Numpty

It never goes into detail about the jobs they can't find... what is the barrier they are dealing with? Experience? Expectations too high?

Anecdotal i know but... my brother in law is on the job hunt and there's loads of potential employers calling him back for construction work, entry level jobs in garages, hotels looking to staff up in the summer, etc. He's working on getting his work permit sorted so he's not able to take the job offers yet... certainly seeing a lot though.

Higher interest rates are impacting Canadians in every corner of life. Food costs... mortgages... fuel... they all domino and collapse together. The lack of urgency is directly hurting the vulnerable portion of our society. There's no easy fix. Drop interest rates too fast and you risk pushing inflation back up... don't drop interest rates fast enough and you risk pushing a significant portion of the population into bankruptcy or homelessness (not just home owners... also renters who are forced to absorb that same interest rate hike in the form of higher rents). Within my circle of friends. several have been forced to close businesses because of the impact of the rapid increase in interest rates. It's not the base rate itself, so much as the speed with which it was increased which was faster than their businesses could absorb.

As for mortgage renewals themselves... the insanity of the Canadian system of the typical 5-year renewable mortgages is just plain vanilla stupid. It makes everyone incredibly susceptible to microeconomics instead of averaging out the risk on a macro scale like most other countries do.

No urgency

Meanwhile people are facing financial struggles with stupid high food prices and out of budget mortgage renewals.

Let them eat cake....

The whole "run a business" thing is bonkers. No wonder so many family doctors give up and go do something else.

With that change in the CBC article that you linked... there's hope. My family doctor told us that she's going to retire this year... hopefully there's a replacement or 10 at the clinic so people can start getting that initial care they need and relieve the pressure on the ER :-(

I'm in BC, and technically have a family doctor... and it sucks. My doctor is only seeing patients a couple of days per week, so appointments are currently booking out around 4 months. There's ONE walk-in clinic where I live (Nanaimo), and they take a limited number of patients per day - they put out signs on a Saturday morning like "Only accepting 10 patients today" (I have a photo of this one to prove it). TThe ER is backup up so bad, you could die before they even triage you (18h or longer wait is normal). The staff at the Critical Care unit in the neighboring Parksville yells at you and tells you to go back to Nanaimo (it's happened to both my wife and I at different times... and we both actually needed medical care). We've ended up driving to Port Alberni or Courtenay for medical care... or in my case, I'm travelling for business and have booked a doctor visit in another damn country to get some checkup work done because I can't get it done locally... OK, I can get it, but the local wait times are so fucking long that I can book a flight, fly overseas and see a doctor, get my results and be back home a month before I'd even start the process with my family doctor.

Talkign with the parents at the local school... many are afraid that their kids will catch something... and thehy won't be able to see a doctor to get the help they need

So yeah.. there's widespread frustration :-P

Every Value Village I've been to is either over priced or just picked over junk. There's never anything worth buying. The overpriced stuff is all originally from Walmart or one of the Dollar stores and always priced well over the new retail price.

The same thing happens at Once Upon a Child. Kids clothes are all George (Walmart brand) and price at least 2x new.

It's not any better in Alberta. :-(

In BC you can "play games" with the medical and go to smaller communities and find a Emergency Care Clinic that serves a smaller community.

Family doctors are impossible to get. There are more than a million people on the waiting lists.

To be fair, the government is making some progress on improving things. They've made changes to allow more doctors to be certified. They've pumped money into training programs (they pay a full salary and all tuition at university for some certifications). It's not perfect but it is something.

Edit: fixed some words that got mangled on mobile

Nah you're 100% welcome in Canada. We are glad you're here.

Try Nanaimo. A city of over 100,000 people... there is ONE walk-in clinic in the city, and they are rarely open. You go there and it's either closed or there is a sign on the door "Accepting 10 patients today". So you go to the Nanaimo General ER and IF you're lucky, you will be seen in about 8 to 10 hours.

Drink bottle water and consume plastic particles... drink tap water and get all the other contaminants (places I travel for work outside of Canada have highly contaminated and unsafe water... so water with bits of plastic are the lesser evil).

Hmmm.... Infineon has been doing work with graphene semiconductors for years. Something seems a bit off with this article.

Yeah once you fly with other non-Canadian airlines you realize just how awful flying domestic and international on Air Canada really is (and the discount airlines like Swoop were even worse). I travel a lot for personal and work, and I try my best to book Qatar, Emirates, Turkish, etc. Hell, even KLM is better and they aren't amazing. Same with Ethiopian Air... not amazing or even good but better than Air Canada.