Obviously telecom. We used to own our transatlantic cables, now we barely have one and we don’t own it.

Anything that is considered a utility or necessary for the function of a nation state, including all schooling, health care and other socially important services.

Food supply lines.

I’m going to give a bit of an odd one here.

Nobody in Canada should own land other than the federal government.

All land used by everyone should be leased from them.

This includes everything from the property with your home on it, to uranium mine, to national parks. Everything.

Loblaws and subsidiaries

And then we attract pricks into the federal government who ignore rules and they evict everyone overnight so that they can build a resort for themselves.

Look, I get the sentiment, but this sort of centralization is scary.

How about subsidized grocery COOPs? Would that work?

Yeah, I read in some other thread that the Canadian wheat board was Saudi owned. Here’s a source that confirms it. And of course it was Harper’s doing. This is essentially what made me ask this question here.

Food production and distribution should absolutely be owned by Canada. It’s insane that something so fundamentally important is at the mercy of foreiegn interests, especially those with whom we are now in a trade war.

How nobody did anything about this the entire time the Liberals were in power, and especially now, is mind boggling.

100% agree. Private, inheritable land ownership in the context of a population that doesn’t all enter the game at the same time with the same resources available to them is inherently unjustifiable.

That’s a very good point. Telecom infrastructure is so important. And because it’s privately owned, it’s not extended to every corner of Canada or in communities in far regions. We rely on things like Musk’s Starling to bring internet to northern communities.

When electricity was made public in Québec under René Levesque with Hydro Québec, the broken down private electricity production and distribution networks were fixed, updated and expanded across the province. It’s become the pride of Québec and a god damn good example of how these essential services need to be provided.

Eeeh… I dunno. I kind of disagree with that one. I think it’s important to allow people to own their own piece of land. Otherwise everyone can risk being evicted from their home by the government and I don’t like that idea.

Limiting how much land people can own though… Like how many residential properties. That I could go for.

Isn’t that already the case though? Aren’t hospitals and schools mostly public except for a few private ones?

Maybe make them ALL public and forbid any private for-profit health care and education facilities. This will force the more priviledged to invest in that system if they want the best service for themselves and their children.

Didn’t some Scandinavian country do this already?

bring back nortel! oh wait…

lol people would go wild if that was even muttered on the news

How I read the question is what should be nationalised, not what else should be.

“everyone can risk being evicted from their home by the government”

A) The government already has a tool to do that, in Canada it’s called “expropriation” and they happen fairly regularly.

B) That’s actually a feature of this system. People buying up land and never leaving is actually one of the major problems with our current real estate prices. In areas of high demand, if the government just terminated leases and then forced those properties to be developed we wouldn’t have the pricing issues we have now. Does this hurt people? yes, but also not nearly as much. Given that property would be much more affordable under such a scheme moving elsewhere wouldn’t be nearly as difficult.

I agree, but it needs to still be talked about.

People still think we can build our way into affordable homes, which is impossible. Alternatives like this would actually deliver affordable housing, but you’re right that a lot of people would be unhappy about it.

I mean… they can already evict people from land they privately own. It’s called “expropriation” and it happens fairly regularly in Canada.

Not sure why this would change anything related to that.

No because of the distribution side. Unless the dustribution also goes COOP. But you asked for nationalization. Loblaws does both distribution and retail so narionalizing it solves the problem.

There’s a difference between hospitals being public and health care services being public. Drugs for chronic conditions. Dentistry. Optometry. Psychiatric services. Proper handling of transport costs for people not living in large cities who urgently need to see a specialist (Ontario’s reimbursement program for that is joke-worthy). Hospital equipment—constant fundraisers to replace things should not be required. There’s so much stuff that falls between the cracks under the current setup that really should be covered by the government.