Ongoing YYCCC (Chu + Farkas) Transgressions Threat

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Macman

Isn't Chu also a former police officer, maybe not quite the person he's being portrayed here.

From Wikipedia:

Awards
While working for the Calgary Police Service, Chu received both the Calgary Police Service Distinguished Service Medal and the 20 years Service Medal. His contribution to community initiatives has been recognized with both the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Medal and the Alberta Centennial Medal.

Education and career before politics
Chu spent three years in military service in Taiwan before moving to Canada.

After his arrival in Canada, Chu attended Mount Royal College.

Prior to being elected Sean was a member of the Calgary Police Service. During his 21 years of service Sean worked as a member of the motorcycle Unit, District #1 and the Diversity Resources Team for Community Outreach.

He can be a complete moron of a councillor and a good former police officer.

[boogerz]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

Most people barely pay attention to politics at all (especially local/municipal politics) and can't even tell you much about Chu. He's a self-described conservative (that alone gets you very far in Calgary politics, as Rob Anders and more recently Michelle Rempel Garner demonstrate), and he regularly gets positive/favourable coverage in Sun Media publications where the writers and editors massage his words to make him sound more intelligent and coherent than he comes across to anyone who listens to him directly.

So yeah, everyone who actively follows local politics knows how moronic Chu is and how utterly worthless he is as a councillor (even conservatives who oppose the same things he opposes should still expect better representative of their views than Chu provides), but the percentage of the population who are highly-informed voters is way too low. I'd hazard a guess and say anyone who reads this thread is likely more informed about local politics than 75% or more of voters.

There's a lot of Asians that live in Ward 4. In addition to the conservative vote, Chu also has that going for him.

[Cappy]

If the US has taught me anything, it's that morons can be elected to office so long as other morons agree with them

[CliffFletcher]

Originally Posted by Parallex

Honest question here... how did Chu get elected in the first place? I mean the guy isn't charismatic, says dumb things all the time, and constantly sounds confused at council meetings. Just wondering why people voted for this guy in the first place?

Municipal politics is about the ground game. Pressing the flesh at community association barbecues and cultural centres, visiting seniors, knocking on doors, working the phones, and being involved in the local community at the grassroots level. Stuff that pretty much doesn’t show up in the media. You can win decisive support with engagement at that scale because only a small fraction of people vote in municipal elections.

[Lubicon]

Originally Posted by Cappy

If the US has taught me anything, it's that morons can be elected to office so long as other morons agree with them

The US doesn't have a monopoly on that, Canada has demonstrated the same thing repeatedly too.

[tvp2003]

Not necessarily related to City Council but definitely civic related: Global tech firm Mphasis to set up its Canadian HQ in Calgary, creating 500 to 1,000 jobs and hopefully taking up some empty office space as well.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calga...erta-1.6050362

India-based Mphasis has formed a partnership with the University of Calgary and the provincial government to establish the Quantum City Centre of Excellence, which is intended to become a hub for companies pursuing the commercial development of quantum technologies, according to a release.

"Thanks to the people and technology cultivated at Quantum City, Calgary's economy will grow and diversify. Quantum technologies often sound like science fiction today, but they will sound like paycheques tomorrow," said U of C president Ed McCauley.

"This is how great research universities improve their community, and it's a great day for UCalgary."

The university and Mphasis will work together on the development of an AI-driven personalized learning experience.

The Calgary operation will create 500 to 1,000 jobs over the next two years, the release said.

[Fuzz]

Can we like the announcement, but despise the name?

[Flames0910]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Can we like the announcement, but despise the name?

It's probably a good name at a quantum / subatomic level.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Can we like the announcement, but despise the name?

Yes, but there is a limit to how precisely you'll be able to define both the name, and your dislike of it.

[habernac]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Can we like the announcement, but despise the name?

Gymvmt

[Wormius]

I always wonder how long it would take for a bad actor with a quantum computer to hack passwords.

[CaptainYooh]

Yet another Chu+Farkas transgression...

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by CaptainYooh

Yet another Chu+Farkas transgression...

They’ll be to blame…

[FurnaceFace]

Originally Posted by Wormius

They’ll be to blame…

...they will take credit.

I think all or the majority of Mphasis’ competitors have a foothold in Calgary so this makes sense to me. Wonder with the University connection if they do something in the research park area.

[Wormius]

Originally Posted by FurnaceFace

...they will take credit.

I think all or the majority of Mphasis’ competitors have a foothold in Calgary so this makes sense to me. Wonder with the University connection if they do something in the research park area.

