When people ask me where my parents live, my answer is almost always invariably met with a blank stare.

“Elliot Lake?”

“Yeah,” I’d reply. “You know where Sudbury is?”

“Ummm, kinda. Do people go skiing there?”

“Yeah, I suppose. More likely they go to mine minerals there. Iron, copper, that kinda thing.”

“Uh huh.”

“Well, you go to Sudbury, then head an additional two hours or so north and west. That’s Elliot Lake.”

“How far is that from Toronto?”

“I guess anywhere from seven to nine hours depending on traffic and weather.”

*surprised whistle* “Is it nice?”

“Yeah. If you like bears and hiking. In the winter they do a lot of ice fishing.”

“Sounds like cottage country. Muskokas.”

“Yeah … no. It’s pretty wild up there. Civilization is mostly a strip-mall type deal named the Algo Centre. Beyond that, it’s all trees and lakes and logging roads.”

Basically, people have never heard of it let alone be able to place it on a map. That is, of course, until recently. Now most Ontarians have at least a rough idea of where the infamous mall is located.

My parents are still trying to convince me to move to their community — apparently uranium mining is about to take off again and there are going to be jobs galore!

That’s a definite maybe on that one.

Kinda reminds me of all this spam I’ve been receiving lately that starts off with, “I was awake at 4:30 again this morning as usual…”; you know, the one from Ilsa Beauregard or Brian Stainhousman or Georgina Whatsamopolous telling me what a great investment they’ve discovered or how they’ve defied ageing or how they’ve managed to extend their penis by 10.3% and erectile rigidity to superhuman levels.

Except this time it’s me that’s awake and this one particular vision of blogging at my desk keeps running through me head — I’m sitting at my dining table (which is now permanently my work table), it’s a golden late afternoon outside with gilded shafts slicing the air of my downtown apartment behind me, and I’m blogging about the day’s events on TCL. I haven’t discovered any great new investment product, am still the same age (and getting older), and am fairly satisfied with my boners. And I’m happy.

And I realized I missed this.

I mean, there’s definitely a place for hard-hitting political commentary and well-deserved Ford bashing, and I have other blogs where I can broadcast my programming prowess or disgust with modern events around the globe, but I can’t help but wonder what the hell happened to me.

For some mysterious reason the Twitter account is now at an unhealthily large number of followers, I’m blessed with a modicum of financial stability, and lord knows my life is more interesting and unpredictable now than it ever was when TCL started.

And why did I start TCL again? When I go back to post number one about New Year’s Eve at Nathan Phillips Square, there’s the prototype for what I had intended should I ever get to this day. And here I am, and it feels like I’m wasting a great opportunity. At least that’s why my brain seems to be keeping me up at 4:30 in the morning.

Yeah, it’s true that life today is in some ways more challenging than it used to be. The various projects that come my way professionally have me keeping vampiric hours which sometimes include weekends, and Sarah’s MS keeps me occupied in a bunch of ways. I’ve hardly mentioned her at all but she’s such a large part of my life (in a great way). I also now have another cat, a little black hellion named Bitty, who vies for my attention along with the ever-hungry Ollie.

And although it’s sometimes hard to get behind the keyboard, what with all the extra side projects I decided to heap onto my already overfull plate, I just can’t seem to shake that feeling that this is exactly where I should be at this time of the day. Well, hopefully I’ll be better-rested in the future when I decide to write again, but you get the idea. No gimmicks, no filler, no photos for the sake of photos, just Toronto City Life.

So welcome, once again, dear reader. It’s nice to be back.

Unfortunately, I don’t know who wrote this Pastebin entry about the Toronto and Vancouver real estate markets, but it’s a salient and seemingly well-researched piece, certainly better than the vast majority of so-called “news” sites out there anyways.

I’ve copied it here in its entirety and would love to be able to attribute it to whoever wrote it (if you know, drop me a line!).

The real estate market everywhere will be in turmoil by September. The bankers know it. The realtors smell it. The sheeple have no idea what’s coming.

Investor and consumer behaviour’s been irrational. Your friends, relatives and the people at work have been employing leverage on a scale not seen since the 1920s to speculate that assets already priced at record levels will go higher. Net worth has been consolidated in houses, as it was in stocks prior to the Great Depression and in US real estate before the GFC. The consequences will be the same. F knows this. It’s why the hammer dropped two weeks ago. Too late.

An astonishing number of people are about to be turned into crispy critters by something they see as safe and benign. A whack of them lined up outside a new Vancouver-area condo development called Cambie+7 a few days ago – the latest reminder of the lust we saw weeks ago north of Toronto when people stormed a sales centre and bought million-dollar homes in five minutes.

