Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Scott @sdlb.bsky.social · 7hMost of those are supply manged, which is a literal government sponsored and protected cartel designed to raise prices. Artificially increasing the price of milk and eggs then layering price controls on top because the price is too high is completely incoherent 4368
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Deny Sullivan @denysullivan.bsky.social · 8hNowhere is the gerontocracy more alive, and unrepentant, than municipal government. 0205
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Dale Smith @journodale.bsky.social · 20hWhat if—hear me out—these provincial ministers actually funded their own mental health care, addictions and home care programmes? They're not helpless! Provinces can raise their own revenues! That's why they got the tax points in the seventies.thecanadianpressnews.caHealth ministers say Ottawa needs to renew mental health, home care fundingOTTAWA - Health ministers from across the country say they're worried about "profound and negative" effects on patients and health-care jobs if federal funding agreements for mental health, addictions... 67430
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈How-Sen Chong @how-sen.com · 15hListen: I don’t want to minimize the danger of high e-bike speeds. But if the problem here is that stores sell e-bikes that can drive faster than legal limits, then where’s the story about how literally *every car dealership has been doing the same thing for decades*?!?cbc.caHidden cameras show some stores unlocking speed limits on e-bikes, selling e-scooters that go up to 120 km/h | CBC NewsA new hidden camera investigation by Marketplace shows how some stores are selling e-scooters and e-bikes with top speeds much higher than provincial speed limits and with recommended rider ages young... 471469346
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 01/10/2026Here’s the monthly data with a 12-month trailing average, so we don’t “look ahead” of the time series. We can see that visits from Canada are substantially down. Like, a *lot*. And if we looked at the French series by itself we’d see something too. But it’s not on the scale of Covid. Yet. 1028158
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Kieran Healy @kjhealy.co · 01/10/2026I keep seeing this Semafor graph that seems to show the Trump administration’s effect on international visits is comparable to the pandemic. My first thought was “that can’t be true” and indeed it is not. This is monthly data. We only have to Jun/Aug 2026. The lines are over-fitted to the months. 12444131
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Jens von Bergmann @jensvb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026That’s totally different. Buildings cast shadows, whereas trees provide shade. 😎 1602
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Joe Fish @sadbusdriver.bsky.social · 01/10/2026the shade thing is especially bizarre because down thread the reader learns of a seperate regulation requiring developers to also plant a bunch of trees. bsky.app/profile/kers... 1391
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Max Dubler 🏳️🌈 @maxdubler.com · 01/10/2026People are going to clown on this but we need to remember that planning for local context is important: a city with Los Angeles, California’s semi-arid Mediterranean climate only gets sunshine ~300 days a year; so it’s important to make sure you can never ever find shade in the middle of the day. 19650109
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Daniel Herriges @dpherriges.bsky.social · 01/10/2026The American planning profession gave up on actually, you know, planning cities in the mid-20 century, in favor of incoherently micromanaging private development to death. Decades of piling rules upon rules, each one developed to react to some perceived harm or grievance, and this is what you get: 0302
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Toronto Star @thestar.com · 01/10/2026Opinion: Those outside the uppermost echelons of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s team see a government that moves quickly, travels everywhere and makes announcements often — but nobody is quite sure how it actually works, beyond whatever part they can reach out and touch, writes the Star's Justin Ling.thestar.comJustin Ling: Who does Mark Carney really listen to? I asked the insiders 4326
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Gavin Schmidt @climateofgavin.bsky.social · 02/10/2026Not only are the flat earthers wrong, they are getting wronger by the day. 634970
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 30/09/2026My most radical take is that TOD is a scam invented by single-family home preservationists to find a scientifically sound way to concentrate "those people" is specific areas outside of where real people live, and urbanists have embraced it because it's better than nothing. 1413217
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Like, regulations that establish decreasing density at arbitrary distances from higher-order transit stations are pure political compromises, with no scientific evidence, and a caricature of how market forces work (or how laypeople think they work). 49012
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Marco Chitti @chittimarco.bsky.social · 30/09/2026The idea that planning should mandate, through regulations, an urban form that mimics market forces (higher demand induced by better accessibility along high-capacity rail, which translates into higher densities) is one of the silliest yet most persistent tropes our profession has produced. 412019
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Justin Ling @justinling.ca · 01/10/2026I spent the summer trying to understand what makes Mark Carney's government tick. What I found is a C-Suite obsessed with efficiency — which is trying to ignore what's deeply broken. www.thestar.com/opinion/star...thestar.comJustin Ling: Who does Mark Carney really listen to? I asked the insidersIt’s become clear that the prime minister would much rather circumvent problems than fix them. 1622692
Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈 @mikedoherty.ca · 01/10/2026Pathological secrecy -- at every level of government, on every topic -- seems like a bad way to run a free and democratic country. 010
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Oh The Urbanity! @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social · 30/09/2026While this looks transit-oriented, maximizing access to the subway would look more like circles of residential density around each station, rather than one long string of density down the road.pedestrianobservations.comCorridor Zoning is not Transit-Oriented DevelopmentCorridor zoning is a style of development, in which major arterial streets are zoned for high residential and commercial density, while side streets remain zoned for low density, sometimes even for… 31247
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Oh The Urbanity! @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Flying over uptown Toronto (North York), with its corridor of towers along the Yonge Street subway, and density that sharply drops off one or two streets back. 914912
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Brent Toderian @brenttoderian.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Your city could embrace a patio/street seating culture if it really wanted to. You don’t have to be like Paris to do better, you just have to WANT to do better. Between now and next summer, your city could put in place everything it needs to transform streets as people-places. So do you want to? 612829
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Terri @terriclarke.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Most of the surge occurred between late 2021 and late 2023 when asking rents rose in most cities, “notably in Halifax”. “Regulations and other local constraints on development can limit the pace at which housing supply expands, causing demand pressures to translate mainly into higher asking rents”bankofcanada.caWhy asking rents have surged in Canada since 2021Renting has become significantly more expensive in Canada in recent years. Asking rents—those advertised for vacant units—rose sharply as demand grew faster than supply. As tenants move and sign new l... 2276
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Leo Spalteholz @leospalteholz.bsky.social · 30/09/2026There’s a set of NIMBYs that are convinced that councillors are in the pockets of developers. Ironically the best way to ensure that doesn’t happen is to allow a lot more housing by right. Potential for bribes aside, a good housing regulatory environment allows even total assholes to build housing 0111
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Colleen @cbailey6.bsky.social · 30/09/2026Don't forget that this was the handpicked Chair of Ontario's housing "plan" implementation team. In case you are wondering how we got here. news.ontario.ca/en/release/1... 1186
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Peter Norton @norton.bsky.social · 29/09/2026One hundred years ago, Chicago coordinated the traffic signal timings at 49 intersections in the Loop district. The hard-earned but long-forgotten lessons of this innovation are as valuable to us in 2026 as they were in 1926. Instead we keep learning our lessons the hard way. 2184
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Max Dubler 🏳️🌈 @maxdubler.com · 28/09/2026So-called “inclusionary zoning,” the practice of requiring home builders to rent new apartments at a loss to low-income tenants, is a tax on new housing that worsens the housing shortage and raises rents overall in exchange for a handful of means-tested units. It’s bad policy!thecooldown.comGreater Boston builders say affordable-unit rules stall housing, but Boston won't budgeDevelopers and city leaders across Greater Boston are clashing over whether affordable-housing requirements are helping address the region's housing shortage. 1729841
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Mike Masnick @masnick.com · 28/09/2026Oh wow! Again, seeing more people realizing the power of atproto/Atmosphere to rebuild a better, more distributed internet with fewer chokepoints (not just as a new way to do microblogging) is important... 25314
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Will Stancil @whstancil.bsky.social · 28/09/2026A great illustration of the way social media has essentially shredded society’s informational immune system: The USSR spent a fortune trying to spread conspiracy theories, without success because they couldn’t crack newsrooms. Today, you can reach the globe with a post that costs $20 to make. 13842229
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Mark Shaw 🇨🇦✌️🇪🇺 @markshawtoronto.bsky.social · 27/09/2026What if we had a European Union but for Provinces 1586
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈rev. howard arson @theophite.bsky.social · 27/09/2026one trillion liters of water is less than the dairy and beef industry uses in one day 2659560
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Colleen @cbailey6.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Finally, a Premier with the courage to ask: do people really need housing *in* the cities where their jobs are? Why not simply commute for three hours a day so that Christine can continue to imagine she lives in a small village? 26713
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Housing Affordability Task Force (Advocate) @housingforce.bsky.social · 27/09/2026What do I think about “blanket” zoning? Like, when you only allow detached single family homes in residential neighborhoods? I think blanket zoning like that limits choice and overall housing supply, pushing up rents, forcing people to live farther away from work so they lose out on family time. 0124
