That’s not completely true. Social Security is supposed to fund itself, however it’s currently facing a funding shortfall with current estimates that it will be depleted in 2035. There are many suggestions on how make this program solvent, including bolstering it with general funds.

Wait.

Thanks, fixed.

Frankly, I’m shocked it wasn’t already banned. It’s been outlawed throughout most of the world, and when Florida beats you to the punch by half a decade, you know you’re way behind the times.

EDIT fixed link

Now I am faced with needing to replace my SSD which gives me reason enough to install a new distro.

Replacing an SSD is pretty simple on Linux; just copy over the data, adjust the partitions, select the new drive in UEFI/BIOS. If you want to try a different distro, any time is good, but a new SSD doesn’t require a reinstall.

My advice from my distro-hopping days is to dual-boot with potential new distros (unless space is at a premium). I just made sure to share important folders like /home/. That way, if I didn’t like my new setup, I could quickly fall-back to the old.

If not explicitly, then at least the electorate usually dislikes it. In Canada, we had a party leader who was found to be a dual Canadian/American citizen during the 2019 election, and while I don’t think that’s the whole reason he lost, it definitely contributed.

I think you’re working on old data. According to Wikipedia:

Prior to the 1994 constitutional reform, the president and vice president were required to be Roman Catholics. This stipulation was abolished in 1994.

and

Article 89 of the Constitution detail the requirements:

Article 89. To be elected president or vice president of the Nation, it is necessary to have born in Argentine territory, or be the son of a native citizen, having been born in a country foreign; and the other qualities required to be elected senator

Article 55. The requirements to be elected senator are: to be thirty years old, to have been a citizen of the Nation for six years, enjoy an annual income of two thousand pesos or an equivalent income, and be a native of the province that chooses it, or with two years of residence immediate in it.

Caves Post owns 91%of Purolator. It isn’t surprising they’re running the show over there too, and I think past leadership has done the same.

As long as it’s something only the person themselves can authorize, either at the time or ahead of time via end-of-life planning

So let’s imagine an individual. They go through a period of 1 or 2 years where they are in pain and suicidal. They go through all the checks and procedures that we put in place and doctors clear them for execution. They end up dead.

First off, using the word “execution” is pretty loaded. I just wanted to put that out there, especially because you’re, “not trying to tell anyone they’re wrong.”

Second, as of right now, MAID for mental illness on it’s own is not available in Canada.

The big thing you said, but kind of glossed over is, “doctors clear them”. It’s not just on the individual who is making this decision, but health care professionals who use their professional opinion on the mental state of the individual. If a person is suicidal, generally a mental health care professional is involved.

Obviously, this system isn’t perfect, but no system is perfect. Doctors do mess up and individuals can be influenced by their families/finances. I think these are all good reasons to be skeptical, but I also don’t think they’re reasons to completely prevent access.

> And what do companies have to do with it?

We live in capitalist countries. Anything and everything will have money involved. Even public healthcare involves money changing hands with private contractors and such. There is no way to get around this fact. And wherever money changes hands it creates the potential for perverse incentives that we are possibly opening the door wide open for.

It’s not like these perverse incentives don’t exist without MAID. Nursing Homes, etc. have an incentive to keep people alive and in their care as long as possible.

I appreciate that you’re looking for discussion, however, I’m hung up on this is the part of your comment:

But I think human life is something sacred and that we all have a duty to ourselves and to each other to live for as long as we can.

I also grew up Catholic, and agree that “human life is something sacred.” However, I’d ask you to consider why you think human is sacred, and what about it is sacred? IMHO, our lives are a gift, and we should appreciate that gift by not squandering our lives, by enjoying life and by trying to share that joy with others. If someone is in extreme and unending pain, it would be extremely difficult for them to bring joy into the world and instead their lives often just introduce suffering for themselves, their loved ones, and their caretakers.

I know one of the arguments against this is that even terminally ill patients sometimes experience miracle recoveries. Similarly, when dealing with terminal illness, there’s a concept know as the “Last Good Day”. My Grandmother had one, where she was nearly comatose for months, had a medical emergency and nearly died, then perked up the next day, was lucid and talking, then died a week later. However, I don’t think we should force people to suffer in the vague hopes that they might have another good day, or in the vaguer hope that they experience a miracle recovery.

