Search results

The only draw back to credit cards is fees. They already have unmatchable ubiquity and fraud detection. Competition from upstart payment providers and new technologies such as block chain will push those fess down. Interac seems to be a relic from the early 90s. Once ecommerce took off in the...

Because the economist has a track record of failed technocracy. His solution to everything has been stimulus. Technocracy fails due to its hubris in underestimating the unintended consequences of countering market forces.

This election reeks of the myopia of 2021. Tariffs will be as consequential in the long term as vaccine mandates were in the fall of 2021. The real threat, completely ignored, is responding to the US becoming even more attractive to capital. Canada has suffered a massive exodus of capital since...

Calgary Transit picked, the cheapest, best and most future proof method for managing payments. It may not have the branding allure of cleverly named stored values cards, but it works.

But why? Reloading fares through a phone app can be done anywhere so don't need a convenience store network or kiosks. The gamut of stores that would accept credit cards has got to be orders of magnitude larger than those that would accept reloadable cards. Credit cards and mobile phones are...

I use Clipper a lot in the Bay Area and it is a disaster. Kiosks are out of service or won't read credit cards, the tap terminals are broken, adding funds online imposes a several hour lag, transferring balances between cards or to Google Wallet seems to fail more often than it works, leading to...

The QR code system used in Calgary is far superior to a reloadable card as it doesn't require access to kiosks to distribute or reload cards, doesn't impose a delay on waiting for funds to show up on a card and doesn't have to deal with overdrawn cards. Most importantly, it uses low cost...

The Saddledome site was previously an amusement park called Funtier World. It had a waterpark, ball room, obstacle course and potato sack slide. Admission was $2, $1 if you clipped a coupon from the Herald Comics section.

Probably true. Both the industry and the Alberta government waited too long to push back against environmental activist overreach. It took too long, but at least eNGO are finally getting their just rewards...

If someone has access to the Calgary Herald archives, there is an article from around Sep-1995 detailing a multi-highrise proposal for the site designed by Manu Chugh. The city had recently done some grading on the downslope between the rec center and the community that allegedly reduced flood...

Alberta accounted for almost half of national population growth: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1710000901 Quarterly Growth Quarterly Growth Percentage Percentage of Total Growth Newfoundland and Labrador -301 -0.06% -0.47% Prince Edward Island -21 -0.01%...

I remember high rise proposals for that site from the mid 90's

I remember high rise proposals for that site from the mid 90's

Biden, Obama, Trudeau and the governments of BC and Quebec were greater threats to Alberta's economy than Trump

Not from a net perspective

Federal spending or hiring in Calgary does not change electoral outcomes. Federal spending or hiring in Toronto, and most of Canada, does. Regardless of party in charge. The Feds could reduce demand for housing by reducing the capital entering the housing market. If, for example, CHMC would...

The feds won't fund many buses for Calgary Transit regardless of City policy, yet they will fund buses for the TTC even if Toronto does not take on NIMBYs.

Reduce demand

It has nothing to do with the governing party. Trudeau's drawn out resignation and prorogation left the country vulnerable. Even if the prorogation hadn't happened, Canada would have had a lame duck government with which the US government would have no motivation to negotiate. The Liberals...

People blame the Feds for pumping up population growth. They should blame the Feds for enabling excessive capital to flow into housing: allowing high LTV mortgages extending amortizations allowing unrealized real estate gains to be used as down payments on additional real estate purchases...