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Oliver Moore @oliver-moore.bsky.social · 26/09/2026Because Ontario hasn’t done property tax reassessments *in a decade* some people are paying way more than they should and others way less. It’s grossly unfair 161
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Urban Truth Collective @urbantruth.bsky.social · 26/09/2026They tried their best to make the idea of having more things we want nearby, more options and choices in our cities and neighborhoods, seem like a conspiracy. But never forget what the REAL urban conspiracy has been — moving everything further away and making us car dependent. #1HourCityConspiracy 414752
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Alex Bozikovic @alexbozikovic.bsky.social · 26/09/2026This is now the middle of a city-region of 7.5 million. In any reasonable planning scenario, this pocket of houses would be getting high-density redevelopment to match what's happening 400m away. (The current compromise, allowing high-end townhouses, will lock in lowrise for generations.) 1345
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Alex Bozikovic @alexbozikovic.bsky.social · 26/09/2026The complaints are, as always, a bunch of nothing. This joke of a letter by architect Daniel Cowling complains the new houses are too big to fit the old zoning. But their house is way too big for that zoning too, and right against the property line. 2444
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Alex Bozikovic @alexbozikovic.bsky.social · 26/09/2026An elderly couple doesn't like the new housing going up next door. So what? This is not news. They'll suffer minor inconvenience. But no one is forcing them to move. And they have the freedom to sell their big multimillion-dollar house and live comfortably elsewhere.cbc.caToronto needs more homes. These neighbours say they're paying the price | CBC NewsAn elderly downtown couple says they’re shocked and upset that the city has approved a duplex next door to their three-story Victorian home that they say will tower metres above their chimney and rend... 610417
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈PAIGE! @paige.canadiancivil.com · 26/09/2026Wholesale(Infrastructure) and retail splits in markets that have concentrated or natural monopolies is a great policy solution. This would be done in #Canada in numerous sectors if the government was actually serious about economic development […]masto.canadiancivil.comOriginal post on masto.canadiancivil.com 031
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 26/09/2026But at least now we'll build the passenger cars that go slow, get stopped by leaves on the tracks, and often have to wait for freight to go by before moving at all. 4372
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 26/09/2026Canada has train service that is not only considerably worse than most comparable rich countries; it is considerably worse than many much poorer countries. 2467
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 26/09/2026If only passenger train service was functional in this country... 57410
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Eric Lombardi (EricForOLP.ca) @ericlombardi.ca · 25/09/2026It's time to end Ontario's era of "Tall and Sprawl". Our archaic building code rules have resulted in housing that is uglier, more expensive, and with fewer units that make sense for families. By changing the rules, we can build communities more beautifully and affordably. 14911
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 26/09/2026it's literally this yeah. data centers are something like less than 1%. agriculture is ~40% (varies on how you count environmental water use, etc etc). like 'in the top ten industrial uses of water' is that one spiders Georg meme. it's not really a very meaningful fact. 9995
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈William B. Fuckley @opinionhaver.bsky.social · 25/09/2026Top ten industrial use is maybe technically true but meaningless substantively. Water is agriculture and everything else. 724816
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Colleen @cbailey6.bsky.social · 23/09/2026Toronto doesn't need a volcano. We have a heritage register where councillors bulk list hundreds of properties at a time with the stated aim of making the city into a "live museum" (actual councillor quote) instead of letting new people live here. 6379
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Emmett Macfarlane 🇨🇦 @emmettmacfarlane.com · 25/09/2026As others point out, Ontario is not too different. Ford is an unbelievably bad premier, even if he is a bit less evil than Smith, and yet Ontarians shrug and re-elect his party. 69226
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Melissa Bowman @dtkmelissa.bsky.social · 25/09/2026"The value of cities is not merely that they concentrate people and transactions. It is that they create a shared world: places where strangers encounter one another, where ideas circulate, and where commerce emerges from proximity and exchange." buff.ly/TAK6afkbuff.lyOpinion: Welcome to the age of the land grab: How can we balance great power with great responsibility?Taking property to build big things is not a simple story of heroes vs. villains. Are we ready for a hard conversation about the powers of our (sometimes) friendly neighbourhood governments? 061
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈Oh The Urbanity! @ohtheurbanity.bsky.social · 24/09/2026The case of Canadian ICC judge Kimberly Prost being debanked by the United States — having her credit cards and online accounts frozen — shows why Canada, Europe, and others need to develop their own financial systems outside of US control.cbc.caANALYSIS | As Canada deepens ties with Europe, could it leave U.S. banks and dollars behind? | CBC NewsPrime Minister Mark Carney last week pointed to international payments as a system that "can be used as leverage against you" before telling the EU that he sees this as an area for "deep co-operation.... 213832
Reposted by Mike Doherty 🇨🇦 🏳️🌈David Roberts @volts.wtf · 24/09/2026Abandon hope for democracy, all ye who enter here. 816724