COMMENT: Hi Martin, on the recent post about out of control government I can attest to at least 3 cases in the last 6 months. I work for a large coop FI and deal with people from all walks of life. Recently I had: 1) client was refused a permit after 4 months of applying for permits to do modest renos. Was told by city staff that since he had a few trees on his lot they needed a cash deposit of 21 k to assure the trees would not be damaged. My client was shocked and said he negotiated it down to 12 k. How the hell do they come up with the number ?
2) another client was forced by the city to install a new water meter outside of the house. The city then ran the new meter back to the date in 2006 the client bought the house and sent him a bill for $ 12 k saying he did not pay enough before. The client was charged 1% / month plus fees until we refinanced his house to pay it just last week. The clients know of other people that experienced similar issues although those bills were smaller.
3) if a tree in your property has the roots rupture a pipe, the city no longer provides $ 3000 to the homeowner to reduce the major cost of fixing the leak and replacing the pipe
Very heavy handed and blatant abuse
And people think Canada is different ? Maybe you can run Socrates view on the canadian market and Quebec separation which in my view is inevitable
As always thanks for your efforts to help us stay on top of what is really happening out there
REPLY: Yes, the Quebec separatist movement will heat up again after 2015.75. Governments are absolutely dead broke everywhere. Examples are coming in from New Zealand, Australia, Japan, every country in Europe, and Russia. The press is not covering this in a connect-the-dot manner. They may report a single incident, yet remain blind to the trend.