Here they are:

What they’re buying: Lilliputian units (less than 600 feet), in an unbuilt structure in a regional city with a declining real estate market for an average of $710 a square foot. Why? Two reasons. “Proven value appreciation,” says the developer. “Condos in the area went up 35% in the last three years.” So, of course, they’ll go up forever. Second, a 5% deposit – putting rank speculation on a $500,000 asset within the grasp of anyone with $25,000.

By the way, here’s what half a million (including closing costs) gets you:

That real estate is troubled will become apparent to everyone in a few months. For those who care to look now, the cracks are widening. Quite apart from the public delusion mentioned above, Vancouver (for example) is unraveling. In the next day or so the real estate board will try to caramelize and fluff the latest ugly set of numbers. But June was a disaster, as this pathetic blog told you would happen.

Sales of detached houses crashed 37%
Prices have declined for four consecutive months, the first such occurrence in 16 years.
The average SFH has lost almost 13% of its value, likely one-third or less of what’s coming.
Condo sales were down 20%. Prices were down 6% in a single month.
Listings of detached homes have exploded higher 27% over this time a year ago.
But this is not a Vancouver story. It will define economic lives in every significant community. Prices could actually revert to the mean, which historically places the cost of owning a house close to that of renting the same digs. By this measure houses in Toronto and Vancouver are overvalued by about half. You can just imagine the consequences.
Bankers can. That elfin deity known as F tried to calm jittery Bay Street nerves with a conference call on Friday, addressing head-on fears that slashing the amortization rate and curtailing lending will crash housing. It didn’t work. “We are prepared to take that risk, quite frankly, because of the greater risk of the development over time of a housing bubble,” he said. “I realize it may have some dampening effect on the economy and I realize it may have some dampening effect in the residential real estate market.”

For their part bankers are uncharacteristically speaking out. As RBC’s head of banking told a Globe reporter, “This is not like turning a Ferrari. This is like a big ship. And it takes a while to turn. And sometimes if you over steer, you can’t re-steer the other way.”

It’s all just beginning. The odds of us having a soft landing, as I detailed last week, are fading daily. One on hand the lenders, agents, developers, brokers and bankers understand what just happened and where it’s leading. On the other, idiot buyers, popped on leverage, are embracing deals they see as riskless.

When the facts emerge, expect chaos at the exits.

Fordo does it again!

It’s bad enough to set the example that it’s okay to flagrantly break driving laws and talk on a cell phone while behind the wheel, but now His Ascended Fattiness has been caught driving past open streetcar doors on Toronto streets while passengers were boarding. Anyone who lives in the city knows that streetcars can’t come to the curb so drivers must stop to let passengers on.

Of course, this law doesn’t apply to the mayor who apparently gets to plow through anyone he chooses because he’s Rob Fucking Ford! How do I know it doesn’t apply? Simply because, despite having words with the streetcar operator, Ford once again got away without so much as the measly $109 fine. There was a streetcar full of witnesses, and it’s unlikely that most of them wouldn’t recognize our Illustrious Thickness at this point, so why the fuck aren’t the police charging him with breaking the law?

And what was Fucking Ford’s response? He’s apparently the one that “had comments” for the TTC operator and then lodged a goddamn complaint against him for having the gall to confront him! And Ford’s lapdog, Andy Byford, has said that he can’t comment on the complaint because,  “In the same way as normally we wouldn’t comment on specifics around a customer complaint, I’m not going to on this occasion.” Really, Andy? Last time I checked, Rob Ford was in his van or whatever the hell he drives, and not on the TTC, and hence not a customer. In fact, when was the last time Ford squeezed his fat ass onto public transit?

So in the long run, does it matter at all that the mayor once again brazenly broke the law, chided the operator for calling him on it, and then instead of trying to do the right thing tried to get the operator fired?

“As far as we’re concerned the matter is closed,” TTC spokesman Brad Ross said. “We’re not going to comment on the incident.”

Hooray! Another day of justice for Toronto.

In Google’s latest transparency report there was a minor note about how Passport Canada had requested to ban a YouTube video featuring a passport being pissed on and flushed down the toilet. I’ve tried looking for the video but can’t seem to find it, suggesting that maybe the government had used other means to have the offending material removed.

I can only imagine that the government would’ve use the “passports are government property” excuse as a basis for this, yet considering the fact that a passport is required to both leave and re-enter Canada, to claim that they can control a person’s actions using a passport as a threat (if they can have a video banned, why stop there?), this would go directly against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms Mobility Rights clause as well as the Fundamental Freedoms portion. And since this is the highest law in the land, this is a pretty clear-cut example of the government breaking the fundamental laws governing the country, or at least coming very very close. Will anyone be held to account for this? How about a mild reprimand? Maybe a stern nod?