I thought the only other company doing quantum computing in Canada was D-Wave in Vancouver.

[boogerz]

Mphasis is just like the other global IT outsourcing firms (e.g. Wipro, Infosys, HCL, Tata, etc). For those 500-100 "local" jobs, they'll hire some local business development and admin/clerical roles with a few technical SMEs and project managers sprinkled in for optics, but the remaining "local" staff will be individuals on whatever the Canadian equivalent to the HB1 visa is.

Then there's the real issue of them undercutting local shops by outsourcing the grunt work to India. I used to see this all the time on bids where each of the firms mentioned above submit proposals at half the hourly rate of North American-based or local IT professional services firms. Then when it comes to execution, they'll end up taking 50% longer than a local firm at 80% of the cost of a local firm.

Competition is good and there is a little bit of benefit to Calgary, but I don't think this is great news given that it's not going to stimulate the economy as much as people think it will. It just continues to reduce the number of locals getting projects and lowers local rates.

[shogged]

Originally Posted by Parallex

Honest question here... how did Chu get elected in the first place? I mean the guy isn't charismatic, says dumb things all the time, and constantly sounds confused at council meetings. Just wondering why people voted for this guy in the first place?

Persistence. Gael McLeod was the incumbent and she had won a wide open race the election before with only 25% of the vote to Chus 21%. Her first term she managed to polarize the ward by doing crazy liberal things like organizing walks around the community and had a fair amount of negative buzz heading into the election. In 2013, Sean chu ran against her again with a much smaller slate of candidates competing against them, positioned himself as the conservative option and beat her by 3%.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by boogerz

It just continues to reduce the number of locals getting projects and lowers local rates.

I don't have a problem with people in India getting better work. Just because someone was born within the magic lines of Canada doesn't mean they deserve a livelihood more than someone in India.

As India progresses, wages will climb, and hopefully one day global competition will be more evenly priced as there is opportunity for more people to earn a good wage and live a good life.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Bill Bumface

I don't have a problem with people in India getting better work. Just because someone was born within the magic lines of Canada doesn't mean they deserve a livelihood more than someone in India.

That's great for the people of India, but in the meantime the wages and quality-of-life for someone over here is negatively affected. We all want people around the world to elevate their standard of living, but there's a negative cost to all this outsourcing. Look at the sacrifice that a worker in the manufacturing industry in Ohio or Michigan made for China's rise. How much of a reduction in wages and standard of living for your family would you personally sacrifice?

As India progresses, wages will climb, and hopefully one day global competition will be more evenly priced as there is opportunity for more people to earn a good wage and live a good life.

Wages will climb in India, but when you have people from a country of over 1B getting access to the international market, the overall cost of labor will go down considerably. Great for the bottom line, probably not so great for the average employee here or anywhere else that's not India.

In my industry, I've had my fair share of working with Indian companies to know that the game over there is quantity, not quality. They have 5 guys working on a project, and if you have an issue, their solution is to throw 5 more guys at it, because finding more guys in India is never a problem. But in the end, you realize you should've paid for the 1 guy who knows what he's doing. Quality and consistency is one of the few things we here in Canada can offer on the international market. Once you erode that too, you might as well ship the whole thing over.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Table 5

That's great for the people of India, but in the meantime the wages and quality-of-life for someone over here is negatively affected. We all want people around the world to elevate their standard of living, but there's a negative cost to all this outsourcing. Look at the sacrifice that a worker in the manufacturing industry in Ohio or Michigan made for China's rise. How much of a reduction in wages and standard of living for your family would you personally sacrifice?

I believe I won the lottery by being born where I was and having the opportunities I have.

My firm belief is that being born in Canada doesn't make me more deserving of opportunity, nor does it make me deserving of having a standard of living that is better than 99% of people in the world.

You mention quality differences, and that's fine, all of us make those tradeoffs every single day. People that do great work of high quality should and will be compensated better for it. But they shouldn't arbitrarily receive compensation that results in a higher quality of life because of where they live.

Many of us on here agree that providing equal opportunities for all Canadian kids, regardless of wealth, is an important goal for our society. Why should we decree that giving the chance to do meaningful work and developing industries outside of our borders is not a meaningful goal for all of humanity?

While it can be validly argued that the working conditions in other countries make for an unequal playing field, it can be conversely argued that people in China have a far better standard of living because they were given an opportunity to take on manufacturing work that in many cases we would call equal in quality to what was being done in North America.