Ph.D. Epidemiology, P.Eng. U of A Alumni, U of C Alumni. Father of three beautiful smiling kids: #bringbackthesmile
Alberta
Joined April 2011
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Observation: Public health is not only about unavoidable respiratory viruses. Public health messaging should focus on risk based mitigation but public health should also seek to prop society not divide it or diminish people & their individual life goals.
bbc.com/news/world-asia-chin…
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JonesPhD retweeted
There is something deeply disturbing about a political mindset that allows partisan hostility to dictate how Canadians should live their lives.
Now we're being told that Canadians should avoid vacationing in the United States, regardless of the midterm election results.
When did political disagreement become a reason to discourage ordinary people from travelling, doing business, or enjoying themselves?
I can disagree with an American president without holding an entire country responsible for his policies.
Political tribalism has reached the point where some people seem incapable of separating their personal ideology from everyday life.
Independent thinking means judging people, policies, and circumstances on their merits, rather than through a partisan filter.
Canada needs more critical thinking and considerably less political hysteria.
JonesPhD retweeted
Hi. Meteorologist here.
Can you please show me the increase in heatwaves on this chart? Looks to me that they're down since 1895.
This quoted post is unavailable.
JonesPhD retweeted
The Liberals are promising to “end homelessness within 10 years.”
They have promised this before.
November 22, 2017 — Trudeau: “reduce chronic homelessness by 50%.”
September 23, 2020 — his government: “entirely eliminating chronic homelessness in Canada.”
April 7, 2022 — the budget: “eliminate chronic homelessness by 2030.”
November 15, 2022 — the Auditor General, after $1.36 billion spent through Reaching Home in 2019–2021: they were “unlikely to achieve” the 50% target by 2027–28.
May 22, 2024 — the Parliamentary Budget Officer: the program “is not on track.”
November 6, 2026 — Carney’s own government: homelessness has “nearly doubled” since 2018, with about 65,000 people experiencing homelessness in 2025.
Now they say nearly $30 billion more will “end homelessness within 10 years.”
Same promise. New date. Worse results.
JonesPhD retweeted
After years of water system failures, flooding and property damage, a new independent report raises serious questions about what the former mayor of Calgary, and Alberta NDP leader Naheed Nenshi knew and what he did about it.
Nenshi was briefed on the concerns, yet the warnings never made it to city council.
Years later, Calgarians are dealing with the disastrous Bearspaw water main failures, not once, but twice.
Residents were forced to boil their water and ration their water use. Meanwhile, the man who led Calgary for 11 years has blamed everyone but himself.
Now, Calgary families are facing water bills projected to DOUBLE over the next three years, exceeding $200 per month.
Nenshi wants to lead Alberta. He can’t even keep water running for Calgarians.
JonesPhD retweeted
CTV's "expert" calls Alberta's referendum a "waste of money" and an "embarrassment."
That's not what Albertans thought.
More than 2.2 million Albertans voted. Turnout beat the last provincial election. Asking them was not a waste. It was democracy.
But who is CTV's expert? 🧵
‘Embarrassment for the province’: Alberta referendum cost taxpayers $84 million, prompting questions about value ctvnews.ca/calgary/article/e…
JonesPhD retweeted
China now burns more coal than the rest of the world combined.
Meanwhile, here in Alberta, Notley shut down our coal power electricity generating plants during her reign of terror.
Alberta has huge coal reserves, but now we have the country's most expensive electricity.
And we now export our coal to China.
JonesPhD retweeted
This is so hard to watch. Vassy's got the finance minister on the run, but she just won't finish him off.
I'll do a thread on the budget tomorrow, complete with a decade of trends. You'll see how bad Ottawa's fiances are, and how none of his explanations make sense.
There's no World where adding $60 billion in deficit to an existing multi-trillion dollar dept makes sense, especially when we're never paying off the house (to use his analogy).
François-Philippe Champagne is a lawyer who spent years as corporate counsel at ABB and Amec. That’s it. No economics degree, no banking, no finance portfolio, no private-sector profit & loss responsibility.
Now he’s Finance Minister running $70-billion deficits and talking about “productivity” while debt service eats everything.
A guy who never managed a balance sheet is in charge of Canada’s. All he's got are pure Liberal credentials: loyalty, bilingualism, and a resume that looks impressive until you notice it has nothing to do with the job.
JonesPhD retweeted
More government is never the solution.
Opinion: If Canada wants economic security, it must tolerate a bigger government hand in business theglobeandmail.com/business…
JonesPhD retweeted
Imagine if you could reduce your debt by dividing it onto three credit cards!
Well Mark Carney says today you can.
JonesPhD retweeted
I absolutely LOATHE how the NHL is weirdly militant about calling stick lifts that touch or breeze near a player's hands, but that is how they've consistently called it for a couple seasons now. No goal for Liam.
Russian Kids. God forbid we invite them here and show them what a peaceful, accepting nation Canada is so they can go home and tell others what a great place Canada is and lead by example… or we could just ban the kids and their families from coming. What sounds moral to you @YourAlberta @ABDanielleSmith @MarkJCarney @nenshi
I’m pleased to hear that the federal government will not allow Russia to compete in the World Junior Hockey Championship here in Alberta.
Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine continues, and Canada has welcomed hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing the war, many of whom now proudly call Alberta home.
Canada has opened its arms and hearts to the Ukrainian people, and we must never forget why so many were forced to leave their homes in the first place.
Our solidarity with Ukraine must extend beyond words.
JonesPhD retweeted
So Ovechkin and others get to play in NHL and travel to Canada, but Carney wont allow kids to come play world jr tournament.
JonesPhD retweeted
Her post is not about the Olympics, but bear with me.
The modern Olympics weren’t created so governments could use them as another sanctions tool.
Pierre de Coubertin revived them because wars start when nations don't understand each other. His idea was to get young athletes from competing countries together on a regular basis so they could test each other fairly and maybe reduce some of that ignorance.
The ancient Games operated under a truce that protected travel to the competition while wars continued elsewhere. The point was competition amid conflict, not exclusion because of it.
Canada’s latest statement does the reverse. It turns sport into another extension of foreign policy.
See my Joint Statement with @LenaMetlegeDiab and @vankayak on the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in international sport.
JonesPhD retweeted
Watch for this trick in this week's Canadian budget.
Ottawa will brag about “low net debt.” They started doing this when CArney got elected. What they won’t tell you is that the only reason that number looks good is because they’re subtracting roughly a trillion dollars in CPP and QPP assets.
Those funds are not government money. They’re held in trust for workers and retirees. The feds can’t spend them, borrow against them, or use them to cover their own deficits. Subtracting them is not standard accounting. In fact, most other countries don’t do this because the money is earmarked and legally unavailable for general government spending.
This is how they plan to conceal the real borrowing binge. Gross debt keeps rising, debt-service costs are exploding, and they’re using our pension savings as an accounting offset to pretend there’s still fiscal room.
Don’t fall for the “net” number. It's a deliberate sleight of hand.
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It seems this article keeps getting quoted by those who fail to critically appraise said article and methods used… even a superficial critical review…
As I've been saying for years, fossil fuel emissions do not explain changes in atmospheric CO2. nitter.cf/JunkScience/status/178…
Here's a new paper from @cohler and @williesoon8 backing up my assertion: "The claim of fossil dominance is therefore not merely empirically weak; it is nconsistent with the arithmetic of the isotopic constraint applied to the standard measurement record." papers.jcohler.com/keeling
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JonesPhD retweeted
I'm seeing a lot of confusion and misinformation about time zones in Canada this week.
(This was made worse by people sharing maps that looked messier than the real situation, simply because they weren't fully updated yet.)
So, if you're interested, here's a really detailed look at how our time zones really work:
First, it's important to understand that time zones are not just info about "what time it is in this place".
Time zones are a set of rules about what time it is relative to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) and - crucially - on what dates those times apply.
Pacific Standard Time, Pacific Daylight Time, Mountain Standard Time, Mountain Daylight Time, Central Standard Time, etc are NOT time zones - they are temporary statuses of time zones.
There is a Pacific Time Zone, a Mountain Time Zone, a Central Time Zone, an Eastern Time Zone, etc (often just called Pacific Time, Mountain TIme, Central Time, and Eastern Time).
Each of those time zones tells you what UTC they are on on which days.
"Pacific Time Zone" means that the time is UTC-7 between the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November, and UTC-8 between the first Sunday in November and the second Sunday in March.
So, it's kind of nonsensical to say that British Columbia is now observing permanent Pacific Daylight Time, or that Manitoba is now observing permanent Central Daylight Time.
(Yes, the UTC numbers are correct, and so as a shorthand it's not wrong, but... it causes confusion.)
So, if BC's time zone cannot be "Pacific Daylight Time All Year Round", because Pacific Daylight Time is not a time zone, then a new time zone is needed.
The new time zone specifies that the time in BC is UTC-7 for the entire calendar year.
Where the provinces have gone wrong (and caused even more confusion) is in their naming of the new time zones.
They should have gone with "British Columbia Time - BCT" to make the difference more obvious.
Other provinces made this mistake too.
Western Canada's current (new) time zone names are:
BC: Pacific Time - PCT
AB: Alberta Time - ABT
SK: Central Standard Time - CST
MB: Manitoba Standard Time - MBT
BC's new time zone "Pacific Time" is far, far, far too similar to the existing "Pacific Time Zone".
SK is making the mistake I pointed out earlier, of nonsensically saying they're permanently on a temporary time - but this name was set decades ago.
Manitoba got close to something sensible, but introduced unnecessary complication by using the word "Standard," which can be too easily confused with Central Standard Time.
Here's what the new time zones should be:
BC: British Columbia Time - BCT
AB: Alberta Time - ABT
SK: Saskatchewan Time - SKT
MB: Manitoba Time - MBT
If the provinces make these fixes, then most of the confusion will go away.
Each province will have its own time zone, which explains what time it is and which dates those times apply to (all year).
If people then want to use shorthand to say that, functionally, BCT = PDT, ABT = MDT, SKT = MDT, and MBT = CDT, then go for it.