Originally posted at: http://patrickbay.ca/blog/?p=4081

I know I’ve spent a lot of time pissing on the Conservatives and Harper, but it’s become exceedingly obvious that the Liberals are just more of the same, the same broken system of bipartisanship designed to keep us all arguing on the ground instead of looking at the houses of power and seeing the truth of the corruption and lies being peddled there.

I say this because of Dalton McGuinty’s latest revelation that his budget, which he wants the NDP to guarantee in writing to vote for, includes a section that would privatize ServiceOntario. In case you’re wondering what this agency does, here’s a quick rundown of everything that would fall into private hands:

• Driver’s licenses, plates, and stickers
• Birth certificates and newborn registrations
• Death certificates
• Marriage certificates
• Business licenses
• Personal property liens
• Hunting and fishing licenses
• Government address registrations

All this even as, in the same budget, McGuinty’s government boasts about how they’ve saved $1.5 billion last year. So how do they justify it? With the claim that Canada is poor because of the 2009 recession, and we need to cut cut cut! This is probably thanks to Harper (may I have a second helping, sir?), even though the Liberal’s own website strongly suggests this is not the case.

In any event, the Libs are holding up the construction and almost immediate sale of highway 407 as the type of resounding success that privatization can bring. I’m sure anyone who takes the 407 is familiar with just how amazing it is to be under the yoke of a private agency that can revoke your driving privileges. And wasn’t it the Libs who took the 407 to court to try to break that contract? And, what a wonderful example to hold up anyways…the fact that it cost over $100 billion to build, land acquisitions and all, and was sold for just over $3 billion for a quick $1.5 billion “profit” for the Conservatives that wasn’t really a profit at all.

Look, I get it, all of you who have been calling these people “Fiberals” have, I admit, been far too kind about your monickers, but just don’t delude yourselves that by being on the other side (ergo the Conservatives), is any better. The government at all levels (I’m sure I’ve mentioned my municipal government more than once), seems hell bent on robbing citizens blind for the benefit of the banks. A global deficit, after all, is impossible if the same money lent out is what’s owed — that’s just elementary logic. The only way that the whole world can owe an approximate $200 trillion is if someone either stole that amount, or loaned it out fraudulently (they never had it to begin with), and is now expecting payback. And I dunno know about you, but the government only ever takes my money, never gives me any, so I sure as hell wasn’t on the receiving end of any such “loan”.

The fact that politicians are all mentioning that the “new” deficit is going to come from Europe where it was caused by banks lending out money they didn’t have (with much help by Government laws and regulations), and then expecting payback for cash literally created out of thin air (look up “fractional reserve banking” if you need an explanation), indicates a strong collusion, probably even big kickbacks (but how would we know? The banks control the money supply!) Besides, haven’t governments been handing over taxpayer money to the banks by the billions to solve this “problem”? How’s that been working out?

So doesn’t it just make perfect sense to go in exactly this direction more and more? Then, when we can’t pay our “debts” anymore, the banks can just privatize everything and then get ready for some genuine old-school slavery (or feudalism if you like, and if we’re lucky). And the government can be expected to back them all the way.

I recently had a situation where one of the cheques I wrote bounced. Happens. But what I discovered as a result shocked and upset me.

They’re charging me $42.50 for a bounced cheque!

For starters, I wanted to know who I could contact about my bank. I visited the OBSI website and discovered that my institution decided it just simply didn’t want to participate anymore. According to OBSI, this means:

Unfortunately, some financial services providers are not covered by an ombudsman service.You may have to contact a government department or regulator if you are dealing with a mortgage broker, insurance broker, financial planner or other service which is not covered by an ombudsman.  Some resources to help you can be found in our Useful Websites.

Didn’t help much except to give me the TD Ombudsman’s email address. So I shot off an email:

Hello Mr. XXX,

I’ve recently managed to run into an NSF situation with my chequing account due to an error on my part. I noticed that the NSF fee has been increased to $42.50, a sum I don’t recall ever being informed about. In regards to NSF fees, I have a couple of questions and a complaint to make:

Questions

1. How does BANK determine the fee of $42.50? This value seems incredibly high and fairly arbitrary considering most of the clearing process is completely automated (it would seem that the only costs incurred would be for the electricity consumed and perhaps the decreasing cost of the computer equipment involved).
2. What is BANK’s responsibility in informing customers in NSF fee increases? And what are the repercussions to BANK for simply arbitrarily setting any fees it likes – what laws govern this? I’m presuming the standard placations that BANK “wouldn’t do that” (a need to retain customers, fairness, etc. etc.), but given that this is precisely what is being done, not to mention my own experiences and knowledge working behind the scenes at financial transaction networks, I would appreciate a forthright explanation.

