About our Canada PM and Crisis Policies

So I need to talk about our PM, Mr. Trudeau. I'm a big fan of younger generation leadership. Goodness knows it's insane what's happening with elderly leaders in USA and Japan. The efforts Justin Trudeau has taken to reshape Canada was a platform of hope and change, and I enjoyed that. Maybe a little naive, but there have been some massive positive impacts. I'm thinking in particular relations between our first nations and the Canadian population in general. A lot of good awareness has been generated, with soft and hard changes throughout the nation. I thought perhaps the Liberals could make a difference in the drug overdose epidemic, and maybe even address the healthcare crisis that was already brewing in 2015.? Oh, but, how I was wrong...

I did not expect these consequences.

1. Legalizing recreational marijuana arguably made the most vulnerable worse off. Anecdotally, it fed a large number of people into a drug culture lifestyle, amping up the numbers considerably, pushing a lot more people into schizophrenia meltdowns that wouldn't have otherwise. Drug culture is real, and the availability of opioids and ensuing escalation of death from fentanyl in the drug channels just kept getting further out of hand. (feel free to share counter anecdotes)
2. Ramping immigration completely undid any gains by short term rental (ie AirBnB) legislations, causing far more squeeze on housing and medical systems than we thought possible.
3. Combined drug crisis, plus housing crisis, plus effects from Covid, we now have material collapse of health care across the nation.? Desperate people coming off the street, flooding emergency services, and not enough nurses and doctors. Nurses leaving their careers behind. Having to compensate more doctors, nurses, and excessive managerial overheads and seeing those net cost of care skyrocketing.
4. Immigrants being unable to certify their home trades, despite their skills, and desperately having to earn a living to survive.
5. Quality of life plummeting, massive inflation, and losing value against the US dollar.
6. Canada got poor.

It doesn't matter how good Mr. Trudeau was at any one thing, it's the confluence of many bad decisions that is seeing Canada fall into decline. I'm happy to see some course corrections but it's a lack of "smart" corrections that makes me upset.

The thing that really put me off was this short term tax holiday.? This was not a material benefit to people, it was 99% about buying votes and that's it.? If he was smart, it would be to reduce taxes on a set of goods that are needed most urgently, permanently.? Be it 2%, or whatever, but only 2 months holiday on select goods caused an insane burden on every business that has to deal with re-categorization of their goods.? Enforcing the correct taxes will be virtually impossible.? Businesses will have to take short-cuts because they just can't get it all 100% right in the weeks before the tax holiday took effect.? And undoing those changes, is 2X the work!? Every Canadian will be 1-2 degrees away from someone that had to deal with that hell. Mr. Trudeau caused that hell, and it was made absolutely clear it was his choice with Ms. Freeland's very public exit.

Shutting down immigration in a hard-stop is also going to cause a ripple effect across all the universities and college campuses.? We can bet there will be consequences to education, employment of educators, and overall programs.? Existing immigrants who need their certifications, and submitting themselves through that financial burden to do so, are going to suffer. They'll need support, but those international tuition dollars are now gone. The shockwave will be palpable over the coming two years, and programs will close.? What would the smart thing be here?? Having a structured, or goal oriented allowance of foreign students, with real material conversion to PR and preemptive employment insurance. Here's an idea, have every category of trades, nursing, and foods management be positively impacted with well designed programs that are directly coupled with clear-open allowances for immigration permanent residency.

Immigration policy has been run backwards, using numbers to quantify results, instead of good planning and results quantified with numbers. Sure we got more immigrants, but at what cost.? We discovered too late that the housing, trades, and education sectors could not absorb that kind of rate of immigration.? If we had a scientific approach, things could have been better.? Here's how science works; form a theory, run a program, gather the data, evaluate the results, and make a well written conclusion. Plan, try, evaluate, learn, repeat.

For the past 15 years Canada has suffered from poor immigration policy. My wife and I experienced first hand how a bad policy change can ruin things. My wife living with me, out of country, was prevented travel because eTA banned people with expired PRs from flying. Why should an expired PR matter for a legitimate visit to family, when standard VISA policies apply? The same person can travel via private vehicle across the border no problem. This was primarily an issue with bad policy gone awry. eTA should be about pre-qualifying travel, period. If PR numbers need to be better controlled, make it handled in country, and make it straight forward for those involved.

