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There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

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Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#411

Post by genewitch »

megablast wrote: post #374
amatecha wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I live in Vancouver - my coworkers and family were very aware of this, watching footage online and exclaiming at the brutal nature of the weather and landslides we experienced yesterday. Never seen this many roads closed in BC in my nearly 4 decades living here.

Keep driving your car, pretending you’re not destroying the planet.

Yes it's my car that I drive like 2000 miles a year, and not coal plants in third world countries, hexafluorine or whatever magical greenhouse gas we develop and use for 25 years before realizing our children will suffer.

No, it's my relatively new and aggressively emission controlled cars.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#412

Post by seanmcdirmid »

waiseristy wrote: post #329
AutumnCurtain wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's hope it migrates further south and relieves some of the California drought. Any meteorologists have a sense of the weather patterns at play here?

Typically it's snowpack that relieves drought. All torrential rain does is remove topsoil and blow out bridges

Torrential rain can replace water in underground aquifers. But there is only so much water that can be absorbed by the ground, much of it just rushes out to sea.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#413

Post by PhantomGremlin »

genewitch wrote: post #411
megablast wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keep driving your car, pretending you’re not destroying the planet.

Yes it's my car that I drive like 2000 miles a year, and not coal plants in third world countries, hexafluorine or whatever magical greenhouse gas we develop and use for 25 years before realizing our children will suffer. No, it's my relatively new and aggressively emission controlled cars.

The ongoing deforestation of the Amazon Basin is probably just as much of a long term threat.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#414

Post by cal5k »

philistine wrote: post #373
sbarre wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it doesnt have competitors at least in telecom and banking To be fair, the high regulation that we have in the banking sector insulated us from a lot of the 2008 financial crisis. So it's not all bad. The big banks spent the early part of the 2000s complaining loudly about being "left out" of the financial boom happening and wanted to internationalize and merge with US banks, and our government said no. America's r…

Thank you for eloquently describing why Canada has chosen a different path than the USA. Banking, for example, is such a clear-cut case of competition not being detrimental for Canadians. For example, I've seen Americans laugh at Canadians on Reddit for not having the Cash app when our equivalent service is available directly from our banks (with a shitty UI, sure) and free. I pay my plumber with e-transfer and could…

Canadian banks are the most profitable in the western world, because we pay the highest fees in the western world.

A lot of it is hidden - Canadian banks charge outrageous sums of money for foreign exchange fees. Credit card interchange fees are reliably a full 1% higher than in the US. e-Transfers are intentionally limited in size so that banks can still make their money on credit card payments etc.

Interac is a bank-owned monopoly, and merchants eat astronomical fees even though it's nominally "free" to send an email money transfer to your plumber.

The more you dig into the Canadian banking ecosystem, the more you realize how powerful it is and how much rent-seeking is really going on.

The amazing part is that they've convinced the average Canadian that this oligopoly is actually good for them. Marketing works!

Anyone working in the financial services space, however, understands that the reality is really much darker than people realize.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#415

Post by cal5k »

katbyte wrote: post #399
VVertigo wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of free options: even more if you consider ones that require a minimum balance. The paid ones though are typically $10-15. Where they really get you though is in service fees. If you overdraft or do any one of a myriad of options you can get hit with penalty fees. Basically you just have to treat the minimum balance as a hard zero.

You can be pre approved for over draft and pay no fees

Until you use your credit card. Interchange fees in Canada are a full 1% higher than in the US, on average. You pay for this in higher prices on goods and services.

Or until you buy something in USD. Foreign exchange fees in Canada are a multiple of what they are south of the border, and Canadian banks ruthlessly protect this business by refusing to bank money service businesses that compete with them.

Canadian banks are the most profitable in the world, and they're really good at making customers think they're not paying that much for the pleasure of feeding the oligopoly.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#416

Post by iainctduncan »

tjr225 wrote: post #409
iainctduncan wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we have tons of folks in Van, where it basically snows a few times a year, who have never driven the roads through the rest of the province and have no clue how bad they can get in bad weather. And I'm sure every modern city has people who have never thought about how things get in their stores. As to your assertion that highway closures won't change other access, this is nonsense. Take away the highways and yo…

> I don't understand how anyone can believe "we'll just go the other way" is going to work fine. We don't have extra shipping works, boats, port slots, etc just waiting for twice the load or anything. This is _already_ the direction these goods are coming in from. These so called idiotic city folk are likely going to be just fine. They might not be able to go to Whistler or whatever to go snowboarding for a year,

Hey don't listen to me, I only lived there for 35 years. But maybe listen to some professors of supply chain management instead:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/bc-floods-rail-impact-1.625...

A large part of Vancouver's food comes from the Fraser Valley by truck -- through two municipalities that are now under water. The mayor of one of whom is already wondering whether farmers will be killing all their livestock.

It's a fuck of a lot worse than a cancelled snowboarding trip.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#418

Post by 14 »

skrebbel wrote: post #105
lhorie wrote: post #100

For just a bit of context/anecdata, I'm talking to my brother who lives in Vancouver and he wasn't even aware this was a problem. The road closure[0] on hwy 1 near Abbotsford/Chilliwack is a good one hour drive away from Vancouver core[1]. So while it sounds noteworthy for an entire city be technically flooded in, unless you were driving to the boonies, you're probably not actually impacted in any meaningful way. He…

I'm surprised there's no shortages yet because trucks can't get to the city. Or does Vancouver import most non-regional goods from the US (and not the rest of Canada) anyway?

Just saw a post from my cousin in Victoria the store shelves are empty it’s crazy.

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#419

Post by iainctduncan »

iainctduncan wrote: post #254
lhorie wrote: post #100

For just a bit of context/anecdata, I'm talking to my brother who lives in Vancouver and he wasn't even aware this was a problem. The road closure[0] on hwy 1 near Abbotsford/Chilliwack is a good one hour drive away from Vancouver core[1]. So while it sounds noteworthy for an entire city be technically flooded in, unless you were driving to the boonies, you're probably not actually impacted in any meaningful way. He…

This is complete bullshit. EVERYONE is affected. Honestly, just read the BC news. If they think they aren't affected, then they don't understand BC supply chains and haven't noticed... yet.

From the CBC:

"The rail lines in question are the main arteries in and out of the port. "The mere fact that those trains are stalled means that it's going to back up further because those ships are still underway," Prentice said.

Adel Guitouni, a business professor at the University of Victoria, says the pandemic followed by recent natural disasters have underscored just how fragile global supply chains are.

"It would have a huge impact, and it would be felt not just in B.C. but across the country," he said in an interview. "You start having shortages in places and a lot of accumulation in other places."

Depending on the extent of the damage, he thinks the rail companies will likely have most of their lines back up and running within a week or so, but clearing the global backlog in supply chains will take much longer.

"This will take until probably 2023 to see some kind of getting back to normal," he said"

Re: There is currently no way to drive between Vancouver and the rest of Canada

#420

Post by lai-yin »

Dedime wrote: post #7

I surprised you didn't link Kelowna's finest newspaper, Castanet: https://www.castanet.net/news/BC/351544/Mudslides-close-all-... I love them because their reporting is terrible and the site itself is straight out of the 90's. They used to run polls that were easy to manipulate, according to a ex-coworker of mine. It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Nonetheless, everybody in Kelowna acts like Castanet is…

As an American working in politics who's jacked into the daily Politico/WSJ/Twitter grind it warms my heart to briefly imagine that all Canadians get their news from quirky, local newspapers like this.
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