Complaint

Banks, including BANK (I believe), currently charge the depositor for NSF as well ($20 is my understanding). This fee seems exceptionally egregious since the depositor has absolutely no control over what funds may or may not be in the cheque issuer’s account. This is similar to mobile phone companies who had been charging customers for receiving text messages – when there is no option or ability to refuse – or even know about impending charges — the courts have found such behaviour to be unlawful and has resulted in large fines. From my point of view, the banks seem to be engaging in this practice as well, and it becomes worse when it’s done by a bank where both the cheque issuer and the depositor both have an account – the bank is in the sole position to know that a cheque will be returned NSF and allows for no recourse, thereby seemingly simply taking money from account holders as it likes. And after exacting such exorbitant fees, the bank does not see fit to offer any services that might benefit their customers in such situations, seemingly chalking up the money extracted as nothing more than profits to be shared among shareholders. Is this accurate? And if it’s not, please offer an explanation.

I have a few other points of contention with bank operations but I would like to start with these.

Thanks for your time and attention.

 

Sincerely,
Patrick Bay

In hindsight I realized I’d unintentionally fibbed a bit — I do get notices that my bank account is being changed, by mail — but it still seems pretty unsavoury that they can just up their fees (note how they never go down), at any time by simply telling you they’re going to do it. It’s kind of like making theft legal so long as the robber lets you know he’ll be dropping by next Tuesday.

And I do feel pretty strongly about calling it theft based on the escalating NSF fees that banks charge, not only to me, but more to the person on the receiving end. Seriously, $20 for receiving a cheque that bounces? As I point out in my letter, mobile carriers did this to consumers with text messages, and the law wisely said that we can’t possibly held accountable for something that’s completely out of our control and even knowledge.

In any event, I can’t help but feel jaded by the knowledge that even though we have a Consumer Protection Act, financial services and banks seem to be completely omitted from it (a.k.a. they’re the only business that the CPA doesn’t really want you to know about). And, sadly, the Bank Act doesn’t do a whole heck of a lot on protecting customers either, though it does spell out all sort of insane rights that no individual would ever have.

Yes, it’s true that I did work behind the scenes at a financial transaction network and saw exactly where most of the bank fees go — into the bankers’ pockets. I sure as heck didn’t get rich working there, and on an average night, a financial institution would walk away with between $1000 to $2000 in pure profit (after I’d been paid, rent was covered, etc.) And this was a tiny side-network of small credit unions that were connected to Interac and decades ago; I can’t imagine the level of skimming on just standard transaction on any given day on something like the whole Interac network or Plus today.

Do you remember what the banks promised to everyone when ATMs were just starting to be rolled out to the public? “Oh, it’ll make things cheaper! Now you won’t have to pay for a teller and all of your transactions will be much smaller!” Yeah, $1.50 to $3.00 a transaction — MUCH cheaper. That was just the beginning of the wholesale lie.

When banks complain that they’re the most regulated industry out there, maybe it’s because they need to be. Maybe because they’re the most crooked, the most in need of control. Maybe as consumers we need take control back since the government seems only too happy to give it away, and the banks are only too happy to abuse it.

The song on the P.A. system in the shop was Ozzy Osbourne’s “Crazy Train”. The place was Smoke’s Poutinerie, a tiny hole in the wall serving the generally agreed-upon definitive Canadian food consisting of fried potatoes topped with cheese curds and gravy. The recipe is pretty simple and Smoke’s doesn’t deviate too much except to add things like beef, peas, or other fitting toppings.

I stick with the tried and true peppercorn beef — sliced beef with a peppercorn gravy. Except that tonight it would be a large, for me and Sarah, with less gravy on her half.

Seemed pretty simple.

I gave my order, including two cokes and a plastic bag, to the bespectacled fellow manning the cash register and he cheerful acknowledged. After hovering over the register for what seemed like five minutes he finally managed to type in my instructions, but not before the guy in the kitchen, overhearing my request for half the gravy on half, managed to toss out some jibe about filling half a pool with only half the water.

Whatever.

I stood back for a bit, remarking on my luck at being the only one in the place. And before I could blink, my order was on the counter. Great!

“Close it up for you?”, asked cash register guy, pointing at the opened paper box of poutine.

