Category: Canada

Anything related to Canada or Canadians

Helping kids pay for college

These days, it seems like having a university degree is the equivalent of having a high school diploma in previous generations – it is simply the requirement in order to even be considered for most professional jobs.

At the same time, university is expensive and comes at a time when people do not have savings or earnings of their own. For many people, the late teens and twenties will be the poorest time in their life, as they are no longer fully provided for by parents but cannot yet get jobs good enough to let them live in comfort. In most cases, they definitely cannot get jobs that pay the cost of living and university tuition, while not requiring so much time and commitment that it undermines their ability to study and benefit from school.

A case can be made that people who choose to have children have some level of moral obligation to help pay for university, in the event that their kids can get in and want to go. Providing such a transfer of wealth to one’s children could help set them on a good path for their entire life. It provides a useful qualification, as well as a key venue to meet future friends, allies, and potential spouses. It is enormously more useful than a lump-sum inheritance received much later in life, when their personal trajectory will already have been basically established. You will also be contributing to the development of an educated and productive populace.

People who themselves went to college probably have a bit more of an obligation to provide a similar opportunity, especially if they received financial help from their own parents. Even for those who didn’t, it is worth bearing in mind that school used to cost a lot less, so people going today have more need for help.

An obligation to help pay for university adds significantly to the total cost of having children, but nobody should be under the illusion that doing so will be cheap. If you don’t feel inclined to invest significantly in your children, my recommendation would be getting a couple of friendly dogs instead.

On a semi-related note, university education is also a smart thing to consider when choosing a spouse. There seems to be a lot of evidence that the more educated a person’s mother is, the better they are likely to do in school, work, and life generally.

Ottawa advance voting

For anyone out enjoying the sunshine near Elgin Street, there is an advanced polling station open for the federal election at Bank and Lisgar.

They are open until 8pm tonight.

[Update: 1:10pm] The station cannot be used by everyone in the riding. There are different ones for different sub-regions and you can only vote at the correct one. That seems like a needless nuisance.

Georgia’s drug courts

Ira Glass recently produced an especially interesting episode of This American Life, talking about a particular drug court in the United States: Very Tough Love.

One potential advantage of the fiscal mess states like Canada and the United States have gotten themselves into is that it might help drive the advancement of more sensible drug policies. Our current approach is excessively punitive, fails to respect the sovereignty of the individual over their body, and is needlessly costly and destructive.

Will my vote matter?

Previously, I created a flowchart for use in voting in Canadian elections. It occurred to me today that it could be interesting to elaborate the concept into a website.

The site would allow people to enter their riding and rank their preferences for either local candidates or parties. It could then estimate the odds that their vote will make a difference they care about. For instance, if someone strongly prefers Party X to Party Y, and both candidates have a shot at winning in that person’s riding, then their vote is relatively likely to matter. By contrast, if someone hates both Party A and Party B equally, and one of their candidates is basically certain to win, then that person’s vote is relatively unlikely to matter.

There are different possible methodologies for the site. For instance, it could be based entirely on past election results, entirely on polling data, or on some combination of the two.

In circumstances where a person is told that their vote is unlikely to matter – for instance, if they prefer a party with minority support in every riding – the website could direct the person to more information on electoral reform and alternative electoral systems like the various kinds of proportional representation.

Unsurprisingly, this is one of those ideas that falls into the “things that may be interesting to discuss, but which I do not have the time to actually do” category.

Warning labels for booze

According to a study in the British Medical Journal, alcohol could be responsible for 10% of cancer in men and 3% in women. The scientists performing the study examined data from eight European countries. Reporting on the study, the CBC raised the question of whether there should be warning labels on alcoholic beverages.

I think there should be. They should warn about the risk of addiction, about damage to unborn children, and about other well-documented risks. These days, there are warning labels on everything from plastic bags (choking hazard!) to coffee cups (this beverage is extremely hot!). When governments put warning labels on some things with long-term health consequences, it implies that anything without such a label is considered safe by the government, or at least substantially safer than the things that do bear warnings. Given that alcohol is one of the most lethal drugs consumed by human beings, along with tobacco, it just makes sense that there be warning labels there too.

I think it’s absurd that Canada is considering putting warning labels on beer to alert people of the presence of wheat, but not considering putting on labels advising that if you drink enough of the stuff, it could kill you in a matter of hours.

P.S. Non-alcoholic beer can be a good option for those who enjoy beer, but want to avoid alcohol for whatever reason.

Don’t emulate the US on health

On CBC’s The Current the other day, there was a panel discussion about health care costs and Canada’s system. Partly, it was a response to a recent article by David Dodge and Richard Dion. They basically say that health care in Canada is going to get too expensive, and lists some possible actions to respond to that.

