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Toronto offsets property taxes, because the provincial government gives them the different out of the general revenue funds. That means if you live in a normal burb of Toronto, your property taxes might be say $5400/year on a $1m/house. While the same house in London, Ontario would cost you $9k-10k/year in property taxes.

By "the same house" do you mean a $1m/house in London (which clearly is not the "same" as a $1m/house in Toronto) or do you mean a physically similar house? The average price for a home in London seems to be $343,939 while in Toronto it looks like it is not quite three times the price. Thus if Toronto has a property tax rate of about one half the property tax rate in London, I could see one arguing that Toronto home owners are paying MORE than similar home owners in London.

These London homes look much fancier than these Toronto homes:

https://www.homesinlondonontar...

https://www.kijiji.ca/b-house-...

I had forgotten how much responsibilities the "municipalities" got downloaded on back in the early 2000s - I think you are right that much of the "provincial" infrastructure is probably already there.

As for the difficulty of political representation - it certainly is a tough problem to solve . If half you population is concentrated in one region, there is some logic in putting a whole lot of your resources and services in that region, but then again it is important to give everyone else reasonable access to all those services too. Putting the province's only cancer hospital up in Kenora wouldn't make much sense, but having all of the "only one in the province" services in Toronto doesn't make much sense either.

Of all the things you can find on Kijiji / Craigslist... here's a fancy 747 Simulator including a few Boeing parts - but not the ones that get you in the air ;) . Built for a TV show???

http://www.kijiji.ca/v-desktop-computers/edmonton/flight-simulator-boeing-737-everyone-can-fly/1108118705

20 houses listed on kijiji in my town never mind the ones being sold by realators. There are ten houses on my street five were for sale last year. 2 took down the signs, 2 took a little over 2 years to sell at a loss to the owners, one is still for sale.
Here is a town of 5700 by edmonton
http://edmonton.kijiji.ca/f-vegreville-real-estate-houses-for-sale-W0QQCatIdZ35QQKeywordZvegrevilleQQisSearchFormZtrue
http://www.calgarysrealestate.ca/vegreville.php
https://www.google.ca/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=real+estate+vegreville+alberta&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&redir_esc=&ei=uWpPUZjXOc3PigLfm4G4Aw#hl=en&client=ubuntu&hs=CrY&channel=fs&q=vegreville+real+estate+listings&revid=1903828307&sa=X&ei=umpPUfCqAqqDjALCmYD4Bw&ved=0CKgBENUCKAA&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.44158598,d.cGE&fp=fc703c3c98ada1dc&biw=1393&bih=672
Sorry $6.79 for 4 litres of milk, $4.65 for 1 litre chocolate milk. Bananas are $1.96 -$2.20/kg at the local store. All the small town goceries are run by koreans or chinese and although they use KG at the till everything is labled in LB on the shelf. Most rural people in Alberta use english measure for daily activities (ie. miles, pounds,feet,inches, bushels etc) so does residential construction we buy 2x4's, 4x8 sheets of plywood, floor tiles are in inches, pipes (electrical and plumbing are sold by inches/diameter and foot/lengths) even the Home depot in Edmonton sells construction materials in english measure.
My neighbor has 8 kids other neighbour has 10 kids both are from Mexico. Parents ,sometimes grandparents and even 4-6 kids is a lot of people in a house. Temporary foreign workers usually live 2/4 per basement suite due to high rent cost. Low unemployment is because many low income people work 2-3 part time jobs because none of the bussnesses that hire min/wage employes hire full time to avoid paying pensions and benefits. It cost me $1,500 to get 2 teeth pulled on my 4 year old since my benefits don't kick in till May and I'm fortunate to make a decent income. Not everyone lives in Edmonton or Calgary buddy.

I use Kijiji. It's run by the same people who run eBay.

Around Winnipeg Craigslist is, frankly, a waste of effort. Few advertisements and if there is one, it's on Kijiji too.

What you obviously lack is life experience. Here is an example in the moving industry in Toronto to help you with that. It is well known that there are scam artists out there who will quote you a price and then try to jack up the prices of the move by charging you a hefty deposit, loading your stuff, and then telling you there were "extra charges for extra work" before unloading. And if you don't pay they drive off with your goods. For the longest time and often even now when you call the police they (would) tell you it is a civil matter, even though it looks, feels, and smells like fraud. Quote from the link:

I have called the police and reported how I was intimidated and asked to go to the bank and get more money before they even finished loading my furniture, and the officer practically told me that this is a civil matter and there's not much they can do about this.

