president of CPA Nova Scotia, said under the bill, member accountants could flock to whatever regulator charged the lowest dues, threatening the association’s very existence

Good! Competition between regulators will mitigate rent-seeking. Professional licensing is (mostly) a tax on everyone for the good of the priestly class of licensed. IMO there are very few professions where a license makes sense, and it seems like the complainers are those who would stand to lose their political power over their profession

I’m convinced the guy is literally doing this because of how it would look on a map. He took a look at how big Canada looks (partially due to Mercator) and thought “Wouldn’t it be great if the my country was that big?”

In Canada it’s a politically successful strategy to agitate the suburbs

This is true and depressing. But “the gov’t will probably undo this” does not mean we shouldn’t try

The way that London has done a congestion tax, by law, all the funds raised from it go towards improving public transit. It has been an enormous success there! The transit is much better, the city is less polluted, and if you do choose to drive in the city, you have less traffic to deal with.

I’m sure you can find a niche of people who are worse off in this situation, but Londoners overall are very supportive of it given the fact it has been in place for 22 years now without a gov’t repealing it.

1. Many taxpayer funded services still have additional fees for the users (postal service, toll roads, etc)
2. This is a common argument against congestion pricing, but it ignores the fact that the lowest income people cannot afford a car/gas. Implementing congestion pricing and shifting resources towards public transit would be a huge win for the poorest in our society