geofflister.ca
Professional photographer, I take pictures of people and places, sometimes both.
Skiing, mountain biking, cycling, disc golf, gaming. I'll try anything once.
476 posts
296 followers
105 following
Getting Started
Active Commenter
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I’d blame government here, it’s not like you’re really allowed or encouraged to build anything where we should.
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The models that dictate efficiency requirements often don’t consider overheating and often fail to properly consider thermal gains and building thermodynamics.
I’ve heard they are off by 50% much of the time.
You do see thermal shading concepts on some new buildings.
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From what I’ve heard, Vienna is falling when it comes to public housing and policy growth. They are riding a 100 year head start and openly xenophobic policy to stay where they are.
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That’s only two and a half billion a year, applied to Canada, for what it’s worth. I am pretty sure we are investing a lot more than that here now—hard to parse and combine the value of various subsidies at the federal and provincial levels.
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There’s room to be wrong here, a 0% population growth rate would not be great for Canada. But we should really ensure that this estimate is correct, if there are tens of thousands of people each quarter losing status but actually they are still here, could become a massive issue.
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This math counts on outflows of 200,000 NPRs. Unlikely that more than 50 or 75k got PR, given ~50% of PR is granted directly to people out of country. Did well over 100k actually leave Canada?
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I don’t disagree a shift, has happened,I’d be curious as to how many NPRs got PR, and how many were deemed to have exited the country, because as far as I know they don’t measure exits, and they don’t factor for those overstaying visas long-term.
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I mean, it was weaponized against me because of a political disagreement (and dismissed), not that I give a single care about the potential consequences of the city.
Really needs to be a provincial creature with a SLAAP-like disincentive.
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Curious, will you act on the integrity commissioners’ own report that has several suggestions to limit frivolous cases?
I’m of two minds about the integrity commissioner. It’s been weaponized as a political tool almost as often as it’s been used for good. Perhaps their own tweaks could fix it?
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There’s a discussion to be had about our limited ship building capacity as a country, but that’s a separate conversation from this contract award.
We need the ships as soon as possible. There was a competitive bid process. The contact was awarded. Time to move on. [2/2]
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The new trend is to do like 10inch depth so it doesn’t fit a standard dinner plate.
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Hey, that’s harsh, sometimes they spring for the cheapest artificial stone available.
I’m surprised you even saw drawers, most try and minimize their use to save a few bucks.
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Envy is slicker for sure but the encore would be the move to keep my partner happy haha.
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The best way to fix the incentive structure is to tax the winnings properly. It would change the risk profile that PE is willing to take.
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The banks are sophisticated investors. They aren’t forced to lend the money out if they don’t see a good case for it. Increasingly, they won’t.
You could do that, but it would reduce living standards and jack up unemployment. Worth looking up WHY society developed the corporate veil.
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Again, I stress that it’s an industry like any other, with a bell curve distribution of behaviour. It’s just like home builders, or developers, or car mechanics. There are bad players in it. But I’d bet the distribution is more boring than a bestselling book.
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I would love to see a real analysis that proves that, even just of a single major PE firm’s held assets.
Based on my conversations with people in the space, stripping a company is a plan B option, plan A is always to grow the company, it’s just much more profitable to do so.
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An example: a laundromat makes 100,000/year after paying its operating costs. It’s worth something like 300-500k. You settle on 400k. You take 300k debt and 100k equity. You also put 50k into capital for the business, fix it up. The business pays back debt 80k/year for five years. You keep 20k.
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Because he’s paying more sensible prices, that debt is paid off within a few years via the company earnings, even if the company doesn’t grow much.
What we need to do is tax these earnings sensibly, eliminate carry, for example. Break up big players.
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Of course, and generally more as a percentage of purchase price than larger deals, as banks lend on the basis of earnings, he pays smaller earnings multiples.
Debt is how any small business changes hands. We need ways for companies to change hands, otherwise they just close.
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Corporate looting happens, but it’s actually pretty rare compared to the number of PE investments.
Running a business well is usually a much more efficient way to make a bunch of money.
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There are many models. I have an acquaintance who runs a mini PE firm, he buys relatively small businesses from people who are retiring, and tries to improve the companies operations. Because he pays a reasonable price based on earnings, he can look forward and run the business well.
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Many companies bought by PE are profitable businesses. I personally use Capture One and it’s a great product.
Heres the story on CHI: www.buyoutsinsider.com/deal-of-the-...
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There’s plenty of bad players in PE, just like in many ownership structures. A shitty PE firm has absolutely wrecked Canadian newspapers. But to just say it’s bad across the board? I think no one talks about the clean plays, because they are boring.
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KKR’s CHI garage doors exit recently, where it gave employees equity as part of the initial purchase, enough that on average, employees each earned $175,000 on the deal, with some long tenured employees, truck drivers, taking home over $800,000.
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Success is rarely heralded. Like most industries, it’s a bell curve of behaviour.
Phase One was purchased by PE in 2014, then a very niche camera company. They saw the potential in its software.
Capture One has taken a huge chunk of market from Adobe (competition here was welcomed).
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Fair. I do think that we are about to see a sea change in the form of a large number of undocumented workers, and I don’t know how we are going to handle that. I’d love to see college scholarships for health, agriculture and trades for those without status, rather than policing.
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CIBC’s Benjamin Tal on the matter: manager.cibccm.com/wp-content/u...
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I’ve read a bank analysis that state StatsCan simply assumes NPRs leave within 90 days of their visa expiring. Any thoughts?
There’s certainly plenty of anecdotes, and the number of refugee claimants who previously held another visa has skyrocketed, I believe?
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The bureaucrat should be shielded from complaint by their management and ultimately politicians.
This is far more prevalent than just public hearings. Incredibly complex systems get set up to avoid complaints across government.
There's too much feedback, not enough action.
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I call it complaint-based governance. I see it all the time in events and film departments, too.
Your job is to facilitate growth, not minimize complaints.
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It’s effectively a Yes or a No at this stage, because any meddling is incredibly complicated to solve. Which is why this stage shouldn’t exist.
Council should set policy and pre-zone parcels of land that spell out clearly what is allowed, and after that, builders should be allowed to build it.
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I don't know if that's true given current shipyard's capacity. No Canadian company bid on the project.
And almost certainly not at a price we're willing to pay.
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I *love* Vancouver’s system which extends a slap on the wrist approach to volunteer community members on its various boards, commissions and panels, and can be filed by random community members.
Nothing like an ethics investigation email to start your day.
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A not insignificant drop in overnight tourism coming to Canada. I will say that people have pointed to many causes, but our hotel shortage really isn’t helping here.
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I definitely worry that there's a lot of room for a left-centrist to win Vancouver over OneCity and COPE. Depends where OneCity positions itself over the next two years.
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Hey a few wild ideas are going to be necessary even if we stop today haha. And I like seeing some crazy geo engineering ideas, fodder for great sci fi.
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It does not ban heat pumps, it simply requires mitigation that is not explained here.
You just put it on top of a box, basically. The boxes cost more than they should if you go through an HVAC company but you could also build or acquire it yourself.
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Correct. It leaves room for interpretation. It could be fenced in, for example, or it could be placed in an inaccessible location.
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There’s an easy solution, you just put the heat pump on top of a box, basically, so it is the same height as the guardrail.
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You’d probably have to duct it per room and it would be a shit ton of work.