I got screwed like this once. But fortunately (if that is even applicable), it was one quite small load. However it has happened to others many times and in many places for hundreds and even thousands of dollars.

Finally the police arrested one crew for doing this to one poor soul. Then it turned out that the victim in this case was an off duty police officer. This was the first time many people had heard of actual criminal charges in these cases.

Charming. It's a shame the police didn't cotton on to this earlier: they admit that they ignored many earlier reports because they sounded like civil, not criminal, disputes. What changed? We certainly can't say, but CBC Radio was reporting yesterday that one of the victims of this scam was a police officer.

Now this was at least a couple of years ago so references are hard to find among all the advertising cruft and bullshit that google always returns, but there should be enough in the links etc I posted to show I'm not bullshitting. The only reason the police did anything was because it was one of their own. That is not paranoid delusions. That is reality. Before you make judgments, get out of the basement or whatever insular world you are in and see the world or at least pay attention to it.

It is a well know human trait that people protect their own. Police are no different.

Buy one from where?

The flea-market I was at last week had laptops going for $300, and desktops going for $150 ($200 with a monitor). The local Salvation Army and Goodwill stores regularly sell components and sometimes complete systems. Then there are resources like Craigs List or kijiji. There's even Freecycle if you're really strapped for cash.

And if you're considering making the obvious silly crack about looking online for a computer, please, do yourself a favor and think, first. Or, alternately, refer back to my previous comment.

Then there are the unbudgeted consequences when your old, out-of-warranty second hand laptop suffers from a hardware fault...

So go even cheaper, and budget for a replacement. The sites I linked to list several laptops in the $175 and under bracket.

My aunt bought two laptops for about $350, almost two years ago. That's $350 for both, not each, so you can imagine the specs on them. I offered to find her a good deal on something more modern, but she insisted she didn't need anything fancy. Almost two years later, both laptops are still running fine. Their batteries last about 25 minutes, but they're still adequate for her and her husband. She checks her e-mail, composes documents in word, creates power-point presentations, and even does web-site design for her own small business. Oh, and she also has a 6-figure income. Maybe that's why poor people can't find these computers - the rich people keep buying them up!

Because amphibious vehicles have worked out so well that now everyone owns one! I suspect it is even harder to build something that both makes a good aircraft and a good car than it is to build something that both makes a good boat and a good car. As a child, my father sold Allsport Tracker amphibious ATVs. Guess what -- they sucked. Big time.

I can't actually find a specific small-town environment in which Kijiji actually has an advantage. Can anyone suggest a specific one?

http://edmonton.en.craigslist.ca/
http://edmonton.kijiji.ca/

In every comparable category I've checked, Kijiji has more activity (usually by an order of magnitude.) For example "Computers" - Kijiji has 17 ads in the last hour, Craigslist has 3 for the whole day. (And that's not counting "Computer accessories" which only exists in Kijiji.) "Motorcycles" - Kijiji has 31 posts so far today, Craigslist has 3. "Furniture" - Kijiji has 27 posts in the last hour, Craigslist has 4 for the day.

Every other category I've checked is similar.. Kijiji is just *way* more popular in Edmonton.

Where I live, and what I buy/sell, Kijiji has *way* more users.

Compare:
http://edmonton.kijiji.ca/f-buy-and-sell-cameras-camcorders-W0QQCatIdZ103
http://edmonton.en.craigslist.ca/pho/

I'm totally ignorant on the value of a 1991 Nissan Skyline GT-R.

If he makes money, it'll more likely be from selling kits or plans on infomercials than from making electricity. After seeing L.E.D.s powered from small batteries sold as teeth whiteners and pain killers, its clear some people can be fooled into buying just about anything. But in the spirit of developing his idea...

No point wasting good nails and trees. Just find a place where there are copper water pipes buried, use that as one connection, then bury beer cans with wires attached nearby. Teach your dog (and maybe whoever drank the beer?) to pee there.

Free power, as in free beer?

When your friends are too drunk to go out and pee, have them sitting naked on metal plates, with peltier-junction arrays between the plates and massive solid iron cylinders going down into the ground as heatsinks. Get some electricity from the heat flow. Being overweight can be an ass-set.
Maybe get enough power to run a non-backlit LCD tv!

Be original when stepping up the voltage...
A DC-DC up converter with an inductor, power-F.E.T., schottky diode, capacitor and some control electronics is so high tech. I say let's bring back the dynamotor!
It's more fun than putting trees in pots so they could be hooked in series.