I know this gets into a bit of a slippery slope fallacy, but I’d be curious what your opinion is on DNRs and other forms of with-holding care. I personally don’t think those options are all that different than MAID, though I will acknowledge it’s the difference of action vs inaction. Personally, I think both action and inaction are decisions, as the Canadian band, Rush says in Freewill, “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

K…I started my original comment with, “While I don’t agree with it’s findings,” and was responding to a comment asking for elaboration on the safety risks. I was just providing context, not stating the report was gospel-truth or anything.

What was the debunked? That a report exists?

While I don’t agree with it’s findings, there is a 388-page report this decision is based on.

Puberty blockers to be banned indefinitely for under-18s with gender dysphoria across UK

I fixed the title. Of course, they’re still available for other medical conditions, they’re just singling out gender dysphoria.

This is talking about if the plan cannot pay it’s pensions. That’s why it starts with:

The Government of Canada has a legal obligation to pay plan member pension benefits.

It’s not talking about if actuaries predict a future funding shortfall. In that case, they can change the rules before there’s actually a shortfall, as they did in 2012.

I don’t dispute that they’ve renegotiated contribution rules, I don’t know the history of this pension fund that well. Typically these rules are renegotiated with union agreement.

The unions have no input into contribution rules. Any changes are decided unilaterally by the government, as shown in your source (look for “Jobs and Growth Act, 2012”).

EDIT You are correct, that the government guarantees the fund if it completely fails. What I meant to say is the government isn’t liable to top it up if it’s underfunded. My bad on the wording.

Just like the govt guarantees the pensions if the fund fails, it can also take excess surpluses. That seems totally reasonable?

The government doesn’t guarantee the pension if the fund fails, they manage it so it doesn’t fail.

EDIT TL;DR That means they’re not financially liable to top up the pension, it means they get to decide how the pension returns to a healthy state, potentially by rewriting the contribution rules.

Most of the unions assume this means the next step is the government will stop funding their portion of the contributions instead of sharing the savings with employees. The step after that is if (really, when) the fund becomes unhealthy, the government gets to unilaterally decide how to fix the fund. Sure, they could top up the fund completely out of public revenues, but they could require employees to help top up the fund.

The reason why the unions think this will happen is because it has happened before. Any employee under the PSPP who’s been employed for greater than ~15 years (I can’t remember the cut off date) makes 35% of the contributions to their pension, with the government making the other 65%. Anyone who’s been with the public sector under that cut-off pays 50%. That’s because we started this same cycle back in the early 2000’s with the government taking the surplus, but not putting the money back when investment returns were low. AFAIK, a similar cycle has happened at least once before that.

Honestly, this sounds low.

As you alluded to, I think it’s the fact that there are a lot of cases where patients have low-costs that bring down the average significantly. The CMAs you mentioned are ~47% of the Canadian population and there are a LOT of other cities that also do cancer treatment. I also get the impression that we’ve gotten much better at diagnosing and treating cancer, so for every complicated, high-cost patient, there are probably dozens of cases that have pretty straight forward treatment.

I really would love to see the distribution of cases.

The article does link to the report from the Canadian Cancer Society. The report says that,

Over the lifetime of each person, an average of $11,199 in time costs, $16,018 in out-of-pocket costs and $5,560 in indirect costs are expected to be incurred by people with cancer and their caregivers. In total, and averaged across all cancer types, an individual is expected to incur $32,778 in costs related to cancer over their lifetime.

however the report doesn’t break it down further, or explain exactly what makes up each of those categories, which is disappointing. As others pointed out, it would be nice to know things like:

• Out of those “out-of-pocket” costs, how much can be claimed as medical expenses on an income tax return (15% tax credit), and is that factored in to the calculation?

• How much is lost wages?

It’s hard to consider ways of reducing these costs (Pharmacare, Welfare, refunds/tax credits for friends/family helping, etc) without knowing the details of these costs.

Nope. FTA:

Employees were offered the same pay for 32 hours as they had received for a 40-hour work week.

It was part of their contract negotiation, and they took reduced hours in lieu of a pay increase.