Is it plausible? I wouldnt give these people the benefit of the doubt. In Canada we also have the emergency powers ... so if we had a war we would already have the "weaponry".
Emergency powers don't give you ability to unwind time and not buy Huawei equipment in the past. This bill appears to almost entirely be about allowing the government to exercise control over the telecommunications supply chain... which is certainly necessary if you want the ability to defend yourself against people who would otherwise be in that supply chain.
Hasnt this already been done in Canada? Without this bill? Without the secrecy?
The nature of the bill is that a minister can remove services from specified person without any interaction with due process. They can also make this directive secret indefinitely. Is such power required? Could it be abused?
No. The government has tried to get telecoms to remove Huawei equipment. They have successfully resisted. This bill appears to exist in large part to change that, specifically.
This bill does not allow the minister to remove services from any specified person. It allows the minister to order telecoms stop receiving services from specified persons (i.e. huawei). It allows the minister to put conditions on, but not remove, services the telecoms provide to a person.
I agree I wish there were more limits on the secrecy portion.
I dont think Canadians are worried about sections in the bill targeting foreign actors or even equipment. I think Canadians are worried about the sections that suggests individuals (citizens) can be denied access to telecommunications by a secret order of their government stemming from the decision of a single minister.
Every law is always wrapped in a package of anti-terrorism, cyber security, or protect the kids. This is a given. Let us not pretend not to know whats going on here.
Jam resistant comms are critical for drones, and other precision weapons and their infrastructure. Even if line of sight is interrupted modern drones can return to signal nowadays, relay information, and return to target with corrections. You may not need optical cable anymore
Missiles generally go from point A and then blow up point b. Are there any missiles that leave base, fly around for a bit trying to identify targets, and if they can't identify any targets then return home?
I said that somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but the line between "drone" and "missile" seems to have gotten pretty blurry with the Ukraine war featuring FPV drones holding a hand grenade that are effectively a human-piloted missile.
Some modern missiles can fly around to identify targets, but they can't return home. They can blow up harmlessly if nothing is a target, though. They can also dodge and weave the way FPV pilots do.
Obviously, "drone" has a much more expansive mission profile than "missile."
Missle is a projectile, propelled by rocket motor. Drone is an aircraft vehicle, capable of transporting explosives or whatever. There is a fat line between drone and a missile, there are different in everything: control, speed, trajectory, weight, flying principles. I don't know how you can say they are even close. Just because both fly and do boom? Then you can say there is a thin line between cow launched from catapult and a missile.
The term you're looking for is loitering munitions. From Wikipedia: "Some loitering munitions may return and be recovered by the operator if they are unused in an attack and have enough fuel"
It might reduce property prices, but affordability would be adversely affected. The change would require the same cash flow from buyers. Instead of the costs being on a basis of mostly on high-stability mortgage loan rates, some of the required cash flow moves to a basis of insurance rates which are annually bumped (as proposed, now with less or no regulation).
Affordability would be adversely affected in the short term, yes. In the long term, more housing production would be incentivized in less-risky areas. The reduced property prices to come out of this would also mean insurance rates would decrease for them proportionally— insuring for $600k is cheaper than insuring $6m, all else being equal.
On the other hand, affordability will also be adversely affected in the short and long term if nothing changes. Once the moratorium for insurance companies to leave the state is up in about 1 year, and no one can get a mortgage because no insurance providers are left. Banks will not take on the implicit roles of insurers in a no-recourse loan state.
Doing nothing is not an option. The writing is on the wall.
There are no less risky areas left to build into in the Los Angeles area. To build more you have to fight nimbys to change neighborhoods from mostly single family residences and build for density increases.
I agree that doing nothing is an increasingly unviable option
Yes. I live in Los Angeles. Huge swaths of our entire city are ripe for development— the safest areas are often some of the least densely populated, and that needs to change.
And of course, maybe property values in fire-prone areas should fall ! In fact, by not subsidizing them, perhaps the market would eventually restabilize these homes at saner insurance premiums to cover the reduced property value due to the risk.
A $600k home that is sure to burn within 20 years will have a much lower premium than a $6m home in the same location, after all.
Houses are insured for replacement value, not market value.
So, if it costs $6M to rebuild a $600K house due to construction labor shortages and permitting bullshit, you still need to insure for $6M.
It’s basically never a financially good idea to build a house in California, since market value will be below construction cost. (Otherwise, we’d have a housing boom instead of a housing shortage!)
So, decreasing the supply of buildable land (as your proposal would do) will only make housing prices go up.
Worse, all the major cities are prone to flooding and hurricane-force storms thanks to climate change, so we’d need to disallow building there too. That’s on top of earthquake risk.
The market value of almost every single home in the Palisades, as someone with family from there, is due to the location, not the homes themselves.
If the land loses its intrinsic value because it is inherently unsafe, it will be cheaper to buy. Maybe only modest homes get rebuilt because decreased land value cannot support estates anymore, but that is the situation.
> It’s basically never a financially good idea to build a house in California, since market value will be below construction cost
No, I can assure you as someone who has both built and remodeled in Los Angeles, this is not the case. This region is so housing starved that even spending $200k to a convert a 500sqft garage into an ADU (which is extremely high cost per square foot, compared to national averages) immediately increased the property value by almost $400k. The reason Los Angeles has a housing shortage and not a housing boom is entirely self-inflicted: this city has a terrible zoning and NIMBY problem, and the city refuses to meaningfully fix it. Developers would _love_ to build here, if only they could: projects that take 60 days to get permitted in Dallas, TX take 3-5 years here.
> It’s basically never a financially good idea to build a house in California, since market value will be below construction cost.
If that were true, there would be no new construction in California. There is still plenty, although it might not be where you're looking. And much construction isn't happening where you're looking because 1/the land isn't suitable for construction, or 2/zoning rules forbid building housing in such a way that it would be profitable.
Well, with enthusiasm like that it is no wonder China and Russia banned all western social media and are actively trying to replace these services with homegrown. China was first, Russia late to the party, but working on it.