“Umm, is that a peppercorn beef?”, I asked, noticing a complete absence of any beef on the meal. Usually the beef sits conspicuously on the top so it was hard to miss.

“Yup!”, replied register.

“And are you sure this is a large?”, I asked again, noticing that this was definitely not the large box.

“Oh, umm, you wanted a large?”, said cash register.

“Yeah, I said. But you know what? If you wanna just dump this into a large box and top it up, we can call it a day.”

This really stumped cash register guy. He stood there for a very long time, finger on his lips, deciding how best to handle the situation.

“Are you sure?”, he asked, “I only have a regular on this order.”

“Pretty sure”, I replied. “It’s for two people. But like I said, if you wanna put it into a big box and charge me the difference, I’ll by on my way.”

At this point the guy in the kitchen piped up. “How about I just put it into another regular box? If I dumped it into a big box, it wouldn’t taste as it was intended.”

“Sure”, I shrugged my shoulders, “why not?”

Back to register; “Okay? Great, so I’ll just charge you for another regular one then.”

“Umm, no”, I retorted. “I just want one large one. We can’t eat two and it’s more than I was expecting to spend.”

“Okay, so, umm, hang on a sec”, said cash register, holding up a finger. “Okay, so I’ll just charge you the difference, an extra two dollars, and we’ll get you a large one. Sound good?”

“I mean, sure, I guess. But it’s really no bother if you want to just take this one here and stick it into a large box and top it up. Really.”

“No, that’s okay. We’ll get you two regulars and charge you for a large”, replied kitchen guy, clearly the one in charge of the place.

Fine by me.

A few more minutes went by and poutine number two emerged. Except this one looked startingly different from number one — it had copious helpings of shaved beef and mushrooms (as it should).

Register held them both up to examine them. With a puzzled look on his face he remarked that they don’t look the same.

No they don’t, I said.

He called out to kitchen guy, asking if poutine number one was correct.

“What do you mean?”, replied kitchen guy.

“Well, isn’t it supposed to have beef or something on it?”, replied cash register.

I didn’t bother pointing out that I had said this at the beginning. I was really more interested in seeing how this would all play out.

“I can’t see anything from here!”, replied kitchen. “Pass it over.”

Register passed it back through the order window and under the consternated gaze of kitchen who seemed instantly to recognize that half of order number one was absent. In the meantime, I payed the difference.

A couple of additional minutes went buy as kitchen disappear behind the counter. Not sure where he went because it’s only about chest high, but he stayed there for an unnaturally long time.

Then he re-appeared and passed back a completed poutine. Both were slapped on the counter in front of me in a state of glorious completion.

“Close ’em up for you?”, asked cash register once again, beaming a “we finally did it!” smile.

“Sure”, I replied.

He did so with a little trouble (in his defense, those things aren’t easy to close), and slid them in front of me.

“There you go! Sorry for the trouble. Have a great day”, he half-waved.

“Did I order a couple of cokes too?”, I asked, not sure what the hell he’d punched into the register at this point.

“Oh yeah! Let me get those for you…and here we are. Have a good one!”

“Thanks”, I smiled. “Don’t suppose you have that plastic bag back there somewhere too do you?”

“Oh shit!”, blurted out register. He pulled one out and slapped it on the counter, red-faced. I thanked him again, bagged my dinner (at that point I decided it would be asking too much), and left Smoke’s.

“Crazy train” was just finishing up as I left the premises.

As I mentioned in my first PatrickBay.ca audiocast (which I’m itching to pick up again real soon), one of the topics that got me started on this blog was Canada’s version of the NSA, the Communications Security Establishment of Canada or CSEC.

What both fascinates and terrifies me about organizations such as CSEC is the cloak of secrecy under which they operate. While being all undercover makes a certain amount of sense, it also lends itself to a great deal of abuse. The little bit that we can glean from accounts such as Mike Frost’s book Spyworld leaves a very bad taste in my mouth — the agency has no problems spying on even the highest levels of government for undetermined reasons, meaning that none of us peons are excluded from warrantless surveillance.

Where CSEC feels something is out of its jurisdiction it simply asks a foreign security apparatus to pick up, thereby absolving themselves of any wrongdoing, and the whole thing is anonymized and removed from oversight anyways meaning that even if such actions ever came to light they would never be linked to anyone in particular. It’s a free pass to do whatever they please to anyone they like. And such behaviour has been going on for decades — proposed laws such as Lawful Access are merely an attempt to broaden and legitimize it for wholesale use across Canada (and elsewhere).

Continue reading at: http://patrickbay.ca/blog/?p=4048