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Category: INTERNATIONAL
TAXI NEWS OCCURING OVERSEAS BUT NOT IN CANADA OR USA
Safety of the travelling public is key in the vehicle for hire industry and the vehicle’s mechanical inspection plays an important role. As a reminder, all vehicles set up and licensed by Vehicle for Hire Services for Taxi, Limousine and Transportation Network Companies must provide a valid mechanical inspection, regardless of vehicle age or kilometers, as per Livery Transport Bylaw 20M2021 :
Regards,
Dawn Unsworth
Leader, Court Coordination & Vehicle-For-Hire Licensing EMCS, Public Vehicle Standards
Today’s millennials who are young and prosperous are forced to spend half their working lives saving barely enough―if anything at all, for a reasonable down payment on their first home at a time when they are starting a family―an injustice of the first order.
There are two sources of the crisis, namely speculation and the way in which home purchases are financed.
Our present legislation fails to take into account that incomes vary throughout the life of the mortgage leaving occupants vulnerable to foreclosures and eviction. There is only one way to deal with the problem: payments must vary with income whether the banks or landlords like it or not―to wit, a floating mortgage or rent where payments are pegged to a fixed percentage of a buyer’s income over the life of the mortgage.
Here’s how it would work:
The cost of a dwelling whether rented or purchased must always be pegged by law to a fixed percentage of a dweller’s current income irrespective of any positive or negative change in his income. In a word, a floating payment plan for a person’s residence. If a person’s income rises his payment would automatically rise with it or decrease should his income decline.
So how could we achieve this? We would begin with legislation that prohibits the use of a down payment of any kind whatsoever and apply the entire cost to a floating mortgage where the amount applied to the outstanding principle would be set at a fixed percentage of the buyer’s income. Interest charges would not be allowed to exceed applications to the principle which would float with the buyer’s income. Hence, any increase in the buyer’s income would shorten the life of the mortgage while income reduction or interruption would lengthen the life of the mortgage.
Such an arrangement will easily put the dream of home ownership within the reach of even the poorest of the poor and eliminate the threat of homelessness flowing from the unforeseen such as job loss or illness.
Any politician who works the foregoing into his platform will undoubtedly be ushered into public office in a political landslide.
All that is required on the part of governments is political will.
I often call this the HELSINKI FORMULA on the housing crisis where homelessness is literally unknown due to it’s HOUSING FIRST policy on coping with poverty.
Before covid vaccinations became available, truckers, like soldiers in wartime, took the calculated risk of infection by transporting vital goods and food across the country and stateside. Many truckers were casualties throughout 2020, and as such are our heroes.
As Justin Trudeau is undoubtedly aware, 90% of the truckers promptly got vaccinated as soon as possible. He is also aware that the remaining 10% who for one reason or another, chose to continue working with the calculated risk of an already abating chance of infection and giving it to others.
All the foregoing leads to the next question: Given that the freight transportation system already in place was working rather well, why in blazes did the prime minister find it necessary to force truckers loaded with Canadian bound goods from the U.S. into two weeks of isolation and thereby reducing available trucks and cutting their meager incomes in half.
In other words, both U.S and Canadian governments chose to cut a trucker’s already meager income in half if he should dare carry a load across the border.
Forced isolation was the spark that ignited the truckers’ revolt and the Freedom Convoys crossing North America and elsewhere. It is the product of a growing culture of elitism with society’s failing leadership of all political stripes.
For example, Ottawa’s cab drivers must cope with substantial broker’s fees and usurious insurance premiums notwithstanding the refusal of their brokers to allow their drivers to work. The City of Ottawa — the same city locked down by the Freedom Bear Hug convoy, responded to their concerns with their usual big yawn and empathy as they listen to truckers honk their horns.
To end the Ottawa standoff, all the prime minister had to do was follow the example of the 14 year old King Richard ll who in June 1381 met with the peasants who were far more dangerous than today’s truckers, face to face and listen to them voice their concerns and proposals as that young King had done 600 years ago. He even put in writing his acceptance of all the peasants’ proposals which are now in the British archives.
The establishment’s culture of elitism is the source of the current truckers’ uprising and that has got to change.
