.
It is involuntary care.
As communities across the province grapple with street disorder and a sense of insecurity, involuntary care is seen by many as a solution. Politicians of all stripes have offered it up to concerned residents and businesses as a path forward.
The problem is it is unlikely to be what people are expecting. The expectation is that it will be a panacea; the reality will be quite different.
Currently, the perception is that involuntary care will be a method for sweeping the streets clean, getting people into treatment and rebuilding contributing members of society.
The reality is that people are likely to be disappointed as we get a classic example of overpromise and underdeliver.
There are a lot of reasons for this.
Without doubt, there are a number of individuals who need help, who are not in a place where they can make decisions. The CEO of Our Place in Victoria summed it up well recently. “If someone is so unwell that they cannot make informed decisions about their health care, then leaving them to die on the sidewalk with little but their liberties intact is not compassion. It is abandonment,” said Julian Daly.
These people need care and, quite possibly, may never be in a place to return to life without supports.
What doesn’t get discussed enough is the toxicity of the drugs awash in our streets. These drugs, laced with fentanyl and carfentanil, are rewiring the brains of users and causing massive damage. The reality is that some may need constant care in a facility designed to deal with their complex needs. Sadly, it will mean something closer to involuntary confinement.
Calls for using jails or recreating Riverview are far off the mark. No matter how it happened, these folks are worthy of compassionate care to protect themselves and others. Warehousing is wrong, morally and practically.
Next up as a challenge are the courts. They are highly unlikely to allow a roundup of people who can then be forced into treatment. The courts have been clear that when removing encampments, there need to be dignified alternatives. Expecting them to approve a clean sweep is wishful thinking.
The biggest challenge, though, is that involuntary care for most individuals is doomed — even if allowed. It needs to be voluntary to make the needed changes in mindset and habits. I know people who have gone to treatment at the behest of others and were taking a shot, snort or swig as they waited outside the gate to enter rehab. They wanted to do right by others, but they were not there yet. Success did not follow.
Which is why the current trend of calling for dry-only facilities for those just emerging from hardship is so frustrating. Yes, there needs to be housing where people — who are ready — can live and not be surrounded by temptation. We also need more treatment beds to help people achieve this.
But trying to jump straight to a sober life is impractical for many and decidedly dangerous as well.
An operator of Tiny Homes says there are four basic rules: no pooping, no fighting, no dealing and no using alone.
And that final one is important. Developing the routine of not using in your home is a step forward; it is a mental divide you can bridge. It does not mean the desire will magically disappear, but it gives a framework for progress.
With all the political rhetoric that flies, what gets lost is that progress is measured in inches and not yards. Rare is the person who can go cold turkey and not suffer a relapse.
Yet politicians are succumbing to the temptation of easy fixes. In Surrey, on Vancouver Island, in Vancouver and in Penticton, we see what should be pathways to success being blocked or removed.
So, if these pathways work, why can’t we see results? (People are tired of stats; they are trusting their eyes.)
In our haste to warehouse people, we have not built the support. British Columbia has a two-tier health-care system when it comes to treatment beds. Six years ago, a 30-day stay paid privately cost $20,000, and that has only gone up. We do not have enough public beds.
And when people get out? Supportive housing gets caught up in a tangle of red tape, whether that be for seniors, youth, working families or those on the comeback trail. We bottleneck the system.
Here’s How Harm Reduction Advocates Can Regain Lost Ground
read moreWe are also wildly behind when it comes to preventing people from sliding into homelessness, which then often leads to addiction and mental health issues. They are three crises that become one. Another simple idea that works is a rent bank, and yet the provincial funding is threatened.
Now being of a certain age, I can remember when the belief was you just needed some willpower to overcome addiction. That is not the case anymore. The toxicity is killing our family, friends and communities.
Involuntary care sounds great. It is not enough. Not nearly enough.
There is an old joke about stopping smoking: “Quitting cigs is easy. I’ve done it a dozen times.” Except what we are going through is not a gag.
Many years ago, an unlikely advocate for a balanced, comprehensive approach came along. Philip Owen was the mayor of Vancouver and championed the Four Pillars — equal focus on harm reduction, prevention, treatment and enforcement.
What we need is a return to that balance and courage.
Without it, we will be the joke. ![[Tyee]](https://thetyee.ca/design-article.thetyee.ca/ui/img/yellowblob.png)
Epiphyte City
Next Page of Stories