One action that is mentioned by them and others is to more closely emulate the United States by having more of a private health care system. It seems to me that the point that should be stressed in response to that is that the United States has a poor health care system, particularly when it comes to value for money. Private insurers paying private health care providers does little to reduce the serious economic externalities that exist in relation to health care. The US system also does poorly on objective measures like life expectancy and infant mortality, especially when considered in terms of outcomes per dollars spent. The weird hybrid character of the US system – with insurance tied to jobs and adults with pre-existing conditions barred from new coverage – also produces significant economic inefficiencies, as people risk losing the health care along with their jobs and never being able to secure coverage again.

Ultimately, the mechanism for controlling health care costs is rationing. We cannot afford to give every drug and treatment to everybody, since we could theoretically spend an infinite amount of money on each citizen. What we can do is fund those interventions that are justified by the degree to which they extend and improve a person’s life. The super rich will always be able to afford to buy a superior quality of care out of pocket – and they can do so perfectly easily outside Canada. For our society as a whole, however, our health system should be focused on producing the best outcome possible for the greatest number of people at a reasonable cost.

Locksport

Locksport is the practice of studying and learning to defeat locking systems, primarily mechanical locks such as pin and tumbler locks. As I understand it, it is driven by curiosity and the desire to understand how things work, rather than any desire to circumvent real-world locks. Practitioners are people who puzzle their way to inside information about an industry that tends to be close-knit and secretive, not unlike the people who watch classified satellite launches in the U.S. and track the orbits of mysterious secret satellites.

The Dutch blog blackbag is a good source of information on locksport, including picking, bump keys, and impressioning. The Open Organization Of Lockpickers is a group for locksport affectionados. Theoretically, they have a chapter in Ottawa, but it doesn’t seem to be active.

I think it’s worth trying one’s hand at picking locks, if only to get a sense of how secure they really are. I found that with a few minutes of work and no professional instruction, I could open the locks and deadbolts in my old apartment using a tension wrench and simple pick. The same goes for padlocks – both the omnipresent cheap Master Lock variety and higher security versions with security pins.

The legality of tools for manipulating locks varies by jurisdiction. In the United States, it varies from state to state. In Canada, lock picking tools (except for key duplication tools) are legal and treated just like any other tool.

Should the Green Party have a full platform?

Apparently, the Green Party has a position on income splitting. If this seems a bit random and disconnected from the environment, it is also reflective of a controversial question about what the party ought to be.

Given our first-past-the-post electoral system, the Green Party is never likely to elect many MPs. At the same time, the party has a reasonably large number of supporters – quite possibly more supporters across Canada than the Bloc Quebecois. I would argue that the main message these voters are sending is that Canada needs to take better care of the environment, and prioritize the development of a sustainable society more than we do now. I don’t think they are really endorsing their personal Green candidates, for the most part, or even that they are endorsing the overall Green platform.

Since they will never form a government (barring major constitutional reform, or a huge realignment of voter preferences), it seems there is a strong case to be made for the Greens sticking to their core message and not campaigning on unrelated issues (except as individual candidates, if they wish). It seems like taking a stance on environmentally unrelated things could lead to voters who disagree on those peripheral issues rejecting the party. If the Green Party took a strong stance on an issue like whether Canada should (or should not) have intervened in Libya, the risk is that they would be broadening their message somewhat pointlessly and alienating potential supporters. The Green Party isn’t about income splitting, or intellectual property rights, or criminal justice policy. There may be areas in which policies in this area have environmental effects – and it makes sense for the Greens to comment on them in those senses – but I don’t see the sense in them unnecessarily adopting political positions outside their area of core competency.

What do others think? Would the Greens be a more effective force for driving improved environmental policies if they focus on that area exclusively, or does seeking to be a party with a comprehensive platform actually make more sense for them given the nature of our electoral system and what they want to achieve?

Cities with unusually good libraries

I think Vancouver is on the list. I remember actually attending the opening ceremonies for the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library, when I was in elementary school. The building is rather elegant, I think, and they have a good selection.

Oxford obviously counts, though only from the perspective of students. The same may be true of Toronto. How is the public library system there? I am sure U of T has good libraries, even if one looks like a gigantic concrete turkey.

The reading room of the New York Public Library is one of the most appealing spaces I have ever read in, plus it is free and their archives are gigantic.

Ottawa’s central public library, on Metcalfe, doesn’t have either the physical attractiveness or the comprehensive catalogue of some of those other offerings. Perhaps that is something Ottawa should change, particularly given the number of people here who try to stay well read on their topics of personal expertise. It would add a lot more to the city than some new suburban road or sports venue might.

A better library would also be a nice place to meet bookish people.