I hope, in the coming months, that the political discord will be about how better to use scientific methods to make changes that make sense. I want to hear more about working with the smartest people we can in education, trades, and health care.? Forming a plan, test the theory, and having a way to capture useful data about how it's going. If done right, it should be quite light weight for each unit of policy.? But man, lately the stupid things our politicians are saying are bating, gaslighting, and fear mongering for votes.? It's not healthy, and worse, it's not smart.

One of the more successful programs that put theory into practice was ironically one of the most nebulous things to evaluate.? The Truth and Reconciliation Commission.? It resulted in these calls to action:

https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Calls_to_Action_English2.pdf

And delivery reports:

https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1524494530110/1557511412801

While Truth and Reconciliation had its fair share of problems, a lot of useful information and changes have been enacted.? It's quantifiable and qualitatively evaluated by people with real stakes.? And the proof is in the change in people's awareness and attitudes.? It's not perfect, never will be, but we're measurably moved in the right direction.

Let's do the same for;

1. Housing Crisis - Get all people into the right size homes, and do it affordability.
2. Medical Crisis - Get the all possible care providers certified, including new and old immigrants. Incentivize in ways that makes sense, and mitigate that financial risk with employment insurance.
3. Drug Crisis - Treat the root causes of drug addiction and associated factors as mental illness, and where appropriate with the criminal justice system. Establish the right plans for breaking the loop. It means converting recreational drug usage to purely medical drug use.? If you're taking drugs, there better be a good reason and you're certified.? If not, then you're part of the problem. If you're a doctor, you better expect to be tested by blind-shoppers (patients) that are there ensure you're not part of the problem. The penalties for poor evaluation should be proportional, egregious acts should result in actual financial pain, criminal record, and loss of license, and good evals should result in active visible promotion. More contrast on the good vs bad, and promote the best practices, including effective and novel uses of cannabis to improve health affordably and safely.
4. Immigration Policy around Trades - If a trades certifying program can open up 100 immigrant slots, then they should get paid for those 100 slots, and rewarded again for those immigrants landing a job. The immigrants themselves, for taking the risk should get government backed bank financing to see their family's survival through that period, automatic PR, and employment insurance on the other end. You better believe that certifying trades programs will land each person a job if they get a bonus on the other side. And if they're really good, then businesses will be lining up to recruit straight out of the gate.?But also be careful about abuse, rate limit the slots directly proportional to the number of immigrants who gained or lost their jobs 2 years.? Application for more slots should be worth it, but also we need follow through.
5. Immigration Policy for Permanent Residence - This needs to suck less. We need immigration to proceed smoothly, with fast paths and clear obtainable goals. Drive the immigration opportunities with actual slots allocated in certifying trades, and make it automated. If you do get PR, then marry a spouse, and get an opportunity to live out of country, then this should also be fine. International couples probably have interests in and out of country, and if housing pressure or medical needs makes Canada a bad choice today, let them leave without risk. Release the pressure on housing and the medical system. 730 days limitation is stupid. PRTD is lousy, eTA is lousy, the whole application process and waiting game for PR is lousy, renewing a PR is lousy. ?We need immigration policy that is efficiently run, healthy to sustain, and not full of fear. If someone has made the effort to go the gauntlet to obtain PR in Canada, they're trusted, and that should be permanent as it says on the tin.

In the long haul I believe Canada will win, there are so many wonderful things about Canada life and culture that make it stand out.? But, it's so important we make smart policy now.? I expect Canada's housing and medical system issues to take at least 10+ years to bring back into equilibrium.? This is longer than Justin Trudeau can possibly hope for, so it's time he picks a successor. And it's time to set the narrative on smartly fixing policy. Righting what's wrong.? And there are some notable wins that are worth promoting by all sides of politics, whether progressive or conservative. Let's be strategic. Who can get the smartest people to back them up, decide ways we can measure good policy, and make accountability the debated goal.