[tenpies]

Calgary. It amazes me that despite the Chinese money laundering, the Trudeau Federal government willingness to back residential real estate through monetary, immigration, and legal policies; and just the general Canadian willingness to pretend everyone is well-intended and no one would lie in a mortgage application; that Calgary is the one place in Canada that remains somewhat reasonably priced. Multiple road and rail routes that would make it almost impossible for the city to be cut off (a la Vancouver last year). Reasonably good international airport that is set for expansion - although the expansion was very tied to energy.

Very well protected with mountains on one side (but far enough to avoid the major floods or mud slides). Some rivers in the city do flood, but stick to the higher-placed properties and you'll be fine. Some exposure to forest fire smoke, but only smoke, the land around is generally farmland or ranching, and well protected from catching fire. Great self-reliance for food and energy.

Problems: generally just the Canada-wide ones (e.g. healthcare system has collapsed but they haven't noticed, Ottawa largely doesn't care about the West, economy is 50% real estate, immigration is 95% of population growth and has resulted in a very exploitative and corrupt system that lures in young people to be poorly-paid expendable labour under the guise of Canadian Permanent Resident through exorbitantly expensive but low-quality education). Locally, Calgary leans very left (NDP, the Left-most party in Canada), but this balances well with the Conservative provincial government.

[soperj]

Didn't you have a flood that put a mudslide right through the saddledome in the last 5 years?

[swader999]

Yes! 2013 and the mitigations since then and planned should work.

[908B64B197]

> economy is 50% real estate,

That mirrors what Canadians have told me. There's little interest in innovation and building tech when the simplest way to make money is simply housing.

The CSeries comes to mind, it was almost ready and had orders for years, then the Trump admin slapped tariffs on it and Trudeau did basically nothing. All it needed was a little capital injection while waiting for the courts to declare the tariffs illegal and remove them. Instead, Airbus bought it for virtually nothing.

As someone in tech, it's scary to see how little support such an innovative plane got from the government. This would never happen here with Boeing (just look at the 737 MAX) or in Europe with Airbus. And the A220 (the rebranded name) is making a fortune for European investors right now.

> immigration is 95% of population growth and has resulted in a very exploitative and corrupt system that lures in young people to be poorly-paid expendable labour under the guise of Canadian Permanent Resident

The point of immigration is to fill a shortage. That's why here there are rules regarding salary requirements for immigration purposes. If a job isn't paying a lot, it's because it's not in demand; why then bring-in more people to an already saturated market? What’s the logic here?

[motorist_hacker]

Fascinating… I had no idea they grow sour grapes in america :-)